There is a black market for stolen artworks, and according to the head of the F.B.I.'s art-crime team, Bonnie Magness-Gardiner, their prices are inevitably a small fraction of the works’ legitimate value. Some estimates put the average at 7 to 10 percent of perceived open-market value. A painting doesn’t need to be sold at auction to hold value. Even if it stays forever on the black market, it can be used as a kind of promissory note in a weapons or drug deal. Career criminals also believe they can extort a ransom from insurers or use the stolen work as a bargaining chip. A prison sentence, for instance, might be reduced in some jurisdictions in exchange for a criminal’s help in retrieving a missing Monet. In effect, an unframed canvas, easier to move across borders than its equivalent in cash or drugs, acts as a high-value and extremely pretty bank note.

“It was relatively easy,” said David Byrne, “back in the day, to work with only a smallish number of people watching, as we sometimes succeeded and sometimes failed.” In the mid-’70s, the early days of his band Talking Heads, “we felt comfortable trying out different things, songs that were quickly abandoned and stage wear that proved impractical,” he wrote in an email. “That’s all hugely important (the songs part anyway) as it allowed us to explore, refine our identity and go down those musical dead ends without the embarrassment of public scrutiny.” Now, online exposure can make for an overnight viral sensation. But “it can also destroy and eliminate that crucial period of anonymity,” he said.

The 300 million yen robbery (三億円事件 San Oku En Jiken?), also known as the 300 million yen affair or incident, was the single largest heist in Japanese history at the time. It occurred on the morning of December 10, 1968 in Tokyo, Japan. It remains unsolved.

Inside a run-down mall off of Elizabeth Street in Chinatown, down an escalator to the basement and past a raft of empty storefronts, is a minuscule store, the size of a walk-in closet, that’s quietly at the center of a peculiar global fashion empire. It has no sign and it’s not on the mall directory. It’s impossible to find on Google. The enterprise, which its owner refers to as Unique Hype Collection, is in the business of buying clothing from the skate-inspired men’s fashion brand Supreme at retail prices, waiting until the items have sold out at Supreme’s physical stores and online shop, and then putting those items up for sale in the mall and on eBay at significant markups.

Doctors in Albania say hundreds of people have fallen ill from harvesting cannabis in a lawless region that for years has been out of bounds to police, local media reported on Friday. "In the last two months about seven to eight people arrive in the emergency ward each day and many more have come earlier with disorders from hashish," Hysni Lluka, a Gjirokastër doctor, told Top Channel television. Some 2,000 people, including poor Roma who have set up a camp near Lazarat, have been working for months in the cannabis fields, where producers pay €8 per 10 kilos of processed drug. The illegal practice has flourished in Lazarat over two decades of turbulent transition in Albania since the end of hardline communist rule. Lazarat has become a byword for lawlessness in Albania, with cannabis growers brazen enough to shoot at police officers who venture near their fields. Aerial pictures suggest some 60 hectares have been cultivated in Lazarat, with 300,000 cannabis plants, capable of yielding 500 tonnes or half the total cannabis production in Albania.

Er ist einer der umstrittensten Politiker in Kanada: Seit Rob Ford vor gut drei Jahren zum Bürgermeister von Toronto gewählt wurde, sorgt er für einen Skandal nach dem anderen. Er polarisiert mit rechten Parolen, liefert sich Prügeleien mit Journalisten und pflegt dubiose Freunde im Drogenmilieu. Im Frühjahr war er in ein handfesten Skandal um ein Video verwickelt, das ihn angeblich beim Rauchen einer Crack-Pfeife zeigte. Der schwergewichtige Bürgermeister aber trotzte allen Gegnern. Bis zuletzt regierte er die viertgrößte Stadt in Nordamerika mit harter Hand und schüttelte alle Vorwürfe ab. Auch weil außer zwei Journalisten lange niemand das angeblich kompromittierende Drogen-Video gesehen hatte. Selbst eine über Crowdfunding finanzierte Belohnung von 200.000 Dollar förderte die Aufnahmen nicht zu Tage. Viele Kanadier hatten den Skandal fast vergessen. Am Donnerstag dann der Paukenschlag: Auf einer Pressekonferenz berichtete Torontos Polizeichef Bill Blair völlig überraschend vom Fund des Drogen-Videos.

