Their lives intersected around a playground on a sunny Friday evening in Kryvyi Rih, a city in central Ukraine. Kostiantyn Novik, 16, had come with his cousin to hang out with friends. Serhii Smotolok, a 57-year-old welder, was nursing a beer nearby on the terrace of a restaurant, unwinding after his workday. Radislav Yatsko, 7,…
The human costs of Russia’s war in Ukraine are enormous, measured in mass graves, nightly missile attacks, traumatized children and hundreds of thousands of soldiers dead or wounded. But Ukraine’s environment is also being devastated. The war may end, but damage from artillery shells, mines, drones and missiles will endure for decades, experts say, degrading…
Even in a frequently fogbound port city along the Atlantic Ocean, the billowing clouds of steam rising from Canada’s largest oil refinery over Saint John, New Brunswick, are impossible to miss. On a ridge overlooking the refinery sit six enormous tanks, each containing one million barrels of crude oil. Letters painted in dark blue spell…
When she finds it hard to focus, Nilab jots down her worries on slips of paper and pins them to her wall, a strategy she picked up in a seminar on mental health at the American University of Afghanistan in Kabul. She makes a mental note to deal with the issues at a scheduled time…
Spring is a season of renewal, a time for refreshing homes, minds and wardrobes. While you are at it, why not refresh your hair? A haircut is among the quickest — and most drastic — changes in appearance that someone can make. No wonder they can induce so much anxiety. But few transformations can leave…
At the battle-scarred presidential palace in the heart of Sudan’s shattered capital, soldiers gathered under a chandelier on Sunday afternoon, rifles and rocket launchers slung over their shoulders, listening to their orders. Then they trooped out, down a red carpet that once welcomed foreign dignitaries, and into the deserted center of the city on a…
When the first buses of newly freed migrants arrived this month in Panama City from a detention camp at the edge of a jungle, three people were visibly ill. One needed H.I.V. treatment, a lawyer said, another had run out of insulin and a third was suffering from seizures. Confusion, chaos and fear reigned. “What…
Sudanese military forces pushed toward the presidential palace in the battle-scarred capital, Khartoum, on Thursday, signaling a potential turning point in Sudan’s devastating civil war, now approaching its third year. Video footage showed Sudanese troops about 500 yards east of the palace compound, which overlooks the river Nile, and is controlled by the Rapid Support…
For nearly 60 days, Gazans did not have to tally the newly dead as a fragile truce between Israel and Hamas held. Hostages and prisoners were freed, food and supplies returned to markets, and people picked their way through ruins they had called home. On Tuesday, after weeks of fruitless talks to extend the cease-fire,…
Feith Shimila Murunga says her boss groped, beat and raped her. Mary Wanjiru Nyambura says she was thrown from a balcony. Winfridah Kwamboka never even made it back home. East African leaders and Saudi royals are among those profiting off a lucrative, deadly trade in domestic workers. By Abdi Latif Dahir and Justin Scheck Photographs…