In the coming days the United States and other countries will make a decision on the use of military force against Syria. The consequences of this decision will affect not only the Assad regime loyalists but also the foot soldiers manning bunkers, barracks, and installations across the country. For the vast majority of Syria’s conscripted soldiers, military service amounts to a brutal prison sentence of unknown length now that the war has extended service periods indefinitely. Though the Syrian army does contain true believers who believe that it’s their duty to defeat the rebels and any means justifies this end, many are draftees with no ideological sympathy for the regime and are merely following orders to survive...

High in the thick grass meadows of the southern French Alps, a modern parable of man and nature, sheep and wolf, is being written in a great quantity of blood.

With official encouragement, herders and farmers had hunted the gray wolf to extinction in France by the 1930s. Within a half-century, though, the animal had been made a protected species throughout Europe; the first wolves re-entered French territory from Italy in 1992, a small and delicate population at the outset. Much to the thrill of conservationists and European officials, they have thrived.

But to the exasperation of this region’s shepherds, who for generations have scaled these hills with the seasons, the species’ success has been due in no small part to the ample, easy pickings. Wolves have been slaughtering vast numbers of sheep here — at least 20,000 in just the past five years...

"The girls aren't crazy—they're just excited." Early on in the One Direction documentary This Is Us, a neuroscientist details the dopamine rush a fan feels when she thinks about the band, and provides confirmation for what Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson, Zayn Malik, Niall Horan, and Liam Payne have always insisted: Directioners are not crazy—and they're not to be ignored. In interview after interview over the past three years, usually surrounded by thousands of screaming young women, the band has politely corrected reporters who characterize their followers as "insane" or "deranged." "We prefer 'passionate,'" they'll demur. "Or 'dedicated.'"

There’s more to this than semantics. Possibly you don’t realize how radical it is to see five guys treat young women with respect, and to demand that others do so as well, but it is...

My favorite books teach me how to think, or how to stop thinking; they encourage me to adopt a more permissive, openhearted, curious relation to the mind’s taxations. Matias Viegener’s 2500 Random Things About Me Too is such a book; it kindly provides a rest cure for my linguistic apparatus — the brain’s word-machine, a system of weights and measures, of pulleys and levers, that frequently experiences shutdown. Reading Viegener, I hope to learn from his authorial equanimity, the simplicity and tact of saying only the things that matter, whether or not they strike the scrupulous, monitoring consciousness as merely random...

Your parents may have had to walk uphill, both ways, to get to school. But as ideological warfare threatens the teaching of climate science and evolution in many schools, it is clear that today’s students face their own obstacles on the road to a respectable science education — and some are speaking out...

The story I want to tell you is a simple story about myself and my son Luke. Some of you may have read about him over the years. I write about him often enough. And the truth is we’ve always been pretty good friends. Father and son, of course, but we’ve always shared a lot in common. We lived through Paris together, and we love football. I’ve taught him to love hockey; we even love the same hockey team, the Montreal Canadiens.

But recently he turned 12, and in New York City, because everything is a little accelerated, 12 is really thirteen. And when thirteen happens to kids, as you all know, something profound changes. They begin to become adolescents; they approach being teenagers. And the bond, no matter how strong it is, between a father and son, or a mother and son or daughter, begins to change. It begins to alter. And suddenly they become more distant from you...

Now that the State Department has confirmed the Syrian government crossed President Obama's red line and used chemical weapons against its own people, the world is waiting to see whether the United States will launch military strikes against the Bashar al-Assad regime. The president said he will seek congressional approval before he commits the armed forces to another combat situation even though the legislative branch is out of session until Sept. 9. It's been a difficult road for the Obama administration, which has been back and forth about whether it would intervene in the brutal civil war. Despite all of the criticism, there was one thing Obama has made clear: if Syria uses chemical weapons again, the United States won't wait for Congress to get back from recess to launch its attack...

On the lawn outside Motown Records’ former headquarters here, a historical marker honors the pivotal role that the song “Money (That’s What I Want)” played in building the Motown empire. With its hypnotic piano riff and unabashedly materialistic refrain, “Money,” recorded in 1959, was the first national success for the label that came to be known as “Hitsville U.S.A.,” giving the fledgling company credibility and a vital infusion of cash.

Over the years, “Money” has generated millions of dollars in publishing royalties. It was recorded by both the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, has been widely used in films and advertisements and is now featured in “Motown: The Musical” on Broadway. But the pianist and singer Barrett Strong, who first recorded “Money” and, according to records at the United States Copyright Office in Washington, was originally listed as a writer of the song, says that he has never seen a penny of those profits...

Just before 8 a.m., Johnson Zeng eases his rented Chevrolet into a space in front of Cash’s Scrap Metal & Iron in St. Louis. He’s in the market to buy scrap metal he can ship to China, and this is the first stop of the day in the middle of a two-and-a-half-week road trip to regular suppliers that started in Albuquerque and will end in Spartanburg, S.C. But that, Zeng says, is nothing. “My last trip with Homer,” he recalls, referring to Homer Lai, the scrap importer in China’s Guangdong Province who provides him with most of his business, “we drove 9,600 miles in 26 days.”

The result? Millions of pounds of metal worth millions of dollars left the U.S. for China...

The bearded man with thinning, gray-and-bleach-blond hair flapping down his neck first appeared in this tiny agricultural town last year, quietly and inconspicuously roaming the crackly dirt roads.

Nettie Ketterling thought nothing of it when he came into her bar to charge his cellphone in an outlet beneath the mounted head of a mule deer. To Kenneth Zimmerman, the man was just another customer, bringing his blue Dodge Durango in for repairs. Bobby Harper did not blink when the man appeared in front of his house and asked him if he had any land to sell. And the mayor, Ryan Schock, was simply extending a civic courtesy when he swung by the man’s house to introduce himself...