Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in 1992, left and Carly Simon in 2016. Simon has written a memoir about her friendship with Jackie O. Photo / AP
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in 1992, left and Carly Simon in 2016. Simon has written a memoir about her friendship with Jackie O. Photo / AP
Welcome to the weekend, and a long weekend at that. Hopefully it will be one full of celebrations as the All Blacks take on England in the Rugby World Cup semi-final.
With all that extra time up your sleeve why don't you check out some the pieces from our premiuminternational syndicators this week.
Carly Simon reveals the private side of Jackie O
When Carly Simon and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis first met, in 1983, Simon was filled with the same questions that all of us would have. What was it like to be married to JFK? How did she manage to avoid going insane after he was assassinated beside her in the back seat of a limousine before a crowd of thousands? Why did she marry that Greek shipping magnate? What was it like to see stories of JFK's alleged adulteries with Marilyn Monroe and the wives of various gangsters?
In the course of their friendship all of Simon's questions were answered.
John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy in 1961 photo. Photo / AP
'What is going to happen to us?'
The prisoners cover the floor like a carpet of human despair. Many are missing eyes or limbs, some are bone-thin from sickness, and most wear orange jumpsuits similar to what the Islamic State, the terrorist group they once belonged to, dressed its own captives in before it killed them.
Upstairs, jammed into two cells with little sunlight, are more than 150 children — ages roughly 9 to 14 — from a range of countries. Their parents brought them to Syria and ended up dead or detained. The children have been here for months and have no idea where their relatives are or what the future holds.
Boys peer out from their crowded cell at a prison for suspected members of the Islamic State run by Kurdish-led forces in Syria. Photo / Ivor Prickett, The New York Times
Schwarzenegger on returning to Terminator
Arnold Schwarzenegger has been "99 per cent vegan" for the last three years, though he still looks as if he subsists on a diet of molten steel and breeze blocks.
A household name since the mid-Eighties, he has a life story that remains astonishing today: the boy born into postwar Austrian poverty who slogged, flexed and wisecracked his way to the summits of American celebrity and public life.
Arnold Schwarzeneggerstars in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. Photo / Supplied
Why is a secretive billionaire buying up the Cayman Islands?
Kenneth Dart, the heir to a famously private foam-container dynasty and a reclusive businessman in his own right, apparently hasn't spoken to the press since 1993.
Although he's lived on Grand Cayman for 25 years and is widely believed to be the biggest private landholder on the archipelago, almost nobody is sure if they have ever seen him.
Kenneth Dart is believed to be the biggest private landholder on the archipelago. Photo / Carter Johnston, The New York Times
Robert Pattinson: 'It's more fun if you're shocking people'
There is little that Robert Pattinson likes more than confounding expectations, and plenty were placed on him after the mega hit Twilight franchise ended in 2012. Since then, he has reinvented himself as an auteur's muse, eager to add his mischievous spirit and pop cultural frisson to art-house films by directors like Claire Denis, David Cronenberg, and the Safdie brothers.
After spending the last few years in independent films, Pattinson is planning another zig: He's shooting Tenet, a big-budget summer movie for Christopher Nolan, and he was just cast as the lead in The Batman, a new take on the comic book character due in 2021.
Robert Pattinson says he's not worried anymore about the spotlight that comes with big movies: "I'm old and boring. And I only have abs, like, two weeks a year." Photo / Ryan Pfluger, New York Times
Can you believe your eyes? How deepfakes are coming for politics
Only a few years ago, such "deepfakes" were a novelty, created by hobbyist coders. Today, they are increasingly commodified as yet another service available to those with even a little disposable cash.
While they may be increasingly cheap to pull off, their repercussions could be far-reaching. Fraudulent clips of business leaders could tank companies. False audio of central bankers could swing markets. Small businesses and individuals could face crippling reputational or financial risk.
And, as elections approach in the US, UK and elsewhere, deepfakes could raise the stakes once more in the electorate's struggle to know the truth.
In this recording of reporters grilling President Trump, the face of British comedian Rowan Atkinson was superimposed on Trump's body. Photo / Supplied
The stunning escape of El Chapo's son: It's like 'a bad Netflix show'
Escape, it seems, is a trait shared in the Guzmán family.
Joaquin Guzmán Loera, the drug lord known as El Chapo, eluded the grasp of the government numerous times — in tunnels, behind closets, beneath bathtubs and through steep ravines in the remote mountains of Sinaloa. He even managed to escape prison, twice.
The latest family member to escape apprehension — El Chapo's son, Ovidio Guzmán Lopez — managed his own feat of government humiliation this week, when cartel henchmen forced a patrol of at least 30 members of government forces to release him after he had been captured.
Burnt out vehicles used by gunmen still smolder on a street, a day after street battles between gunmen and security forces in Culiacan, Mexico. Photo / AP
Kombucha: The rise and rise of a superdrink
Kombucha is a fermented food, much like cultured yogurt, cheese, kefir, kimchi and sauerkraut.
The "tea of immortality" has come a long way from its reported beginning in China more than 2000 years ago. It has evolved into a US$475 million industry in America, nearly quadrupling in the previous four years, according to Nielsen.
"Booch," as it's known, flows at megastores, coffeehouses and workplaces; and in bars in a more boozy form, with enough alcohol to rival an IPA.
Kombucha is wildly popular but are there actually any benefits? Photo / 123RF
Ahoy there, mummy! Family sails around world on YouTube
They met in Greece: locking eyes across the town square, both in their 20s then. Elayna Carausu was playing guitar and singing for a travel company; Riley Whitelum was living on the sailboat he had bought with money saved from working for years on oil rigs.
Riley Whitelum tosses Lenny gingerly into the air, as Elayna Carausu looks on, aboard La Vagabonde. Photo / Karsten Moran. The New York Times
The life of Cameron Douglas: From privilege to prison and back
On the day in 2009 when Cameron Douglas was arrested at a New York hotel for possession of crystal meth, he was given a choice. As he recounts a Drug Enforcement Administration agent told him he could either be taken out the front door, kicking and screaming, or, "for your family's sake, we can take you out the back way, put you in a car."
The subject of family permeates Douglas' new book and it remains prominent in his life, even after he served almost eight years in prison for possessing heroin and selling drugs.
Cameron Douglas with daughter Lua and dog Tank. "All those years that the book is based on, all the pain and destruction that a lot of my behaviour caused, is done." Photo / Harry Eelman, NY Times
Why don't rich people just stop working?
"Billionaires should not exist," Senator Bernie Sanders said last month.
It's an idea that's going around. Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook founder who is worth close to $108 billion, is apparently open to it. "I don't know that I have an exact threshold on what amount of money someone should have," he said. "But on some level, no one deserves to have that much money."
Yet here we are, chugging into the 10th year of an extremely top-heavy economic boom in which the 1 percenters, by all statistical measures, have won, creating the greatest wealth disparity since the Jazz Age.
And yet the only thing we know in this casino-like economy is that for those at the top, too much is never enough.
