A portrait of actor Robert Wagner and actress Natalie Wood, circa 1958. Photo / Getty Images
A portrait of actor Robert Wagner and actress Natalie Wood, circa 1958. Photo / Getty Images
Welcome to the weekend. It's been a huge week for political news in New Zealand with the reshuffle of the National Party.
Take some time this weekend to catch up on what else has been happening around the world. Here's some of the best pieces of journalism from our premium international syndicators to help with that.
Happy reading.
My mother, Natalie Wood, Robert Wagner and the mystery of the night she died
Natasha Gregson Wagner was 11 when her mother, the legendary Hollywood actress Natalie Wood, drowned. For 39 years, rumours have surrounded what happened.
Anthony Fauci on Covid and Trump: 'We are living in the perfect storm'
Of all the unenviable jobs in this pandemic, Dr Fauci may have the trickiest. He is a leading public health scientist in a world growing suspicious of expertise; an affable self-described humanist in a society where soundbites get more play than sound advice. After 36 years as director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, he is facing a challenge that eclipses even the epidemics he has previously battled — Aids and Sars.
Now, Fauci reports to his sixth president: Donald Trump. The president flouts his advice and appears to be to be preoccupied with polls and economic data, rather than the soaring case counts in the country hardest hit by Covid-19 in terms of confirmed cases and deaths.
Dr Anthony Fauci hasn't met with President Donald Trump for more than a month. Photo / Getty Images
The Chilean burglars targeting the homes of the super-rich
Claudio Baez, a young Chilean police detective, is staring at photographs on his computer screen. One looks like a holiday snapshot — two young men smiling in front of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. Another selfie shows a man holding a bundle of €500 notes in his hand like a fan.
The men in these photographs are "crime tourists", they travel the world burgling expensive homes, and brazenly post snapshots of it and the tourist attractions they visit on social media.
On a high note: a Chilean criminal displays his latest haul of euros on Facebook. Photo / Facebook
'I couldn't do anything': The virus and an ER doctor's suicide
On an afternoon in early April, while New York City was in the throes of what would be the deadliest days of the coronavirus pandemic, Dr. Lorna M. Breen found herself alone in the still of her apartment in Manhattan.
Breen worked at NewYork-Presbyterian Allen Hospital in upper Manhattan, where she supervised the emergency department. The unit had become a brutal battleground, with supplies depleting at a distressing rate and doctors and nurses falling ill. The waiting room was perpetually overcrowded. The sick were dying unnoticed.
She picked up her phone and dialled her younger sister.
"I don't know what to do," she said. "I can't get out of the chair."
Dr. Lorna Breen was unflappable - until she faced a new enemy.
Dr Lorna Breen. Photo / Chris Leary Photography via The New York Times
Jarvis Cocker on how David Bowie saved his life
While drinking green tea and pinching bits of a scone, Jarvis Cocker discusses with Rob Tannenbaum of The New York Times whether lyrics are important in music and how David Bowie saved him from prison, and opined on Steely Dan, Bryan Adams and broken crockery.
Jarvis Cocker is releasing a new album with Jarv Is, the electronic successor to Pulp, which he led for more than 30 years. Photo / Tom Jamieson, The New York Times
What Antarctica's 'doomsday glacier' means for the planet
Only a handful of people had ever set foot on Thwaites Glacier before last year. Now it is the focus of a major research project, led by British and American teams, as scientists race to understand how the glacier — which is the size of Britain and melting very quickly — is changing, and what that means for how much sea levels rise during our lifetimes.
Antarctica hold crucial clues about the future of the planet. Photo / 123R
How koalas with an STD could help humanity
Humans don't have a monopoly on sexually transmitted infections. Oysters get herpes; rabbits get syphilis; dolphins get genital warts. But chlamydia — a pared-down, single-celled bacterium that acts like a virus — has been especially successful, infecting everything from frogs to fish to parakeets. You might say chlamydia connects us all.
This shared susceptibility has led some scientists to argue that studying, and saving, koalas may be the key to developing a long-lasting cure for humans.
Skroo, a wild koala visiting Endeavour Veterinary Ecology clinic. Researchers at the clinic are testing a vaccine against chlamydia in koalas. Photo / Russell Shakespeare, The New York Times
WHO struggles to prove itself in the face of Covid-19
President Harry Truman signed the US up to the World Health Organisation in 1948 with the "hope and expectation" it would "help liberate men everywhere from the overhanging dread of preventable disease".
Last week President Donald Trump moved to rip the US out of the UN body over its performance during the coronavirus pandemic — and the WHO announced an independent review into how it and others handled the crisis.
Coronavirus model is seen with World Health Organisation logo in the background. Photo / Getty Images
The Wire creator: 'The next Trump will be more frightening'
Arguably the greatest TV series ever made, The Wire, primarily about policing and drug-dealing in Baltimore, offered moral complexity — the system was so corrupted that nobody had good options. Creator David Simon's new show, The Plot Against America is simpler — there is still time to object. The series tracks a Jewish family in New Jersey as each member chooses between outrage and opportunism in Lindbergh's Nazi-sympathising America.
Through them, Simon wants to show voters "on a visceral level what it is to be the outsider in a society." His focus is the election of 2020, not the election of 1940. "What are we for, what are we against, how are we going to be counted? It's the question that I wanted everyone to have foremost in their minds as they go into a voting booth."
In Medellín, which considers itself the region's Silicon Valley, there have been widespread job losses and hunger. Photo / Federico Rios, The New York Times
This pickle is a cake
Over the past week, social media has been flooded with videos of knives slicing into ordinary objects only to reveal that they are actually made of cake.
These hyper-realistic cakes have taken the shape of a bottle of hand lotion, a chicken thigh, a bar of soap, rolls of toilet paper and human heads. It's unsettling to see them cut open to reveal their sweet insides.
The bizarre intricacy of the cakes, and the cabin fever of the moment, has helped the meme spiral into absurdity.
A pickle-shaped chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream icing, made at Sideserf Cake Studio in Austin, Texas. Photo / Natalie Sideserf via The New York Times
