Tomi Masters was a 23-year-old from Indiana who moved to California with dreams of making it big in the cannabis business. Then she met a hacker who introduced her to a dark new world of digital manipulation, suspicion, paranoia, and fear — one that swallowed her alive and left her floating in a river in the Philippines.

On July 11, 2002, the researchers revealed that they had synthesized the polio virus, which had been wiped out in the US in 1979. It was the first time a virus had been created from scratch with synthetic DNA. The work was funded by the Pentagon in part to establish whether terrorists could pull off such a feat. The answer was yes.

When I say I have a crush on you, what I’m saying is that I’m in love with the distance between us. I’m not in love with you: I don’t even know you. I’m in love with the escape that fantasizing about you promises. Poisoned, stung, bitten and bridled. The promise of being ground down until I disappear.

An essay drawn from the introduction of Davidson’s iconic book Subway, first published in 1986:

To prepare myself for the subway, I started a crash diet, a military fitness exercise program, and early every morning I jogged in the park. I knew I would need to train like an athlete to be physically able to carry my heavy camera equipment around in the subway for hours every day. Also, I thought that if anything was going to happen to me down there I wanted to be in good shape, or at least to believe that I was. Each morning I carefully packed my cameras, lenses, strobe light, filters, and accessories in a small, canvas camera bag. In my green safari jacket with its large pockets, I placed my police and subway passes, a few rolls of film, a subway map, a notebook, and a small, white, gold-trimmed wedding album containing pictures of people I’d already photographed in the subway. In my pants pocket I carried quarters for the people in the subway asking for money, change for the phone, and several tokens. I also carried a key case with additional identification and a few dollars tucked inside, a whistle, and a small Swiss Army knife that gave me a little added confidence. I had a clean handkerchief and a few Band-Aids in case I found myself bleeding.

The story of a massacre in El Salvador.

An execution in war-torn Cuba.

In the aftermath of rape, a transition from prey to predator.

A gardener in Newark, NJ tries to grow the world’s best peppers.

An experiment in public defense.

In the U.S. military, more than half of rape victims are men.

On America’s vanishing night sky and life in perpetual light.

Reinventing a once-great whisky distillery in Scotland.

A profile of Gina Rinehart, the richest person in Australia.

A new era in the search for life on Mars.

A crash course in Tantra and superficial spirituality.

The fate of a star 16-year-old pitcher in Japan.

The benefits of getting sick in New York.

How Paul Ryan remade the Republican Party in his own image.

Bangka Island, a frequently lethal link in a global electronics supply chain.

How the biggest club in Vegas does business.

The old and the new in New York.

Why the flood of money in this election is just the beginning.

Captain Iván Castro, who lost his vision in Iraq, runs the Boston Marathon.

Blockbusters in the age of “corporate irony.”

Life and death in an underground economy.