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BAKERSFIELD — Fernando Jara is something of a star in Kern County — and a mystery. From humble beginnings, Jara founded a program to rehabilitate drug addicts and felons on a five-acre…

A second SEAL stepped into the room and trained the infrared laser of his M4 on bin Laden’s chest. The Al Qaeda chief, who was wearing a tan shalwar kameez and a prayer cap on his head, froze; he was unarmed. “There was never any question of detaining or capturing him—it wasn’t a split-second decision. No one wanted detainees,” the special-operations officer told me. (The Administration maintains that had bin Laden immediately surrendered he could have been taken alive.) Nine years, seven months, and twenty days after September 11th, an American was a trigger pull from ending bin Laden’s life. #Sept11

Stanley Ann Dunham at Borobudur in Indonesia, in the early 1970s. The photograph sh

On 10 April 2006, a DC-9 jet landed in the port city of Ciudad del Carmen, on the Gulf of Mexico, as the sun was setting. Mexican soldiers, waiting to intercept it, found 128 cases packed with…

Three hours after I gave my name and e-mail address to Michael Fertik, the CEO of Reputation.com, he called me back and read my Social…

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E VERY SPRING, for the past three yearsfor the first three seasons of the Indian Premier LeagueLalit Kumar Modis life would swing into...

It’s 1975 and two college dropouts are racing to create software for a new line of “hobbyist” computers. The result? A company called “Micro-Soft”—now the fifth-most-valuable corporation on earth. In an adaptation from his memoir, Paul Allen tells the story of his partnership with high-school classmate Bill Gates, until its dramatic ending in 1983.

In the developed world, these ideas are beginning to affect policy. For instance, the Pension Protection Act of 2006 encourages U.S. employers to establish automatic enrollment for retirement plans. Could such approaches help alleviate poverty in developing countries? If policies based on behavioral economics can help Americans save more, could they also help Indian children get vaccinated or Kenyan children get cleaner water?