Katie Falkenberg

A brutal drought gripping the Southwest is hitting New Mexico and the Navajo reservation especially hard, threatening traditional shepherds and a pastoral way of life going back generations.

Decades ago, poachers would set off explosives in the cool waters of this North Umpqua River tributary, killing steelhead by the dozens. That was before Lee Spencer settled in to watch over the wild steelhead. At a time when environmental protections are being lifted and scientific research budgets slashed, one man's study of the world in front of him is a throwback to conservation work rooted in bearing witness to simple truths in nature.

This summer, more than 2,500 children were separated from their parents after the Trump administration instituted a “zero-tolerance” policy against anyone who crossed the border illegally. The move was eventually stopped, but not before many parents were deported back to Central America, leaving behind about 400 children.

Virunga National Park, in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, is Africa's oldest and most bio-diverse National Park. It is also home to about a quarter of the world's estimated 880 mountain gorillas left in the wild. With determination, hope, and grit, Virunga's rangers protect this UNESCO World Heritage site from rebel militias, poachers, the illegal charcoal trade, and, most recently, a high-stakes proposal to explore for oil.

Two lives, two jobs, and two cities irretrievably linked by the geography of global economics.

She begged him not to leave Mexico again. But the lure of America was powerful, and deadly.

“It is a calamity we are expecting to come,” says Sister María Engracia Robles, about the number of people she expects will be deported from the U.S. to Mexico under the Trump administration. Sister Robles works at “El Comedor,” or “Dining Room,” in Nogales, Mexico, on the border with the U.S. The humble building provides meals and other humanitarian services to migrants and recent deportees. Robles says they are not prepared in the small space they have — to receive the “stampede of deportees” she expects will arrive.

Suffering from ALS, Angie Bloomquist wants to be able to die through doctor-prescribed medication, a controversial issue known as "aid in dying" or "assisted suicide."

"You get married with the idea of forever in mind. Thinking about losing each other…you don't plan on that." Two army wives, also good friends, had husbands deployed together in Afghanistan. While there, an attack took down their Blackhawk. Only one came home.

Omar Wawieh, age 19, and his family fled Syria's civil war and arrived in the U.S. last month. Omar has rich memories of his childhood in Syria before the war; now he is dedicated to making sure his younger siblings have a good childhood.

Velva Stone, whose mother was a suffragette, and who was born in 1913 -- seven years before women had the right to vote -- was thrilled to vote for the first woman president.

Alessandra de Sousa Amorim says that she would have to stop buying food in order to afford bug repellent. In northeast Brazil, those living in poverty have been disproportionately affected by the Zika virus due to lack of running water, the absence of screens on doors and windows, and the inability to afford bug spray. When Alessandra was pregnant last summer, she developed telltale symptoms of a Zika infection. Her son was born with microcephaly in December.

Two years after returning from Afghanistan, three soldiers from Michigan National Guard's Charlie Troop, each affected by war in a different way, still struggle to fit back into the civilian world.

The third night of demonstrations against the Trump election yielded close to 200 arrests in downtown Los Angeles.

Hundreds of Malibu students and their families marched and rallied against gun violence, showing support for the students in Florida, and calling for stricter gun control laws.