In July 2014, Staffan de Mistura, a 68-year old Italian-Swedish diplomat, was enjoying a peaceful semi-retirement on the isle of Capri when he received a telephone call from his former boss, the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, offering him what might be the world’s most difficult job. De Mistura had worked under Ban as the chief of the UN missions to Afghanistan and Iraq, and he was now being asked to take up a role as the UN’s special envoy...

“Son, is that you?” Recognizing the weak, shaky voice on the other line, Kevin immediately hangs up the phone. Kevin, the eldest son in his family, defected from North Korea in 1998 when he was 17 years old and is currently a graduate student in South Korea, working odd jobs to save cash to send as remittances to his family, all of whom still reside in North Korea. Several years ago, he sent smart phones to his family so that they could stay in touch.

I met Angelo on a film set in Berlin. We'd both been booked for a German TV commercial. The producers were worried that the all blond-haired, blue-eyed cast would send out the wrong message, so they'd done a last-minute search of out-of-work non-German actors in the city and found Angelo, a black Canadian, and me, a ginger Paddy. There was a lot of downtime on the shoot, so Angelo and I got to talking. But our conversations kept getting interrupted...

The line for lawyers and family members to get into Lefortovo prison starts to form around five in the morning. The building, on a quiet street just east of Moscow’s Third Ring Road, now officially belongs to the Ministry of Justice, but it’s still informally known as the prison of the F.S.B., a successor agency to the K.G.B. Early on June 16, 2014, one of the prisoners awaiting visitors was Boris Kolesnikov, a general who had been the deputy head of the...

When Boston photographer David Fox moved to Afghanistan, he began to share pictures and stories about the day-to-day life that rarely gets covered by the press.

In the latest installment of Hopes&Fears anonymous interview series, we talk to a struggling actor who made a livelihood selling his semen. I’m a professional sperm donor. It kind of started off as a joke. I knew that you could earn money donating sperm. I was trying to make it as an actor. I guess you could say I was a starving artist. I was basically just working a bunch of random part-time jobs to hoard as much funds as I could to pay...

‘She sent me a picture of her adoption records. We had been born in the same clinic. She wrote, “Dude, we’re totally twins!”’

After a hospital error, two pairs of Colombian identical twins were raised as two pairs of fraternal twins. This is the story of how they found one another — and of what happened next.

A handful of North Korean defectors are publishing their memoirs this summer. Among the harrowing accounts is “The Girl With Seven Names,” by Hyeonseo Lee, who walked out of the country when she was 17.

I have lived in America for the past 15 years. I have two Ivy League degrees. And I am on the verge of deportation. Despite being an "honorary American," as I have often jokingly introduced myself, I am in fact a citizen of New Zealand. I was 18 years old when I first came to America. I still remember the excitement I felt when, very late at night, my flight from Auckland touched down at JFK.

Sometimes I wonder if I would do it again. That's the funny thing about life. Experience comes in random, sporadic servings. It's only years later that the story takes shape. I didn't intend to spend more than a year covering human trafficking. It ended up taking a decade. I didn't intend on reporting in more than two countries. So, how did I end up in nine?

For virtually all of the past forty-three years, Albert Woodfox, a sixty-eight-year-old man in poor health, has been in solitary confinement in a six-by-nine-foot cell. He’s allowed out of his cell for an hour each day, to walk his cellblock, shower, or exercise in the yard, while still remaining in isolation. This treatment would be cruel and inhumane regardless of the crime for which Woodfox was convicted.

In 2009, a strange Facebook account appeared out of nowhere and friended people en-masse. The name on the account was Junko Junsui, and she had a message for anyone willing to listen. Thus began a strange mystery that would continue for years to come, as countless people across the internet became enamoured of Junsui, her story, and the shadowy organizations she claimed were hiding in plain sight. It was never real, of course.

BOB WEIDNER likes to play a game when he goes to a high-end outlet store like Brooks Brothers or Ralph Lauren: How many things can he buy and not spend more than $100? On his last visit, the answer was seven. “Every year, we go up to the outlets and find a deal,” he said. “It’s worth it.” His wife, Angela Marchi, who chides him for darning his socks (just the toes, not the heels, he said), prefers to buy her clothes twice a year when her favorite stores put last year’s styles on sale.

Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer at Facebook, has written an emotional post on the social networking site about mourning for her husband, David Goldberg, who died in an accident last month. “Today is the end of sheloshim for my beloved husband—the first thirty days,” Sandberg wrote. “Judaism calls for a period of intense mourning known as shiva that lasts seven days after a loved one is buried. After shiva, most normal activities can be resumed...

McDonald’s sales have slumped. Maybe the public wants healthier food. Maybe there’s too much competition. Maybe people aren’t into the chipotle barbecue snack wrap. McDonald’s leaders have vowed to reverse the downturn by recommitting to “hot, fresh food,” by selling off certain outlets to independent owners — which would reduce the number of corporate-covered employees with a newly raised minimum wage — and by cutting $300 million in costs.

The women begin to arrive just before 8 a.m., every day and without fail, until there are thickets of young Asian and Hispanic women on nearly every street corner along the main roads of Flushing, Queens. As if on cue, cavalcades of battered Ford Econoline vans grumble to the curbs, and the women jump in. It is the start of another workday for legions of New York City’s manicurists, who are hurtled to nail salons across three states.

If you'd seen him in the crowded room that night, you might not have given him a second look. He was the frail old man in a wheelchair. He wore a black ascot cap, a burgundy tie and a gray tweed jacket that covered his 140-pound frame. Ba Van Nguyen couldn't speak, could barely move; just a tiny man in a roomful of big Navy men swapping war stories.

Seventeen hundred miles from what is customarily called civilization—in this case, the western shore of the Republic of South Africa—lies a tiny British-run volcanic island populated by fewer than three hundred people who lay claim to living in the most isolated permanent habitation in the world.

He’d spent years wondering when the other shoe would drop. The revelation had taken him by surprise — the best possible thing that could have happened under the circumstances, his lawyer said — and yet the promise of it weighed too heavily for him to completely go along with it. Part of him was sure it wasn’t true at all.