Indholdsfortegnelse for May 20, 2022 i The Week Magazine

It was the culmination of a decades-long movement fueled by religious fervor. In 1919, an America with a fondness for drink nonetheless adopted a constitutional amendment banning the “manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors.” Prohibition immediately divided the country, and gave rise to sophisticated bootleg operations, smuggling, speakeasies, and the growth of organized crime. With public support waning after 13 tumultuous years, Congress abandoned the great dry experiment in 1933. It was not the first, nor the last, time governments have failed to prohibit a substance or behavior for which there is great public demand. When there is a want, there is always a way. Banning abortion will be even more difficult than booze. Abortion will remain legal in roughly half the states, and state borders are permeable. Medications…

A man in jail for allegedly murdering his cancer-stricken wife qualified in a GOP primary for a town board seat in Clinton, Ind. Andrew Wilhoite received 60 votes in a three-person race for three slots in a mostly Republican district. The 40-year-old would be disqualified if convicted of murder. Police say he admitted smashing his wife’s head with a flowerpot, then dumping her body over a bridge. GOP Sen. Susan Collins of Maine called police after a chalk message appeared outside her Bangor house urging her to support federal abortion rights legislation. “Susie, please,” the message said, “vote yes.” Collins called this “defacement,” but police said no crime was committed because the message “wasn’t threatening.” The public works department then washed away the chalk. In other news Bill to ensure…

Sienna Miller was once the biggest target of Britain’s famous tabloids, said Emma Brockes in The Guardian (U.K.). In the mid 2000s, the actress was a 23-year-old style icon dating Jude Law, her co-star in a remake of Alfie, when the Sun published a “rumor” that she was pregnant. She was in fact early into an unwanted pregnancy, and says it was “hell” to deal with the prying attention and gossip. “Appearing in public when you’re extremely heartbroken. Trying not to break. All the while being mocked and ridiculed.” She wondered who had betrayed her. “Literally my three best friends were the only ones who knew,” she says. Soon, however, her doctor called to say, “We sent the documents you asked for.” Miller realized the tabloid had been “blagging”…

Noah Rothman Commentary The Biden administration has abandoned the women of Afghanistan, said Noah Rothman. In his rush for the exit, President Biden sacrificed millions of girls and women to the Taliban’s control, making a “dramatic reversal of freedoms” inevitable. Last week, the Taliban announced they are “once again imposing the burqa” on the country’s women, requiring them to cover up head to toe in clothing that allows only their eyes to be seen when in public. (That’s if they go out: Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada said that for most women it’s “better if they stay at home.”) The new edict is an “attack on basic human dignity,” but the Biden administration is treating it as merely a “political problem to be managed”: Complaining too loudly would remind Americans…

A California couple returned from a trip to find their home had been taken over by hundreds of swallows who’d flown in through the chimney. Gary and Patti Reitemeyer of Redding had been warned by a neighbor that there were about 20 birds in the house, which sounded like “no big deal,” Gary said. But when they entered it was “like an Alfred Hitchcock movie,” he said. They had to throw out all their furniture, blinds, and carpeting. “You can’t get all that bird stuff out,” Gary said. “Everything’s gone.” A British woman makes more than $100,000 a year selling taxidermied mice she arranges in mini scenes involving stripper poles, circus hoops and the like. Katie Hardwick got started when her husband bought her a beginner’s taxidermy kit for Christmas.…

SOUTH AFRICA Khaya Koko The Mail and Guardian Never let it be said our politicians can’t preen and pose, said Khaya Koko. John Steenhuisen, the leader of South Africa’s Democratic Alliance, has become the butt of jokes by jetting off on a “fact-finding mission” to Ukraine. The opposition leader met Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko, then began filing “stories on the ravages of war” from his five-star hotel room. Ukraine, he said, “has now become the new frontier of freedom,” and Africa must get off the sidelines and support it. To be fair to Steenhuisen, he delivered a “balanced report” that fairly critiqued our government’s bewildering decision to criticize NATO rather than Russia, but that did not necessarily require cosplaying as a war correspondent, doing everything “short of wearing a hard…

