• America’s shale oil boom is now so big it is visible from space— night-time satellite images show North Dakota’s Bakken shale shining almost as brightly as Chicago. They highlight how development has outpaced investment in infrastructure that manages the unwanted associated gas released alongside oil production.
• Charles Clover examines the role of Father Tikhon Shevkunov, an abbot who travels with Vladimir Putin dealing with ecclesiastical problems.
• David Pilling interviewed Cecil Chao, the 76-year-old property magnate and babe magnet, who offered a $65m dowry for any man to woo his lesbian daughter.
• Xan Rice talks to hotelier Abderhamane Alpha Maiga about the day Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the notorious jihadist who organised the raid on the gas plant in Algeria, arrived in Timbuktu.
• Thousands filled the streets of Gao to cheer Malian troops and French forces over the weekend — watch Lindsey Hilsum’s report of the celebrations.
• When Saudi religious police closed an educational exhibit of plaster dinosaurs, a Twitter hashtag #Dammam-Hayaa-Closes-Dinosaur-Show soon started generating theories about the reason for closure — an indication that the vigilantes might be heading the same way as the dinosaurs.
• Could Cyril Ramaphosa be the best leader South Africa has not yet had? Bill Keller profiles him for the NYT.
• In this interactive, the NYT has also shown the startling growth of the Zaatari camp in Jordan, which has expanded as refugees haved spilled out of Syria.

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