When JK Rowling debuted her Harry Potter series, the sports world added a new game to their list: Quidditch. It officially became a real sport with the first match between between Middlebury and Vassar in 2005.

On a quiet Friday night, several North Korean defectors gathered near Seoul World Cup Stadium. Dressed in the latest fashions, they looked like typical young Koreans. But there was some hesitation in their eyes when they were asked about their lives in South Korea.

Lynda Lopez, a PEARL reporter from Chicago, won a scholarship to spend the summer studying in Thailand. In her spare moments, she began chronicling the lives of young people there – having fun, studying, eating – through photographs, interviews, and shared experiences.

The home of the world’s largest concentration of flamingos, Lake Nakuru National Park in central Kenya, is drying up for the second time in two decades. The lake could now disappear altogether if the destruction of the nearby Mau forest is not contained.

Do you know where your shirt or your shoes came from? The most basic things in our lives are often made by a child laborer. In reports from Brazil, Philippines and Ghana, PEARL reporters look at how child labor is continuing, despite laws to prohibit it.

Karachi is widely known as a colorful city, from the clothes people wear to the food they eat to the highly decorated public buses they travel in. But some of the color in this Pakistani city comes from garbage strewn along roads, parks and other public places.

Teenagers are spending more time with new and old friends on social networking sites. But they are also becoming more careful. PEARL reporters in Romania, India and Brazil look at social networking trends in their countries.