The New Zealand Herald is bringing back some of the best stories of 2020 from our premium syndicators, including The New York Times, Financial Times and The Times of London.
Today we look at how Gillian Anderson is conquering midlife, the devastating California fires, the scandal that took down banking's sole Black CEO, our struggle to sleep during the pandemic and the surfers riding the biggest waves.
Making midlife look easy
Gillian Anderson, who is most recognised for her role as Scully in The X-Files, is twice divorced and has three children, Piper, 25, Oscar, 13, Felix, 11, whom she co-parents with their father. Her partner of three years is the playwright, screenwriter and creator of The Crown, Peter Morgan, himself a father of five.
In person Anderson is chatty and witty, aloof and friendly at the same time, a peculiarly feline trait often encountered in driven, confident women who have reached mid-life.
The Golden Globe winner makes mid-life look easy.
Lorraine Candy of The Times meets a woman in her prime.
Inside the wreckage of California's worst wildfires on record
California has this year seen the worst fire season on record. More than 4.1 million acres have burnt this year — double the amount scorched in 2018, the previous record. More than 100,000 people were evacuated and 31 had died by mid October.
Nowhere was harder than Berry Creek. The sparsely populated community of 1,200 lost 15 people to the so-called Bear Fire.
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• A pastor, a school bus and a trip through a scorched town
• A vow of silence, a cabin in the woods, a terrible wildfire
• Australian bush fires: Death and destruction from the scorched front line
• The springs ran dry. Then this Australian town burned
The short tenure and abrupt ouster of banking's sole Black CEO
Tidjane Thiam's five years atop Credit Suisse, when he was the only Black chief executive in the top tier of banking, were shaped by a series of painful incidents.
Some moments were shocking, others disturbing; most had to do with tensions around being Black in a predominantly white industry and an overwhelmingly white city.
A tall, reserved, bespectacled polyglot, Thiam did the job he was hired to do: He made Credit Suisse profitable again after a long decline. But he never had to stop fighting for acceptance and respect, both within the bank and in Switzerland generally.
The New York Times examines the sudden scandal that took Thiam down.
How to get more sleep tonight
Many people have spent this year tossing and turning, struggling to un-glue from the constant scroll of coronavirus news updates.
But, while there is no body or life hack to make you impervious to the touch of disease, we do know that sleep is key to helping our bodies stay healthy.
The New York Times with some concrete recommendations for getting some.
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• Why am I having weird dreams lately?
• I was diagnosed with insomnia. Here's how I get more sleep
The biggest wave surfed this year
Every winter, the cliffs along Nazaré, a Portuguese fishing port north of Lisbon, become a grandstand for spectators watching daredevil surfers drop into the tallest waves on Earth.
On February 11, they witnessed yet another world record wave, this one ridden by Maya Gabeira, a 33-year-old Brazilian surfer who almost lost her life to the same wave.
Gabeira didn't just ride the biggest wave ever ridden by a woman. It was the biggest wave surfed by anyone in the 2019-20 winter season.
The New York Times looks at this first for women in professional surfing.
