IT’S A DAY of rest, and you may be in the mood for a quiet corner and a comfy chair. We’ve hand-picked the week’s best reads for you to savour this Sunday.

1. The prime minister goes back to his cubicle
Jay Rey on the surreal story of Mohamed A Mohamed, who was ousted as prime minister of Somalia – and went back to his old job at the transport department in Buffalo, New York (Buffalo News).

After his first interview with Somalia’s president, he stepped outside and a bullet whizzed passed, landing two feet in front of him. “Yeah, that’s normal,” said the man walking with him. “Keep walking.”

2. How the world’s good intentions ruined Haiti
Janet Reitman on a global multi-billion dollar aid effort, and how it failed (Rolling Stone).

I’m at this river the other day, and here’s what I see: three men washing some Land Rovers in the water, two pigs having sex, a group of children gutting some pigs and cleaning their intestines right next to the pigs having sex, and a few women washing clothes and bathing

3. Living with death
Scott Johnson on the reality, and the results, of reporting from a war zone (Guernica).

“No,” he cries, “You carry it.” We are both small children now. The sergeant doesn’t move, watches, learns something. I have survived something today, I know, and yet now I feel as if I could crumble from the inside. “No,” I insist back, “It’s your soap, you fucking carry it.” I shove it into his hands.

4. The man who hacked the one-armed bandits
Brendan I Koerner on the story of Rodolfo Rodriguez Cabrera, who figured out how to make a fake slot machine (Wired).

Using blueprints meant to assist casino service personnel, he figured out a way to solder a half-dozen jumper wires between the memory cards and the motherboards, completing circuits that circumvented the machine’s security.  If he was given a used Pharaoh’s Gold machine, for example, he could convert it to a Cleopatra II

5. How the SWAT team was born
Matthew Fleischer on the tactical unit’s violent beginnings – and how it was almost all over after their first raid (LA Times).

Back then, SWAT was ragtag. A lot of the guys were over 40 and not in the kind of shape one would expect of an elite fighting unit. There was no budget for weapons and equipment, so members were required to bring their own. McKinley had an M-1 carbine he had ordered through the mail.

6. Inside the cyber war
Michael Joseph Gross on how international conflict is moving online (Vanity Fair).

After Google got hacked, they called the NSA in and said, ‘You were supposed to protect us from this!’ The NSA guys just about fell out of their chairs. They could not believe how naïve the Google guys had been.

…AND A CLASSIC READ FROM THE ARCHIVES…

In November 1995, Rick Bragg wrote about the old men serving out their declining years in prison, for the New York Times.

He cut the man so quick and deep that he died before his body slipped to the floor. Mr. Cooper had killed before, in 1936 and in 1954, so the judge gave him life. Back then, before he needed help to go to the bathroom, Mr. Cooper was a dangerous man.

Read more: The best reads from every previous Sitdown Sunday >

Read more: The Sports Pages – the best sports writing collected every week by TheScore >