While war raged across Afghanistan, expats lived in a bubble of good times and easy money. But as the U.S. withdraws, life has taken a deadly turn.

CeCe McDonald, a homeless trans teen in Minneapolis, was charged with murder for defending herself. Then she became a folk hero.

Inside a high-profile Hollywood child custody battle.

Behind the doors of Centaurus, Rio’s most infamous brothel.

Young neo-Nazis attempt to rebrand hate.

The postscript of a viral hit.

“We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.”

A dispatch from Vermont, which is in the midst of what the governor calls a “full-blown heroin crisis.”

A post-mortem.

How a group of vigilante cat-lovers seeking the hooded figure who suffocated a kitten in an internet video found a sadistic killer.

An undercover cop targets an autistic teen as a drug dealer.

He murdered his parents. Then he threw a party.

The price we pay for cheap meat.

A dispatch from Camden, “America’s most desperate town.”

The twisting paths that brought together Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald.

Manson at 79: in poor health and walking with a cane, obsessed with Vincent Bugliosi, willing to talk at length with a reporter for the first time in years, and visited every weekend by a 25-year-old woman he calls Star.

Last fall, a team of American Special Forces arrived in Nerkh, a district just west of Kabul. Six months later, amid allegations of torturing and murdering locals, the team was gone. Shortly after they left, the remains of 10 missing villagers were found outside their vacated base. An investigation into a possible war crime.

A few days in the life of Miley Cyrus.

The story of 15-year-old Audrie Pott, who took her own life after nude photos of her were circulated at school.

The battle between government and industry for America’s best hackers.

Why a former Anonymous spokesperson was arrested for, among other things, copying and pasting a link.

Georgia and Patterson Inman, 15-year-old twins, are the only living heirs to the $1 billion Duke tobacco fortune. They are also emotional wrecks, tortured by a hellacious childhood in which they were raised by drug addicts and left to fend for themselves in mansions across the country.

An interview with Murphy at the apex of his power, just before the release of Harlem Nights.

The multiple lives of accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

How the city will drown.