How NBC Execs Quashed Farrow's Weinstein Exposé
Huffington Post
Sources detail a months-long struggle within NBC News during which executives slow-walked Ronan Farrow's bombshell Harvey Weinstein story, crippling it with their qualms and irresolution before he took it to the New Yorker. NBC lawyers said Farrow had a conflict of interest because Weinstein had helped revive the career of Farrow's estranged father, Woody Allen. The network's reticence seemed clear, too, in the story's absence from "NBC Nightly News" last Thursday and from "Saturday Night Live." How Facebook Outs Sex Workers
Gizmodo
Her "real identity" joined Facebook in 2011. Her sex-work identity is not on the social network at all; for it, she uses a different email address, a different phone number, and a different name. Yet earlier this year, looking at Facebook's "People You May Know" recommendations, she was shocked to see some of her regular sex-work clients. Facebook isn't talking about how its algorithms might have made that happen. But if you're a sex worker or you patronize one, it could happen to you.
America's Shadow War in Africa
Politico
The United States is deploying growing numbers of troops to Africa's most lawless regions, including the part of Niger where four soldiers died in an ambush last week. "The U.S. military presence in the Sahel and sub-Saharan regions has grown to at least 1,500 troops," Politico says, "roughly triple the official number of American troops in Syria."
Rohingya: 'They Threw My Baby Into a Fire'
New York Times
Jeffrey Gettleman investigates the brutalization of a Rohingya woman by Burmese soldiers: "The soldiers clubbed Rajuma in the face, tore her screaming child out of her arms and hurled him into a fire. She was then dragged into a house and gang-raped. By the time the day was over, she was running through a field naked and covered in blood. Alone, she had lost her son, her mother, her two sisters and her younger brother, all wiped out in front of her eyes, she says." Inside a CIA Black Site Torture Room
Guardian
Gul Rahman died of hypothermia at the Cobalt CIA secret prison in Afghanistan in 2002 after "enhanced interrogation." A torture lawsuit settled out of court also forced the release of documents reconstructing the decisions that killed a prisoner just 69 days after the prison opened. How Chicago Gets its Guns
ProPublica, Chicago Sun-Times, WBEZ
An investigation into the flow of out-of-state guns to murder-ravaged Chicago finds that the ATF's anti-trafficking methods -- setting up illegal firearms deals - often bait small-time offenders whose arrests don't make much of a difference. Worse, critics say, this expensive tactic encourages the very gun networks law enforcement is trying to stop. Google X and the Art of Invention
Atlantic
A look inside X, the "moonshot" factory at Alphabet, parent company of Google. There experts explore the seemingly absurd in hopes of radical innovations. X's self-driving-car company looks like the most successful project to date, while Google Glass was a high-profile failure. Regardless, X is a bright spot in an otherwise bleak picture for investment in scientific research. Pharmacy Serves Congress, Alzheimer's Meds and All
Stat News
The secretive Office of the Attending Physician has provided members of Congress with basic health care for over two decades, with drugs delivered by Grubb's, a pharmacy nestled among row houses on Capitol Hill. Its pharmacists know a lot about who runs our government, including who needs Alzheimer's meds. "It makes you kind of sit back and say, ‘Wow, they're making the highest laws of the land and they might not even remember what happened yesterday.'" | 