The havoc of the Ukraine war is showcasing a new future for internet connectivity, said Vivek Wadhwa and Alex Salkever in Foreign Policy. There are now “more than 10,000 Starlink terminals operating in war-torn Ukraine,” receiving high-speed broadband internet beamed down from low-orbit satellites launched by Elon Musk’s SpaceX. The terminals have received rave reviews for being “resilient and adaptable,” keeping Ukraine’s military, hospitals, schools, and municipal services connected with high-speed internet. “When Russia resorted to electronic countermeasures, Starlink simply pushed out software updates.” Satellite data communication is not new, “but the cost of the service has traditionally been high, and bandwidth and capacity have been comparatively low.” Both problems have been addressed, thanks to innovation and competition, which is heating up. Musk has said “he wants to put…

An experimental obesity drug has enabled the participants of a large trial to lose an average of 22.5 percent of their body weight, or about 52 pounds, reports The New York Times. The company behind the drug, Eli Lilly, has not yet submitted data from the trial for peer review. But medical experts have expressed astonishment at the results. “Very impressive,” says Lee Kaplan, an obesity expert at the Massachusetts General Hospital. The drug, called tirzepatide, “appears to be significantly better than any other anti-obesity medication that is currently available in the U.S.” At the start of the trial the participants weighed an average of 231 pounds and had a body mass index (BMI) of 38. By the end of the study, those on the higher doses of the…

(Riverhead, $28) Hernan Diaz’s latest work is “a wily jackalope of a novel—tame but prickly, a different beast from every angle,” said Hillary Kelly in the Los Angeles Times. In his follow-up to In the Distance, a “nearly perfect” debut novel that was a 2018 Pulitzer finalist, Diaz resumes debunking the Great Man myth, only less successfully. Trust’s central figure is the fictional Andrew Bevel, a mighty 1920s New York City financier we encounter in four successive narratives, including a novel-within-a-novel featuring thinly veiled portraits of Bevel and his wife; an autobiography by Bevel refuting the novel; and a 1980s memoir by Bevel’s former secretary, Ida. Unfortunately, the final revelation in Trust “will wallop you with its obviousness.” The layering of the narratives, however, gets at two fundamental questions,…

True by Kostya Kennedy (St. Martin’s, $30) “The true Jackie Robinson should make us a little uncomfortable,” said Aram Goudsouzian in The Washington Post. The baseball legend is best remembered for enduring racist abuse with stoic dignity when he broke the major leagues’ color barrier in 1947. But this unconventional biography focuses on three other baseball seasons as well as the final year of Robinson’s life, 1972, to capture both his athletic prowess and his brave commitment to calling out America’s shortcomings. “He was a crusader to the end.” The Last Days of Roger Federer by Geoff Dyer (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $28) Don’t let the title mislead you, said Charles Finch in the Los Angeles Times. Geoff Dyer’s latest book “has little to do with Roger Federer,” alighting…

  3 Sharon Van Etten’s sixth album is “unmistakably the sound of an artist in their prime,” said Paolo Ragusa in Consequence of Sound. As before, the 41-year-old singersong-writer “doesn’t need to have her songs move at 100 miles an hour for you to feel their urgency.” Most of the tracks here are instead patient, slow-moving rock anthems, rooted more in buzzing synths than guitar, and together they map a personal journey. At the same time, her voice “carries a potency that few singers can manage,” and the vulnerability she displays makes this 10-song set her “most fulfilling work yet.” Van Etten started a family, moved across the country, and committed to marriage shortly before lockdown. Her distillations of those personal experiences, however, “have a wider resonance,” said Stephen Thomas…

MLB The Show ’22 “The Show remains the best baseball simulation out there,” said Mike Hume in The Washington Post. “It is, hands down, the essential game every baseball fan should own if they want to celebrate America’s pastime in video game format.” And for the first time, the latest title in the series is available for use on any of the three major game consoles. Otherwise, while “newcomers will find plenty to embrace,” this version is virtually identical to last year’s, and its few upgrades, while welcome, are so incremental that it’s misleading that they’re advertised as highlights. “It’s still very hard to hit consistently,” but that’s baseball. A greater frustration is that you still can’t buy The Show just once and enjoy regular online updates for a…

