Society

Society The Marshall Project

Homer and Harold

Harold Israel and Homer Cummings were from very different backgrounds and met when the latter was the state’s attorney in the former’s 1924 murder trial. Cummings proceeded to deliver a performance that “will live in the annals as a standard by which other prosecutors will be judged.” More remarkable even than that is the enduring involvement they had in each other’s lives. The story of the trial was noteworthy enough to be made into a film, but the story of their lifelong association is just as remarkable.

BBC Society

Tales from the new Silk Road

Stories from different players involved in a vast Chinese infrastructure project aimed at expanding trade routes – a “bid to shape our century”.

Society The Guardian

An unsolved murder at Italy’s most notorious tower block

The story of a murder at an apartment block marketed as a luxury development when it opened in 1968, but now “like an inverse of Dante’s layers of hell”. The building is disintegrating, but houses a large and diverse population, including an estimated 50 drug dealers. This is a story about the changes in fortune in the Italian economy, urban development, immigration, integration, and failing public infrastructure.

Society The Intercept

The Biggest Secret

The author relates his experience as a New York Times investigative reporter covering the War on Terror, and outlines the pressure that journalists come under from governments to censor stories and reveal sources.