China is securing sub-Saharan Africa’s natural resources at a staggering rate. With the buying spree comes contracts, workers, and of course, politics. (Part 1 of a 6 part series, rest here)

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

On living in Syria as an Alawite loyalist.

How the social networks that popped up in Facebook’s absence—the site is not available behind the Great Firewall—are changing Chinese culture.

A statistics-based argument that drug pricing, not drug use or law enformencement, is the only way to predict swings in violent crime rates.

As labels big and small attempt to gain traction in the world’s largest market, they’re learning that selling pop is never simple in the epicenter of piracy.

The CIA’s declassified account of the two decades two young officers spent as captives after being shot down over China during the Korean War.

While political leaders trade threats, the pandemic has made Americans even more reliant on China’s manufacturers.

The paper reports on a battle of its own.

Forty-five days of avoiding the coronavirus.

Being exonerated for a crime you didn’t commit is a hard-won triumph. But how can the state make up for what you’ve lost while in prison?

Harsh sentences have given us an aging prison population, and all the medical problems that come with age are beginning to choke the system.

Calculating restitution for victims of child pornography.

We’ve barely explored the darkest realm of the ocean. With rare-metal mining on the rise, we’re already destroying it.

Libor, ISDAfix, and how the big banks do business.

For the Zulu club, a black social organization in New Orleans, Mardi Gras was a joy. The coronavirus made it a tragedy.

On the world’s biggest polluter.

Inside an industrial pig farm.

The Permian Basin is booming with oil. But at what cost to West Texans? Though some will reap serious profits, the region’s dealing with skyrocketing rents, overcrowded schools, and potholes as big as VW Beetles.

China is neither a Marxist fundamentalist regime nor a universally-surveilled open-air prison, in which one is free to do nothing but worship the party and carry out its edicts. That is however the impression created by quite a bit of the media. I think that’s not the fault of individual journalists, instead more structural explanations are at work. News bureaus are highly concentrated in Beijing, due in part to natural corporate consolidation, but mostly because the government maintains a strict cap on foreign journalist visas. As a result, the bulk of journalists are based in the part of China that has the most politics and the least sense of growth. Everything here is doom and gloom, a fact well conveyed to the outside world.

The culturally-bound mechanics of comedy.

A business opportunity stemming from “a moment in time when the debate over how colleges should address sexual assault has reached a fever pitch.”

On the railways of China and a trip aboard its latest spectacle, a $32 billion line carrying passengers between Shanghai and Beijing at 170 MPH.

A pastor-turned-banker fakes his own death after allegedly embezzling millions and defrauding investors.

On frozen dumplings, industrial freezers, and what the future could hold after China’s burgeoning refrigeration boom.