Rhum agricole, though its profile is growing, is “a spirit that remains shrouded in mystery for many Americans,” said the editors of Punch. Distilled from the juice of fresh sugarcane rather than from fermented molasses, it is arguably a purer expression of the raw material, and it’s spreading thanks to fine sub-$50 options like these. Saint James Imperial Blanc ($25). Made by one of Martinique’s oldest distillers, Saint James lacks complexity but is “a pleasant entry level agricole” with a great nose. Neisson Rhum Agricole Blanc ($43). Neisson’s longer 72-hour fermentation period yields a more flavorful rhum that’s refined without losing the grassy wildness of agricole. La Favorite Coeur de Canne ($40). This agricole is a sipper that’s “soft and creamy, with layers of flavor,” including cumin and tropical fruit.…

“Cape Town, Cairo, Beijing, Montreal, and… Paducah?” said Elizabeth Hicklin in Garden & Gun. Yes: The walkable city at the confluence of the Ohio and Tennessee rivers earned a place beside those heavyweights when UNESCO designated Paducah a Creative City in 2013. “Today, Paducah is all small-town charm and retro Americana.” Brick sidewalks and cobblestone streets invite visitors to explore the historic downtown and the Arts District, where you’ll find “a colorful blend of eclectic studios, galleries, and funky shops.” Anchoring this creative community is the acclaimed National Quilt Museum. “Neither folksy nor homespun,” the 30,000-square-foot space showcases the vibrant works of cutting-edge fiber artists. “The museum is a revelation—much like Paducah.” Make the handsome 1857 Hotel your home base and be sure to eat delicious fried oysters and…

Inflation eased only slightly in April, “barreling ahead” at close to a 40-year high, said Jeff Cox in CNBC.com. Data released this week by the Bureau of Labor Statistics show consumer prices increased 8.3 percent from a year ago, representing a very modest ebb from the March peak of 8.5 percent. “The month-over-month gains were also higher than expected,” considering that the Federal Reserve has begun to tighten its monetary policies for the first time since 2018 and gasoline prices dropped 6.1 percent. Rising food and shelter costs, however, largely “countered the deceleration in energy.” Twitter: Musk’s plan to turbocharge growth In advance of his planned purchase of Twitter, Elon Musk told investors he aimed to quintuple the company’s revenue to $26.4 billion by 2028, said Mike Isaac in The…

Too-great expectations College students are dreaming too big when it comes to first-job salary expectations, said Wyatte Grantham-Philips in USA Today. A survey by Real Estate Witch found that today’s students “expect to make about $103,880 in their first job” after graduation. “The reality is much lower—as the average starting salary is actually about half that, at $55,260.” The extent of the overestimation could contribute to further disillusionment with the higher-education experience. Already, “less than half the respondents felt college is worth the cost.” Job prospects for the class of 2022 are better than in recent years, however, “and most fields have seen increases” in starting salaries—though they are still not nearly as high as many students think. Scammed by romance and Bitcoin A Texas woman is suing two…

Ezra Klein The New York Times Donald Trump was right about TikTok, said Ezra Klein. Adopted by youth around the world, TikTok’s “growth is like nothing we’ve seen before.” It has “more active users than Twitter, more U.S. watch minutes than YouTube, more app downloads than Facebook, and more site visits than Google.” Unlike those Silicon Valley tech giants, though, TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese company. This has spurred concern about data espionage, which Trump highlighted as a reason TikTok should be controlled by a U.S. firm. However, “TikTok’s real power isn’t over our data. It’s over what users watch and create.” Last month, I gave a lecture at a college in South Carolina and asked students where they liked to get their news. “Almost every one…

Rob Stein got liberal donors to fight fire with fire. He’d had more than a decade of experience in Washington as a strategist and Clinton administration adviser by 2002, when congressional Democrats suffered a midterm rout. Convinced that the debacle foretold decades of GOP dominance, Stein worked late nights piecing together the conservative movement’s network of big-money donors and think tanks. He gave Democratic Party operatives and donors a presentation based on his research. “The center-left is comparatively less strategic, coordinated, and well financed than the conservative right,” he told them. These disadvantages “are debilitating.” In 2005, he founded his own network, the Democracy Alliance, which distributed more than $2 billion to left-leaning causes. Stein was born in Wheeling, W.Va., to a lumberyard owner and a mother who…