Herman Webster Mudgett, better known under the alias of Dr. Henry Howard Holmes, was one of the first documented American serial killers in the modern sense of the term. In Chicago at the time of the 1893 World's Fair, Holmes opened a hotel which he had designed and built for himself specifically with murder in mind (the upper two floors contained his personal office and a maze of over 100 windowless rooms with doorways opening to brick walls, oddly-angled hallways, stairways to nowhere, doors openable only from the outside, and a host of other strange and labyrinthine constructions). While he confessed to 27 murders, of which four were confirmed, his actual body count could be as high as 200. He took an unknown number of his victims from the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, which was less than two miles away, to his "World's Fair" hotel.

Es hat ein Wirtschaftswandel stattgefunden: weg von globalen Handelsstrukturen hin zu einer Regionalisierung, wie bei Gemüse aus dem Bioladen. Das gilt für die gesamte Bundesrepublik. Auch das Bundeskriminalamt beschreibt in seinem Lagebericht 2012 den »umfangreichen Cannabisanbau«, den es inzwischen in Deutschland gibt. Wurden 2010 noch 394 Plantagen von der Polizei entdeckt, waren es 2012 bereits 809. In den allermeisten Fällen handelt es sich um sogenannte Indoor-Plantagen, also Cannabis, das nicht unter freiem Himmel wächst, sondern in Kellern, Fabrikhallen oder eben in Berliner WGs.

Magnum Photos member Bruce Gilden photographs the people and the streets of Derby in England for the FORMAT Photo Festival. We follow and interview him about his work.

Im März 2013 hat Michael Ebeling von freiheitsfoo beim Bundesinnenministerium nachgefragt, wie es denn zur Umbenennung des “elektronischen Personalausweises” zum “neuen Personalausweises” gekommen ist. Neben der Information, dass dazu eine rund 76.000 Euro teure “Kommunikationsstrategie” eingekauft worden ist hielt sich das Ministerium sehr bedeckt: Das mit Steuergeldern bezahlte Werbekampagnenkonzept wurde als “vertraulich” eingestuft und selbst die darin entwickelten “Goldenen Regeln” sah man als zu geheim an, als dass man sie anlässlich einer IFG-Anfrage herausrücken wollte. Dieser Faden wurde von dem Piraten Bernhard Kern eigeninitiativ aufgegriffen und mittels einer weiteren IFG-Anfrage auf dem Informationsfreiheitsportal www.fragdenstaat.de hat es dieser nun geschafft, das 50seitige “Handbuch zur Kampagne” zu befreien und online zu stellen. Es zeigt, auf welche manipulative Art und Weise das Bundesinnenministerium versucht, die Schwächen und Gefahren des elektronischen Personalausweises (im Neusprech: “neuer Personalausweis”) zu verheimlichen und welche ungeheuren Ausmaße die bezahlte Zusammenarbeit mit einigen großen Medienunternehmen sowie die geplanten Einflußnahmen auf die “Blogosphäre” im heutigen Politikgeschäft angenommen haben. Es werden eigeninitiativ große Zeitungen, Zeitschriften und Fachzeitschriften “besucht” und “mögliche Kooperationen” besprochen und entwickelt. Ist das noch eine duldbare Einflußnahme in die “freie” Presse? Unglaublich, aber wahr: Der Axel-Springer-Verlag geht eine exklusive (vertragliche?) Bindung mit der Bundesregierung ein und wird vom Bundesinnenministerium dafür bezahlt, den E-Perso in Bild, Welt & Co. als “Volksausweis” zu propagandieren. Regelmäßig wiederkehrend und selbstverständlich nur unter Nennung der Vorteile.

Electronic devices that biodegrade to order could lead to huge medical advances. And the Pentagon, through Darpa, is investing heavily in 'born-to-die' technology too…

Within Amazon.com there’s a certain type of e-mail that elicits waves of panic. It usually originates with an annoyed customer who complains to the company’s founder and chief executive officer. Jeff Bezos has a public e-mail address, jeff@amazon.com. Not only does he read many customer complaints, he forwards them to the relevant Amazon employees, with a one-character addition: a question mark. When Amazon employees get a Bezos question mark e-mail, they react as though they’ve discovered a ticking bomb. They’ve typically got a few hours to solve whatever issue the CEO has flagged and prepare a thorough explanation for how it occurred, a response that will be reviewed by a succession of managers before the answer is presented to Bezos himself. Such escalations, as these e-mails are known, are Bezos’s way of ensuring that the customer’s voice is constantly heard inside the company.

