Welcome to The Faster Times update. In today's edition, we bring you Ben Laden, a sell-out story, charter school corruption, new autism concerns, and Alexander McQueen. Enjoy!

IIn our first email correspondence, Ben Laden said it’s been, “an interesting ride since 9/11,” but he imagines this will be the, “last hurrah.” Laden has taken the coincidence in good humor, but in many ways these have been trying years filled with absurd, disturbing, and Kafka-esque difficulties for a man whose only crime is to have been born with an unlucky name.

This isn’t a pretty story. I don’t go around telling it, even to good friends. But a journalist’s job is to convince people to reveal what they wish they hadn’t, and I don’t let anyone with a hot story off the record easy.

What happens when you privatize a major piece of public infrastructure and shovel piles of money to unelected and unaccountable figures in the private sector? Pro-Publica has the answer:

Just in time for Mother’s Day, mothers of all stripes received a gift from Seoul, South Korea. Packaged neatly inside a research study, the gift itself was a spanking new state-of-the-art worry. No returns, no exchanges allowed. The study, published in The American Journal of Psychiatry last week, revealed the shocking news that 1 out of 38 children may fall somewhere along the autism spectrum. The number is almost three times greater than the previous estimate of 1 in 110 released by The Centers For Disease Control a few years ago.

The “Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty” exhibition, currently on view at the Met, saw more than 5,100 visitors on its opening day last week, a crush so large the museum was forced to suspend guided tours.