San Francisco Tesla CEO Elon Musk said this week that Twitter would welcome back former President Donald Trump if Musk’s purchase of the social media company goes through. Banning Trump soon after the Jan. 6 Capitol attack was a “morally bad decision” and “foolish in the extreme,” the world’s wealthiest man said at an auto conference. “It alienated a large part of the country and did not ultimately result in Donald Trump not having a voice,” said Musk, who signed a deal to buy the company last month for $44 billion. He added that he preferred temporary suspensions as punishment for illegal or otherwise “destructive” posting. In response to a tweet from far-right commentator Mike Cernovich, Musk replied, “Twitter [obviously] has a strong left-wing bias.” Musk indicated he’d support…

Liam Neeson has no reservations about continuing to use guns on film sets, said Jeff Conway in Forbes. “They’re fun!” says Neeson, 69, who’s become known for playing a gun-toting retired CIA operative in the Taken trilogy, which has grossed nearly $1 billion worldwide. His roles are getting slightly more age-appropriate: In a new film, Memory, Neeson plays a hitman assassin with early-onset dementia. “It just added texture to the character and made the moral issues of the film very ambiguous,” he says. But since last fall—when a gun Alec Baldwin was holding on the set of the Western film Rust fired accidentally, killing cinematographer Halyna Hutchins—Hollywood has faced renewed scrutiny over gun safety on film sets. Neeson listens very carefully to the armorers who direct actors in the…

Kathryn Joyce Salon If abortion becomes illegal, there will be no “forced motherhood.” Women can just carry a pregnancy to term and surrender the child at birth. That’s what Justice Samuel Alito claims in his draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, in an echo of an argument Justice Amy Coney Barrett—who has adopted two children—made during oral arguments in the case. But the claim that women simply have to endure “several months of inconvenience” before they “wash their hands of the entire ordeal profoundly fails to understand how relinquishment affects parents.” Research has shown that many women who carry unwanted pregnancies to term and hand over their babies experience “lifelong guilt, worry, trauma,” and “unresolved grief.” It’s far more traumatic than abortion. This partly explains why in 1972, “close…

SLOVENIA Antisa Korljan Primorske Novice If Robert Golob had asked me for advice after winning Slovenia’s election last month, I’d have told him to “simply enjoy himself,” said Antisa Korljan. Golob, a liberal political newcomer, and his environmental party unseated far-right Prime Minister Janez Jansa last month after voters rejected the incumbent’s turn toward authoritarianism. The 55-year-old, gray-maned former solar executive framed the election as a “referendum on democracy” and rode a wave of public anger toward Jansa, an admirer of Donald Trump and Viktor Orban whose extremist anti-immigration views troubled even his political allies. Jansa lost support after he botched Slovenia’s Covid vaccination drive, cut off funds to the country’s public broadcaster, and moved to compromise judicial independence. Now, as Golob enjoys the period between his victory and the…

President Biden “was never a big fan of using the presidency to cancel debt,” said Christian Paz in Vox, but facing plummeting approval ratings from young people, he seems poised to change his mind. Aides have indicated he’s likely to soon announce an executive order canceling up to $10,000 in debt, with an annual income cap of about $125,000. Despite those limitations, the plan would cost about $373 billion—about the same as the cost of welfare for poor families over the past two decades—while erasing less than a third of the $1.7 trillion owed by more than 40 million Americans. It also would almost certainly face opposition from Republicans, who reject “any amount of forgiveness.” “This isn’t just bad policy, it’s bad politics,” said Rory Cooper in The Daily…

Hyundai is opening a research hub in Montana focused on developing “practically unstoppable” all-terrain vehicles, said Chris Young in Interesting Engineering. Called Ultimate Mobility Vehicles, or UMVs, the concepts include a two-seater pod called Elevate that “has four electronically driven wheels, each of which is mounted on a robotic leg with several articulations.” That allows the wheels “to bend and swivel at different points” for navigating over obstacles—or even to “step down” from ledges. Another smaller vehicle is designed to be operated remotely, “with potential applications in space exploration, mining, logistics, and construction.” Hyundai is investing $20 million in the project, which is being run on Montana State University’s Bozeman campus, a location chosen partly because of its proximity to “off-road trails with more than 150 miles of terrain…

