Weekend reads: 11 of the best international premium pieces

Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson asked Queen Elizabeth II to suspend Parliament. Photo / AP

Welcome to the weekend. The end of August spells the end of winter, and although the rain may not make us believe it, the days are slowly getting warmer.

Here's some of the best content from our premium international syndicators for you get stuck into as we welcome spring this weekend.

What did Boris Johnson do to Parliament?

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson executed a surprise move on Wednesday, announcing he had asked Queen Elizabeth II to suspend Parliament days after lawmakers return to work from a break, and just weeks before a looming Brexit deadline.

The move, which limits legislative time before Britain's planned October 31 withdrawal from the European Union, drew immediate criticism from the opposition — and some lawmakers within Johnson's own Conservative Party — and caused the British pound to plunge.

So what exactly does the move, known as proroguing Parliament, mean for the government and the critical decision-making in the weeks leading up to the deadline? And how could it affect Britain's exit from Europe? Here's what you need to know.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has promised that Britain will leave the European Union on October 31, with or without a deal. Photo / AP

Does Reddit co-founder have a guilty conscience?

Alexis Ohanian embodies the triumphant tech titan. He's the guy who travelled 800km to blind pitch an investor with his start-up idea. He's the guy who built a company with his college roommate, and sold it within two years for between US$10m and US$20m. He's the nerdy kid who worked at a computer warehouse store as a teenager, and then grew up to marry Serena Williams, arguably the greatest tennis player of all time.

It is the stuff of Silicon Valley myth: that with inventiveness and audacity, you can have it all. But what happens when your creation, the thing that made you rich, is also known as a breeding ground for hate?

The Financial Times looks at if Alexis Ohanian is a man with a guilty conscience.

Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian opens up about taming trolls, free speech, and marriage to Serena Williams. Photo / AP

Inside an evangelical pregnancy centre

The director used to attend anti-abortion protests. Now she tries to help pregnant women and new mothers find jobs, emotional support or a place to shower.

This is the Options Pregnancy Help Centre, a small evangelical Christian nonprofit that provides peer counselling, baby supplies and social services referrals to pregnant women and parents of young children. What it won't do is provide or refer for abortion.

Under President Donald Trump, the anti-abortion movement has more power than it has wielded in decades.

Elizabeth Dias of the New York Times goes inside one of more than 2700 anti-abortion pregnancy centres which have proliferated across the United States.

Wendy Ramsey, the director of Options Pregnancy Help Centre, held a 3-week-old while the baby's mother selected donated items.Photo / Audra Melton, The New York Times

Taylor Swift's diary entries are a must-read companion to Lover

When Taylor Swift released her seventh album, Lover, she didn't just deliver 18 songs into the digital ether. As one of the few remaining pop stars to prioritise physical sales, Swift offered her devoted fan base four special-edition CD versions of the album, each accompanied by a booklet containing a reprinted selection of handwritten journal entries spanning her career, from ages 13 to 27.

Instead of collectible fluff, the result, for any close reader of Swift's work, is a meticulously curated glimpse into the artist's real-time feelings on an array of issues, people, ideas and squabbles that have defined her life as a musician and celebrity.

The New York Times explores how these booklets reveal what Swift wants us to see — and what she doesn't.

Taylor Swift onstage at Madison Square Garden in 2009. Special editions of her new album, Lover, include diary entries from this time. Photo / Chad Batka, The New York Times

The power of being single: The new wave of 'single-positive' people

You don't want a partner, you love living alone and you don't date: you thought it was just you, but it's not.

There's a new trend of "single-positive" people who have made a conscious decision to be single for a period of time, to "focus on other things in their lives".

Fleur Britten of The Times looks at the new single-positive revolution.

There's a new wave of 'single-positive' people who are independent, happy and self-fulfilled. Photo / 123RF

'The crowd was out of control': A night to remember at the US Open

The 2018 US Open women's final between Serena Williams and Naomi Osaka will be remembered for its controversial conclusion amid booing fans, when Williams was penalised for illegal coaching and for unsportsmanlike conduct.

Fans will surely debate the virulent crowd reaction that reduced Osaka to tears during the trophy presentation and say the Open had never experienced anything like it.

Except it had.

In 1979, on a sultry evening in the old Louis Armstrong Stadium in Queens, chaos erupted during a second-round match between John McEnroe and Ilie Nastase, the sport's original bad boys.

The New York Times looks back on the match that caused a near riot.

At the 1979 US Open, tournament officials tried to calm things down during the match between Ilie Nastase, second from left, and John McEnroe, third from right. Photo / Getty Images

How it really feels to buy your own private island

Trump's attempt to make an audacious bid to buy Greenland appeared to show the US President is eager to fulfill a seemingly universal fantasy most of us have held at one time or another: owning an island to call one's home.

US property developer Dr Albert Sutton was able to join the likes of Richard Branson and Johnny Depp and call himself an island owner after purchasing Colombia Island and Pea Island off Long Island.

"I remember thinking this is great," he recalls

The reality was rather less profound. Sutton has now put both back on the market having spent a single night out across the water.

The Daily Telegraph looks at how the reality can't match the fantasy.

Colombia Island in New York is currently up for sale. Photo / Supplied

Is the office affair dead?

Researchers have mapped the extraordinary rise of internet dating and its effects on other ways of meeting romantic partners. All have declined, including via family, school or work, as the lonely flock online in search of perfect strangers.

Surely though there's no better way to meet than at work?

The Financial Times looks at how online dating is the new normal, but why getting to know a partner at work has many advantages.

There is surely no better way to meet than at work? Photo / 123R

City on edge: Photos from Hong Kong's summer of protest

The Hong Kong protest movement reached a milestone Tuesday: It was 80 days since the mass march that started the near-daily demonstrations across the city.

Photographer Lam Yik Fei has spent the past 12 weeks on the sweltering summer streets of Hong Kong, dodging tear gas canisters and pepper spray to document each step of the movement for The New York Times.

Here's a selection of his most powerful image from the past 80 days.

Protesters clash with police officers in Kowloon Bay in Hong Kong. Photo / Lam Yik Fei, The New York Times

The sisters who first tried to take down Jeffrey Epstein

As more women have come forward in recent days to describe assaults at the hands of Jeffrey Epstein, Maria Farmer finds herself distraught, wondering what might have happened if someone had taken her seriously.

Twenty-four years ago, Farmer was an artist who had entered the unorthodox life Epstein lived behind the doors of his luxury estates. Epstein had offered to help her painting career, but it all came to an abrupt end one night in the summer of 1996, when she says Epstein and his companion, Ghislaine Maxwell, began violently groping her.

She learned later that her 16-year-old sister, Annie Farmer, had been subjected to a troubling topless massage at Epstein's ranch in New Mexico.

The New York Times investigates how nine years before any police investigation, the sisters reported the troubling behaviour of Epstein and Maxwell but no one would act.

Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell in 2005. The Farmer sisters reporter the troubling behaviour of the pair years before any investigation. Photo / Getty Images

The Amazon, Siberia, Indonesia: A world of fire

In South America, the Amazon basin is ablaze. Halfway around the world in central Africa, vast stretches of savanna are going up in flame. Arctic regions in Siberia are burning at a historic pace.

While the Brazilian fires have grown into a full-blown international crisis, they represent only one of many significant areas where wildfires are currently burning around the world.

The New York Times looks at the growing intensity of wildfires and how their spread to new corners of the globe raises fears that climate change is exacerbating the dangers.

A fire burns along the road to Jacunda National Forest, near the city of Porto Velho in the Vila Nova Samuel region which is part of Brazil's Amazon. Photo / AP