Buenos Aires

A Playboy Model's Cinderella Story

How a former kindergarten teacher used her role as a crime buster to launch a showbiz career from the cover of the girlie magazine

London

Fearful of Waning, Gordon Brown Seeks Waxing

Dispelling rumors of a snub, Madame Tussaud's invites Britain's Prime Minister to join its pantheon of mannequins. Now, he'll face the battle to stay out of its storage vaults

Chernobyl

Video: Vacation in Chernobyl

A tourist take on the site of the world's worst-ever nuclear meltdown

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