Pohan Wu, a Taiwanese exchange student in Paris, stood behind barricades on Boulevard Saint-Germain, his eyes trained on the road where Chinese President Xi Jinping’s motorcade would soon pass. It was March 26, 2019, and Xi was in the French capital to discuss trade with European leaders. Armed with a teal cloth sign that read, “I am Taiwanese. I stand for Taiwan’s independence,” Wu planned to protest Beijing’s policy that asserts Taiwan is part of China. He waited patiently until he saw the pre...

Every few months, Alina Kusmangaliyeva faints. The 24-year-old cosmetologist once fainted in front of a client. She fell out of a chair during class when she was a college student. Another time she passed out on an airplane. The first time it happened was an autumn day 10 years ago. That morning, 14-year-old Kusmangaliyeva walked, as she always did, to the only school in Berezovka, a village tucked into the rolling feather grass of northwestern Kazakhstan. The smell of rotten eggs hung in the ai...

Although Interpol has asked governments around the world to find and provisionally arrest Isabel dos Santos, the Angolan former billionaire is not hiding. Instead, she regularly posts about her lavish lifestyle at a Dubai residence on social media. Now, confidential land records connect dos Santos and her mother to other properties on the waterfront of the United Arab Emirates’ financial hub. The eldest daughter of Angola’s former president, dos Santos came under scrutiny by authorities on thre

Jack Ruffin’s mother never wanted him to be a lawyer. As a Black man in South Georgia, he once told an interviewer, it would only put a bigger target on his back. But Ruffin pursued the career anyway, and built a record fighting school segregation and winning acquittals for wrongfully accused Black southerners. That record landed him in 1979 on a list of prospective nominees for a federal judgeship in Georgia. Instead, the nomination went to a White lawyer and former federal bankruptcy judge w

Savannah Schoenherr celebrates with her University of Florida teammates during the 2023 NCAA women’s gymnastics semifinals. Schoenherr received a $3,000 check from a company she’d arranged an NIL deal with but after she deposited it, the check bounced.

As it grew from scrappy Silicon Valley startup to a world-conquering multi-billion dollar operation, Uber promoted itself as a leader of the digital revolution. But the tech company pushed its agenda the old-fashioned way. Uber’s scandals and missteps in the United States, from its spying on government officials to its leaks of executive misconduct, have been the subject of books, TV series and newspaper investigations. Now, a new leak of records reveal the inside story of how the ride-hailing

On a rainy spring evening in 2016, Russian tech tycoons and politicians sat down for a three-course dinner at the Moscow City Golf Club, an exclusive meeting place near the Moskva River. The man of the hour was Travis Kalanick. Hoping to expand Uber’s business in Russia, the company’s chief executive chatted up dinner guests about big data, artificial intelligence and other things tech. “God love the Russians, where business and politics are so….cosy,” Uber’s European public policy chief Mark M

The homes of a billionaire family, featured in Architectural Digest, provide clues to Cambodian investigators seeking the recovery of lost artifacts.

Phoenix police don’t follow Fe’La iniko on social media, but he knows they’re watching. “They’re pretty hip to Instagram,” the racial justice activist said. “Sometimes they’ll pop up in my story views.” Iniko, whose given name is Milton Hasley, often uses social media to share fliers on upcoming protests or speak out against police violence. So when officers surrounded his car last summer while he was leaving a demonstration against the killings of George Floyd and Dion Johnson, iniko worried

At least 38 Georgia elected officials and congressional candidates have ties to businesses that received Paycheck Protection Program loans from the federal government to protect workers from the financial fallout caused by COVID-19. The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) has doled out $518 billion in PPP money since April as part of a federal initiative to provide companies with loans to keep employees on the payroll during the pandemic. In Georgia, more than 18,000 businesses and organi