The Week Magazine August 5, 2022

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: There’s a great investment we’ve learned about that will let you double your money every four years—guaranteed. How does it work? You lend money to people who will borrow it to make even more money. But you don’t need to look too closely at that, because, as you know, your gains are guaranteed. Pretty much. Oh, wait, you say you have heard this? It sounds like Bernie Madoff? Or swampland in Florida? Well, don’t worry about that. Because this time (say it with me) it’s different. This time, you see, it’s all digital. And that changes everything. Except of course it doesn’t, as Bitcoin “banks” like Celsius (see Making Money, p.33) are shutting down, leaving depositors with locked accounts scouring fine print…

What happened The Justice Department is investigating Donald Trump’s role in efforts to overturn the 2020 election, The Washington Post reported this week, days after the Jan. 6 commission completed nine hearings that laid out in great detail how Trump orchestrated a wide-ranging plot to stay in power. Federal prosecutors questioning witnesses before a grand jury, the Post said, have zeroed in on conversations Trump had with his lawyers and others in his inner circle, asking “hours of detailed questions” about Trump’s attempts to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to reject election results, and the president’s involvement in a scheme to choose fake electors from several swing states. Prosecutors reportedly have obtained phone records of top administration officials, including former chief of staff Mark Meadows. Attorney General Merrick Garland told…

What happened As Russia’s war on Ukraine dragged into its sixth month this week, Ukrainian troops fought back hard in the south, damaging a bridge in Kherson that had been an essential Russian supply line. Russian forces control most of the Donbas region in the east and the provinces of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in the south, where they have been exerting their rule by distributing Russian passports and rubles. But in addition to bombing the Antonovsky Bridge, Ukrainian troops have clawed back 15 percent of Kherson, and officials expect to retake its central city—Russia’s first major conquest—by September. Ukrainians are losing far fewer troops now, from between 100 and 200 per day to about 30 per day, partly because they have been using their 12 U.S.-supplied High Mobility Artillery…

Cheetahs were once prevalent in India—the word “cheetah” traces its origins to Sanskrit—but in 1952, they were officially declared because of habitat loss and hunting. Now, after two years of negotiations, eight cheetahs will be brought to the South Asian country’s Kuno-Palpur National Park. They’ll be followed by 42 more, all hailing from Namibia, over the next five years. Conservationists hope the cheetahs can adapt to the transition from Africa, where the great cats, which can run at 70 mph, hunted on open grasslands. Alena Analeigh Wicker is working toward two separate undergraduate degrees—a monumental task for anyone. But even more impressive is the fact that Alena, who was recently accepted into medical school at the University of Alabama, is only 13 years old. “What is age?” asked Alena. She’s…

If we have finally reached “endemic” Covid, said David Wallace Wells in The New York Times, it “looks pretty brutal.” An endemic disease is one that is stable within a population, like the flu, but Covid is actually evolving a new, hyperinfectious variant every two or three months. The latest—the Omicron BA.5 subvariant—this week drove new U.S. infections up to 140,000 reported cases per day, and the real number is likely closer to 1 million. That’s the most since the original Omicron surge in January. Most virologists would not call that level of infection endemic, but “in a vernacular sense,” the term may describe how Americans view where we are. Through vaccination and/or prior infection, more than 95 percent of Americans now have some immunity against Covid. The risk…

Good week for: President Biden, who tested negative after a six-day bout with Covid that included a fever, body aches, and congestion. Biden, 79, was treated with the antiviral drug Paxlovid, and his doctor said the president’s symptoms are “almost completely resolved.” Tigers, after a new study by the International Union for Conservation of Nature put the number of living wild tigers at 5,578—40 percent higher than previously believed. Tigers remain well within the “endangered” range, however. Leaving it at the office, after Republican Rep. Glenn Thompson attended his son’s wedding to another man three days after voting against a bill protecting same-sex marriages. Thompson was “thrilled to attend” the wedding, his staff said. Bad week for: Mime, after police charged Edward William Rodriguez of Florida with robbing his local…