Weekend reads: 11 of the best international premium pieces

Odds are on Boris Johnson winning the Conservative Party leadership vote and becoming Britain's next Prime Minister. Photo / AP

Welcome to the weekend - what a week it's been! Who would've thought we'd be getting ready to support the Black Caps as they take on England in the Cricket World Cup final on Sunday night.

Huge news in the rugby world too with Beauden Barrett announcing he'll be defecting to the Blues from mid-2020.

Throw Wimbledon in the mix as well and we definitely wouldn't blame you if you're struggling to keep up with it all.

So while you're preparing yourself to stay up all night in support of the cricketers in London, take some time to catch up on some non-sports news with a selection of the best pieces from our international premium syndicators this week.

Boris Johnson is poised to become PM. Is he up to the job?

Successful London mayor - or incompetent foreign secretary? Compassionate Conservative or dog-whistle racist? Serious figure or court jester? What sort of prime minister would Boris Johnson make?

George Parker and Sebastian Payne of the Financial Times look at how colleagues, critics and Tory members view the man most likely to enter Downing Street.

Odds are on Boris Johnson to become Britain's next prime minister at the end of the leadership content. Photo / Getty Images

What if being a YouTube celebrity is actually backbreaking work?

Emma Chamberlain, 18, is the funniest person on YouTube. What does she do? So far the content of her videos has not been the point.

Chamberlain began watching YouTube when she was 6. When her interest in high school began to wane her dad asked her what she really wanted to do.

"I want to start a YouTube channel," she said.

Now, two years later, the teen had 8 million followers and has forged a career out of funny videos. But it hasn't been easy.

Jonah Engel Bromwich of The New York Times reports.

Emma Chamberlain's 8 million YouTube followers admire her humour and relatability. What they don't see, though, is how much work goes into her videos. Photo / Kaleb Marshall, The New York Times

Why Abigail Disney is trying to shame $250b company that bears her name

The entertainment heiress is getting a lot of practice speaking publicly about money these days — even if not always her own. At the age of 59 she has emerged as an unexpected class warrior in America's battles over how its wealthiest families should be taxed and what counts as a fair wage for the people who clean its theme parks rather than sharing names with them.

Having ditched LA for New York in 1984, Disney once tried to distance herself from her name.

But far from LA, her family's creations continued to stalk her. "When I brought my baby home from the hospital and Mickey Mouse was on her first diaper I wanted to vomit," she says: "I used to call him 'that f***ing mouse', TFM for short."

Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson of the Financial Times talks to Disney about her hate of money talk.

Abigail Disney has opened up about the unfairness of wealth, family, and "that ******* mouse". Photo / Getty Images

'It could have been any of us': Disdain for Trump runs among ambassadors

Ask members of the Washington diplomatic corps about the cables that Sir Kim Darroch, the British ambassador who resigned Wednesday, wrote to London describing the dysfunction and chaos of the Trump administration, and their response is uniform: We wrote the same stuff.

Until Darroch's confidential cables appeared in the Daily Mail last weekend, none of the major ambassadors in Washington had been denounced by Trump as "wacky" and a "very stupid guy'' — a description that the envoy's friends are quick to say hardly applies to one of Britain's most sophisticated diplomats and a former national security adviser.

But as one ambassador, who is still serving and therefore spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Wednesday, "it could have been any of us."

David E. Sanger of The New York Times reports.

Sir Kim Darroch often tried to reach out to the White House and the National Security Council, but he never quite felt that he broke into the Trump administration's inner circle. Photo / AP

Why so many of us don't lose weight when we exercise

People hoping to lose weight with exercise often wind up being their own worst enemies, according to the latest, large-scale study of workouts, weight loss and their frustrating interaction.

The study, which carefully tracked how much people ate and moved after starting to exercise, found that many of them failed to lose or even gained weight while exercising, because they also reflexively changed their lives in other, subtle ways.

Gretchen Reynolds of The New York Times looks at how most of us eat when we exercise, and though it may be just a few extra bites a day, the result is weight gain.