Damon Lindelof, the ubiquitous ­screenwriter-producer whose name seems attached to all of Hollywood’s biggest blockbusters, is doing his damnedest to get small. This summer, he miraculously pulled Brad Pitt out of the mass grave that was World War Z’s zombocalyptic original third act and restored the regular-guyness that made Pitt’s character work. He also resisted the temptation to threaten Earth’s existence (yet again!) at the end of Star Trek Into Darkness, focusing instead on a personal vendetta—albeit one enacted via a dizzying mile-high pursuit across a 23rd-century cityscape. But, hey, you have to give something to get something.

It’s hard to overstate the gamble Jobs took when he decided to unveil the iPhone back in January 2007. Not only was he introducing a new kind of phone — something Apple had never made before — he was doing so with a prototype that barely worked. Even though the iPhone wouldn’t go on sale for another six months, he wanted the world to want one right then. In truth, the list of things that still needed to be done was enormous. The iPhone could play a section of a song or a video, but it couldn’t play an entire clip reliably without crashing. It worked fine if you sent an e-mail and then surfed the Web. If you did those things in reverse, however, it might not. Hours of trial and error had helped the iPhone team develop what engineers called “the golden path,” a specific set of tasks, performed in a specific way and order, that made the phone look as if it worked.

The English-language Wikipedia alone had about 750,000 entries by late 2005, when a boom in media coverage and a spike in participation pushed the project across the line from Internet oddity to part of everyday life. Around that time, Wikipedians achieved their most impressive feat of leaderless collective organization—one, it turns out, that set in motion the decline in participation that troubles their project today. At some time in 2006, the established editors began to feel control of the site slipping from their grasp. As the number of new contributions—well-meaning and otherwise—was growing, the task of policing them all for quality began to feel impossible. Because of Wikipedia’s higher public profile and commitment to letting anyone contribute even anonymously, many updates were pure vandalism. Today the English Wikipedia has 4.4 million articles; there are 23.1 million more in 286 other languages. But those tougher rules and the more suspicious atmosphere that came along with them had an unintended consequence. Newcomers to Wikipedia making their first, tentative edits—and the inevitable mistakes—became less likely to stick around. Being steamrollered by the newly efficient, impersonal editing machine was no fun. The number of active editors on the English-language Wikipedia peaked in 2007 at more than 51,000 and has been declining ever since as the supply of new ones got choked off. This past summer only 31,000 people could be considered active editors.

This is a list of problems that have been solved by MacGyver. Demonstrating resourcefulness, he employs his knowledge of science, technology and outdoorsmanship to resolve what are often life or death crises. His ingenuity is normally put to the test under dire circumstances with little time or specialized resources with which to work.

When we started running, the huge crowd in the park opened up like Moses parting the Red Sea. It was a good thing they did, because, boom, one of my friends opened fire. Everybody scrambled when they heard the gun. I realized that some of the Puma Boys had taken cover between the parked cars in the street. I had the M1 rifle, and I turned around quickly to see this big guy with his pistol pointed toward me. “What the fuck are you doing here?” he said to me. It was my older brother, Rodney. “Get the fuck out of here.” I just kept walking and left the park and went home. I was 10 years old.

Investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill travels to Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, and other countries where the United States has taken military action. In Afghanistan, he investigates a night raid conducted by the Joint Special Operations Command. He also investigates the U.S. assassination of Anwar al-Awlaki. The documentary also shares testimonies from CIA agents, Special Forces operators, military generals, and warlords backed by the United States. Dirty Wars premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival on January 18, 2013. The film competed in the U.S. documentary section, and it won the Cinematography award.

In der Arte-Dokumentation „Gangsterläufer“ wurde die kriminelle Karriere des Intensivtäters aus Berlin-Neukölln bereits umfassend dokumentiert. Aus eben dieser Rolle scheint Yehya el-A. nicht ausbrechen zu können. Seit Dienstag sitzt der 23-Jährige aus Neukölln, mal wieder, hinter Gittern.

Belgrade born documentary Photographer, Boogie, opens up about his journey of self-discovery while photographing life on the streets in New York City.

As the machinery for a U.S.-led military intervention in Syria gathers pace following last week’s chemical weapons attack, the U.S. and its allies may be targeting the wrong culprit. Interviews with people in Damascus and Ghouta, a suburb of the Syrian capital, where the humanitarian agency Doctors Without Borders said at least 355 people had died last week from what it believed to be a neurotoxic agent, appear to indicate as much. However, from numerous interviews with doctors, Ghouta residents, rebel fighters and their families, a different picture emerges. Many believe that certain rebels received chemical weapons via the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and were responsible for carrying out the dealing gas attack. “My son came to me two weeks ago asking what I thought the weapons were that he had been asked to carry,” said Abu Abdel-Moneim, the father of a rebel fighting to unseat Assad, who lives in Ghouta. Abdel-Moneim said his son and 12 other rebels were killed inside of a tunnel used to store weapons provided by a Saudi militant, known as Abu Ayesha, who was leading a fighting battalion. The father described the weapons as having a “tube-like structure” while others were like a “huge gas bottle.” Ghouta townspeople said the rebels were using mosques and private houses to sleep while storing their weapons in tunnels. “They didn’t tell us what these arms were or how to use them,” complained a female fighter named ‘K.’ “We didn’t know they were chemical weapons. We never imagined they were chemical weapons.”

