Innehållsförteckning för December 3, 2021 från The Week Magazine

This week’s Last Word is about a group of McDonald’s workers in Bradford, Pa., who walked off the job en masse. The article, by Greg Jaffe, is the kind of immersive story that The Washington Post does very well; recently, we ran another piece in the same vein, about a family stuck in a FEMA trailer camp. In these stories, reporters embed themselves with their subjects and peel back layers of personal history, often interleaved with intense suffering. There are a few themes that tend to run through them. One is that the subjects almost invariably work just as hard—no, harder—than people higher on the economic ladder. Another is how the destruction of social bonds and links to family creates a vicious cycle that drives the subjects ever deeper…

■ Until now, naturalists had thought all wild descendants of Britain’s native honeybees had gone extinct, wiped out by invasive species and disease. That changed when bee conservationist Filipe Salbany discovered 50 colonies of rare forest honeybees on the 400-acre Blenheim estate. The bees appear to have adapted to cold temperatures, letting them survive in the oak forest. While DNA samples have yet to return, Salbany believes their wings and veins strongly suggest they are descendants “of an old English bee, of something that was here many, many years ago.” ■ When Abraham Olagbegi, 13, learned he qualified as a Make-A-Wish recipient, his mother, Miriam, asked him what he wanted most. His answer surprised her: “I really want to feed the homeless,” he said. Before he got sick with…

■ A Nevada man who claimed to have proof of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election has pleaded guilty to voter fraud. Donald Hartle, 55, a Republican, said last November that it was “sickening” to learn that someone had voted in his late wife Rosemarie’s name, suggesting it revealed widespread voter fraud. Hartle this week admitted using Rosemarie’s ballot to vote twice, and was sentenced to probation and a $2,000 fine. ■ Colorado’s Sex Offender Management Board has voted to replace the term “sex offender” with “adults who commit sexual offenses.” The new term comes from “person first” terminology, which advocates say is less stigmatizing. But prosecutor Jessica Dotter criticized the board for prioritizing “the self-image of sex offenders…over the devastating impact on victims’ lives.” In other news…

Emily Ratajkowski is reclaiming ownership of her body, said Andrea Long Chu in The New York Times. The supermodel rocketed to fame after appearing, naked save for a skin-colored thong, in Robin Thicke’s 2013 smash “Blurred Lines.” The song was criticized for endorsing so-called rape culture, and Ratajkowski says she was bewildered to find “the politics of my body suddenly being discussed and dissected by feminist thinkers and teenage boys alike.” And yet there was something familiar about the experience. Growing up in San Diego, Ratajkowski would often be stopped in the street by strangers who told her she should model—which she started to do at age 13. Her mother, she says, treated Ratajkowski’s beauty like a “like a piece of bequeathed jewelry” and took pride in how boys…

■ Model and cookbook author Chrissy Teigen was mocked last week for her poor taste in hosting a lavish Squid Game–themed party at her Beverly Hills mansion, with husband John Legend and other celebrity friends mimicking the South Korean Netflix show about poor people risking death for a chance at winning a huge amount of money. “My dream came true of watching my friends fight to the death!” Teigen, 35, wrote on Instagram. The underlying theme of Squid Game is wealth inequality, so celebrities playing the game in a mansion struck critics as “tone deaf.” Waiters dressed up as guards from the show, there was a large piggy bank stuffed with cash, and winners of Teigen’s contest reportedly won a trip to Napa Valley for dinner at the ritzy…

Reason.com Yes, the First Amendment even applies to James O’Keefe, said Jacob Sullum. “Widely despised by professional journalists,” the founder of the right-wing activist group Project Veritas is mired in a legal battle with The New York Times in connection with the FBI’s recent raid on O’Keefe’s home. The search was part of an investigation into the theft of a diary that belonged to President Biden’s daughter. Project Veritas claims that the Times has no right to publish its memos with its lawyers, and last week a judge agreed, ordering the Times to cease that reporting. Times editor Dean Baquet rightly called that ruling a form of “prior restraint” and an infringement on press freedom. But in the Times’ coverage of Project Veritas, the paper has suggested press freedom…

