The long read: The years since 2008 have seen a global crackdown on offshore finance. Yet a few places have doubled down on offering secrecy to the super-rich. Among these, one tiny Caribbean island might be the worst offender.

The epic effort to rescue Floyd Collins was a battle between heroism and folly, selflessness and selfishness, and life and death.

August has been at the forefront of home security for several years, impressing consumers with two generations of smart and secure door locks that integrate with third-party devices and work with Amazon Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant. So, it was no surprise to hear that the company was gobbled up by security giant Assa Abloy, owners of Union, Yale and other well-known brands.

We’re eating alone more often than in any previous generation. But why should a meal on our own be uninspired?

The first batches of batteries from electric and hybrid vehicles are hitting retirement age, yet they aren’t bound for landfills. Instead, they’ll spend their golden years chilling beer at 7-Elevens in Japan, powering car-charging stations in California and storing energy for homes and grids in Europe. Lithium-ion car and bus batteries can collect and discharge electricity for another seven to 10 years after being taken off the roads and stripped from chassis—a shelf life with significant ramifications for global carmakers, electricity providers and raw-materials suppliers.

There is no escaping the fact that Chapultepec Avenue has changed since the Jalisco New Generation cartel tried to kill the former state prosecutor. Despite enjoying a reputation as one of Mexico’s trendiest locations, business has slowed in the once crowded bars along the famous Guadalajara street and only a handful of shoppers are in sight.

America's love for SUVs is killing pedestrians, and federal safety regulators have known for years.

“For people who want to make sure the Web serves humanity, we have to concern ourselves with what people are building on top of it,” Tim Berners-Lee told me one morning in downtown Washington, D.C., about a half-mile from the White House. Berners-Lee was speaking about the future of the Internet, as he does often and fervently and with great animation at a remarkable cadence.

The drive to the little white dome on the northern slope of Mauna Loa is a bumpy one. Mauna Loa, the “Long Mountain,” is a colossal volcano that covers half of the island of Hawaii. The rocky terrain, rusty brown and deep red, crunches beneath car tires and jostles passengers. Up there, more than 8,000 feet above sea level and many miles away from the sounds of civilization, it doesn’t feel like Earth. It feels like another planet. Like Mars.

Did I ever tell you about the time I punched a wall?” Jay asks with an embarrassed laugh. Jay (a pseudonym) was working as a legal advocate at a so-called family detention center in the small rural town of Dilley, Texas, when I first met him. The privately run South Texas Family Residential Center (STFRC) opened in late 2014 in response to an increase of mothers and children, mostly from Central America, seeking asylum in the U.S. Some of these asylum-seeking women who cross the Mexico-U.S. border with their children of minor age are involuntarily incarcerated in the facility while their cases go through an initial legal review.

The long read: Forgeries have got so good – and so costly – that Sotheby’s has brought in its own in-house fraud-busting expert

In Baltimore and other segregated cities, the life-expectancy gap between African Americans and whites is as much as 20 years. One young woman’s struggle shows why. One morning this past September, Kiarra Boulware boarded the 26 bus to Baltimore’s Bon Secours Hospital, where she would seek help for the most urgent problem in her life: the 200-some excess pounds she carried on her 5-foot-2-inch frame.

A man in Texas helps police find missing people. He’s spent three decades working on the hardest, coldest case of all: his daughter’s murder. Has he finally solved it?

On the frontlines of extinction in the Gulf of California, where the vaquita faces its final days.

The refugee crisis that dominated the news in 2015 and 2016 consisted primarily of a sharp rise in the number of people coming to Europe to claim asylum. Arrivals have now dropped, and governments have cracked down on the movement of undocumented migrants within the EU; many thousands are stuck in reception centres or camps in southern Europe, while others try to make new lives in the places they have settled.

Proponents of genetically modified crops say the technology is the only way to feed a warming, increasingly populous world. Critics say we tamper with nature at our peril. Who is right? Robert Goldberg sags into his desk chair and gestures at the air. “Frankenstein monsters, things crawling out of the lab,” he says. “This the most depressing thing I've ever dealt with.”

The long read: Accountancy used to be boring – and safe. But today it’s neither. Have the ‘big four’ firms become too cosy with the system they’re supposed to be keeping in check?

The long read: For decades, politicians have welcomed the super-rich with open arms. Now they’re finally having second thoughts. But is it too late?

The sun is barely up when Thoeun Theap pulls into a clearing in the thick Cambodian bush with a giant African rat on the seat beside him. In a few minutes the two will be out there beyond the treeline, scouring the earth for the remnants of a war Mr Theap fled almost 40 years ago. He spends most mornings out here in no man's land with his team of pouched rat handlers from APOPO and de-miners from the Cambodian Mine Action Centre (CMAC). A step in the wrong direction could see them lose a leg.

It seems like a common convenience in a digital age: a car that can be powered on and off with the push of a button, rather than the mechanical turning of a key. But it is a convenience that can have a deadly effect. On a summer morning last year, Fred Schaub drove his Toyota RAV4 into the garage attached to his Florida home and went into the house with the wireless key fob, evidently believing the car was shut off. Twenty-nine hours later, he was found dead, overcome with carbon monoxide that flooded his home while he slept.