Stereotypes rule the dog world: Chihuahuas are nervous, border collies are smart, and golden retrievers make great family dogs. But new research suggests breed has little effect on predicting your pooch’s temperament. And that applies in particular to traits commonly linked to personality, such as cuddliness or aggression. “What the dog looks like is not really going to tell you what the dog acts like,” co-author Marjie Alonso, from the charitable arm of the International Association of Animal Behavior Consultants, tells The Washington Post. The study examined the genes of more than 2,000 dogs, along with 200,000 survey answers from dog owners. The researchers found that breed accounted for just 9 percent of behavioral variation, and that no trait was unique to a single breed. They say the remaining…

(Doubleday, $30) Airline stewardesses of the early 1960s were, by necessity, “accustomed to accepting blatantly unreasonable demands,” said Eleanor Clift in The Washington Post. Airlines hired only women, who were required to be thin and single, and faced a mandatory retirement age of 32. Weight and girdle checks were common, and pregnancy was grounds for termination. Even after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, “the airlines’ model of a cadre of young, beautiful women catering to mostly male business travelers resisted meaningful change until stewardesses took matters into their own hands.” It’s that story that travel writer Nell McShane Wulfhart tells in her new book, and she brings “a treasure trove” of vivid anecdotes to the task. Once the stewardesses start fighting back, the story becomes “exhilarating,”…

A.J. Jacobs has developed an unusually far-reaching defense of his daily Wordle habit, said Scott Simon in NPR.org. Unlike most of the other millions of Americans who began playing the simple online word game in early 2022, the best-selling author and lifelong puzzler had recently finished studying the history of puzzles and games, and was well-versed in both the upsides and downsides of puzzle crazes. The New York Times, which bought the rights to Wordle in January, once blasted an addictive 1880s puzzle as a pestilence, and a few decades later lobbied vigilantly against crosswords, which had caused a murder and a prison riot. But Jacobs, in his new book The Puzzler, firmly endorses puzzle vogues. “It becomes a communal thing,” he says. “And actually, that’s one of the…

  3 Arcade Fire’s latest is “a much-needed reset,” said Justin Sayles in The Ringer. The “sometimes excessively earnest” Canadian band led by husband and wife Win Butler and Régine Chassagne “has always peddled in big, fiery emotions.” That’s why 2017’s cynical, heavily disco-influenced Everything Now alienated a lot of fans. This collection of “shimmering, melancholic electro-pop” isn’t a back-to-basics throwback, but it is the sort of “big-tent emotional affair” that made Arcade Fire indie-rock royalty. “The melodies and arrangements are gorgeous,” and “it’s hard to find fault with the set musically,” said Mark Richardson in The Wall Street Journal. The first half is full of sophomoric truisms about the evils of technology, though, and some of the band’s multipart suites “veer into pomposity.” But at least the second half…

Longacre Theater, New York City   2 Sam Gold’s “overthought” production of Macbeth is lucky to have Ruth Negga, said Jesse Green in The New York Times. The actress, whose turn as Lady Macbeth just earned her a career-first Tony nomination, co-stars opposite Daniel Craig, who is solid himself. Negga, though, is “extraordinary with the verse,” cutting through Gold’s conceptual clutter. She’s “wonderfully physical,” too. “Like a feral cat, she can seem quicksilver and weightless or, when enraged, menacing and bristly and twice her size.” Though Craig is too put-together to fully sell Macbeth’s descent into madness, he and Negga have “a thrumming chemistry,” said Leah Greenblatt in Entertainment Weekly. She remains throughout “the play’s indelible focal point”—“fluid, anxious, frankly sexual,” and “very much in a tempest of her own…

The 1970s all over again… Meltdown: Three Mile Island A new four-part documentary revisits the 1979 accident at a Pennsylvania nuclear plant. The greatest surprise: the tale of a whistleblower who during the cleanup helped avert a catastrophe that could have made the East Coast uninhabitable. Netflix Our Nixon A fresh take on Richard Nixon is rare, but director Penny Lane came close with this 2013 documentary that featured home-movie footage shot by Nixon’s top aides. The 37th president comes across as almost human—before his vindictive, paranoid traits emerge. Amazon Prime She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry Mary Dore’s taut, powerful primer on the women’s liberation movement of the 1960s and ’70s focuses on the grassroots organizers who led the fights for equal pay, child care, and, of course, reproductive…