■ Pat Moorehead of Long Beach, Calif., celebrated his 90th birthday by jumping out of an airplane—nine times. While it might sound impressive, on his 80th, he made 81 jumps. The retired firefighter, who took up the sport at 37, has made nearly 6,700 lifetime jumps all over the world, including New Zealand, Jordan, and Japan. The nonagenarian prefers not to brag about his exploits. “A true skydiver doesn’t think what he’s doing is so special,” Moorehead said. “It’s just part of his life.” ■ Madonna’s former Miami mansion has been put on the market for $31 million by its owner: a dog. The pop star sold the eight bedroom property in 2000 to the trust of Gunther IV, a German shepherd, who passed it down to grandson Gunther…

Novaya Gazeta Russians and Ukrainians may be facing off on the real-world battlefield, said Ivan Sirin, but venture online and you’ll find them joined together in Slavic kinship. In e-sports—particularly multiplayer battle video games that pit rival teams against each other—fans from across the former Soviet Union “get together, hang flags, and cheer” for any Russian-speaking team, irrespective of its home nation. Our fervor isn’t nationalist as, say, soccer fandom is—even if politicians don’t always understand that. In October, Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulated Moscow-based Team Spirit for winning the Dota 2 International tournament, calling them the “first Russian squad” to gain the title. But in fact, Team Spirit’s current lineup includes two Ukrainians alongside the three Russians. Likewise, the Ukraine-based Natus Vincere has three Russians and three…

■ More than 100,000 Americans died of drug overdoses between April 2020 and April 2021, according to National Center for Health Statistics data—a 30 percent increase from the previous year. Powerful synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, which is often added to other illicit drugs, accounted for most of the deaths. Fatal overdoses have more than doubled since 2015. The New York Times ■ Only 100 of the 28,000 Afghans who have applied for humanitarian parole, which allows refugees temporary residence in the U.S., have been accepted so far, federal officials say. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services says it’s struggling with a massive backlog of people to screen. That backlog comes on top of the 73,000 Afghans airlifted out of Kabul by the U.S. after the country fell to the…

“Invest in inflation. It’s the only thing going up.” Will Rogers, quoted in USA Today “Regrets are as personal as fingerprints.” Author Margaret Culkin Banning, quoted in Forbes.com “It’s important to remember that you’re born naked, and the rest is drag.” Entertainer RuPaul, quoted in the Montreal Gazette “Until you’ve lost your reputation, you never realize what a burden it was or what freedom really is.” Margaret Mitchell, quoted in Lapham’s Quarterly “All stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true storyteller who would keep that from you.” Ernest Hemingway, quoted in the Hagerstown, Md., Herald-Mail “Mystery is not the absence of meaning, but the presence of more meaning than we can comprehend.” Theologian Eugene Peterson, quoted in the Pittsburgh City Paper “If you…

The treadmill video wars NordicTrack is battling customers who hacked its treadmills to watch Netflix and take Zoom calls, said Matt Burgess in Wired.com. The best part of NordicTrack’s $4,000 X32i treadmill, some runners say, is its 32-inch high definition screen. The machine is designed to serve up the company’s own videos of exercise classes and running routes. But some users figured out they could override the software to access “the underlying Android operating system,” sideload apps, and even install third party browsers to fire up videos they want to watch while exercising. NordicTrack began automatically updating its exercise equipment in October to block access to “privilege mode.” The move has put NordicTrack “at the center of the right-to-repair debate,” over how much control consumers should have over tech…

Drinking tea or coffee in the morning is associated with a lower risk for stroke and dementia, a new study suggests. Researchers from Tianjin Medical University in China examined health data for more than 360,000 people in Britain. Compared with those who drank neither tea nor coffee, the participants who said they had two to three cups of coffee and two to three cups of tea a day—so, four to six cups in total—had a 28 percent reduced risk of dementia and a 32 percent lower risk of stroke. The risk for both diseases was also lower for those who had two to three cups of coffee daily, or three to five cups of tea. The study, which adds to recent research showing similar associations for ailments such as…

