Two Palm Beach neighbors fought over a tennis contract. A jury awarded $70 million.

01 • 25 Minute Read

Toronto Life

Sarah Treleaven

In 2011, Toronto businessman Harold Peerenboom pushed the board of Sloan’s Curve, a gated oceanfront enclave in Palm Beach, Florida, to rebid its $85,000-a-year tennis pavilion contract. Fellow resident Isaac Perlmutter, then CEO of Marvel Entertainment, rallied neighbors behind the longtime manager, and the fight turned personal. In late 2012, anonymous letters accusing Peerenboom of child molestation began reaching his neighbors and employees. Convinced the Perlmutters had written them, Peerenboom and his lawyer secretly lifted the couple’s DNA from documents handed to them at depositions, then publicized a single inconclusive test. In 2016, federal agents traced the letters to David Smith, a former partner fired from Peerenboom’s executive search firm. A Florida judge cleared the Perlmutters in 2021, and in 2025 a jury awarded Laura Perlmutter $70 million. Peerenboom is appealing and still believes his neighbors were involved.

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02 • 35 Minute Read

The Atavist Magazine

Alessio Perrone and Berber Verpoest

The Rise and Fall of a Super-Cop

In October 2019, customs officers in Antwerp, Belgium, X-rayed a container of Costa Rican timber and found nearly 2,800 kilograms of cocaine inside. They let it travel on under surveillance to a Dutch warehouse, where they spotted Willy Van Mechelen, a former detective the Belgian press had once hailed as a “top cop.” In the 1980s and early 1990s, Van Mechelen was a leading figure in an elite Antwerp investigative unit and solved several high-profile kidnappings. Then, in 1995, informants tied him to a 3.5-ton marijuana shipment. He said envious colleagues had framed him, but he was convicted. He fled the country in 2003 and was caught in the Netherlands eight years later. The 2019 surveillance placed him inside a smuggling network that a 2020 raid exposed as part of Belgium’s biggest drug bust. In July 2026, now in his eighties, he was sentenced to nine years. He is appealing from a residential care center, and authorities are unlikely to ever imprison him.

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03 • 25 Minute Read

ProPublica

Alex Cuadros

The Garbage Man: Bill Gates Has Earned Billions Investing in Climate-Polluting Landfills

At the 2015 Paris climate summit, Bill Gates pledged at least $2 billion to clean-energy startups. By then, his investment office had spent years buying into Republic Services, the country’s second-largest landfill operator. Gates now owns 38% of the company, a stake worth about $29 billion. Landfills may produce up to a fifth of U.S. methane, a potent short-term driver of warming. Since 2020, federal inspectors have documented more than 1,400 problem spots at Republic landfills, and independent measurements suggest some sites emit far more than the company reports. Republic says it works to fix identified issues. In 2021, it declined to adopt a tougher emissions target that staff estimated could cost over $1 billion, while spending more than $8 billion on stock buybacks. Gates sold his oil and gas shares in 2019 but has never sold Republic. He did not respond to questions.

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04 • 20 Minute Read

New York Magazine

Lauren Hilgers

The 7-Days-a-Week, 12-Months-a-Year School

On the first Saturday of the school year, Horacio, a Bronx bodega worker, left two of his children at Strive Charter School while he ran errands. Strive, which opened in August for kindergarten through fourth grade, stays open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., seven days a week, year-round, with the extra hours free and optional. Founder Eric Grannis, husband of Success Academy CEO Eva Moskowitz, designed it for working parents in a city with roughly 150,000 free after-school slots for more than 643,000 K–8 students. To stay on a standard public-school budget, it pays teachers less than city schools and staffs extra hours largely with aides. The start has been rocky, with staff turnover and unfinished facilities, and one parent has already pulled her daughter out. Still, about 40 of the school’s 200 students came that Saturday, and Grannis is now discussing expansion.

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Two Palm Beach neighbors fought over a tennis contract. A jury awarded $70 million.

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