Former President Donald Trump's lie about election fraud unleashed a movement that shattered democratic norms. Photo / Getty Images
Welcome to the weekend.
Settle down with a cuppa and catch up on some of the best content from our premium syndicators this week.
Happy reading.
Hours after the United States voted, President Trump declared the election a fraud — a lie that unleashed a movement that would shatter democratic norms and upend the peaceful transfer of power.
ALSO READ:
• Key takeaways from Trump's effort to overturn the election
• Trump's sleight of hand: Shouting fraud, pocketing donors' cash for future
I thought this was going to be a normal interview with Jordan Peterson. After speaking with him at length, and with his daughter for even longer, I no longer have any idea what it is. I don't know if this is a story about drug dependency, or doctors, or Peterson family dynamics — or a parable about toxic masculinity. Whatever else it is, it's very strange.
Dave Grohl has done so much throughout his career — drummed for Nirvana, arguably the biggest band of its generation; led Foo Fighters, one of the most successful acts of the past three decades; sold out Wembley Stadium, twice; played on the White House lawn; interviewed the sitting president of the United States; broke his leg during a show and finished the show with the broken leg; entered the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, with another induction likely on the way; recorded with both living Beatles; appeared on The Muppets, also twice — that when you ask him what's left, he takes a moment.
Jeremy Gordon of The New York Times talks to Grohl about the band's history and their latest album.
Guy Babcock vividly remembers the chilly Saturday evening when he discovered the stain on his family. It was September 2018. He, his wife and their young son had just returned to their home. Babcock still had his coat on when he got a frantic call from his father.
"I don't want to upset you, but there is some bad stuff on the internet," Babcock recalled his father saying. Someone, somewhere, had written terrible things online about Guy Babcock and his brother, and members of their 86-year-old father's social club had alerted him.
Babcock got off the phone and Googled himself. The results were full of posts on strange sites accusing him of being a thief, a fraudster and a paedophile.
Outrageous lies destroyed his online reputation.
ALSO READ:
• Here's a way to learn if facial recognition systems used your photos
The Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was smiling as he made his way towards his country's consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, on the afternoon of October 2, 2018. He was happy. He was in love. He was planning a wedding.
The smile would not have lingered long on Khashoggi's face when he saw who was there to meet him inside the consulate — a 15-member hit squad of Saudi government agents. After the Saudis suffocated their victim, a government physician dismembered him with a bone saw in the consulate "media room". His remains have never been found.
The online trading app Robinhood became a cultural phenomenon and a Silicon Valley darling with a promise to wrest the stock market away from Wall Street's traditional gatekeepers and "let the people trade" — making it as easy to put millions of dollars at risk as it is to summon an Uber.
Last week, in the middle of a market frenzy pitting amateur traders against hedge fund bigwigs, that veneer began to chip. As it turned out, Robinhood was at the mercy of the very industry it had vowed to upend.
ALSO READ:
• 'Let them trade': Washington struggles with Robinhood politics
• Robinhood's CEO is in the hot seat
• Opinion: Can we please stop talking about stocks, please?
In 2015, Vanessa van Ewijk, a carpenter in the Netherlands, decided that she wanted to have a child. She was 34 and single, and so, like many women, she sought out a sperm donor.
She considered conceiving through a fertility clinic, but the cost was prohibitive for her. Instead, she found an ideal candidate through a website called Desire for a Child, his name was Jonathan Jacob Meijer.
In 2017, when she decided to conceive again, she reached out once more to Meijer.
Even before then, however, van Ewijk learned some unsettling news. Meijer had fathered at least 102 children in the Netherlands through numerous fertility clinics, a tally that did not include his private donations through websites.
One man, hundreds of children and a burning question: Why?
On May 4, a new cruise ship called the Spirit of Adventure is due to leave the English port of Dover on a maiden voyage like no other.
The vessel's owner, Britain's over-50s holiday and insurance group Saga, is one of the first large businesses to make Covid jabs mandatory for its customers. No one will be allowed on board unless they are fully vaccinated against coronavirus — or rather, almost no one.
In a sign of the fraught situation employers around the world face, the shots will be compulsory for passengers but not the ship's crew.
The nearly 426 metre tower at 432 Park Ave., briefly the tallest residential building in the world, was the pinnacle of New York's luxury condo boom half a decade ago, fuelled largely by foreign buyers seeking discretion and big returns.
Six years later, residents of the exclusive tower are now at odds with the developers, and each other, making clear that even multimillion-dollar price tags do not guarantee problem-free living.
The news that Jeff Bezos would step aside as Amazon's chief executive was a surprise, but there were signs it may have been on his mind for some time.
With little sign of a horse race, Andy Jassy, the current head of Amazon's cloud computing division, will step up to be the new chief executive.
Amazon insisted that Bezos, as executive chairman, would only be involved in what it described as "one-way door" decisions, from which there is no turning back.
The Financial Times looks at how investors are reassured by the succession plan.
Officials in Australia moved mountains to make the country's annual professional tennis swing happen.
In diplomatic terms, the White House shouting match was beyond worst-case scenario.