Bloomberg Businessweek

How the Pacheco family business pivoted from bread baking to burying bodies in El Salvador, which has the highest murder rate per capita on the planet, “enough for the World Health Organization to classify it as an epidemic.”

Small business owners across the U.S. are being driven into bankruptcy by usurious loans advanced by predatory lenders that are making a lot of other people very, very rich. It’s perfectly horrifying, and perfectly legal.

Studies have shown that 3M-made “per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (or PFAS, pronounced ‘PEE-fas’)” found in Teflon, Scotchgard, and fire-fighting foam have been linked to a weakened immune response and cancer. The chemicals contaminate the ground water around the 3M plant in Cotton Grove, Minnesota creating an “underground plume” of pollution that’s 100 square miles in size. The biggest problem? 3M knew of the dangers and has been covering it up for decades.

Everyone in Canadian high society knew the Shermans, who owned a lucrative generic drug company and were some of the country’s most active philanthropists. But Barry Sherman also sued a lot of people, battled his cousins, made questionable business relationships, didn’t use a bodyguard, and kept their one home security camera off.

Companies that deal with the belongings left behind after you die are in demand in Japan, “where each year more people die with no one to mourn them.”

Greenville, South Carolina has discovered a way to revitalize its postindustrial spaces: by incubating start-ups and joining the knowledge economy. Can other mid-size Southern cities do the same?

How can a perennial blockbuster like Nintendo fall down for more than a century, innovate continuously from that prone position, and rise up, as if on cue, to master the art of fairytale comebacks time and time again? Felix Gillette tries to crack the code behind the gaming giant’s success, which remains as mysterious and unlikely as lucking into a banana bunch in the depths of an abandoned mineshaft.

Bill Benter did the impossible: He wrote an algorithm that couldn’t lose at the track. Close to a billion dollars later, he tells his story for the first time.

Elderly Japanese women — many of whom live lonely lives even in the company of husbands and children — are turning to petty theft and are thriving in prison, a place where they find the companionship and security lacking in their lives on the outside.

Unlike with thousands of other consumer products, no government entity in the U.S. has the power to police defective firearms or ammunition. Taurus has sold nearly a million handguns that can potentially fire even if no one pulls the trigger. After the accidental death of their son, one family is seeking justice.