The Lucrative, Corrupt Market for Instagram Verification
Gizmodo
Verification on Twitter and Facebook is easy, but on Instagram it's more exclusive, and coveted as an instant source of credibility for the platform's 700 million monthly active users. So, many "influencers" are willing to pay thousands for the all-important blue checkmark -- with the help of people on the inside. Here's how the deals go down. Grading the Bugle Boys of Company B
RealClearInvestigations
Military bands have been stirring the spirits of soldiers and citizens alike since the Revolutionary War. But now the government watchdog agency is blaring a sour note: It wants the Pentagon to justify their combined price tag north of $400 million a year. Can you measure the value of patriotic inspiration? New York's DNA Techniques Are Tainted
New York Times
Over the past decade, the DNA lab of New York City's chief medical examiner pioneered analysis of the most complicated crime-scene evidence: tiny samples or those with more than one person's genetic material. But now its methods themselves are under the microscope -- and thousands of cases are under a cloud. Harvey, America's Worst Storm
Houston Chronicle
In the aftermath of Harvey, Houston's flagship paper weaves together a detailed narrative of the story of the worst storm in U.S. history through the eyes of five people who survived it: a weatherman, a medical salesman, a mother, a refugee, and a good samaritan. ICE Wrongly Imprisoned an American Citizen for Years
Daily Beast
As a youth, Davino Watson became a citizen when his father did, but that didn't stop Immigration and Customs Enforcement from later holding him through years of legal wrangling -- much as ICE has held hundreds of American citizens in jails without lawyers. In Watson's case, ICE ignored easily verifiable information about his parentage.
Red Sox Used Apple Watches to Steal Signals
New York Times
For decades, spying on another team has been as much a part of baseball's gamesmanship as brushback pitches and hard slides. The Boston Red Sox have apparently added a modern — and illicit — twist: They used an Apple Watch to receive video replay information in the dugout and thereby steal on-field catcher signals from the Yankees and other teams. Leagues of Their Own, in Girls' Football
Wall Street Journal
Girls' tackle football leagues in Indiana and Utah are part of a small but striking trend: As boys' football participation declines amid worries about concussions, girls are joining their own leagues. Or boys on their own teams: The number of girls playing on boys' high school football teams nearly doubled in the past decade to more than 2,000 nationwide, while the number of boys playing football dropped 4 percent. | 
