Anna Sorokin appears for her trial in Manhattan Supreme Court, in April 2019. Photo / Jefferson Siegel, /The New York Times
Welcome to the weekend.
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Happy reading.
Anna Delvey, real name Sorokin, is a modern day Gatsby who scammed New York's high society and ended up in prison.
The story of how the SoHo grifter swindled New York's rich has become one of the parables of the Instagram age. Arriving in Manhattan from Europe in 2013 Sorokin was a mysterious German heiress to a £50 million fortune who dished out $100 tips, posted photos of herself living the high life, and had grand plans to open a private members' arts club to rival Soho House.
In reality she was the Russian-born daughter of a former truck driver who was using bad cheques, skipping out on hotel bills and blowing other people's thousands on Net-a-porter, champagne dinners, celebrity personal trainers, lavish holidays, $400 eyelash extensions and cryotherapy.
It was the "summer of scam" in 2017. Until Sorokin's audacious act came crashing down.
Newly released from prions she speaks to Laura Pullman of The Times.
A year since the first recorded coronavirus death of a health care worker in the United States, those on the front lines are finding it hard to move on.
They have been hailed as "Covid warriors" but so many do not feel like heroes. They are angry, burned out and feel unappreciated as they struggle with their own wounds, both psychic and physical.
There also hasn't been a national reckoning over the many thousands lost to Covid.
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"The Trojans" are the firearms wing of the Metropolitan Police, which is Britain's biggest police force and has the country's largest team of armed response vehicles. Trojan is their radio call sign.
The Trojan call sign was chosen because the plain outward appearance of the vehicles — they look like standard police cars — belies the fact that they are mobile armouries. The weapons, stored in a locked safe accessible from the rear seat next to me, include Sig MCX carbines and magazines, a baton gun and spare rounds and "stunnies" — stun grenades. The ARVs also carry a ram for forced entry, first aid kits, helmets and a large bulletproof shield.
Perhaps it was because pandemic lockdowns have left women clinging to whatever is left of their access to public space. Perhaps it was because after more than three years of the #MeToo movement, the police and society are still telling women to sacrifice their liberties to purchase a little temporary safety.
It all came to the surface when 33-year-old Sarah Everard, who disappeared as she walked home in London on March 3, was found dead a week later, after doing everything she was supposed to do. She took a longer route that was well-lit and populated. She wore bright clothes and shoes she could run in. She checked in with her boyfriend to let him know when she was leaving. But that was not enough to save her life.
The "Reclaim These Streets" movement in Britain asks why the police demand sacrifices of women rather than forcing men to change to end violence.
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This has been the biggest year of urban change in decades. Many cities have remade themselves during the pandemic, laying bike paths or turning parking spaces into café terraces overnight. Offices have emptied and shops closed, some forever. Every organisation on earth seems to have held a webinar on "The future of cities". The city — 10,000 years old — obviously isn't going to die, but it is evolving on fast-forward.
The Financial Times looks at how to make our great metropolises healthier, cheaper and happier.
Demi Lovato woke up legally blind in an intensive care unit after the July 2018 drug overdose that nearly killed her. It took about two months to recover enough sight to read a book, and she passed the time catching up on 10 years' worth of sleep, playing board games or taking a single lap around the hospital floor for exercise. Blind spots made it nearly impossible to see head-on, so she peered at her phone through her peripheral vision and typed using voice notes.
"It was interesting how fast I adapted," she said in a recent interview.
The 28-year-old singer, songwriter, actress and budding activist who has been in show business since she was 6 and a household name since her teens, is not just adaptable — she is one of the most resilient pop cultural figures of her time.
On January 31, the Climate Change Commission published the advice it is planning to give to the Government about how to cut New Zealand's climate pollution.
You could be forgiven for not having the time to read it, or for getting lost in the more than 800 pages of recommendations and supporting materials put out by the commission. But nothing is likely to affect the future of the country more than what happens next.
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Gwyneth Paltrow has claimed that Dr Will Cole's 'intuitive fasting' system cured her of long Covid. Then again, Paltrow once thought it was a good idea to sell vagina-scented candles.
So is this just another fad diet – or might it be beneficial?
Julia Llewellyn Smith of The Times talks to Dr Will Cole.
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Judy Dodd began struggling with long Covid symptoms last spring — shortness of breath, headaches, exhaustion. Then she got the vaccine.
After her first Pfizer-BioNTech shot in late January, she felt so physically miserable that she had to be persuaded to get the second. For three days after that one, she also felt awful. But the fourth day, everything changed.
Scientists are only beginning to study any potential effect of vaccines on long Covid symptoms. Anecdotes run the gamut: Besides those who report feeling better after the shots, many people say they have experienced no change, and a small number say they feel worse.
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• Virus variants likely evolved inside people with weak immune systems
The sweeping view of undefiled wilderness on the border with Mexico long rewarded hikers who completed the Arizona Trail.
Then something else came into focus a few weeks ago at the forbidding site in the Huachuca Mountains: a lonely segment of border wall, connected to nothing at all, in an area where migrants rarely even try to cross into the United States.
A last-minute rush to build the border wall lasted through Donald Trump's last day in office. The effort left odd, partially completed sections of a barrier whose fate President Biden must now determine.
Those Kiwi revolutionaries are at it again. In 1989, New Zealand's central bank was the first to commit to a specific target for consumer price inflation, then the biggest threat to the world economy.
Today, a new scourge — asset price inflation — looms. And New Zealand has launched another counterattack. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and her government has ordered the central bank to add stabilising home prices to its remit, starting March 1.
The Financial Times looks at how the world is watching Ardern's strategy.
