Nanaimo

How Google Earth Ate Our Town

The search engine has mapped virtually every block of this small Canadian coal town — though locals have responded with not much more than a shrug

Chiang Rai

The Right Recipe for Thailand?

Ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra returns to Thailand. Why one noodle-soup seller hails him as a hero

Managua

Twilight of the Sandal-istas

The leftist true believers who came to Nicaragua in the '80s to support the revolution now find themselves being more Sandinista than the Sandinistas themselves

Beirut

March Madness in Lebanon

In the Lebanese league, the players rarely fight; it's the fans that have to be kept apart

Pasadena

A Team That Doesn't All Add Up

At Caltech, basketball is the dismal science: The team hasn't won a league game since 1985. Air balls and astrophysics with the country's worst college hoops team

Video: To See India, Take the Train

In 2001, Indian Railways was steaming towards bankruptcy. But in a remarkable turnaround, the trains have now made more than $5 billion

Porong

Video: Mud Volcano

In Indonesia, an entire district has been buried by an eruption of boiling, noxious mud. Was it a natural disaster or an industrial accident?

Paris

Let Them Eat Cake? Who Can Afford Cake?

France reels under an inflationary assault on its shopping basket. And many suspect there's price-gouging at work

Salamanca

How Spain Became Splitsville

For decades divorce was prohibited, and then it became legal but complicated. A recent reform easing the process has seen the divorce rate climb to one of Europe's highest

Leh

'Ice Man' vs. Global Warming

A visionary engineer struggles to save Himalayan farmers by building his own glaciers

Cairo

An Islamic Answer to Dr. Ruth

Heba Kotb is the Arab world's first public sexologist. A healthy married sex life is mandated by the Koran, she says. But homosexuality is a no-no

Sam Ouandja

Where Darfur Represents Hope

The best thing that happened to an abandoned outpost of the Central African Republic was the arrival of refugees from Africa's best-known conflict