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?”

The real-life events that inspired the new Richard Linklater dark comedy Bernie:

It’s a story about people believing what they want to believe, even when there’s evidence to the contrary. It’s a story about people not being what they seem. And it’s a story, as the movie poster says, “so unbelievable it must be true.” Which it is. I know this because the widow in the freezer was, in real life, my Aunt Marge, Mrs. Marjorie Nugent, my mother’s sister and, depending on whom you ask, the meanest woman in East Texas. She was 81 when she was murdered, and Bernie Tiede, her constant companion and rumored paramour, was 38. He’ll be eligible for parole in 2027, when he’ll be 69.

How amateur tinkerers electronically contacted Russia during the Cold War:

The object of Joel's attention at this moment, however, as it is much of the time, is his four-pound, briefcase-size Radio Shack Tandy Model 100 portable computer. "I bought this machine for $399. For $1.82 a minute - $1.82! - I can send a telex message to Moscow. This technology is going to revolutionize human communications! Think what it will mean when you can get thousands of Americans and Soviets on the same computer network. Once scientists in both countries begin talking to each other on these machines they won't be able to stop. And we'll be taking a running leap over the governments on both sides.

A new Egyptian TV channel called 4Shbab—“for youth” in Arabic—aims to get young people interested in Islam through music videos and reality shows.

In 1963, a Black politician named Ben Lewis was shot to death in Chicago. Clues suggest the murder was a professional hit. Decades later, it remains no accident authorities never solved the crime.

Nearly all the world’s fake products come from China. America’s oldest private detective agency is on the case.

Christian Longo brutally murdered his familyand then posed in Mexico as a New York Times reporter named Michael Finkel. From death row, Longo asked the real Finkel to attend his execution.

For two decades, domestic counterterrorism strategy has ignored the rising danger of far-right extremism. In the atmosphere of willful indifference, a virulent movement has grown and metastasized.

In a small Minnesota town, an IT technician found his way to the darkest corner of the web. Then he made a deadly plan.

What happened to the women in the Robert Kraft massage parlor case? And why did the case collapse?

Throughout 2020, the notion that the novel coronavirus leaked from a lab was off-limits. Those who dared to push for transparency say toxic politics and hidden agendas kept us in the dark.

American anti-trafficking groups often make impossible-to-verify claims. Now, they’re doing it in the aftermath of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

You’ve never heard of her, but somewhere in America, a top-secret investigator known as the Savant is infiltrating online hate groups to take down the most violent men in the country.

For 10 years, Libre—an arm of the Koch family’s Americans for Prosperity—has been working to foster conservatism in Hispanic communities. Now, the group is going all-in on Georgia’s Senate runoffs.

How Russia consistently undermines the U.N. in order to keep a multi-billion dollar monopoly on the sales of helicopters and airplanes.

A profile of the Megaupload founder, who has started a political party in New Zealand as the U.S. continues to fight for his extradition.

How a town of 29,000 on the Hudson River came to be “one of the most dangerous four-mile stretches in the northeastern United States.”

Thousands of Korean children were sent abroad beginning in the 1950s. Now, many of them are returning to their country of origin.

While a Marine stationed in Afghanistan, Austin Tice decided he wanted to become a war photographer. He entered Syria and filed stories for McClatchy and the Washington Post. Then he disappeared.

What happens when an impoverished island nation enters into a deal to sell its own citizenship in bulk.

A trip to Enya’s castle in Ireland.

Walter Tevis, the author of the book upon which the Netflix hit is based, spent his life gambling and drinking in pool halls before turning to chess.

The city’s radical pro-democracy movement faces a stiff test from Mainland China.

As America has turned away from searching for extraterrestrial intelligence, China has built the world’s largest radio dish for precisely that purpose.

On the campaign trail in the most Republican congressional district in America.