On the road with Johnson Zeng, who buys up the metal “Americans won’t or can’t be bothered to recycle.”

Translation of an exclusive interview with Syrian President Bashar al_Assad:

“Have they not realised that since the Vietnam War, all the wars their predecessors have waged have failed? Have they not learned that they have gained nothing from these wars but the destruction of the countries they fought, which has had a destabilising effect on the Middle East and other parts of the world? Have they not comprehended that all of these wars have not made people in the region appreciate them or believe in their policies?”

The son of an American anthropologist returns to the Amazon to reunite with his mother, an indigenous tribeswoman.

Life inside Za’atari, a camp for Syrian refugees just across the Jordanian border, where “the dispossession is absolute. Everyone has lost his country, his home, his equilibrium. Most have lost a family member or a friend. What is left is a kind of theatrical pride, the necessary performance of will.”

“At first, there is only a little sound, a metallic ping, almost a click.”

A visit to Tokyo’s first co-sleeping cafe, where one can pay a set fee to sleep next to a woman in 20 minute increments, though spooning, being patted on the head, and a change of pajamas are extra.

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.

Two white security contractors set off into the remote interior. Within a week, a seemingly innocent man who crossed their path lay dead on the side of the road. The manhunt began.

A profile of lawyer Jacques Vergès, who died yesterday after decades spent defending war criminals, terrorists and dictators.

“Joe’s hand began to tingle, and he called the group together. The toxins would leave his system in 48 hours, he said. He’d be conscious the whole time.”

Departing Marrakech by car with a plan to record music for the Library of Congress.

How a Peace Corps volunteer turned a high school basketball squad into Afghanistan’s national team.

The Mennonite women of the Manitoba Colony would awake with blood and semen stains, dried grass in their hair, and tiny bits of rope on their wrists and ankles. Their rapists, armed with a veterinary tranquilizer converted to spray form, were eight young men from their own community.

Playing tourist in the isolated nation.

After a botched bank robbery in 1990, Sture Bergwall, aka Thomas Quick, confessed to a string of brutal crimes. He admitted to stabbings, stranglings, incest and cannibalism. He was convicted of eight murders in all, and after the final trial he went silent for nearly a decade. But a few years ago, Bergwall came forward again—there was one more secret he had to tell.

When there are too few jobs for an entire generation.

When Germany legalized prostitution just over a decade ago, politicians hoped that it would create better conditions and more autonomy for sex workers. It hasn’t worked out that way.

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

Reporting on drug-resistant tuberculosis across Papua New Guinea – and then contracting the disease.

How a corporate network engineer became one of Aleppo’s most prolific weapons manufacturers.

The hunt for a secretive network of British men obsessed with accumulating and cataloguing the eggs of rare birds.

In early 2012, the bones of a woman and young boy were found near the Arizona-Mexico border. The author investigates who they were and how they died.

When Manny Ramirez played half a season for the E-DA Rhinos.

On the dangerous state of U.K. banks—“an existential threat to British democracy, a more serious one than terrorism, either external or internal”—and how it can be fixed.