How the ‘princeling’ descendants of Mao’s ‘Eight Immortals’consolidated unimaginable power and wealth in the New China.

On the actors who unwittingly starred in The Innocence of Muslims.

On the future of Britain’s finances.

A Ugandan bill that would threaten homosexuals with imprisonment, or in some cases death, has its roots in the shadowy American evangelical group known as The Family.

Elegy for Aleppo.

The story of one Tibetan’s protest.

An inquiry into the assassination of Pakistan’s former Prime Minister.

The Syrian civil war crosses into Lebanon.

Life and death in an underground economy.

On the history of Nigerian penis theft.

Life in the French Foreign Legion.

An alleged rape and one woman’s futile quest for justice in modern China.

On the experimental favela police force UPP (aka “The Big Skull”) and their efforts to clean Rio’s largest slum in advance of the World Cup and Olympics.

How Moscow State university discriminated against Jewish applicants using deceptively simple problems.

“Biafra lost its freedom, of course, and I was in the middle of it as all its fronts were collapsing. I flew in from Gabon on the night of January 3, with bags of corn, beans, and powdered milk, aboard a blacked out DC6 chartered by Caritas, the Roman Catholic relief organization. I flew out six nights later on an empty DC4 chartered by the French Red Cross. It was the last plane to leave Biafra that was not fired upon.”

An essay on Jimmy Savile, British television and child sexual abuse.

Working within Andalusia’s impoverished farming communities, a ragtag pair of longtime union leaders have been leading raids on local supermarkets.

“When I’m in Nigeria, I find myself looking at the passive, placid faces of the people standing at the bus stops. They are tired after a day’s work, and thinking perhaps of the long commute back home, or of what to make for dinner. I wonder to myself how these people, who surely love life, who surely love their own families, their own children, could be ready in an instant to exact a fatal violence on strangers.”

In the slums adjacent to Mumbai’s airport.

A California martial arts instructor’s secret past.

Previously: Finding Oscar

Zaranj: the bloody border of Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

An impossible hike in Western China.

How a high-speed rail disaster exposed China’s corruption.

A Javanese shrine where Muslim pilgrims seeking good fortune must peform a ritual: find a stranger, have sex with them.

In Argentina, where the fútbol underworld controls everything from t-shirt vending to murder, and “rowdy gangs” have turned the stadium into a battleground.