International Affairs

The New York Times' Sabrina Tavernise was among the first to arrive at the site of the downed flight in Ukraine in late July. She says it's hard to get the faces of the dead out of her mind.

Last year, journalist Rukmini Callimachi found thousands of al-Qaida documents in Timbuktu in Mali. She tells Fresh Air about al-Quaida's strategy of kidnapping Europeans and demanding ransoms.

Journalist Alex Perry wrote the new e-book The Hunt for Boko Haram: Investigating the Terror Tearing Nigeria Apart. He says Boko Haram doesn't have logical reasons for the atrocious acts it commits.

On the 25th anniversary of Tiananmen Square, author Evan Osnos discusses his new book that explores the tensions between China's economic expansion and its commitment to authoritarian rule.

Michael McFaul, ambassador to Russia from January 2012 to February 2014, says, "I've never seen [Putin] devote a speech to the necessity of reuniting Crimea with Russia. That came only recently."

The NSA managed to penetrate the networks of the giant Chinese telecommunications firm Huawei, documents show. Journalist David Sanger says cyber-espionage is an "entirely new field of conflict."

For those who viewed the end of the Soviet Union as a tragedy, Crimea was a chance to showcase Russia's strength. Now Russia may have changed its relationship with the outside world for years to come.

New York Times correspondent David Kirkpatrick spent months on the ground in Benghazi, Libya, trying to get to the bottom of the deadly Sept. 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. Consulate.

According to Russian journalist Masha Gessen, the 2012 arrests were the start of a campaign by Vladimir Putin and his supporters against government critics. Gessen, who is also an LGBT rights advocate, recently moved to New York with her partner and their children in response to the anti-gay laws Russia passed in June.

South Africa's Mponeng gold m in is a 2.5-mile-deep network of chutes and tunnels that employs about 4,000 miners. Of course, that number doesn't include the miners who wander its tunnels clandestinely, stealing and refining ore. In a new book, journalist Matthew Hart investigates why gold and crime sometimes go hand in hand.

n 1953, President Dwight Eisenhower appointed John Foster Dulles as secretary of state, and Allen Dulles as director of the CIA. In his new book, The Brothers, journalist Stephen Kinzer says the Dulles' actions "helped set off some of the world's most profound long-term crises."

In his book, which has just won the Hessell-Tiltman Prize for History, Keith Lowe describes a land with no governments, schools, banks or shops, where rape was rampant and women prostituted themselves for food. Flying in the face of usual post-WWII narratives, Lowe sheds light on a complex history.

As the Cairo bureau chief for The New York Times, David Kirkpatrick has covered events in the region since January 2011. He says that the toppling of the democratically elected Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi throws the changes of the Arab Spring into question.

Journalist Alfredo Corchado covers Mexico for the Dallas Morning News. His new book, Midnight In Mexico, is part memoir and part recent history of the upheaval in the country. He talks to Fresh Air about the power of the cartels, the rampant corruption and the hopes for the future of Mexico.

The civil war in Syria is attracting fighters from all over, threatening the region's tenuous stability. Robert Malley of the International Crisis Group tells Fresh Air that "a war in Syria with regional spillover has now become a regional war with a Syrian focus."

The CIA has morphed from a traditional espionage service concerned with stealing the secrets of foreign governments into an organization consumed with hunting down its enemies. New York Times journalist Mark Mazzetti chronicles this transformation in a new book, The Way of the Knife.

In a new book, Washington Post economics writer Neil Irwin looks at an elite group of policymakers from around the word who manage the money supply, and explains how money can come from -- and disappear into -- thin air based on the decisions of these influential men and women.

Adam Nossiter, the West Africa bureau chief for The New York Times, is one of the few reporters covering the situation in northern Mali, where Islamist extremists allied with al-Qaida have taken control after a coup destabilized the country in April.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Anne Applebaum describes the tactics the Soviets used after World War II to take over and transform much of Eastern Europe. Her book Iron Curtain was recently nominated for the National Book Award.

New York Times correspondent Jeffrey Gettleman will receive a George Polk Award this week for being the first to report that the militant Islamist group al-Shabab had prevented starving people from leaving Somalia. He details how he got the story.