(Penguin, $30) Will Smith’s new memoir is “a fairy tale of dazzling good fortune—albeit one told by a narrator who admits by the second chapter that he is a lifelong embellisher,” said Alexandra Jacobs in The New York Times. What’s real is wild enough: Born into a middle-class West Philadelphia family in 1968, Smith was still in high school when he and a new friend scored their first rap hit as DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince. By 21, Smith was starring in a network sitcom custom-built for his charisma and embarking on an acting career that would make him, in his 30s, Hollywood’s most bankable star. Smith, now 53, doesn’t often lose in these pages. He comes across, for better and worse, as “a workaholic and a…

Nikole Hannah-Jones is getting used to being a lightning rod, said Alexis Okeowo in Vanity Fair. Ever since she launched The 1619 Project, a New York Times Magazine series that put slavery at the center of America’s origin story, the Iowa-born journalist has faced relentless criticism. In early 2020, amid the pandemic lockdown, she obsessed over the social media blowback and began drinking too much. But she had supporters too. In May 2020, she won a Pulitzer Prize for the series’ lead essay. This July, she sidestepped controversy over one university appointment by accepting a prestigious post at Howard University. Along the way, she chose to shake off the negativity and pour her energy into ensuring that the book version of The 1619 Project, out now, would answer the…

George Harrison: Living in the Material World One of the tensest moments in the docuseries Get Back occurs when George Harrison quits the Beatles—briefly—in the middle of a recording session. Martin Scorsese’s cradle-to-grave 2011 portrait of the least celebrated Beatle makes a strong case for celebrating him. HBO Max Gimme Shelter The Rolling Stones’ disastrous 1969 concert at California’s Altamont Speedway will always be remembered as an event that brought down the curtain on the love in spirit of the Woodstock era. Much of that owes to the Maysles brothers’ 1970 documentary. $3 on demand Metallica: Some Kind of Monster What if, instead of breaking up, the Beatles went to therapy? It worked for Metallica, the heavy metal band that lost a bassist and sent frontman James Hetfield to…

The best new restaurants of the past 18 months “have one thing in common: tenacity,” said Hillary Dixler Canavan in Eater.com. The pandemic tested everyone in the food world, and some of the survivors even reimagined what dining out could be. Dhamaka New York City Chef Chintan Pandya is “redefining Indian restaurants in America,” and his latest venture, an homage to rural fare, was an instant hit. “Dhamaka brings crowds but doesn’t pander to them,” turning a $190 rabbit feast and specialties such as chile-laced goat testicles into crowd-pleasers. Kasama Chicago Why can’t a restaurant be part French pastry shop, part Filipino gastropub? The husband-wife duo who run humble Kasama play to their individual strengths. Genie Kwon makes jamón-topped Danish. Tim Flores has created a “musttry” Chicago sandwich by…

■ A traditional Thanksgiving meal cost about 14 percent more this year than it did in 2020. A 16-pound turkey cost nearly $24, almost $5 more than the average price a year ago, while the sides for the “classic” Thanksgiving meal totaled roughly $29. Axios.com ■ Existing-home sales are on track to surpass 6 million this year, which would be the strongest annual pace since 2006. The typical home sold in October was on the market for just 18 days. However, higher prices are scaring off some buyers; the median existing-home price rose 13.1 per cent in October from a year earlier, to $353,900. The Wall Street Journal ■ Fifty-one percent of Americans say they have dipped into their retirement accounts early to take a withdrawal, including 20 percent…

A United Nations report found that as many as 811 million people are suffering from hunger around the world, an increase of 121 million people from 2019 driven largely by the Covid-19 pandemic, conflict, and climate shocks. For 40 years, Action Against Hunger (actionagainsthunger.org) has been on the front lines of the global war on hunger. The nonprofit has 8,300 dedicated staff members in more than 45 countries. They work to increase the number of children who are screened and treated for undernutrition, help small-scale farmers increase production and build sustainable food markets, and rush supplies to the victims of humanitarian and natural disasters. Last year alone, Action Against Hunger’s services helped more than 25 million people. Each charity we feature has earned a four-star overall rating from Charity…

