Weekend reads: 11 of the best international premium pieces

Jeff Goldblum promoting The World According to Jeff Goldblum. Photo / AP

Welcome to the weekend. It feels like summer is in the air with parts of New Zealand set to bask in sunshine this weekend.

Despite it being a short working week we still had a wealth of great premium international content for you. So while you soak up some vitamin D, catch up on some of the best pieces from the week.

The world according to Jeff Goldblum

A roar of excitement erupts inside the Californian hall as 7,000 fans spot a gangly silver-haired man sauntering on stage, waving theatrically. Jeff Goldblum is wearing a black and white tie, a colourful shirt patterned with polka dots and sections of comic strip, slim black trousers that somehow elongate his 6ft 4in frame and gleaming black and white loafers.

The outfit would be a sartorial disaster on anyone else, but on Goldblum it proves a triumph, cited by Vogue as proof that the actor, pianist and now social media star is "one of Hollywood's most snazzy dressers".

He's also a cult actor, jazz star, viral meme and older dad. So where did it all go so right for Jeff Goldblum?

Ben Hoyle from The Times finds out.

At the launch of The World According to Jeff Goldblum. Photo / AP

Leaderless rebellion: How social media enables global protests

"A single spark can start a prairie fire," observed Mao Zedong in 1930, as he tried to convince his followers that revolution was possible in China. Almost a century later, Mao's observation comes to mind as little sparks set off mass demonstrations across the world.

In Lebanon, the trigger for protests was a tax on WhatsApp messages. In Chile it was a rise in metro fares. In France, the gilets jaunes protests that began last year were set off by a rise in petrol taxes.

The Financial Times looks at how from Hong Kong to Chile activists have used technology to stay ahead of the authorities.

A protester with his face covered up attends a rally in Hong Kong. Photo / AP

Al-Baghdadi is dead, but the troubles linger

The world is certainly a better place with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi dead and a measure of justice meted out on behalf of all the women Isis raped, all the journalists Isis beheaded and the tens of thousands of Syrians and Iraqis it abused.

Good for US President Donald Trump for ordering it, for the intelligence agents who set it up, for the allies who aided in it and for the Special Forces who executed it.

But as Thomas Friedman from the New York Times says, this story is far from over.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi died during a raid by the US. Photo / AP

How a black activist convinced a neo-Nazi to renounce white supremacy

James Stern knew he would need proof of this conversation later, so while his phone rang in late February he opened his Tape A Call app and hit record.

Stern billed himself as a community activist and minister, though his do-gooder credentials were accompanied by a history of criminal opportunism. He had spent much of his life in South Central L.A. trying to build connections between warring groups: the Bloods and the Crips, Korean grocers and their black neighbours, and now between himself - the son of an Ethiopian Jew - and the neo-Nazi on the other end of the phone.

For weeks Stern had been courting Jeff Schoep, the longtime leader of the National Socialist Movement, in recorded phone calls.

His mission: to persuade Schoep, 45, to turn over the country's largest neo-Nazi group to a black man.

Katie Mettler from the Washington Post has this remarkable story about how James Stern managed to pull Jeff Schoep out of the depths of extremism.

Community activist James Stern and Jeff Schoep, member of the National Socialist Movement. Photo / Philip Cheung and Ali Lapetina, The Washington Post

'My husband chose penguins over the birth of our son'

Mating is a lonely game in the world of emperor penguins. After laying her egg the female passes it to the male and waddles off to sea. While she hunts, he waits, with the egg incubating deep within his fat folds for months on end until the baby hatches.

When wildlife cameraman Lindsay McCrae discovered his new wife Becky was pregnant with their first child, they chose to do things rather differently. He left her at home with the proverbial egg and flew off to Antarctica to spend a year filming the emperor penguins.

The Telegraph looks at what happens when Sir David Attenborough calls - and the reality for those left behind.

Lindsay McRae spent 11 months filming emperor penguins in Antarctica. Photo / BBC

Leaving prison at 72: 'Not home yet, but at least you're free'

In the pink-walled dormitory of the Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women, nearly all of the inmates had risen before dawn. Some sat on one another's beds, applying makeup and sipping instant coffee. Geneva Cooley sat alone, having just put on her white uniform for the last time.

For nearly two decades, Cooley, 72, had assumed she would die in prison. She had been sentenced to life without parole on a slew of drug-related convictions, at a time when drug charges carried that stiff mandatory minimum.

