India’s ruling BJP government is spending millions on a promise to revive the Saraswati River. But will a farm crisis upset its plans?

A cavalcade of police vehicles on the way to Adi Badri – a small village 25 miles from the town of Yamunanagar in the northern Indian state of Haryana – offers the first hint that something unusual is afoot. We cross sugarcane and wheat fields lining both sides of the road and climb a hill toward the Adi Badri temple. We are greeted by monkeys running riot, men in uniform patrolling the road and chants reverberating through the surrounding green Shivalik Mountains.

India’s Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari, of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is visiting the temple, taking part in a Hindu ritual called a Hawan. He’s inaugurating a five-day festival celebrating the mythological Saraswati River. Villagers gather around, looking on. Gadkari won’t mind. It’s election season, and they’re his real audience.

A village of fewer than 1,000 people, Adi Badri is emerging as the focal point of a sharpening debate over the origins of the Saraswati, a river that is mentioned in ancient Indian epics but doesn’t exist anymore. That debate, which resonates widely in Haryana, is also a microcosm of a bigger Pan-India battle between science on the one hand, and politics and faith on the other, that’s playing out as Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeks to retain power in the coming national elections.

Colombia’s most-wanted man, Dairo Antonio Úsuga, directs the wholesale cocaine trade, as well as terrorism against the state.

Among the steamy banana plantations of a place called Urabá, nestled in Colombia’s Caribbean jungle, a 48-year-old man named Dairo Antonio Úsuga lives on the run. His face looks fat and puffy, and he reportedly has a bad back. He travels by mule in ordinary clothing, passing for a small-time farmer instead of a billion-dollar drug kingpin. He never sleeps in the same bed twice. Instead, he survives on an underground network of contacts in the land where he grew up. Cell phone? Nope. Human messengers only.

He goes by the alias “Otoniel.” There’s a $5 million bounty for information leading to his arrest.

When a New York jury this month convicted Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera of drug trafficking and conspiracy to murder, it was billed as a victory following a long, frustrating hunt for the leader of Mexico’s powerful Sinaloa cartel. Yet Sinaloa is still thriving, and Otoniel’s Gulf Clan is its main cocaine supplier in Colombia.

Using hundreds of nozzles, this immersive fog sculpture reflects the collision of art, engineering and natural weather forces.

As you stand upon an inconspicuous-looking footbridge, a hissing sound erupts below and layers of mist begin to rise slowly. Swirls of fog rise from underneath the wooden walkway, water droplets drifting upward and eastward toward the San Francisco Bay. Within moments, you’re wrapped in a mysterious thickening curtain — you can barely see beyond your nose. It’s easy to forget you’re in the middle of a city.

Precisely six minutes later the fog dissipates as suddenly as it appeared. Some 800 jets quiet, and the sounds of the city — whizzing cars and barking dogs — return. Once again you stand upon an ordinary walkway. But in those fleeting moments, it felt like time and place shifted by a force of nature. This is the “Fog Bridge,” a free outdoor exhibit installed in 2013, that activates four times a day between piers 15 and 17 at San Francisco’s Exploratorium, a nonprofit organization and public learning laboratory exploring the world through science, art and human perception.