The New York Times “One of the great promises of technology is that it can do the work that humans find too boring,” said Kevin Roose. So instead of mustering the willpower to write my own review of The Age of AI, a new book about artificial intelligence by Henry A. Kissinger, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, and MIT scholar Daniel Huttenlocher, I decided to see if a computer could do it for me. I fired up Sudowrite, a writing program that uses GPT-3, an AI system that will take the beginning of a piece and try to complete it “using everything it has learned from ingesting billions of examples of writing.” After I input the first few paragraphs of my review, the computer took over. “One of the…

Mick Rock was often called “the man who shot the ’70s.” The British photographer was one of rock music’s most acclaimed portraitists for more than 50 years, but it was among that decade’s flamboyant, decadent artists that he made his greatest mark. Among his best-known images are a shirtless Iggy Pop gazing skyward on the cover of the LP Raw Power (1973), a washed-out Lou Reed on Transformer (1973), and the dark, shadowed images of Queen on Queen II (1974). His most enduring subject was David Bowie, captured by Rock in scores of striking shots during his androgynous Ziggy Stardust period. Rock said he gained an edge by indulging in the rock ’n’ roll lifestyle he chronicled. “I’ve lived a very wild life because I’ve been hanging out with…

Wilbur Smith said he wrote what he knew—a bold claim, considering his Africa-based novels were packed with lantern-jawed heroes, gem-hunting mercenaries, and lusty romances. Yet Smith, who grew up in Africa in the twilight of imperialism and was the descendant of British colonists, was not entirely boasting. He shot his first lion at age 13—the first in a long line of big-game kills—and in later life would trek across the desert on a camel, work in a gold mine, and swim with sharks. The author of 49 books that have sold more than 140 million copies, Smith regarded writing as just another exercise in machismo. “It’s not a game for sissies,” he advised young hopefuls. “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, and then try some more.” Smith…

San Francisco Bay Area Robbery spree: Police were looking for dozens of suspects this week, after three nights of seemingly coordinated smash-and-grab robberies targeting Bay Area retailers. The first night, thieves hit at least 10 stores in San Francisco’s Union Square shopping district—including Louis Vuitton, Yves Saint Laurent, Burberry, and multiple cannabis dispensaries—reportedly stealing more than $1 million in merchandise. The next night, roughly 80 people rushed into a Nordstrom department store in Walnut Creek, grabbing bags, luggage, and other items before speeding off in two dozen cars. Three Nordstrom employees were assaulted, including one who was pepper-sprayed, and all but three of the burglars escaped. The third night, a group of hammer carrying thieves smashed glass while robbing a jewelry store in Hayward. Critics of progressive San Francisco…

Dennis Rodman is still learning how to express himself, said Mychal Denzel Smith in GQ. The rebounding stalwart on Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls, Rodman is today remembered less for his basketball gifts than for his tattoos and piercings, colorfully dyed hair, and nonstop partying and womanizing—he once claimed to have slept with 2,000 women. “They had bets in Vegas when I was 40 years old about what year I was going to die,” says Rodman, now 60. “You go in and say, ‘Oh, 10 to 1 Dennis Rodman is going to die this year.’” In recent years, Rodman has reflected on the pain that he was running from, mainly his loveless childhood. His appropriately named father, Philander, a serial cheater, walked out when Dennis was 3, and his mother…

Bloomberg.com Not all conspiracy theories are crazy, said Stephen Carter. Ever since Black activist Malcolm X was assassinated in Manhattan in 1965, there has been “a considerable body of evidence” that two of the three men convicted in the killing, Muhammad Aziz and Khalil Islam, “had been railroaded.” Last week, Manhattan’s top prosecutor responded to evidence compiled by the Innocence Project and exonerated Aziz, now 83, and Islam, who died in 2009. The evidence for their innocence has existed for decades: A defendant who admitted shooting Malcolm X said as far back as 1966 that Aziz and Islam were not involved, and the FBI buried information pointing to other suspects. Both men had credible alibis placing them elsewhere. But there are so many “wrong man” conspiracies about the killing…