Of 53 tech-related companies that went public last year through an IPO or direct listing, all but three are now trading below their offer price (for IPOs) or opening price (for direct listings). More than half have tumbled by at least 50 percent, including high-profile names like Coinbase, Robinhood, and Rivian. CNBC.com Since the invasion of Ukraine, Russia has exported at least $65 billion worth of fossil fuels via shipments and pipelines. In the first quarter of 2022, the Russian government’s revenues from hydrocarbons rose by over 80 percent year on year. The Economist A silk-screen of the actress Marilyn Monroe by Andy Warhol sold at Christie’s for a record $195 million this week, becoming the most expensive American artwork ever sold at auction. It was the second-highest auction price…

Many people in the U.S. lack the legal and civic knowledge, skills, and confidence to effectively participate in public life. Since 1972, Street Law, Inc. (streetlaw.org) has been working to change that through classroom and community education programs. Street Law’s programs build knowledge of the law by training teachers and bringing law students into high school classrooms to teach practical legal skills. Street Law also runs legal training sessions and field trips with law firms and corporate legal departments, aiming to raise interest in the law as a career and create a diverse pipeline of future lawyers. Street Law’s international programs bring education about democracy and civic engagement to young people and marginalized populations abroad. Each charity we feature has earned a four-star overall rating from Charity Navigator, which…

Phred Dvorak and Katherine Blunt The Wall Street Journal A complaint from one small solar panel maker has thrown the entire U.S. solar industry into chaos, said Phred Dvorak and Katherine Blunt. In March, the Commerce Department opened an investigation into whether Chinese companies have been circumventing tariffs intended to help U.S. solar panel production. Because overseas makers worry that they could be hit retroactively with extra duties, the probe “has effectively halted most solar panel imports,” delaying projects all over the country. The fight started last year when a group of U.S. solar manufacturers filed a petition asking the U.S. to investigate tariff evasion. The petition was turned down when the manufacturers refused to reveal their names. Then one company went public with a complaint: Auxin Solar, a…

Kevin Samuels gave blunt lifestyle advice that more men and women should hear, his fans argued. To critics, the Black life coach could be cruel and misogynistic, spouting outdated views on gender roles. His YouTube videos—with titles such as “Women Should Let Men Use Them”—racked up over 295 million views. Known for being outspoken and favoring tailored suits, the twice-divorced Samuels began cultivating a social media following in the mid-2010s. “If you have made it to 35 and you are unmarried, you are a leftover woman,” Samuels said recently. “Men know that there is likely something wrong with you.” Samuels “had an early interest in fashion,” said The New York Times. He said that as a child, he “laid out my pajamas and made sure they were pressed.” After…

This week’s question: After their flight to Las Vegas was delayed, an eloping Oklahoma City couple enlisted the help of an ordained minister to get married midflight. If a new airline were to dedicate itself to providing onboard wedding ceremonies at 30,000 feet, what name could it adopt? Last week’s contest: A type of male spider that is often eaten by the female after mating has found a way to catapult itself away to safety moments after the act. Come up with a PG-rated term for this lifesaving maneuver. THE WINNER: “Sexit” Curtis Adney, Clovis, Calif. SECOND PLACE: “Deposit and Withdrawal” Greg Flaker, Columbia, Mo. THIRD PLACE: “The Itsy-Bitsy Splitsky” Art Rodia, Southbury, Conn. For runners-up and complete contest rules, please go to theweek.com/contest. How to enter: Submissions should…

Good week for: Queen Elizabeth II, after the British royal became the third-longest-reigning monarch in world history. The 96-year-old, who has ruled for more than 70 years, will soon move into the No. 2 slot, behind only King Louis XIV of France, who ruled for 72 years. Someone who’s very rich, after Andy Warhol’s 1964 painting Shot Sage Blue Marilyn sold for $195 million to an unknown buyer at auction. The iconic portrait of Monroe against a rich blue background is now the most expensive work by a U.S. artist ever sold at auction. Winging it, after the pilot of a private plane became incapacitated and a passenger with no flying experience safely landed the aircraft in Palm Beach, Fla. “Try to hold the wings level and see if you can…

