Longreads

(This is the first chapter of a five-part article to be published in full on Thursday, March 14.) SAN DIEGO — It was to be a reunion of Southern California’s top high school runners,…

Portsmouth, Ohio — Over much of the past decade, the official word on OxyContin was that it rarely posed problems of addiction for patients. The label on the drug, which was approved by the…

Stamatis Moraitis tending his vineyard and olive grove on Ikaria. More Photos » In 1943, a Greek war veteran named Stamatis

Michael, a 9-year-old whose periodic rages alternate with moments of chilly detachment, with his mother, Anne. One day last summer, Anne and her husband, Miguel, took their 9-year-old son, Michael,…

The hacker's eyes widened as the image filled his screen. There, without her makeup, stood Scarlett Johansson, her famous face unmistakable in the foreground, her naked backside reflected in the…

A stop-and-frisk during a ride-along with the Newburgh police.(Photo: Joseph Rodriguez) One morning earlier this month, just before sunrise, a silent convoy of SUVs streamed into the tiny, troubled…

On the 50th anniversary of his death in a plane crash, friends remember the rock & roll pioneer's final concerts — and musicians salute his lasting influence

On a warm morning in May a few years ago, Edgar Valdez, a drug lord who goes by the nickname La Barbie, woke up in one of the houses he owned in the resort city of Acapulco. In the 1950s, this beautiful beach town was the premier haunt of American celebrities: Frank Sinatra used to prowl the hotel lounges, Elizabeth Taylor had her third of eight weddings here, and John F. Kennedy honeymooned on the coast with Jacqueline. The glamour started to fade in the 1980s, but the city remained a popular vacation destination until a few years ago, when the Mexican cartels transformed Acapulco from a seaside paradise into one of the most violent flash points of the drug war. As chief enforcer for the town's most powerful cartel, Barbie drove the celebrities away for good and made tourists nervous about straying too far into Acapulco when their cruise ships pulled into port. He felt bad about it, a little, but that is the way of the world, he thought – eat or be eaten.