Shin Young-gun/AP

The U.S. recovered the front section of the rocket used in North Korea’s satellite launch in December, which gave away the status of the regime's nuclear-arms program.

When North Korean engineers launched a satellite into space December 12, it seemed like business as usual, with the familiar cycle of condemnations from the West and statements of defiance from the Hermit Kingdom. But that launch also led many U.S. intelligence analysts to assess that Pyongyang possessed the ability to miniaturize the components necessary to yield a nuclear explosion for a crude warhead that would sit atop a ballistic missile.

Zed Nelson/Institute

In a city where borders mean everything, one stubborn man has made it his mission to record and warn others about changes to the city.

"The quip in Hebrew is ‘everyone pisses in the swimming pool. Not everyone does it from the diving board.’ What we’ve been watching in the last year is an unprecedented surge in settlement activities.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “has been pissing from the high board, and what we hear from D.C. is, ‘hey, there is a light rain.’”Daniel Seidemann is not a man who trades in verbal niceties. An attorney by trade, American by birth, Israeli by choice, and director of Terrestrial Jerusalem, the NGO he founded, Seidemann has spent the last 20-odd years understanding, anticipating, and cautioning others about the ever-changing map of this burning city.

Yusuf Sayman

Photojournalist Yusuf Sayman ventured to Aleppo’s front lines for three days in early April and returned with these searing portraits of the rebels’ desperate fight.

Eitan Simanor/Gamma-Rapho via Getty

A new study shows them to be among the most contented in the Western world. What gives? By Tiffanie Wen

By now everyone in Israel has read the results of the study published earlier this month that showed Israelis ranked among the happiest people among the Western nations, despite an extensive laundry list of problems in their country.Israel ranked low in terms of income, housing, education and security for example—all things we would typical associate with contentment. As an Asian-American who hails from San Francisco, I could add a few of my own complaints to the list: lack of ethnic food, the outrageous cost of imported goods, the raging summer heat, the marginalization of minorities and refugees, and the famous Israeli frankness that has me constantly fielding questions about why I pay so much for my apartment and my (ever so subtle) fluctuation in weight (Up or down? Eating cakes or working out?), chief among them.

Tetra Images/Corbis

After the U.S. listed 18 Russians who would be denied visas for human rights violations, Russia tried, clumsily, to respond in kind. Eli Lake reports.

If John Yoo, the former Justice Department lawyer who wrote legal memos approving the harsh interrogation of captured al Qaeda operatives, was planning a vacation to Moscow, he’ll have to reschedule.On Saturday, Russia announced that Yoo along with 17 other former U.S. officials would be banned from traveling to Russia, a retaliation for the U.S. decision this week to publish a list of 18 Russians who would be denied visas to come to America for human rights violations inside Russia.

AP

Smiling and waving, his conviction overturned, a confident Hosni Mubarak showed up for his retrial in Cairo. But the moment was cut short when the judge recused himself, and delayed the trial of the former Egyptian president indefinitely.

When Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s one-time autocrat, reappeared inside the metal defendant’s cage of a Cairo courthouse on Saturday, he did something that took observers by surprise: he smiled and waved. Mubarak, 84, had last been seen in the same courthouse last June, when, after a trial that dragged on for nearly a year, he received a sentence of life in prison for failing to stop the deaths of hundreds of protesters killed by his security forces during the 2011 revolution that forced him from power.

Punit Paranjpe/AFP/Getty

If you live in a building in Mumbai, there’s a chance it will collapse from shoddy construction or be knocked down by the government for being illegal. Dilip D’Souza on the perils of finding a safe roof in his home city.

In the Mumbai suburb of Santacruz on Wednesday April 3, 43 homes were destroyed. These were apparently illegal.In the rather more distant Mumbai suburb of Mumbra on Thursday April 4, an entire residential building, seven floors tall, was destroyed. The building was apparently illegal.The parallels, such as they are, end there. The Wednesday destruction was performed by the government. These were 43 slum homes, supposedly built on Railways and Defence Ministry land.

AFP/Getty

The terror organization has reemerged, with punchy statements by its emir Zawahiri. How afraid should we be?

After months of silence, al Qaeda’s Amir Ayman Zawahiri reappeared this week with a long diatribe on the state of the global jihad with special emphasis on Syria, Iraq, and Mali.  His commentary underscores his central role in the Qaeda movement once again and in providing leadership to the group and its franchises across the Islamic world.Zawahiri’s latest audio message, his first since last November, runs over a hundred minutes long and was distributed by al Qaeda’s media arm, As Sahab (“In the Clouds”) from his hide-out in Pakistan.

Wilfred de Bruijn/Facebook

France’s Senate just approved a landmark same-sex-marriage bill. But a horrific beating in Paris last week is evidence of a nasty right-wing backlash.

This is the new face of homophobia, and it’s difficult to stomach.“Sorry to show you this,” wrote French resident Wilfred de Bruijn on his Facebook page last week. Then he posted a picture of his face, which more resembled a piece of mashed-up horsemeat than a man. Contusions, five fractures, a lost tooth, bruises like over-ripe fruit—his face had reportedly been crunched and ground by two thugs who accosted him and his boyfriend, Olivier, while they were strolling in Paris.

Marco Longari/AFP/Getty

Egyptians pray for closure as the former dictator and his two sons go back on trial.

In August 2011, Hosni Mubarak, deposed just six months earlier by the Egyptian revolution, traveled by helicopter to a Cairo courthouse to stand trial. Crowds massed outside the building to behold the spectacle, while tens of millions of people tuned in on TV as the former dictator, ailing on a rolling hospital bed, made his jarring appearance inside the court’s metal defendant’s cage. Facing charges over the deaths of hundreds of protesters during his last days in power, Mubarak was eventually convicted of being an accessory to murder and handed a life term in jail.