A study that tracked how much people ate and moved after starting to exercise found that many of the people failed to lose or even gained weight while exercising. Photo / Jeenah Moon, New York Times

How the Manson killing gripped Los Angeles

A maid called police at 9am on August 9, 1969, after finding five dead people in a Beverly Hills home. There was a blonde woman on the living room floor, a rope wrapped around her neck and stab wounds in her swollen belly. A bloodied corpse wore a hood; another was behind the wheel of a car. Two more were sprawled on the lawn about 50 feet apart. A neighbour recalled hearing shots around midnight.

The word "pig" was wiped in blood on a white front door.

Americans have long had an insatiable appetite for gruesome crime stories. But this inexplicable act left many in Hollywood panicked that they could be next.

Laura M. Holson of The New York Times reports on the case which gripped the US.

Charles Manson escorted by Los Angeles County sheriffs to appear in court in 1970. Photo / Getty Images

From orphan to fashion king: Why Olivier Rousteing has his sights set on one royal

Still only 33, Olivier Rousteing's ambition should not be underestimated. His incredible story — plucked from a Bordeaux orphanage by a wealthy couple as a baby, he went on to become one of the youngest heads of a Parisian fashion house aged 25 — might sound like a fashion fairy tale, but against all the odds, Rousteing has achieved his dream.

He's worked with Beyoncé and Rihanna, Kim Kardashian is his BFF and the first lady of France, Brigitte Macron, swears by his tailoring. Now he has his sights set on dressing the Duchess of Sussex — and possibly the biggest job in fashion.

Laura Atkinson of The Times of London talks to the king of fashion.

Olivier Rousteing has a documentary on his extraordinary life out this year. Photo / Getty Images

She was duped and shipped to a brothel at 16. Then the boat sank

She slipped out of the house around dusk, without telling her mother. Sixteen and hungry, she followed the men who had promised her work and food.

Instead, they smuggled her out of Venezuela by sea, secretly planning to force her into a Trinidad brothel.

Put in a fishing boat, the girl, Yoskeili Zurita, said she sped away with dozens of other women, including her cousin. But the overloaded skiff took on water fast and capsized with the roll of a sudden swell.

Of the 38 passengers, all but 9 people died.

Nicholas Casey of The New York Times reports.

Yoskeili Zurita, 16, was one of nine survivors of a boat that capsized as it was smuggling people from Venezuela to Trinidad. Photo / Adriana Loureiro Fernandez, The New York Times

Poor Ivanka: Why we should pity the children of privilege

It has been a trying year for the sons and daughters of privilege, or at any rate the less gifted among them. Parents with razors for elbows were caught bribing universities to admit their children. The idea that a youngish republic cannot have a class system took a pounding — as did that system's rich-kid beneficiaries.

Once, I would have been at the head of the mob, evil-eyed and foaming. But I have come to know enough of these scions to understand the sadness of their lot.

Janan Ganesh of the Financial Times writes why the First Daughter and scions of the rich and powerful deserve our sympathy.

Ivanka with her father, Donald Trump, the US president, at the G20 summit in Osaka. Photo / Getty Images

American Pie at 20: That notorious pie scene, from every angle

There had been other raunchy sex comedies — Porky's, with its memorable, ouch-inducing locker-room scene, and Animal House, which showed the extremes of frat life. But American Pie set a new standard for the genre when the world watched an apple pie become a vehicle to manhood.

But the scene that would go down in movie history is when Jim, whose friend had described the feeling of third base as "warm apple pie," sees one such pastry sitting on his kitchen counter and decides to experiment with it.

Where did the audacious idea come from? How many pies were harmed in the shooting of the scene? Jason Biggs, Eugene Levy and others look back.

How many pies were harmed in the shooting of the infamous American Pie scene? Photo / Supplied

Dirty, hungry, scared and sick: Inside a US migrant detention centre

Since the Border Patrol opened its station in Clint, Texas, in 2013, it was a fixture in this West Texas farm town. Most people around Clint had little idea of what went on inside.

But inside the secretive site that is suddenly on the front lines of the southwest border crisis, the men and women who work there were grappling with the stuff of nightmares.

The New York Times looks at the deplorable conditions inside the detention centre holding hundreds of children.

A little-known Border Patrol station in Clint, Texas, has become the public face of the chaos on America's southern border. Photo / Ilana Panich-Linsman, The New York Times