Your weekend long reads 🗞️

Good morning, friends of The Short List! It's John, here to kickstart your weekend with some great stuff to read. Let's get started. 

This week we wanted to make sure you saw two fine examples of Paste BN's investigative journalism. 

► In March 2018, heavily armed commandos raided a yacht in the Indian Ocean and seized Princess Latifa bint Mohammed al-Maktoum, who had fled from her billionaire father, the authoritarian ruler of the Emirate of Dubai. How Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum found his daughter has been a mystery for more than three years – until now. A Paste BN investigation established that the FBI, responding to an urgent plea from the Dubai leader, provided assistance essential to her capture. Paste BN pieced together the series of harrowing events through interviews, emails, satellite data and other material.

► Around the country, massage schools in towns large and small are suspected of ties to the illicit massage industry, a billion-dollar black market in the U.S. built to sell sex. A monthslong Paste BN investigation uncovered two dozen schools with connections to either prostitution or fraud. While regulators sometimes find ways to punish schools, bringing charges on serious crimes such as human trafficking and prostitution is rare and difficult.

ICYMI: This week, Paste BN launched a subscriber model for premium journalism (although most stories are still free). Want to know more? Here are answers to your questions.

If only all answers in life were this easy.

Check out more long reads below. Have a great weekend!