He spent14 years and two months as Prisoner 760 in America's most notorious detention centre — yet he was never charged with a crime. Almost seven years of that was after a court ordered that he should be released. When finally told in October 2016 that he was going home, it was, he says, "as if someone had told me I would be going to Mars or Jupiter".
Mohamedou Ould Slahi speaking about his experiences under CIA interrogation via video from his home in Mauritania in 2017. Photo / AP
Watch: Death, through a nurse's eyes
So many Americans have died in hospitals without family by their side, but they were not alone. Nurses brush patients' teeth, change their catheters and hold their hands in their final moments.
In just a year, half a million Americans have died from Covid-19. Vaccinations may be offering some relief, but inside ICUs, nurses continue to contend with the trauma and grief of America's carousel of death.
The short film offers a firsthand perspective of the brutality of the pandemic inside the Covid-19 ICU at the Valleywise Medical Center in Phoenix, United States. Photo / New York Times
Kim Kardashian's divorce lawyer on what she's learnt about marriage
In Hollywood's thriving divorce industry, Laura Wasser is the go-to lawyer. Her bread and considerable butter is dealing with the kind of high-profile, high-emotion celebrity break-up that most of us would run a mile from.
Leaving an LA courthouse after representing Johnny Depp in 2016. Photo / Getty Images
A ripple effect of loss: US Covid deaths approach 500,000
A nation numbed by misery and loss is confronting a number that still has the power to shock: 500,000.
Roughly one year since the first known death by the coronavirus in the United States, an unfathomable toll is nearing — the loss of a half-million people.
No other country has counted so many deaths in the pandemic. More Americans have perished from Covid-19 than on the battlefields of World War I, World War II and the Vietnam War combined.
The milestone comes at a hopeful moment: New virus cases are down sharply, deaths are slowing, and vaccines are steadily being administered.
Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center employees transport a deceased patient to a refrigerated truck on April 8, 2020 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. Photo / Getty Images
North Korean defector: 'A very small spark could topple Kim Jong Un'
At 58 Tae Yong-ho has already lived a remarkable life. He progressed from rare foreign language training in North Korea to become a diplomatic envoy for three generations of Kim dynasty rulers. Then, in 2016, while serving as deputy ambassador to the UK in London, he and his immediate family defected, making him one of the most prominent North Koreans to break with the totalitarian regime. He is now an opposition lawmaker in the South Korean parliament and outspoken critic of the 37-year-old dictator, Kim Jong Un.
The AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine. Photo / Getty Images
The vitamin boom: Do supplements really work?
New Zealanders are increasingly turning to supplements for protection against everything from colds to Covid. But do our laws deny us access to products that may actually help us?
Former US President Donald Trump departs the White House. Photo / Getty Images
Travel quarantines: Enduring the mundane, one day at a time
Air travellers around the world are finding themselves in similar situations, enduring mandatory government quarantines in hotels as they travel to countries that are very serious about containing the coronavirus.
Their quarantine is not the cushy experience of shorter-term quarantines or "resort bubbles" found in some destinations such as Kauai and the British Virgin Islands, where you are able to roam relatively freely on a resort's expansive grounds while waiting for a negative coronavirus test.
This is the more extreme yet typical experience of quarantine life. These mandatory quarantines involve confinement to your room, 24 hours a day, for up to two weeks.
Joy Jones's daughter Jackie draws on the hotel room window with dry-erase markers while quarantined at the Stamford Plaza Hotel in Auckland, New Zealand. Photo / Joy Jones via The New York Times
His lights stayed on during Texas' storm. Now he owes $22,950
As millions of Texans shivered in dark, cold homes while a winter storm devastated the state's power grid and froze natural gas production, those who could still summon lights with the flick of a switch felt lucky.
Now, many of them are paying a severe price for it.
A crew in Austin worked to restore power lost during the winter storm that tore through Texas over the past week. Photo / Tamir Kalifa, The New York Times
