On the insurer’s insurer and calculating the risk of modern catastrophe:

Reinsurers are ultimately responsible for every new thing that God can come up with. As losses grew this decade, year by year, reinsurers have been working to figure out what they can do to make the God clause smaller, to reduce their exposure. They have billions of dollars at stake. They are very good at thinking about the world to come.

For the past 16 months, he had worked as a mole, posing as a militant jihadist in the Islamic State while passing critical information to a secret branch of Iraq’s national intelligence agency. His record was stunning: He had foiled 30 planned vehicle-bomb attacks and 18 suicide bombers, according to Abu Ali al-Basri, the agency’s director. Captain Sudani also gave the agency a direct line to some of the Islamic State’s senior commanders in Mosul.

A profile of Claire Danes.

Is a serial killer on the loose in Wellfleet? An investigation.

The NFL is doing everything it can to avoid paying former players who have dementia.

In 1982, a family disappeared from their Los Angeles home. A writer and former neighbor is still trying to put the pieces together.

Malfunctions caused two deadly crashes. But an industry that puts unprepared pilots in the cockpit is just as guilty.

Courtroom testimony about dogs detecting dead bodies keeps sending people to prison—even without physical evidence. Critics say the science is lacking.

In 1960, beer heir Adolph Coors III was kidnapped and murdered. A look back at the crime and the man who committed it.

From Hong Kong to Bangkok to the Golden Triangle, the author searches for something everyone says no longer exists: an opium den.

The film executive hired private investigators, including ex-Mossad agents, to track actresses and journalists.

The executive and investor resigned from his position as Tronc chairman hours before the news.

The Federal Writers’ Project narratives provide an all-too-rare link to our past.

Two 16-year-olds form a suicide pact, driving a Pontiac off a cliff. One of the boys survives:

To many of the people in Fillmore who considered the incident a cause for civic mourning and self-scrutiny, the idea of trying Joe for murdering his best friend seemed outlandish. To a prosecutor, however, the indictment had its own logic. The Ventura County district attorney, Michael Bradbury, was an aggressive law-and-order man, and he had a potentially strong case. With Joe's repeated announcements of his plan to drive off the cliff, the crucial element of premeditation was undeniably present.

How Goldman Sachs made $5 billion by controlling supply and manipulating the aluminum market.

Everyone just wants to know if he’s going to the football game.

What happened when Pakistan shut down the vitally important Karachi to Kabul trucking line.

What happens when a complete stranger becomes convinced you’re the Zodiac killer.

Jason Matthews worked at the CIA for more than 30 years. Then he started writing spy novels.

He covered car accidents for a years as a journalist. Then he was in two himself.

Fourteen other tornadoes hit Georgia on April 27 and 28. This was not the record — that would be twenty, during Tropical Storm Alberto in 1994. But it was one of the worst twenty-four-hour periods in the history of the state. Tornadoes hit Trenton, Cherokee Valley, south of LaGrange, and Covington; killed seven people in a neighborhood in Catoosa County, swept through Ringgold, and killed two more — a disabled man and his caregiver — in a double-wide trailer on the far end of Spalding County. Those tornadoes got all the attention. The Vaughn tornado didn’t even warrant an article in a major newspaper. No one talked about Vaughn. The only way for a person to really find out about it was to drive past.

“Everyone on the boat is racist and nice. Including me.”

How good is Julian Newman, really?