Sarasota, Florida: A wedding guest takes a smoke break along the water after a late afternoon thunderstorm.

• By Pacific Standard Staff

Set off of one of Addis Ababa's main streets is a secret, self-enclosed village. In that village, girls like Raissa—some as young as 11 years old—fleeing bride abduction, early marriage, and other harmful practices have found a refuge.

• By Annie Hylton

Yangon, Myanmar: In 2015, a week before general elections, people attend a rally for politician Aung San Suu Kyi and her party, the National League for Democracy.

• By Pacific Standard Staff

Sjors Horstman has spent the last 30 years of his life at the bottom of the Grand Canyon as a volunteer for the National Park Service—one of the longest-serving volunteers in NPS history.

• By Jessi Phillips

Manila, Philippines: In 2016, police investigate an alley where a 37-year-old man was killed by two unidentified gunmen riding motorcycles.

• By Pacific Standard Staff

The Adorers of the Blood of Christ, an order of Catholic nuns that define themselves as advocates of Earth, square off against the Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline.

• By Rachel Riederer

Zante Island, Greece: The remains of a cigarette ship that met its demise in October of 1980.

• By Pacific Standard Staff

Even though a majority of West Virginians see government health care as fundamentally un-American, even evil, they know the Affordable Care Act is saving lives every day.

• By Sarah Menkedick

The city prides itself on working with those who are "un-bankable," and on evaluating loans based on individual stories instead of automated credit scores.

• By Erica Berry

Orania, South Africa: Niklas Kirsten, a former paratrooper in the South African Army, instructs Erik Du Pree on handgun self-defense in the fields outside an ultra-conservative, all-Afrikaner stronghold known as Orania.

• By Pacific Standard Staff

Rankin, Pennsylvania: Built in the 19th century as part of the Homestead Steel Works complex, the Carrie Furnaces produced up to 1,250 tons of iron per day at their peak in the 1950s and '60s.

• By Pacific Standard Staff

Lake Urmia, Iran: Men harvest tomatoes in the countryside near Lake Urmia, a large salt lake that is rapidly drying out. Scientists believe resulting salt storms will ravage the region's agriculture.

• By Pacific Standard Staff

Touching asbestos doesn't scare Pierrette Théroux, founder of the Asbestos Historical Society. As a child, she woke to dustings of asbestos, fallen overnight like snow.

• By Crystal Chan

Kanchanaburi, Thailand: Two tigers cool off at Wat Pha Luang Ta Bua Yannasampanno, a Buddhist temple that once doubled as a wildlife refuge. Thai authorities later removed the tigers after allegations of wildlife trafficking.

• By Pacific Standard Staff

Lashkar Gah, Afghanistan: In 2015, after Taliban skirmishes in the town of Sangin, Kharim Ahmad, an Afghan civilian, receives treatment from shrapnel wounds and other injuries at an emergency hospital.

• By Pacific Standard Staff

The night before the election results were announced, opposition leader Raila Odinga was in the lead. But when Kenyans woke up the next morning, the election had unexpectedly flipped in favor of incumbent president Mwai Kibaki.

• By Elettra Pauletto

Even under the hardline policies of President Donald Trump—which resulted in a 25 percent increase in deportation arrests from 2016 to 2017—ICE officers largely avoid churches, mosques, and synagogues.

• By Krista Langlois

Pyarpur, India: In Jharkhand, one of the poorest states in India, gangs recruit young boys for work as robbers across the country.

• By Pacific Standard Staff

Arbaz, Switzerland: A controlled avalanche, started with dynamite, slides down a mountain in the Swiss canton of Valais.

• By Pacific Standard Staff

Svend Erik had not intended to spend the last 37-odd years of his life permanently in Qaanaaq, stewarding critical data through decades of changes in computing and communications technologies, but he had fallen in love.

• By Elmo Keep

Haji Ali, Iraq: A view of the village—which has been ravaged by battles against ISIS—through one of its destroyed buildings.

• By Pacific Standard Staff

How Stone Mountain—the world's largest and most immovable Confederate monument—could become a battlefield where neo-Confederates from across the country make their last stand.

• By Tony Rehagen

Dhaka, Bangladesh: Momin Mohammad, a leather worker, brushes his teeth by a canal near his home in the city's polluted Hazaribagh neighborhood. Each day, tanneries dump 22,000 liters of toxic waste into the Buriganga, the capital city's main river and key water supply.

• By Pacific Standard Staff

John Mganga walks through a forest at night near his former workplace, the Amani Hill Research Station.

• By Pacific Standard Staff