Beneath permafrost on Yamal Peninsula, 1,500 miles northeast of Moscow, Bovanenkovo holds nearly five trillion cubic meters of gas. Described as "the most critical gas facility in the world," Bovanenkovo affords the Kremlin peace of mind, although the price tag for its development--upward of $100 billion--allows Gazprom little margin for error.

Dennis Orcollo is the best pool player on the planet. Too bad no one will face him anymore.

Soccer, the most popular game in the world, is also the most corrupt game in the world. Investigations into match fixing are ongoing in more than 25 countries.

Rio will host the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics. First off, the city must clean up its crime-ridden favelas. Brett Forrest walked the beat with the brutal special police charged with the seemingly impossible job.

A railroad through the Southern Caucasus will soon connect Europe and Asia, fueling dreams and discord in the region.

Anton Alfer is a model scout in the land of models, the exclusive representative for Elite in the former Soviet Union. He must extract the physically perfected girl from the blur of those thousands who possess the sad disadvantage of simply being stunning.

To the visitor raised on the Western ideals of inner fulfillment and the love of Man, Moscow may appear to be too sinister. But stay here long enough, and you will discover that the human animal can grow accustomed to absolutely anything.

Hollywood studios and Russian tycoons are teaming up to make films in Moscow. Is it worth the trouble?

The Moscow scene makes every other city’s look tame, as an indescribably wealthy few—Kremlin power brokers, star athletes, aluminum tycoons in sniper-tint glasses—drop $10,000 for a table, ignore the dawn on Stalin’s yacht, and indulge a bottomless appetite for the heartachingly beautiful women,

He withheld pay from his employees, enraged government officials, and flooded Russia with 25 million emails a day. Then one morning, Vardan Kushnir's mother found his bloodied body on the bathroom floor, skull bashed in.

Skype's leadership is populated by a high percentage of college dropouts, as well as many who still have the chance, since they are still enrolled. Average age: 20-something. Besides programming proficiency, general abnormality provides the hook on incoming C.V.'s.

A gnawed toothpick of land on Moldova's eastern edge, Transdniester had declared independence from Moldova in 1990, the year before the Soviet Union officially collapsed. Since then every right mind in the Western world has passed judgment on the place as Europe's new capital of the international weapons market.

After defecting from China in 1992, kung-fu master Sifu surfaced a few years later in downtown Manhattan, teaching Chan Buddhism (the Chinese form of Zen), and martial arts in his newly established U.S.A. Shaolin Temple.

Round one bend, the Garden Route looks like the Loire Valley, with delicate bushes spiraling in rows. Round another, the Alleghenies, with mountains casting long, dark shadows.

White Collar Sparring Night, held once a month at Brooklyn’s old-school Gleason’s Gym for every doctor, lawyer, and investment banker who thinks he’s Brad Pitt or Edward Norton

The Birth of "adventure travel" has caused the Belize mainland to get attention. There are rainforests, reefs, mountains, and Mayan temples, and it is so small, you can see it all in a few days.

If you want to see whales – 50-foot long, 50-ton humpbacks – up close and plenty of them, there’s no place better than the waters between Molokai, Maui, Kahoolawe, and Lanai islands.

As a New York City window washer, Charles Vasquez is part of an intrepid breed that foregoes scaffolding, safety nets, and flashy firemen’s ladders to reach the glass they wipe free of grime.

Last year, Korean authorities arrested Tiger JK of the local hip-hop act Drunken Tiger for drug use. But the real punishment lay not in JK's sentence (two year’s probation), but in the unofficial ban on the band from radio and TV that followed.