US voters cast their ballots on election day. Photo / AP
Welcome to the weekend.
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Happy reading.
A vote that flew in the face of fear itself
Struggling through one of the most devastating years in US history, a year of strife and suffering and loss, the nation's people responded with resolve on the first Tuesday of November. Together but apart, they voted.
Undaunted by a pandemic that worsens by the day, they showed up in the early-morning snow outside the clapboard town offices of Newbury, New Hampshire. Formed a shivering line into a gymnasium in Tobyhanna, Pennsylvania. Waited their turn in an elementary school in Louisville, Kentucky; a public housing complex in Houston; a recreation centre in Garden Grove, California; a bowling alley in Mandan, North Dakota.
They provided final punctuation to the 100 million votes already cast through mail-in ballots and in-person early voting, the crest to a tidal wave of turnout.
In hunt for virus source, WHO let China take charge
On a cold weekend in mid-February, when the world still harboured false hope that the new coronavirus could be contained, a World Health Organisation team arrived in Beijing to study the outbreak and investigate a critical question: How did the virus jump from animals to humans?
What the team members did not know was that they would not be allowed to investigate the source at all.
The polls underestimated Trump - again. Nobody agrees on why
As the results rolled in Tuesday night, so did a strong sense of déjà vu. Pre election polls, it appeared, had been misleading once again.
No matter the result, it was already clear that the industry failed to fully account for the missteps that led it to underestimate Donald Trump's support four years ago. And it raises the question of whether the polling industry, which has become a national fixation in an era of data journalism and statistical forecasting, can survive yet another crisis of confidence.
Her work once helped put them behind bars. Now she's defending them
Former top forensic scientist Sue Petricevic has traded in her lab coat for a barrister's gown to defend the people her work once helped to put behind bars.
After being a key expert witness for the Crown in horrific cases such as the 2001 RSA murders in Auckland, where she found killer William Bell's DNA on cigarette butts, and the 1996 hammer killing of Tania Furlan, in which she analysed blood spatter evidence, Petricevic says she's now finding the job of advocating for suspects more rewarding.
Life inside No 10: 'There's days when it's like Game of Thrones'
For the past two years Mark Sedwill was one of the most powerful men in the United Kingdom, advising the prime minister on affairs of state as the nation lurched from one crisis to another.
Not only did he have to deal with a country torn apart by Brexit and two very different prime ministers, but also a pandemic that left Boris Johnson battling for his life.
Jane Clifton: Does Ardern's power come from her likeability?
It's beginning to look suspiciously as though New Zealanders really yearn for a sort of benign dictatorship.
Once again, we've gone for a voluntary one-party state – having soundly thrashed one of the minor parties we once elected for accountability and given the other one a hell of a fright.
Ten ways coronavirus crisis will shape world in long term
Covid-19 has had an immediate and massive impact. But how will it affect the longer term? That is far harder to tell.
What do we already know, after 10 months of Covid-19? We know that the world was ill-equipped to cope with a pandemic. It has caused about 1.1 million deaths worldwide, mostly among the elderly. Moreover, some countries have suppressed the disease far more successfully than others.
The wine world's most elite circle has a sexual harassment problem
Master sommelier is the most prestigious title in American wine, and those who earn it instantly join the ranks of the highest-paid and most influential members of the profession.
Only 155 people have achieved the honour since the 1997 founding of the Americas chapter of the Court of Master Sommeliers, the examining body that confers the title on those who survive its gruelling, yearslong qualification process. Of those, 131 are men.
Many young women join the court's programme of mentorship and education in the hope of avoiding the sexist hazing that is notorious in the wine industry.
Cardi B's WAP proves music's dirty secret: Censorship is good business
To an extent not seen in years, Cardi B's WAP has become something of a political lightning rod, decried by pearl-clutching commentators as being "vulgar".