Paris The lone survivor of a 2009 plane crash that killed 152 people attended the Paris trial of the airline this week. Bahia Bakari, who was 12 at the time, said she would watch the trial with both “apprehension” and “relief.” The Yemenia flight left from Paris and stopped in Marseille before landing in Sanaa, Yemen, where passengers and crew members boarded another plane to fly to Moroni, the capital of Africa’s Comoros islands. That plane crashed about 9 miles off the Comorian coast as it attempted to land in strong winds. “No one seemed worried,” said Bakari, now 25. “My mother just said to me, ‘Did you fasten your seat belt?’” Bakari floated in the sea for 11 hours clinging to debris before her rescue. Officials blamed the…

Sheryl Crow is famous for breezy earworms, said Caryn Ganz in The New York Times, but the singer of lyrics like “All I wanna do is have some fun” says her life has been messy. “A lot of people have preconceived notions about who I am based on some very happy-sounding songs,” says Crow, 60. Her career was troubled from the start. With money from singing a McDonald’s jingle, Crow drove to Los Angeles and got a job singing backup vocals on Michael Jackson’s Bad tour. On tour, tabloids falsely linked her romantically to Jackson. Later, she says, “in an industry dominated by men,” she fended off unwanted sexual advances. When her solo career took off in the 1990s, Crow became known for dating famous men. “So many things…

Fareed Zakaria The Washington Post The battle over abortion “may be the precursor to even larger struggles” between red and blue America, said Fareed Zakaria. Studies already show that the U.S. political divide is the “widest among rich countries surveyed.” Why? There are many causes, but the primary one is religion. Since 2007, the U.S. has secularized with astonishing rapidity, and now ranks as the 12th least religious country in the world. But that rapid change has created a “strong backlash” among Americans who are religious. In a 2018 Pew study that asked whether religion should play a larger role in their society, 71 percent of self-identified conservatives said “yes,” while just 29 percent of liberals agreed. That 42-point gap “was off the charts compared with other countries.” This…

“Opponents of abortion should commit ourselves to the most generous and humane provisions for mothers and children (paid family leave, generous child benefits, direct income subsidies for stay-at-home mothers, single-payer health care). In a post-Roe world, many children who would not otherwise have been born will live lives of utter misery, and many of our fellow Americans will be indifferent to their plight. If we wish to dispel the noxious argument that only happy lives are worth saving, we will have to be honest about the limits of social policy and private charity in regulating the turbid ebb and flow of human suffering.” Matthew Walther in The New York Times…

UNITED KINGDOM Clive Aslet The Telegraph As the weather warms, listen carefully for “the buzz and drone of insects,” said Clive Aslet. That hum was once the soundtrack to a British summer, but now “the air has emptied and fallen silent.” The statistics are horrifying: Since 2004, England has lost 65 percent of its insect population, according to the insect charity Buglife. “This is a catastrophic development,” and it’ll have a knock-on effect throughout our entire ecosystem. For instance, Britain’s “chalk streams”—globally rare rivers that form within nutrient-rich chalk bedrock—rely on the mayflies that provide a “feeding frenzy” for trout. But mayflies are sensitive to small temperature changes in the water, and if their numbers dwindle, our chalk streams could be “overtaken by less-welcome residents” like mosquitos. The biggest problem…

MEXICO Mario Patrón La Jornada Ángel Yael Ignacio Rangel was on his way to a residence near his university when he was “intercepted and executed” by the National Guard, said Mario Patrón. The agronomy student at the University of Guanajuato became the latest victim in a troublingly long list of murdered students when an agent, a veteran of the Mexican navy, opened fire, killing Ángel Yael and wounding his companion, Edith Alejandra. The National Guard has said its investigation is ongoing and vowed there would be “no impunity.” But we’ve heard that before. Two weeks ago, three students at the Autonomous University of Zacatecas were “murdered in two separate events,” while the University of Guadalajara reported a rape and three attempted kidnappings. This is what the militarization of security forces…

