Jacob Kushner
Donors claimed they would fix Fabienne Jean’s body. They broke her heart instead.
Too big to jail
The Economist
Illustration Corey Brickley for The Economist
The Colombian drug lord who snitched his way to freedom
A senior member of the Medellín cartel conned American and Swiss authorities, framed the Mexican president’s brother, destroyed a private Swiss bank, and brought down the Attorney General of Switzerland.
And they let him walk free.
In fact, they paid him to do it. Law enforcement agencies across the globe are giving millions of dollars to criminal informants, creating a system where–for big fish like José Manuel Ramos–crime truly does pay.
Read: The Economist’s 1843 Magazine
A Vespucci Story, with Swiss journalist Daniel Ammann
Love Thy Neighbor
The Atavist
American evangelicals’ antigay gospel forced him to flee Uganda. Then Christians in California offered him a home. A refugee’s story, in words and pictures.
Read: The Atavist
In Germany, new museum stirs up colonial controversy
Articles, National Geographic
How Africa’s vaccine hesitancy came from the West
BBC
Immunologist Fatiha El Hilali started trying to counter fake news about vaccines after seeing a close friend die from Covid-19 (Credit: Kang-Chun Cheng)
“If I can be provocative, shouldn’t we be doing this study in Africa, where there are no masks, no treatments, no resuscitation?” said Jean-Paul Mira, head of intensive care at Cochin hospital in Paris. “A bit like as it is done elsewhere for some studies on Aids. In prostitutes, we try things because we know that they are highly exposed and that they do not protect themselves.”
Read: BBC Future
With support from the Pulitzer Center
10 MURDERS, 3 NAZIS, AND GERMANY’S MOMENT OF RECKONING
Foreign Policy Magazine
Jesse Lenz
German authorities looked the other way as a right-wing terrorist cell went on a seven-year killing spree. Now they won’t look in the mirror.
Read: Foreign Policy Magazine
As featured on Longform
Railway Splits Kenya’s Parks, Threatens Wildlife
National Geographic
Andrew Renneisen
As dawn breaks, nine Kenya Wildlife Service rangers dressed in camouflage and brandishing rifles assemble at an airstrip. They are equipped with a Cessna, a helicopter, and a caravan of Toyota Land Cruisers. Their mission: find, tranquilize, and collar Tsavo’s savanna elephants to see how well they traverse a new rail line that has recently split their habitat in two. It is the first time in history that elephants are being collared specifically to study how they interact with human infrastructure.
A Cruise With a Cause
VICE Magazine
Photo/Amy Lombard
Meet Fathom, the world’s first-ever cruise for voluntourists: vacationers who don’t just want to do beaches, spas, and shopping, but do good.
Spoiler: It doesn’t go as planned.
Impact update: Two weeks after my VICE investigation published, Carnival Corp., the world’s largest cruise operator, announced it would discontinue the cruise.
Published in the November 2016 issue of
Listen: Tiny Spark
Who Owns What in Haiti?
The New Yorker
Allison Shelley
Uncertainty over land ownership is playing out across Haiti as the country attempts to attract foreign investment in tourism, mining, manufacturing, and agriculture—often without clear knowledge of who, precisely, owns what.
Read: The New Yorker
Nowhere Left to Go
Harper's
Frankie Lopez
After Uganda passed what became known as the “kill the gays” bill, hundreds of LGBT Ugandans began fleeing across the border to Kenya, where they lived in hiding while applying for asylum—but a few Kenyans, like Lucas, fled in the other direction.
Read: Harper’s Magazine
On the Run
VICE Magazine
Jake Naughton
The plight of Kenya’s LGBT Refugees
“God has a book of life,” Mugisa told his worshipers. “He remembers your name. But to be written in this book you need to do good.” Mugisa turned to his congregants. “Mulondo, Lujja, Kasule, Nansamba: You want to be able to say, ‘God, I served you when I was in Kakuma camp.’ You want to be able to say, ‘I served you in Uganda. Remember me. This is what I have done, remember me.'”
Jake Naughton
Mugisa glanced around his congregation of LGBT worshipers, catching the eyes of a few of them. Unable to ignore the trepidation on their faces, he comforted them. “Trust me—one day we will be out of this place.”
Honorable Mention (runner-up), 2016 Immigration Journalism Award, The French-American Foundation; Official Nomination, “Outstanding Magazine Article,” 2017 GLAAD Media Awards; Shortlist, 2017 One World Media Print Award.
Read: VICE Magazine
The Chinese Company Eradicating Malaria in Africa
The Atlantic
Han Haidan
In 2007, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced an ambitious endeavor: To eradicate malaria across the globe.
It was late to the game. That year, Chinese scientists working with a Chinese philanthropist had already begun eradicating malaria from the small African nation of Comoros. Now they’re setting their sights on a more ambitious location: Kenya, the East African nation of nearly 50 million people.
Read: The Atlantic
Listen: The China Africa Podcast
They Call It Canaan
VQR
Allison Shelley
In the aftermath of disaster, Haitians ask what makes a city
Port-au-Prince was decimated when a magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti in January 2010. Within weeks, settlements began to appear on a barren landscape, shacks and tents spreading over dusty plains. They called it Canaan, the biblical promised land where Moses led the Israelites out of slavery–the land of milk and honey. “This Canaan has the same history,” one pastor, who was among the first to move there, told me. “This is our honey.”
But in Canaan, as in any city, people—the rich and the poor, the powerful and weak, the complacent and the desperate—were destined to get in one another’s way.
Read: VQR
As featured in Longreads
Will LGBT Ugandans Ever Be Free?
Playboy
Photos by Jake Naughton
Inside the Fight for a Queer Country
Just a few years ago, Kampala was a nightmare for LGBTQ Ugandans, some of whom were beaten and stripped in the streets, chased by angry mobs or jailed.
But you wouldn’t guess that from the relaxed atmosphere at Cayenne on Kampala’s north side. Few people seem to notice the transgender woman dancing by the pool, and if they do, they don’t seem to care. Javan belongs to a generation of queer Ugandans barely old enough to remember when the antigay fervor first erupted here, in 2009.
Read: Playboy
Resurrection Science
WIRED
George Steinmetz/Corbis
Biologists Could Soon Resurrect Extinct Species. But Should They?
“Until we make space for other species on Earth, it won’t matter how many animals we resurrect,” writes M.R. O’Connor in her book Resurrection Science. “There won’t be many places left for them to exist.”
“Paradoxically, the more we intervene to save species, the less wild they often become.”
Read: WIRED
