Eve Wiley of Dallas learned, through DNA testing, that her biological father was her mother's fertility doctor. Photo / Allison V. Smith, The New York Times
Now though it's time to take a breath, put your feet up and catch up on some of the great journalism we've had on offer this week from our premium international syndicators.
Their mothers chose donor sperm. The doctors used their own
Growing up in Texas, Eve Wiley learned at age 16 that she had been conceived through artificial insemination with donor sperm.
Her mother, Margo Williams, had sought help from Dr Kim McMorries, telling him that her husband was infertile. She asked the doctor to locate a sperm donor. He told Williams that he had found one through a sperm bank in California. Williams gave birth to a daughter, Eve.
In 2017 Wiley, now 32, took a consumer DNA test. The results? Her biological father was not a sperm donor in California, as she had been told — the doctor, McMorries, was. The news left her reeling.
China's "one child" policy has been praised by its leaders for preventing the country's population from exploding into a Malthusian nightmare. But over 30 years, China was robbed of millions of girls as families used gender-based abortions and other methods to ensure their only child was a boy.
These boys are now men, called bare branches because a shortage of wives could mean death to their family trees.
How Charles Koch turned family business into one of America's richest?
In an unfashionable corner of the American heartland sits a self-effacing business leader who can boast that his company's book value has grown 26 times faster than the S&P 500 in the more than five decades since he took control.
That adorable mop of hair Jamie Oliver had 20 years ago when he slid down a banister and splashed into popular food culture as the Naked Chef is cropped now. At 44, Oliver comes off more like a pleasant, world-weary high school teacher than the arrogant jokey bloke everyone wanted to hang around with back when he blew up food TV.
Many are abandoning Facebook. These people have the opposite problem
For a decade, Christopher Reeves, an Uber driver in Seattle, used Facebook for everything. But one day in June, as he was uploading photos he found himself abruptly logged out.
When Reeves tried to sign back in, the Facebook page said that his account had been disabled. He tried everything and eventually gave up and sought out a page in Facebook's help centre for people who think their accounts have been disabled by mistake.
A year later, the fight over Aretha Franklin's estate deepens
At Aretha Franklin's funeral in Detroit a year ago, members of her family, dressed in crisp black and white, filled an aisle in the Greater Grace Temple as they walked together toward her coffin — a solemn image of unity after the death of their matriarch.
But that harmony seems all lost, as some of Franklin's closest kin — including her four sons — jockey for control of her estate and trade barbs in court over matters as serious as each other's competence and as minor as who gets to drive Franklin's Mercedes-Benz.
Last year Sergey Chernyshev, a break dancer known as Bumblebee, won the gold medal for boys at the first Youth Olympic break-dancing event, solidifying his standing as one of the more promising young breakers in the world.
When it was announced this year that break-dancing would be added to the program for the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris — a development that produced predictable snark and puzzlement in some quarters — Bumblebee suddenly had a new life goal.
What to fear in coming months: How a recession could happen
These three things are all true: The United States almost certainly isn't in a recession right now. It may well avoid one for the foreseeable future. But the chances that the nation will fall into recession have increased sharply in the last two weeks.
That is the unmistakable message that global investors in the bond market are sending.
So if there's going to be a recession in 2020 — if the pessimistic signals in the financial markets prove correct — how would it happen? The New York Times investigates.
The rise of ultra mums: Meet the women who run ultramarathons while breastfeeding
Imagine yourself nine months pregnant. Or perhaps a few weeks post-birth. Now imagine running 16km, up a mountain. No, nor us!
But a fitness phenomenon is afoot, and a new breed of women are pushing the limits of what was previously thought possible during pregnancy and post-birth, and in their wake attitudes towards exercise for expectant mothers are shifting.
Why Hollywood left Antonio Banderas 'tired and angry'
It's no exaggeration to say that Antonio Banderas has spent 37 years preparing for his latest role. In 'Pain and Glory' the Spanish actor plays Salvador Mallo, a thinly veiled facsimile of his close friend and longtime collaborator, director Pedro Almodóvar. It's a remarkably honest and at times unflattering self-portrait by Almodóvar, led by arguably the best performance of Banderas's career.
But in some ways Banderas' preparation went deeper still — albeit unwittingly. The saturnine character of Salva is determined to a large degree by the litany of ailments from which he suffers, and Banderas, though in enviable shape for a man of 59, is himself now no stranger to health scares, having suffered a heart attack in 2017.