This piece kicks off with an evocative depiction of the scene typically found at the V.I.P. terminal of Baghdad International Airport. It was there where in April 2017 a group of Qataris were held on arrival when their luggage was found to contain $360 million in cash. Their presence was linked to a royal hunting trip turned kidnapping that would significantly affect the Middle East’s geopolitics.
Life growing up in a family fighting demons on a daily basis.
A delightfully caustic rundown of (in)famous people that have had a big impact this year – it manages to avoid some of the obvious choices and links to further reading on each entrant.
The story of how a parent teacher association head was allegedly framed for possession of hard drugs by parents with a grudge. The story seems at times to be straight out of a legal procedural TV show – one of the accused writes self-published crime novels in which she imagines ingeniously executed crimes, a firefighter lover arrives at the accused’s house for a tryst at the same time as the police and has to make a hasty exit – and yet it is not.
Nigel Farage manages to consume over 17 units of alcohol in a single lunch over the course of this interview. The encounter takes on an increasingly surreal character, punctuated as it is with outlandish pronouncements – “This is what they tell me – these people who come in and want jobs. I should feminise.”
A piece about warnings of an impending ÒinfocalypseÓ, as tools to falsify video footage, images and the writing of real people become ever more sophisticated, and our ability to control their proliferation remains essentially non-existent.
Evidence suggests that evolution can take place much more rapidly than Darwin anticipated – this piece explores the phenomenon by looking at animals living around us in cities.
A very 21st century tale, involving oligarchs making, losing and hiding their fortunes, and the murder of an enemy of the Russian state, poisoned by a toxic flower in the heart of London.
A look at how the famed whistleblower evaded capture in Hong Kong after leaking troves of classified information, and an interview with him in a hotel room in Moscow three years later.