Libération France’s leading dictionary has added a gender neutral pronoun, said Eva Moysan, and our politicians are freaking out. Some members of the nonbinary community feel uncomfortable identifying as male and using il for he, or presenting as female and using elle for she. So, in recent years they have begun referring to themselves with the hybrid pronoun iel. Le Robert, the authority on French usage, added that term to its online edition last month, with the dictionary’s editors saying that including a definition of any new word in use is helpful. Outrage ensued. Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer thundered that “inclusive writing is not the future of the French language,” while Brigitte Macron—wife of President Emmanuel Macron and a former schoolteacher—declared, “Two pronouns is good.” Such comments “demonstrate a…

■ 43% of Americans approve of the jury’s decision to find Kyle Rittenhouse not guilty of all charges in the shooting of three men. 39% disapprove. The verdict divided people along partisan lines, with 71% of Republicans and just 31% of Democrats approving. Among independents, 33% approved and 38% disapproved. Morning Consult ■ 61% of Americans say the Supreme Court is mainly motivated by the politics of the justices, while 32% say it’s mainly motivated by their reading of the law. Quinnipiac University…

Facebook has designed “haptic gloves” that are intended to let users feel objects in CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s promised “metaverse,” said Adi Robertson in TheVerge.com. The company’s research division has been working on the gloves since 2014. They are “lined with 15 ridged and inflatable plastic pads known as actuators” along the palm and fingertips. The pads inflate to “create pressure on different parts of your hand” depending on what you may be touching in virtual reality, producing “the sensation of that object pressing into your skin.” The gloves draw on “soft robotics,” in which bulky motors are replaced with “tiny air valves” for nimbleness. There are still limitations: The gloves offer only “a sense of an object’s contours” and are not yet capable of producing finer distinctions or textures.…

At least half of all people who survive Covid-19 go on to suffer so-called long Covid symptoms for six months or more after their initial recovery, according to new research. Scientists carried out a systematic review of 57 studies that covered more than 250,000 adults and children who were diagnosed with the disease, reports The Washington Post. They found that more than half of survivors reported a decline in general well-being, resulting in weight loss, fatigue, fever, or pain. A fifth experienced decreased mobility, a quarter said they had difficulty concentrating or thinking, a similar number had breathing problems, and nearly a third were diagnosed with anxiety. Other common health issues among Covid “long haulers” include cardiovascular problems, such as chest pain and palpitations, as well as diarrhea and…

The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell (2019). A can’t-look-away psychological thriller about three families living in the same house on the banks of the Thames. Bad things happen (really bad things), and some people don’t come out alive. This twisty, suspenseful tale had me cringing and wanting more. It’s a read-in-one-sitting kind of book—you’ve been warned. The Need by Helen Phillips (2019). This book is somehow both horrifying and beautiful. Molly is a paleobotanist who unearths strange artifacts at the dig site where she works. Soon, she finds her life thrust upside down, with a stranger in her house and reasons to question her own identity. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever read before: mesmerizing, tragic, and unforgettable. The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton (2014). Burton has a way of spinning…

Adele 30 “Adele has never sounded more ferocious,” said Rob Sheffield in Rolling Stone. The British belter has been singing about big feelings since she debuted in 2008. But in the six years since she released 25, the world’s best-selling album in that time, Adele entered her 30s and split with her husband. The queen of heartbreak has now returned with her “most powerful record yet.” Somehow, “her vocals have gotten even more expressive,” exhibiting greater suppleness “without sacrificing any of the primal firepower that made her famous in the first place.” And though 30 is fueled by turbulent emotions, it isn’t an angry album. “It’s the sound of a woman who suffered through a horrific crisis without losing her soul, her passion, or her sense of humor.” Adele…

The new Broadway musical about the Princess of Wales “may well win the prize as the tawdriest wholesaling of a supposedly true story ever to belt its way to Broadway,” said Jesse Green in The New York Times. Spanning 16 years of Diana’s tragedy-shortened life, this “aesthetically and morally mortifying” production includes such ghoulish touches as a menacing gang of singing paparazzi and a mock boxing match between Diana and royal mistress Camilla Parker Bowles. Diana, the Musical criticizes the press hounds who harassed Diana even as it “matches them for exploitation,” said Peter Marks in The Washington Post. “As with the car crash that took her life, the most appropriate response to Diana, the Musical is to look away.”…

