Stories

How despots use language to seduce and subdue the population

“Pain is a fucking terrorist.” That’s what Dr. Mark Ibsen says as he stalks back and forth in a small conference room. A PowerPoint clicker...

What if your whole life disappeared overnight?

For an overnight shift reporter in America’s murder capital, the beat is an education in violence and its aftermath, marked by powerful snapshots of grief.

Last May two brothers claimed a Philippine city for ISIS. It was a horror centuries in the making: a fatal cocktail of failed politics, colonialism and global terror. Could it happen again?

Sicily’s manic, multicultural capital is buckling under the weight of a migrant crisis. Meanwhile, a new criminal enterprise is laying roots in its ancient heart, working with Mafiosi to traffick drugs and women whose lives are being destroyed.

Since the 1960s, the checkpoint separating North and South Korea has been a zoo — a dangerous zoo.

ILHA GRANDE, Brazil   It was 1960, and Julio de Almeida had been locked away for two years in a hellish prison called Cândido Mendes on...

As many as one million migrants are being held against their will in Libya as hostages and slaves to armed gangs. Europe wants to keep it that way.

PAHOKEE, Florida   The pianist at First United Methodist Church was as nervous as he’d ever been before a performance. Music comes naturally to Chad Stoffel. So...