Britain's new Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Photo / AP
Britain's new Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Photo / AP
Welcome to the weekend. Wrap up warm - the big chill has hit and temperatures are dropping around New Zealand.
Ihumātao has dominated the headlines in New Zealand this week as the protest against a major Fletcher development entered its second week.
Internationally all eyes have been on Britain as new Prime Minister Boris Johnson prepares the country for a no-deal Brexit.
Hunker down this winter weekend and catch up on all the news from the week, including some of the best journalism from our premium international syndicators.
No deal Brexit: How prepared are the EU and the UK?
UK prime minister Boris Johnson has ordered ministers and officials in his new government to "turbo-charge" preparations for a no-deal Brexit, unnerving currency markets and businesses — and leaving EU leaders wondering if he's bluffing.
The new prime minister's pledge to leave the EU with or without a deal on October 31 means both sides stand perilously close to a cliff-edge, peering down at the prospect of medicine shortages, flight disruptions and endless border queues.
Is Britain prepared for a no-deal Brexit? Photo / Getty Images
Jeffrey Epstein envisioned a baby ranch where he would seed the human race
Jeffrey E. Epstein, the wealthy financier and accused sex trafficker, had an unusual dream: He hoped to seed the human race with his DNA by impregnating women at his vast New Mexico ranch.
Epstein over the years confided to scientists and others about his scheme, according to four people familiar with his thinking, although there is no evidence that it ever came to fruition.
Over the years, Jeffrey E. Epstein surrounded himself with many prominent scientists. Photo / AP
She thought he would kill her. Then she complimented his orchids
After she regained consciousness, among the first things Nathalie Birli noticed were the orchids. Their delicacy and colour stood out amid the chaos and grime dominating the dim room where she sat, bound and alone with a man who was threatening to kill her.
Hours earlier, she had been transformed in seconds from happy new mother, cycling near her home in Kumberg in southern Austria, to the victim of the kind of horror most people glimpse only in movies. A man rammed her with his car, got out, wrenched her from her bike, beat her severely, pulled her into his vehicle, and bound and blindfolded her.
Birli knew that if she wanted to survive, she had to find a way to connect with the man who seemed intent on killing her. She started by complimenting his orchids. "Suddenly, he was a completely different person," she said.
Nathalie Birli attributes her survival in part to the power of empathy. Photo / Supplied
'This case took me to the limit': The surgeons who separated conjoined twins
It was a day like any other for Owase Jeelani, consultant paediatric neurosurgeon at Great Ormond Street hospital in London, when his phone rang back in April 2017. At the other end was a fellow neurosurgeon in Peshawar, Pakistan. He had an interesting case, he told Jeelani. Two healthy girls, identical twins called Safa and Marwa, born three months previously to a woman from rural northern Pakistan. There was just one problem. They were conjoined, fused together at the head. Could he help?
The pair have worked together for more than a decade. Their latest operation, which made headlines last week, was their most challenging yet: separating the conjoined twins over 50 gruelling hours.
Twins Safa and Marwa Ullah, who had been born conjoined at the skull, leave the hospital in London after being successfully separated. Photo / Great Ormond Street Hospital
Zimbabwe: Taps run dry as nightmare worsens
Zimbabwe's acute water shortage is a result of a particularly bad drought this year, a symptom of climate change.
Poor water management has wasted much of the water that remains. Two of Harare's four reservoirs are empty from lack of rain, but between 45 and 60 per cent of the water that's left is lost through leakage and theft.
People lining up for water at a borehole in Epworth, in southeast Harare, Zimbabwe. Photo / Zinyange Auntony, The New York Times
Recession: Here's where you'll see it first
Economists often say "expansions don't die of old age." That is, recessions are like coin flips — just because you get heads five times in a row doesn't mean your next flip is more likely to come up tails.
Last week's report on second-quarter gross domestic product showed that the economy slowed last spring. It also came exactly 10 years since the Great Recession ended, making this probably the longest expansion in American history.
According to the movie's fledgling promotional website, which presented itself as a real investigative project, three film students — Heather, Mike and Josh — had ventured into the Maryland woods in 1994 to shoot a documentary and then disappeared. Their footage was recovered a year later.
When it came out, the documentary-style horror movie terrified some audiences who weren't so sure it was fiction.
The makers of The Blair Witch Project capitalised on the rise of reality TV and internet culture in promoting its fictional story as true. Photo / Supplied
How will humans survive on Mars? Elon Musk's brother thinks he has the answer
Kimbal Musk's famous older sibling, Elon, is hellbent on colonising the red planet, and Kimbal, his lifelong consigliere and business partner, is an avid supporter. In fact, the younger Musk, who spends his days as a crusader for good eating — think Jamie Oliver, but without the hectoring and blubbering — has a start-up that could profit handsomely from those galactic ambitions.
For humans to survive on Mars they'll need to grow food. Kimball Musk thinks he has the solution. Photo / Getty Images
The hidden hell of hot-desking is much worse than you think
Few aspects of office life are more dispiriting than hot-desking, the penny-pinching ploy that strips people of their own desk and casts them out to the noisy, chaotic wasteland of shared work spots.
Hot-desking is a penny-pinching ploy that casts people out to the noisy, chaotic wasteland of shared work spots, writes Pilita Clark. Photo / Getty Images
Facebook connected her to a tattooed soldier in Iraq. Or so she thought
On a Monday afternoon in June 2017, Renee Holland was draped in an American flag at Philadelphia International Airport, waiting for a soldier she had befriended on Facebook.
The married 56-year-old had driven two hours from Delaware to pick him up. Their blossoming online friendship had prompted her to send him a care package and thousands of dollars in gift cards. She also wired him $7,500 for plane tickets to return home.
Now she was looking for a buff, tattooed man in uniform, just like in his Facebook photos. But his flight was not on the airport arrivals board. A ticket agent told her the flight didn't exist.
Holland had become entwined in a global fraud that Facebook and the United States military appear helpless to stop.
A selfie of Daniel Anonsen that imposter accounts used on Facebook and Instagram. Photo / Supplied
'Would dad approve?' Neil Armstrong's heirs divided over lucrative legacy
Last fall, Neil Armstrong's two sons began a round of media appearances to promote a venture that would make them millions of dollars: a series of auctions of about 3,000 mementos from their father's moon mission and Nasa career.
The auctions would prove lucrative amid the rising wave of publicity leading up to the 50th anniversary of the moon landing.
But those sales, combined with a $9 million wrongful death settlement over their father's medican care, have exposed deep differences among those who knew Neil Armstrong about his legacy — and what he would have wanted.