Since the mid-1980s, he has been the industry’s very own burly, bearded version of Forrest Gump, appearing in the background, slightly blurry but ever present, at a remarkable number of key musical moments. Except that Rubin's ubiquity is not an accident. His production credits include LL Cool J’ Radio (which may have been the first real hip-hop album); The Beastie Boys’ Licensed to Ill; “Walk This Way” by Run-D.M.C. and Aerosmith; Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back (as executive producer); the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Blood Sugar Sex Magik; Tom Petty’s Wildflowers; Johnny Cash’s American Recordings series; and various songs and albums by Justin Timberlake, System of a Down, Metallica, Slayer, Danzig, Weezer, AC/DC, Nine Inch Nails ... The list goes on.

Der Verwaltungsbeamte, 46 Jahre alt, Vater zweier Söhne, ist Direktkandidat in Berlin, genauer: in Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg-Prenzlauer Berg Ost. Ein Wahlkreis, anders als die anderen. Nirgendwo war der Abstand zum Bundesergebnis so groß wie hier. Wenn in der Südpfalz die durchschnittlichsten Wähler der Republik leben, dann sind es im Berliner Osten die extremsten. Für die CDU kandidierte 2009 Vera Lengsfeld, eine ehemalige DDR-Bürgerrechtlerin und Trägerin des Bundesverdienstkreuzes. Auf ihren Plakaten posierte sie neben Angela Merkel, beide in tief ausgeschnittenen Kleidern, dazu der Slogan: "Wir haben mehr zu bieten". Das Ergebnis: 11,6 Prozent für Lengsfeld. Von Müller gibt es 1300 Plakate und nur ein Motiv: Müller im schwarzen Sakko, weißes Hemd, keine Krawatte. Die grauen Haare ordentlich gescheitelt. Das Parteilogo rechts unten. Er will seriös wirken, Extravaganzen sind Müller fremd. Von den Zigarillos vielleicht abgesehen. Und von seinem Handy-Klingelton. Der geht so: "Halloooo, Guten Mooooorgen, Deutschland. Ich wünsch dir einen guuuuuten Tag." CDU-Mann Müller bekommt Tisch Nummer drei, die erste Fragestellerin bestürmt ihn: "Wann kommt der Mindestlohn?" Müller: "In vielen Branchen gibt es den ja schon ..." Die Frau, zischend: "Der Mindestlohn für alle." Müller: "Den wird es mit uns nicht geben, der ist auch gar nicht förderlich ..." Die Frau: "Dann wollen Sie also nichts dagegen tun, das eine Putzhilfe im Hotel nur drei Euro verdient. Danke, ich habe genug gehört."

Meth users called it the "shake- and-bake" or "one-pot" method, and its key feature was to greatly simplify the way meth is synthesized from pseudoephedrine, a decongestant found in cold and allergy medicines like Claritin D and Sudafed. Shake and bake did two things. It took a toxic and volatile process that had once been the province of people with Breaking Bad-style knowledge of chemistry and put it in the bedrooms and kitchens of meth users in rural America. It also produced the most potent methamphetamine anywhere. Since 2007, the number of clandestine meth sites discovered by police has increased 63 percent nationwide. In Kentucky, the number of labs has more than tripled. The Bluegrass State regularly joins its neighbors Missouri, Tennessee, and Indiana as the top four states for annual meth lab discoveries. As law enforcement agencies scramble to clean up and dispose of toxic labs, prosecute cooks, and find foster homes for their children, they are waging two battles: one against destitute, strung-out addicts, the other against some of the world's wealthiest and most politically connected drug manufacturers. In the past several years, lawmakers in 25 states have sought to make pseudoephedrine—the one irreplaceable ingredient in a shake-and-bake lab—a prescription drug. In all but two—Oregon and Mississippi—they have failed as the industry, which sells an estimated $605 million worth of pseudoephedrine-based drugs a year, has deployed all-star lobbying teams and campaign-trail tactics such as robocalls and advertising blitzes.