After eight women are murdered in Louisiana, what was initially thought to be the work of a serial killer becomes something much more troubling.

A triple homicide, the alleged involvement of a Boston Marathon bombing suspect, and those caught up in the FBI’s ongoing investigation.

The author gets a crash course in health care pricing after having his urethra fixed.

The author goes in search of his father’s days as a member of an elite club of sport parachutists.

How U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan murdered innocent civilians and mutilated their corpses – and how their officers failed to stop them.

A review/interview/profile:

Let's settle on the bald facts: Eminem has secured his place in the rap pantheon.

A profile of Steve Carell, whose last appearance as Michael Scott in The Office airs tonight.

How slot machines snuck into the mall, along with money laundering, bribery, shootouts, and billions in profits.

Nearly 10,000,000 men were killed in the conflict, 65 million participated, and now we are left with two.

Next is "culture training," in which trainees memorize colloquialisms and state capitals, study clips of Seinfeld and photos of Walmarts, and eat in cafeterias serving paneer burgers and pizza topped with lamb pepperoni. Trainers aim to impart something they call "international culture"—which is, of course, no culture at all, but a garbled hybrid of Indian and Western signifiers designed to be recognizable to everyone and familiar to no one. The result is a comically botched translation—a multibillion dollar game of telephone. "The most marketable skill in India today," the Guardian wrote in 2003, "is the ability to abandon your identity and slip into someone else's."

The life history of an unassuming Sudanese man, Noor Uthman Muhammed, who has spent the last nine years in Guantánamo Bay prison.

Beyond the fact that he lacked a pulse, little is known about the man found on an Adelaide beach in 1948.

The death of the journalist who exposed dark secrets about Islamic extremism in Pakistan’s military.

In a campaign supported by the Koch brothers, Republicans are working to prevent millions of Democrats from voting next year.

How mitigation specialists are changing the application of the death penalty:

In Texas, the most prominent mitigation strategist is a lawyer named Danalynn Recer, the executive director of the Gulf Region Advocacy Center. Based in Houston, GRACE has represented defendants in death-penalty cases since 2002. “The idea was to improve the way capital trials were done in Texas, to start an office that would bring the best practices from other places and put them to work here,” Recer said recently. “This is not some unknowable thing. This is not curing cancer. We know how to do this. It is possible to persuade a jury to value someone’s life.”

On Gabo and his complicated role in the country of his birth, Colombia.

The father of the first kid featured on a milk carton thinks he knows who kidnapped the him 30 years ago:

For years now, Stan has had a face to concentrate on; twice a year, in fact, on Etan’s birthday and on the anniversary of his disappearance, Stan sends one of the old lost child posters to a man who’s already in prison. He won’t be there much longer, however, unless the successor to Manhattan district attorney Robert Morgenthau can keep him in jail. In the meantime, Stan’s packages serve notice that someone is still paying close attention. On the back of the poster, he always writes the same thing: “What did you do to my little boy?”

An immigrant from Lebanon, a hair-cutting fortune, and the dream of building a castle on an island in British Columbia.

Eighty percent of North American teenagers are in the care of an orthodontist. On our obsession with perfect teeth.

The author was living in a friend’s basement after a bad breakup, unable to eat. Then he had lunch with Jacques Pépin.

What the internet looks like to someone who spent the past six years in an Iranian prison.

When all else failed, he commandeered a bus, and saved his neighbors. Now he’s in prison.

The poet died when he was hit by a car in 1965. Everything else about his demise is a mystery.

The life of Phyllis Frye, a pioneer in the fight for transgender rights.

Incremental changes in abortion laws lead to a system where women “turn themselves into pretzels” just to find a doctor.