E. Jean Carroll claims Donald Trump sexually assaulted her in a dressing room at a Manhattan department in 1996. Photo / AP
E. Jean Carroll claims Donald Trump sexually assaulted her in a dressing room at a Manhattan department in 1996. Photo / AP
Welcome to the weekend. Much of the country is in for a cold winter's weekend, but don't despair because we have some great journalism from around the world to keep you warm.
E. Jean Carroll tore through the doors of the Fifth Avenue entrance of Bergdorf Goodman, her heart racing.
From the sidewalk, she phoned Lisa Birnbach. Carroll was laughing at first as she described an encounter she said she had just had in a Bergdorf dressing room with Donald Trump that began as cheeky banter. But what she was saying didn't strike Birnbach as funny. When Carroll finished her account, Birnbach said, "'I think he raped you.'"
A day or two later, Caroll described the episode to another friend, Carol Martin.
The three women didn't speak about the incident publicly until now.
"I felt like a fraud," E. Jean Carroll said, because she hadn't followed advice she'd given her readers for years: to speak up. Photo / Todd Heisler, The New York Times
How will movies survive another 10 years?
Big studios are gobbling each other up as smaller movies struggle and even name-brand titles tank at the box office. Netflix is revolutionising the way people watch films, while major new streaming services from Apple, Disney, Warner Bros. and other deep-pocketed studios are coming soon. And every aspect of the movie industry — from the diversity of its storytellers to the spoils of Oscar season — is being called into question.
"This is the biggest shift in the content business in the history of Hollywood," producer Jason Blum recently said.
Will movies survive as we know them? Photo / Getty Images
Crossing the line: A wedding and a rape
After Arab men were filmed dancing with ultra-Orthodox Jews at a village wedding, the groom's father was asked to resign as village council leader and placed under investigation.
Fearing for his life, he was forced into hiding. Four days later, an even more shocking incident drove another wedge between the once peacefully co-existing villages.
Israeli police announced a Palestinian man had been charged with raping a 7-year-old ultra-Orthodox girl, a student at the religious elementary school in Modiin Illit, where the suspect worked as a janitor.
A Jewish settler at a garage owned by a Palestinian, Hamouda Ayash, in the West Bank town of Deir Qaddis, where Jewish settlers regularly bring cars for service. Photo / Samar Hazboun, New York Times
Janet Jackson on Michael's legacy and life in pop's first family
Janet Jackson wasn't just big in the 1980s and 1990s. She was huge. A global icon. When Rhythm Nation was released 30 years ago, it broke all sorts of records and won all sorts of awards. Her 100m-plus album sales and counting make her one of the most successful recording artists of all time. And yet for most of her career, she was always only the second most successful person in her family.
Now, though, things are different. Almost exactly a decade since Michael's death, his legacy is under threat from renewed allegations of child abuse. Janet, on the other hand, is experiencing a renaissance.
Janet Jackson has opened up about Michael's legacy, motherhood and life in the famous family. Photo / Getty Images
What happens after Amazon's domination is complete?
The Sanford Guide to Antimicrobial Therapy is a medical handbook that recommends the right amount of the right drug for treating ailments from bacterial pneumonia to infected wounds. Lives depend on it.
It is not the sort of book a doctor should puzzle over, wondering, "Is that a '1' or a '7' in the recommended dosage?" But that is exactly the possibility that has haunted the guide's publisher, Antimicrobial Therapy, for the past two years as it confronted a flood of counterfeits — many of which were poorly printed and hard to read — in Amazon's vast bookstore.
Counterfeit copies of The Sanford Guide to Antimicrobial Therapy, purchased from Amazon and Amazon's third-party sellers. Photo / Isabelle Baldwin, The New York Times
Honeymoon hashtag hell: Is that Instagram shot really worth it?
If you ask JP Smith what he remembers most about his 2014 honeymoon in Aruba, he'll say the sunsets, but not because of their beauty.
He described the week long vacation with his new wife, Natasha Huang Smith, as a "sunset nightmare," "stressful," "cumbersome" and "torturous."
Huang Smith, 34, who works in digital marketing, was attempting to showcase their honeymoon on Instagram. "I had to prove to the world that I was having a great time," she said. And so half of her day was spent shooting, editing, or planning Instagram posts.
Social media pressure to take perfectly posed photographs may lead to the first argument as a married couple. Is it worth a fabulous Instagram shot if you are just having a horrible time? Maggie Parker of The New York Times reports.
Natasha Huang Smith almost ruined her honeymoon and marriage trying to get the perfect sunset beach shot for social media. Photo / jetset.away Instagram
Nazis killed her father. Then she fell in love with one
Emilie Landecker was 19 when she went to work for Benckiser, a German company that made industrial cleaning products and also took pride in cleansing its staff of non-Aryan elements.
It was 1941. Landecker was half Jewish and terrified of deportation. Her new boss, Albert Reimann Jr., was an early disciple of Adolf Hitler and described himself as an "unconditional follower" of Nazi race theory.
Somehow, inexplicably, they fell in love.
The couple's billionaire descendants, who control iconic brand like Krispy Kreme and Stumptown, have only just learned the awful truth.
Emilie Landecker and Albert Reimann Jr., who kept their relationship a secret for many years. Photo / The Reimann family via The New York Times
A boy who had spinal surgery in the womb stands on his own two feet
Charley Royer, 17 months old, has such a swift, strong kick that putting a pair of pants on him can turn into a wrestling match.
His mother doesn't mind. Far from it.
This child, who crawls around the house chasing a Yorkie named Bruce and proudly hauls himself upright against the couch, wasn't expected to do any of this. Before he was born, doctors predicted that he would be paralysed from the waist down after prenatal testing found that he had spina bifida.
Traditionally, the prenatal surgery has required cutting open the uterus. But the Royers chose an experimental approach: fetoscopic surgery. And it paid off.
Lexi and Joshuwa Royer with their son, Charley. After an operation to close his spine that was performed while still in utero, Charley is now learning to walk. Photo / Tara Pixley, The New York Times
Why the cyborgs are coming - but they won't kill us
Cyborgs will rule the world by the end of this century. They're already here in the form of sophisticated computer programs that think for themselves. Soon they will leave us behind by thinking thousands of times faster than humans. To them, we will be as slow-witted as plants. But don't worry, the cyborgs will need us.
Cyborgs will rule the world by the end of this century. But don't worry, they'll need us still. Photo / Getty Images
Don't let Facebook capture the monetary system
It was only a matter of time before Facebook barged into the payments and money transfer industry. On Tuesday, the tech giant duly published a set of papers on its new venture, a supposedly blockchain-based "cryptocurrency" called Libra.
Not only are there technical and regulatory problems with the Libra layout, but there's issues from an economic policy perspective too.
Facebook's Libra currency could give Facebook even more power. Photo / Getty Images
Young stars of Stranger Things open up about growing up on camera
After an absence of almost two years, Stranger Things returns on July 4 on Netflix. Season 3 finds the kids in the summer between their middle school and high school years, and they are unmistakably teenagers now, teeming with all the passions and messy feelings that come with that phase of life.
In the third season of Stranger Things the kids have hit adolescence and the '80s references have been updated to match. Photo / Bryan Derballa, The New York Times
