A Chinese worker dressed in a protective suit takes the temperature of a woman at a subway station in Beijing during the lunar new year and spring festival holiday. Photo / Getty Images
A Chinese worker dressed in a protective suit takes the temperature of a woman at a subway station in Beijing during the lunar new year and spring festival holiday. Photo / Getty Images
Welcome to the weekend. The country has been swept up in coronavirus news this week with the first cases in New Zealand confirmed.
Make sure you take sometime this weekend to catch up everything else going on around the globe too. Here's a selection of some of the best international premium pieces of content to get you started.
How dangerous is the coronavirus and how does it spread?
Though Covid-19 has passed its peak in China, it is spreading rapidly elsewhere with the number of cases in some countries doubling every week. Public health experts fear the respiratory illness, which is believed to have started in a food market in Wuhan, may become the most serious pandemic since Spanish flu in 1918-19. The World Health Organisation is trying to contain the infection before it reaches that stage.
Oxford University scandal: Assault rocks Christ Church college
Christ Church is one of Oxford's richest colleges. Three years ago, it was rocked by the student Lavinia Woodward's assault case. But it's what has happened since that has set don against dean and led to the latter's suspension.
The most toxic conflict in academia is far from over.
Christ Church College in Oxford, England. Photo / 123RF
A royal Instagram mystery
While sovereignty operates under hierarchy, it survives by public support. What happens, then, when monarchical order is pitted against social popularity?
Since splitting their Instagram accounts it's been a tale of two social media accounts. Photo / Getty Images
Photos from America's longest war
Soon after the attacks of September 11, 2001, the US military's attention turned to Afghanistan, where al-Qaida's leaders were based. Many knew an invasion was sure to come.
What no one knew was that Operation Enduring Freedom, the invasion to rout al-Qaida and its hosts, the Taliban, would turn into a war that is now in its 19th year — America's longest.
Members of the First Battalion, 87th Infantry shield a wounded soldier from the wash of a helicopter that will evacuate him, in Kunduz, Afghanistan, September 17, 2010. Photo / Damon Winter, NYT
Why penguins may help us predict the impact of climate change
The Antarctic Peninsula is the fastest-warming part of the continent. It has heated up by about 3C since 1950, and, in February, a record high of 18.3C was recorded at Esperanza Base. The pace of change on the peninsula — which is warming more than three times faster than the rest of the planet — means the animal populations there are in the middle of a rapid transformation. Some species are thriving, while others are at risk of extinction.
A gentoo penguin stands upon a rock in the middle of the arctic water, taken in the Antarctic Peninsula. Photo / Getty Imags
Mossad's man in Sudan: The truth behind The Red Sea Diving Resort
In the Eighties, a Red Sea diving resort was opened in Sudan. Except the whole place was actually run by Mossad, as a cover for an extraordinary secret scheme – to rescue Jews from Ethiopia. For the first time, the former agent behind the mission reveals what happened.
The Red Sea diving resort was opened as a cover to rescue Jews from Ethiopia. The story has since been turned into a Netflix film. Photo / Netflix
Martin Freeman: No more Mr. Nice Dad
After a career playing good guys and audience surrogates, Martin Freeman has created his own series, Breeders, a dark comedy about the agonies of parenting.
Breeders joins recent Anglophone comedies like Catastrophe, Motherland, Workin' Moms and The Letdown in its focus on the relentlessness of modern parenting. It also shows Freeman, an actor known for playing nice guys and the occasional nice hobbit, loosing the anger that he usually keeps coiled and letting his rage flag fly.
Martin Freeman, who co-created the new FX series Breeders, said that fatherhood has taught him a lot. Photo / Nathaniel Wood, The New York Times
For Seoul's poor, class strife in Parasite is daily reality
The sunlight peeks into Kim Ssang-seok's home for just half an hour a day. When he opens his only window and looks up, he sees the wheels of passing cars. Kim dries his clothes and shoes in the sunless inside because of thieves outside. He wages a constant battle against cockroaches and the sewer smell emanating from the low-ceilinged, musty space that is his toilet and laundry room.
This 30-square-metre abode, built partially underground, has been Kim's home for 20 years.
Kim Ssang-seok, in his basement apartment in Seoul. "You end up in places like this when you have nowhere else to go," he said. Photo / Lam Yik Fei, The New York Times
Can you really hire a hit man on the dark web?
On a website called Azerbaijani Eagles, you can commission a murder for $8,000. The site Slayers Hitmen provides more options, with a beating going for $3,000. Death by torture costs $80,00.
But don't expect someone to get the job done, these sites are scams. There has not been a known murder attributed to any of them.
That doesn't mean the sites aren't involved in a very dark trade. They have become catch points for real people who are looking to pay to have someone murdered. And a number of men and women are sitting in jail after paying one of these sites — and getting caught by police.
A collection of online stores offer murder for pay. Researchers say they are scams, but people who want someone dead aren't listening. Photo / Yoshi Sodeoka, The New York Times
Russia gets its Disneyland, a Cold War dream come true
Opening a real international Disneyland in Moscow would be out of the question amid the current political standoff with the United States.
But Russia's decadeslong quest to build a theme park, which began during the Cold War rivalry with the United States, finally reached its fairy-tale ending.
The $2.4 billion Dream Island, which opened last Saturday, may certainly remind some visitors of Disneyland.
"But will they sell emotions, like Disneyland?" a mother of two girls asks.
Horses on a two-story carousel at Dream Island, a 72-acre covered theme park in Moscow. Photo / Maxim Babenko, The New York Times
How Bloomberg buys the silence of unhappy employees
Every year, hundreds of departing employees at Bloomberg LP are presented with a choice: Either leave the company empty-handed or accept a generous financial package and agree to never speak ill of the company. Many take the money.
The result is that some employees are barred from publicly describing misconduct and what they perceived as an entrenched culture of bullying, where women are often objectified and sometimes face discrimination.
Departing employees at Bloomberg L.P. are presented with a choice: Leave empty-handed or accept a financial package and agree to never speak ill of the company. Photo / Chris Koehler, New York Times
