A massive raid on a long-running cockfighting ring in Arkansas has raised complex questions about ICE, immigration, and the future of a centuries-old tradition.

The story of a marginalized, mentally ill young man who drew the FBI’s attention with his social-media posts and then staggered into its elaborately constructed snare.

Black patients were losing limbs at triple the rate of others. The doctor put up billboards in the Mississippi Delta. Amputation Prevention Institute, they read. He could save their limbs, if it wasn’t too late.

‘‘Just imagine what it was like to be him,’’ Walton added. ‘‘It was 50 years of him being 18 inches taller than everyone and having the brain that he had. Imagine being this jazz head coming up during black power. This is just a dude who has a different head.’’

"Before I met Ayn Rand, I was a logical positivist, and accordingly, I didn’t believe in absolutes, moral or otherwise. If I couldn’t prove a proposition with facts and figures, it was without merit. In the midst of a conversation, she said to me, “Do I understand the thrust of your position? You are not certain you exist?” I hesitated a moment, and I said, “I can’t be sure.” And she then said to me, “And who, by chance, is answering that question?” With that little exchange, she undermined the philosophical structure I had built for myself. "

Richard Gere, AIDS anxiety and the search for the “Original Gerbil.”

The battle to contain the Asian tiger mosquito–one suburban, above-ground pool at a time.

On the British and American fascination with rocking chairs and upholstery springs in the 19th century.

The story of a sheriff’s deputy in Minnesota who took his own life.

"If anything happens to me," Ruettimann said, "give this to the reporter." After Ruettimann's death, Hereaux took the file down off his desk. Inside was a thick stack of loose-leaf documents, a manila folder stuffed with letters, and a catalog-size clasp envelope labeled "Reports." Written in black permanent marker in the margin of the envelope was the reporter's name: mine.

In 1980, a bankrupt gambler came up with a plan to get his money back. He built an incredibly complex bomb, one that was impossible to defuse and that only he knew how to move, and snuck it into a Lake Tahoe casino with an extortion note demanding $3 million. Part of the plan worked. Part of it did not.

On the shootings, and the response, in Baton Rouge, Falcon Heights, and Dallas this summer.

How the Syrian president stays in power.

A filmmaker goes to court to fight the television commercial break.

A weekend with the only person on Earth who can survive five venomous snakebites in 48 hours.

He was fired from the company he helped create, YouSendIt. Then the cyberattacks started.

On the evening of November 7th 1974, the 7th Earl of Lucan, an inveterate gambler and Backgammon champion with a taste for power boats, snuck into his estranged wife’s basement. He then bludgeoned their nanny with a lead pipe and placed her in a canvas sack, before attempting to murder his wife. Recognizing his voice, she convinced him that she could him escape, then slipped out a bathroom window. Lord Lucan was never seen again.

How Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger and his Airbus A320 landed safely in the Hudson.

On reservations, where policing hardly exists, bruiser-for-hire vigilantes are often the first choice for justice.

After an election deadlock that held the country hostage for months, two former rivals confront Afghanistan’s patronage and corruption.

The bloody, often surreal, fight for Kosovo’s independence was led by a man moonlighting as a roofer in Switzerland.