Hanoi / DPA Pham Thi Minh Thinh, a 52-year-old Hanoi native, spent her early childhood amidst the backdrop of catastrophic American bombings against her home city. Born in 1965 at the onset of the US-Vietnam War, she clearly remembers hiding in underground shelters as explosions rocked the surface. “It was a very painful time because the bombs nearly killed …

  KABUL / AP Raheem Rejaey was a drug addict for 17 years. He lived under bridges in Kabul or in the ruins of buildings. His clothes reeked. In his misery, he tried suicide several times, he said, once intentionally overdosing and lying unconscious in a street for two days, undiscovered. So he can feel the pain of other addicts …

  Bloomberg Europe has wanted to wean itself from Russian natural gas ever since supplies from its eastern neighbor dropped during freezing weather in 2009. Almost a decade later, the region has never been more dependent. Gazprom PJSC, Russia’s state-run export monopoly, shipped a record amount of gas to the European Union last year and accounts for about 34 percent …