Until recently, Ethiopia has been hailed as an African success story. After a decade of strong economic growth, the country has begun to shed its image as a famine-struck wasteland. But repression by Ethiopia’s authoritarian government has sparked demonstrations that have led to the deaths of hundreds of protesters this year. The movement gained worldwide attention at the Rio Olympics when the country’s silver medal-winning marathon runner Feyisa Lilesa crossed his wrists above his head at the

Colombia’s government and negotiators from the FARC guerrilla group spent four years negotiating a peace agreement backed by the U.N., Cuba and the U.S. President Juan Manuel Santos even won the Nobel Peace Prize for the effort. Then Colombian voters narrowly rejected the pact, sowing doubt about the prospects for ending a 52-year civil war that’s killed a quarter of a million people. On this edition of Global Journalist, a look at what how the government and the FARC might piece a deal back

The central Asian nation of Uzbekistan is known for its spectacular mosques, vast fields of cotton and immense natural gas reserves. It's also one of the world's most repressive police states, where the government reportedly once disposed of two political prisoners by boiling them alive. But Uzbekistan's regime has been shaken by the death last month of President Islam Karimov - the only president the country has had since the collapse of the Soviet Union. On this edition of Global Journalist, a

The Philippines is in the midst of a spectacularly brutal war on drugs. The man behind it is the President Rodrigo Duterte, who took office June 30. In Duterte’s first seven weeks on the job, more than 1,800 people were killed by police or vigilante death squads. By one estimate that figure has climbed to nearly 4,000 through mid-October. Those being killed aren’t just suspected drug traffickers. They’re also ordinary drug users, street children and sometimes people who are just in the wrong

A key pillar of President Barack Obama's foreign policy has been the attempted "pivot to Asia." The idea was that under President Bush, the U.S. expended enormous resources fighting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. That focus was a detriment to American relationships with the surging economies of the Asia-Pacific region - an area expected to account for half of the world economy by the middle of this century. Obama’s goal was to put new heft to the political, economic and military relations in

The Islamic State’s attacks in Europe earlier this year made headlines around the world. But there’s another terrorist group that by some estimates has killed more civilians over the past few years than ISIS. That’s Boko Haram in northern Nigeria, which killed more than 6,000 people last year. It’s a group known for tactics like using child suicide bombers, striking churches at Christmas and kidnapping schoolgirls, like the 276 taken from the town of Chibok in 2014. The violence has caused a

One of the hardest regions of the globe to be lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender is the Arab world. In Saudi Arabia and Yemen, the punishment for the crime of sodomy is death by stoning, and many other countries impose prison sentences. Also challenging is the fact that the stigma associated with being LGBT is so great, many people feel they can’t come out even to their family or closest friends. On this edition of Global Journalist, a look at the uncertain lives of LGBT people in Arab

When you think of humanitarian crises, they’re usually caused by war or some natural disaster like a drought or earthquake. But in Venezuela today millions of people face shortages of food and medicines for a different reason: the spectacular mismanagement of its economy. By one estimate, Venezuelans spend an average of 35 hours a month standing in lines to buy food. All of this has led to huge protests against President Nicolás Maduro’s government and an effort by the opposition to recall him

Thailand is the world's third-largest exporter of seafood, shipping shrimp, tuna and other fish to supermarket chains and pet food companies in the U.S. and Europe. But a series of investigations by the Associated Press and other news agencies have highlighted a pervasive problem in the Thai fishing industry: the use of slave labor from people tricked or kidnapped into working at sea. On this edition of Global Journalist, a look at slavery at sea in Southeast Asia, and what’s being done to fight

Picture a city of about 300,000 people - something the size of Tampa, Fla. or Riverside, Calif. Now picture all of those people in this city being told it’s being closed down and they have to move. That’s what the Kenyan government in East Africa is trying to do with the 340,000 people who live in Dadaab, the world’s largest refugee camp. Built 24 years ago by the U.N. to house people fleeing Somalia's civil war, many of the people living there today have never set foot in Somalia and don't want