A British man who previously spent ten years living in the desert off $10,000 a year in his effort to break the land sail speed record, has started an even more ambitious, and likely more lucrative endeavour. His company, armed with venture capital investment, is building unmanned saildrones that could have a huge impact on our understanding of the ocean, as well as myriad commercial and governmental applications.
A gambler made a fortune betting on the trickiest of markets – horses. This piece tells the story of how he made close to a billion dollars betting on Hong Kong races.
The Moneyball and Liar’s Poker author Michael Lewis goes to Washington to ask a question, and ends up watching the State of the Union at Steve Bannon’s house.
The story of how the mining giant got badly burnt when they came up against the Chinese government.
This piece profiles Maria Ressa, a Filipina journalist taking on President Rodrigo Duterte’s regime by examining its sophisticated use of social media to crack down on dissent. This work has apparently caused the regime’s bots and supporters to turn their attention to her. Her own detailed primer outlining the techniques she asserts are used by the regime is well worth a read too.
Entertainment meets accounting in this piece looking at a lawsuit brought by the creators of the cult classic This Is Spinal Tap. They initiated the suit when they were told that despite a healthy percentage share in earnings from their creation, they would be entitled to under $200 in royalties over a period spanning 20 years.
A former data journalist has pooled information about thousands of murders and sought to identify hitherto undiscovered links between them.
The oil tanker Brillante Virtuoso was attacked off the coast of Somalia and set on fire, apparently by a group of pirates. When the insurance company’s investigator started to look into the incident, he quickly discovered that all was not as it seemed.
The story of how Goldman Sachs took on Libya as a client, and subsequently allegedly lost $1.2bn of their money.
The top tier chess tour is rife with unsavoury sponsors and political intrigue.