“No one has ever doubted that truth and politics are on rather bad terms with each other.”Hannah Arendt, quoted in The Washington Post “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.”George Orwell, quoted in Wonkette “A romantic relationship is a sort of delusion between two people.”Writer Sheila Heti, quoted in The Paris Review “Politics is the art of the possible.”Otto von Bismarck, quoted in The Atlantic “The errand of life is to be able to understand as many perspectives as you can.”John Darnielle, quoted in The New Yorker “Does one have to go through catastrophe to arrive at vision?”Artist Niki de Saint Phalle, quoted in the Los Angeles Review of Books “Let me be surrounded by luxury; I can do without the…

Going password-free You can soon forget your mother’s maiden name, said Boone Ashworth in Wired, because passwords are about to become a thing of the past. Apple, Google, and Microsoft each said last week they are committed to building a “password-less sign-on method” across all their platforms in the coming year. With the new system, “instead of asking you to enter a password, websites will push a notification to your phone that prompts you to verify your identity.” Simply authenticate the same way you normally use to unlock your phone, either via PIN, fingerprint, or facial recognition. In addition to convenience, proponents say password-less log-ins make life harder for hackers because remotely signing in will require access to a physical device. Period tracking and the abortion war Privacy experts…

A man in Colorado has become the first person in the U.S. to test positive for bird flu, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has announced. The virus, H5N1, has already been tearing through the country’s birds, leading to the culling of more than 22 million of them. The patient, an unidentified inmate at a state prison, was infected while culling poultry as part of a pre-release employment program, reports NPR.org. His only symptom was a few days of fatigue, he was treated with oseltamivir, sold as Tamiflu, and he made a full recovery. All the other inmates involved in the culling wore personal protective equipment, and none has since tested positive. The only other known human case of this H5 strain of the virus was in the…

In Dan Chaon’s new novel, Sleepwalk, an easygoing mercenary is pulled into a mystery when he’s contacted by a woman who claims to be his daughter. Below, the author of Ill Will and You Remind Me of Me recommends six other new books. French Braid by Anne Tyler (2022). This has already been a stellar year for books, with new work from greats like Jennifer Egan, Jean Thompson, and Marlon James. But I was particularly thrilled to see a new book from Anne Tyler, whose work I’ve loved since I read Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant in college. Tyler, now 80, weaves together the lives of a Baltimore family over decades, and her insights are as incisive, funny, and moving as ever. Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John…

    2 “Jack Harlow is the hottest rapper in the world right now,” said Kyann-Sian Williams in NME. The 25-year-old from Louisville has blown up in the two years since his 2020 single “Whats Poppin” went viral on TikTok. He’s performed at the Grammys, appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone, and vacationed with Drake in Turks and Caicos. He is also known for being a charismatic flirt, and his subdued second album has so many “soppy” songs about his love life that it grows monotonous. But he can string together rhymes for bar after bar, and Come Home “proves he’s great at it.” Harlow has “a laid-back, effortless style that appeals to a lot of people,” said Eric Skelton in Complex. But because his lyrics “don’t dig deep,”…

The recipe for these shrimp rolls, from Kay Chun, is the kind you want to memorize so that they can become a dinnertime standby, said Nikita Richardson in The New York Times. Think of it as three component parts: fried pepper-salt shrimp, a garlicky mayo, and a smattering of Fresno chiles and cilantro. The flavors are amazing and, “best of all, the sandwiches come together in about 15 minutes.” vegetable oil, for frying • ½ cup mayonnaise • ¼ tsp grated garlic • 1 tsp ground black pepper • ½ tsp kosher salt • 4 hot dog buns, preferably top-split • 1 lb peeled and deveined jumbo shrimp, tails removed • ¼ cup whole milk • 1 cup cornstarch • 2 Fresno chiles, thinly sliced • cilantro sprigs, for…

George Pérez breathed life into some of the biggest heroes in comic books. Over a career that spanned more than four decades, the Bronx-born artist earned legendary status among comics fans for his vivid, highly detailed drawings of superheroes that captured both their grandeur and their humanity. Among his signature achievements was reinventing Wonder Woman in the 1980s, injecting new life into an old franchise by returning the character to her origins in Greek mythology. At Marvel Comics in the mid-1970s, he drew acclaim for his nuanced renderings of The Avengers; in 1980 he cocreated The New Teen Titans, a series following a fledgling group of junior heroes that became one of the most successful franchises for DC Comics. He also created Marvel’s first Hispanic superhero, the White Tiger.…