She had accepted her fate. She got her own drug addiction in check, took some two dozen classes and eventually earned a place in the so-called "faith and honour" pink-walled dorm.

Then a judge reduced her sentence and changed her fate.

The New York Times follows Cooley as she returns to a world she hasn't seen in 17 years.

Geneva Cooley, 72, bids farewell to fellow inmate Annie Dennis, 83, hours before her release from the Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women. Photo / Lynsey Addario, The New York Times

The end of humanity: Will AI free us, enslave us — or exterminate us?

Autonomous weapons are "much more dangerous than nuclear weapons," says Berkeley professor Stuart Russell.

"The fact that you can launch them by the million, even if there's only two guys in a truck, that's a real problem, because it's a weapon of mass destruction. I think most humans would agree that we shouldn't make machines that can decide to kill people."

There is no shortage of AI doom-mongers. Elon Musk claims we are "summoning the demon". Stephen Hawking famously warned that AI could "spell the end of the human race". Seemingly every month, a new report predicts mass unemployment and social unrest as machines replace humans.

The bad news? Russell, essentially, agrees with all of it. This is disconcerting because he quite literally wrote the book on the technology.

Russell tells The Times why we are at a dangerous crossroads in our development of AI.

"I think most humans would agree that we shouldn't make machines that can decide to kill people," says Berkeley professor Stuart Russell. Photo / 123RF

America's craziest shopping mall finally opens after 20 years

The man-made snow was piling up on the 16-storey indoor ski slope and workers were testing whizzing rides at the theme park.

These were some of the surest signs that the opening of the American Dream Meadowlands megamall was finally at hand some 16 years after the star-crossed project was initiated on the New Jersey marshlands, just across the river from Manhattan.

The first phase of the American Dream came to life with a grand ceremony to kick off the opening of its theme park. That will be followed in the months to come with the christening of North America's largest indoor water park, the ski slopes and then hundreds of shops and restaurants.

The Financial Times looks at how the project has changed since it was first born in 2003.

Visitors to the American Dream mega entertainment and shopping complex ride Dora's Sky Railway. Photo / AP

Silicon Valley billionaire takes a gamble on weed-infused beer

When Brendan Kennedy gave up a career in finance to gamble on the commercial potential of legalised cannabis, everyone thought he was crazy.

"Probably the hardest thing," he says, "which people don't often ask about, was telling my in-laws."

Now his company is valued at $3.7 billion

Rhys Blakely of The Times talks to Kennedy about his next big idea - weed-infused beer.

Brendan Kennedy gave up a finance career in Silicon Valley to take a gamble on the world of legalised cannabis. Photo / Getty Images

Selling the Warhol: Billionaire's ugly divorce ignites battle over art

There is the $112 million apartment, so large it runs the full length of one side of the Plaza Hotel, with windows overlooking Central Park. A second Manhattan apartment is high up in one of the tallest buildings in the Western Hemisphere, along the so-called Billionaires' Row.

The $29 million house in the Hamptons on Long Island has neighbours with boldface names, including Martha Stewart and Steven Spielberg. The $36.6 million yacht is a 45 metre long prizewinner.

And then there is the art collection, an enormous trove of masterpieces that the judge presiding over the divorce described as "extraordinary" and "internationally renowned" and that has become the latest chapter in the exes' rancorous unravelling.

The New York Times reports on the bitter divorce battle taking place and the feud over nearly $1.5 billion worth of art.

The Macklowes' art collection includes multiple works by Pablo Picasso and Jeff Koons. The judge presiding over their divorce called the trove "extraordinary." Photo / Getty Images

Panic in Pakistani city after 900 children test positive for HIV

Nearly 900 children in the small Pakistani city of Ratodero were bedridden early this year with raging fevers that resisted treatment. Parents were frantic, with everyone seeming to know a family with a sick child.

In April, the disease was pinned down and the diagnosis was devastating: The city was the epicenter of an HIV outbreak that overwhelmingly affected children. Health officials initially blamed the outbreak on a single paediatrician, saying he was reusing syringes.

The New York Times looks at the devastating impact the epidemic has had on the region.

Four of Imtiaz Jalbani's six children contracted HIV. His two youngest, 14-month-old Rida and 3-year-old Sameena, have died. Photo / Mustafa Hussain, The New York Times