Ronan Farrow may now be the most famous investigative reporter in America. Photo / Getty Images
Welcome to the weekend. New Zealanders will be celebrating the re-opening of bars this weekend as we continue to slowly emerge from lockdown.
With the winter weather slowly creeping in though some might be keen to stay hunkered down at home.
No matter what your plans are, make sure you make some time to catch up on some of the best pieces from our premium international syndicators this week.
Happy reading.
Ronan Farrow may now be the most famous investigative reporter in America, a rare celebrity-journalist who followed the opposite path of most in the profession: He began as a boy-wonder talk show host and worked his way downward to the coal face of hard investigative reporting.
The child of actress Mia Farrow and director Woody Allen, he has delivered stories of stunning and lasting impact, especially his revelations about powerful men who preyed on young women in the worlds of Hollywood, television and politics, which won him a Pulitzer Prize.
He has delivered revelatory reporting on some of the defining stories of our time.
Last Monday was a day of triumph for Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Thanks to the efforts of the entire nation, she said, New Zealand had been largely successful in meeting its ambitious goal of eradicating, rather than just controlling, outbreaks of Covid-19. The lockdown she had put in place March 25 could now end.
Ardern's success is the latest data point in a widely noticed trend: Countries led by women seem to be particularly successful in fighting the coronavirus.
On January 27, at a regularly scheduled Monday morning meeting with top executives at Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg turned the agenda to the coronavirus. For weeks, he told his staff, he had been hearing from global health care experts that the virus had the makings of a pandemic, and now Facebook needed to prepare for a worst-case scenario — one in which the company's ability to combat misinformation, scammers and conspiracy theorists would be tested as never before.
The meeting, described by two people who attended it, helped vault Facebook before other companies — and even some governments — in preparing for Covid-19. And it exemplified a change in how the 36-year-old is running the company he founded.
Since the day he coded the words "a Mark Zuckerberg production" onto every blue-and-white Facebook page, he has been the singular face of the social network.
The New York Times looks at how Facebook's problems have become too acute to leave to anyone else.
With shoppers forced to stay indoors, demand for new clothes has collapsed. Although some retailers are still operating online, revenue streams for many of the world's largest companies have been wiped out, with rent and wages eating into cash supplies and stock piling up in warehouses.
it has been estimated that up to a third of global fashion players, such as brands and department stores, will not survive the crisis. And the impact is being felt all along the $4.2 trillion industry's complex supply chains, hitting places where companies and employees cannot always access government-funded emergency support. Shuttered stores on London's Oxford Street very quickly transmit to closed factories in Bangladesh and Vietnam and stockpiles at the cotton farms of Central India.
The Financial Times looks at whether these supply chains can be stitched back together again.
Widespread mask wearing hasn't impeded the ability of photographers to recognise celebrities on their daily drives around Los Angeles.
The challenging part is that since California issued a stay-at-home order in March, there have been fewer celebrities to spot. Stars, somewhat a little bit like us, are sitting at home.
In recent years, it has been hard to imagine a time when the office wasn't central to our cities and central to our lives, it had developed an atmosphere as distinctive as the sports stadium or the cathedral.
Now, in the coronavirus-induced lockdown, it seems likely that something has not just paused, but passed away. Offices will open again, but with new rules and with less importance.
Henry Mance of the Financial Times looks at if this is this the end of the water-cooler century.
Year after year, the bombs fell — on wedding tents, funeral halls, fishing boats and a school bus, killing thousands of civilians and helping turn Yemen into the world's worst humanitarian crisis.
Weapons supplied by American companies, approved by US officials, allowed Saudi Arabia to pursue the reckless campaign. But in June 2017, an influential Republican senator decided to cut them off, by withholding approval for new sales. It was a moment that might have stopped the slaughter.
Not under President Donald Trump.
For the past two months, many of the world's most popular destinations have been shuttered to visitors, leaving monuments, museums, shops, restaurants, bars and streets almost empty.
As the world reopens and residents step out, they are faced with the reality that life today is different from what it was before Covid-19, and will likely remain this way for some time. One of the most significant differences — a bittersweet realisation for most — is that there are currently no tourists to attend to or crowds to shuffle through.
By rights, Harry should be flying right now. These are the exact circumstances — global meltdown, widespread chaos, patchy leadership — in which young, charismatic royals tend to soar. This crisis, with its catastrophic impact on our livelihoods and the challenges it has placed on people's mental health, would seem to have been designed with his good works in mind.
After an adulthood of listless purpose, the bonny prince of mindfulness and therapy could have used this moment to really make a mark. He could have encouraged us to empathise and be kind to each other and talk about our feelings — all the things of which he used to speak so highly when he was princing. Before he chucked it in.
During the last two decades China unleashed a global lending spree, showering countries with hundreds of billions of dollars, in an effort to expand its influence and become a political and economic superpower.
Now, as the world economy reels, countries are increasingly telling Beijing they can't pay the money back.
Nations want Beijing to forgive or renegotiate the loans, but doing so would be costly.
According to The New York Times however, saying no could hurt China's global image.
Officially, police in Brazil are allowed to use lethal force only to confront an imminent threat. But an analysis of four dozen police killings in a violent Rio district shows that officers routinely gun down people without restraint, protected by their bosses and the knowledge that even if they are investigated for illegal killings, it will not keep them from going back out onto the beat.
The New York Times investigated the record year of violence in the city.
