Foursquare and Gowalla are in a VC-funded race to become the dominant location-based social network. But their founders say both companies have a larger purpose.

The number one item confiscated by U.S. customs for four years in a row: fake shoes. As brands continue to crack down, counterfeiters continue to up their game.

Roy Petersen was blind in one eye, had two replaced hips, and was twice divorced. His job was to solve a gold mine robbery case in the Peruvian Andes. He would need some help.

The Federal Trade Commission has brought more than 60 cases related to data security against businesses. Only one has refused to settle.

The Tarahumara became famous for running incredibly long distances. In recent years, cartels have exploited their talents by forcing them to ferry drugs into America. Now they’re running for their lives.

The company has been battling its store owners for years, using tactics that include planting hidden cameras and and tailing franchisees in unmarked vehicles. It seems to have found a new tool: U.S. immigration authorities.

“Three giant telecoms are gonna make and own all the content, and they’re not gonna want anyone else to make it.”

Iranian operative Qassem Suleimani has been reshaping the Middle East. Now he’s directing Bashar al-Assad’s war in Syria.

African-Americans are 75 percent more likely than others to live near facilities that produce hazardous waste. Can a grass-roots environmental-justice movement make a difference?

The venture capitalist and Facebook board member staked his reputation on a Trump presidency. Now what does he have to show for it?

Brian Kelly, The Points Guy, has created an empire dedicated to maximizing credit-card rewards and airline miles. What are they worth in a global pandemic — and why are they worth anything at all?

In 2019, I made a painful decision. But to the algorithms that drive Facebook, Pinterest, and a million other apps, I’m forever getting married.

In the 1950s, L.S.D. became a Beverly Hills’ therapy fad, and it profoundly changed idols like Cary Grant.

A few years ago, before anyone knew his name, before rap artists from all over the country started hitting him up for music, the rap producer Lex Luger, born Lexus Lewis, now age 20, sat down in his dad’s kitchen in Suffolk, Va., opened a sound-mixing program called Fruity Loops on his laptop and created a new track... Months later, Luger — who says he was “broke as a joke” by that point, about to become a father for the second time and seriously considering taking a job stocking boxes in a warehouse — heard that same beat on the radio, transformed into a Waka song called “Hard in da Paint.” Before long, he couldn’t get away from it.

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

On what you do and don’t learn in medical school.

It started as a bluebird New Year’s Day in Mount Rainier National Park. But when a gunman murdered a ranger and then fled back into the park’s frozen backcountry, every climber, skier, and camper became a suspect—and a potential victim.

What started as a DVD-mailing service has changed the way we watch TV. Now Netflix has to do it again. (And again. And again.)

A former Saint and Super Bowl champion, Will Smith, was shot and killed by another player named Cardell Hayes. Their fatal collision highlights the fine line between triumph and tragedy in football and life in New Orleans.

The idea that people would “inexpensively have access to a tremendous global computation and networking facility” was supposed to create wealth and wellbeing. Has it instead created a technologically advanced dystopia?

Ken Dornstein’s older brother died when a bomb exploded on Pan Am Flight 103. For the past three decades, he’s been obsessed with identifying who’s really responsible.

In 2006, Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian spy working for British intelligence, was poisoned. As he lay dying, he worked with detectives to find his killer.

What do we give up when we become freedom-seeking, self-determining, autonomous entrepreneurs? A lot, actually.

In 2008, a Brooklyn cop grew gravely concerned about how the public was being served. So he began carrying a digital sound recorder, secretly recording his colleagues and superiors.

When New York built a prison designed to house two men in a single cell, it launched a new experiment in crime control. A look at life inside this prison and in the tiny town surrounding it.