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 Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 US election, why Lee Child is handing over the reins of Jack Reacher, the Mafia's infiltration of Italy's hospitals, why we were born to be lazy and the man cured of HIV.
How Joe Biden won the presidency
On aJanuary evening in 2019, Joe Biden placed a call to the mayor of Los Angeles, Eric Garcetti, a personal friend and political ally who had just announced he would not pursue the Democratic nomination for president.
During their conversation, Garcetti recalled, Biden did not exactly say he had decided to mount his own campaign. The former vice president confided that if he did run, he expected President Donald Trump to "come after my family" in an "ugly" election.
But Biden also said he felt pulled by a sense of moral duty.
Twenty-one months and a week later, Biden stood triumphant in a campaign he waged on just those terms: as a patriotic crusade to reclaim the American government from a president he considered a poisonous figure.
Biden at times faced doubts about his political acuity and the relevance, in the year 2020, of a set of union-hall-meets-cloakroom political instincts. Photo / Courtland Wells, The New York Times
So long, Jack Reacher. Why Lee Child is handing over the series
Lee Child's Jack Reacher series, about a US military police veteran turned itinerant crime fighter, is ranked among the world's most valuable publishing franchises. Every 13 seconds someone buys one of his books in one of 101 countries. In total, an estimated 100 million copies have been sold.
And now, the age of 65, the thriller writer is hanging up his pen as his younger brother takes over the bestselling series.
Lee Child is hanging up his pen as his younger brother takes over the Jack Reacher series. Photo / Jennifer S. Altman, The New York Times
How the Mafia infiltrated Italy's hospitals and laundered the profits globally
Over the past two decades, the leading families of the 'Ndrangheta have expanded operations far outside their small home region. Today they control a large part of cocaine importation into Europe, as well as arms smuggling, extortion and cross-border money laundering. Several hundred autonomous clans have been transformed into one of Italy's most successful businesses, with some studies estimating their combined annual turnover to be as high as $75.5 billion.
Yet even among such lucrative criminal activities, the riches on offer from plundering Italy's public health system stood out as a golden opportunity.
Italy's most powerful organised crime group packaged millions of plundered euros into funds and portfolios. Photo / 123RF
Lie back, take it easy: Why we were born to be lazy
Harvard professor Daniel Lieberman is one of the world's leading experts on the human body, and kick-started the cult of ultra long-distance running. Which makes it all the more surprising that he now says that we were born to be lazy.
Sit back and put your feet up because it turns out, we're born to be lazy. Photo / Getty Images
'How I was cured of HIV': Adam Castillejo's extraordinary story
In March last year a British doctor made his way to a conference in Seattle with some extraordinary news. His patient, a 40-year-old man with HIV, had undergone a bone marrow transplant that had removed the virus from his body. The London Patient, as he was known, became the second person in the world to be cured of HIV.