Don’t wait until Dec. 25 to drink bubbly at the dinner table, said Zachary Sussman in PunchDrink.com. From Catalonian pétnats to Italian Franciacortas, “we have more fizzy options at our disposal than ever before.” The affordable examples below are “the sort of all-purpose bottles you won’t regret keeping in rotation.” Sidónio de Sousa Branco Bairrada Brut Nature ($16). A Champagne-style sparkler from Portugal, this blend of three native grapes “packs more complexity into a sub-$20 package than anyone could reasonably expect.” Vigneto Saetti ‘RossoViola’ ($23). This blackberry-and licorice-infused red sparkler from Italy’s Emilia-Romagna region “may very well be the platonic ideal of old-school, artisanal Lambrusco.” Mirco Mariotti ‘Sèt e Mèz’ ($22). Made from the obscure fortana grape, this “singular” frizzante rosé from Emilia-Romagna has “a tangy strawberry brightness” but…

This week’s question: The tight labor market and concerns over Covid have created a shortage of Santas, leaving malls and other businesses scrambling to find bearded men in red suits, who can charge up to $200 an hour. In seven words or fewer, please come up with the title of an economic study about the disruptions in the Santa market. Last week’s contest: A proposed $1.5 billion dormitory at the University of California, Santa Barbara, designed by billionaire investor Charlie Munger, is being compared to an 11-story prison, because 94 percent of the tiny rooms have no windows. In seven words or fewer, please come up with a snappy slogan to persuade students to move into “Dormzilla.” THE WINNER: “We make education pane-less” Gerald Gornik, La Verne, Calif. SECOND…

Free beer, after environmental officials confirmed that a small creek in Waipio, Hawaii, reported to smell “like beer” did in fact contain 1.2 percent alcohol due to runoff from a local brewery. Gay men, who earn undergraduate and post-graduate degrees at a higher rate than any other demographic, according to a new study. American gay men, said Professor Joel Mittleman of Notre Dame University, have “the highest college completion rate in the world.” Pancake eaters, with the announcement by the Quebec Maple Syrup Producers organization, known as “the OPEC of maple syrup,” that it is responding to the ongoing global syrup shortage by releasing 50 million pounds of syrup from its “strategic reserve.” Bad week for: Real-time reviews, after a motel manager in Helen, Ga., evicted a woman and…

Melissa Etheridge has been through hell during the pandemic, said Simon Hattenstone in The Guardian (U.K.). The singer’s 21-year-old son, Beckett, died 18 months ago from an opioid overdose—he had become addicted to painkillers following an earlier snowboarding accident. Beckett had inherited the looks of his biological father, singer-songwriter David Crosby, who was a sperm donor for Etheridge and her former partner Julie Cypher. Crosby, a recovering addict, has agonized over the idea that Beckett may also have inherited his addictive tendencies. But Etheridge, 60, doesn’t blame Crosby. “Everybody has choices,” she says. “It’s nobody’s fault.” Beckett had moved to Colorado, where he was able to snowboard and mountain bike despite his dependency. “I thought he was going to be happy, but the pandemic was really hard on him.…

The Washington Post The right-wing push for “parental choice” is headed in “disturbing directions,” said Michael Gerson. In an overreaction to exaggerated claims that kids are being indoctrinated in “critical race theory” in all public schools, North Dakota recently outlawed any teaching that suggests “racism is systemically embedded in American society and the American legal system to facilitate racial inequality.” How do teachers operate under such constraints? The ban rules out discussing the “zoning and lending practices that have maintained white neighborhoods,” or systems of policing and imprisonment that have disproportionately targeted Black people. Some evangelical Christians also are demanding the right to censor all “sexual education they find disturbing.” Now there’s even growing opposition to schools employing mental health professionals, on the nonsensical theory that students should be…

“Social media have turned large swaths of our personal lives into platforms for pseudo-celebrity performance, where we display ourselves and observe others without really connecting. The internet has also come to mediate different parts of our real-world experience (from dating to calling a taxi to getting food at a restaurant) in ways that have let more people live as functional loners, meeting their needs with a minimum of eye contact or interpersonal risk. And countless younger Americans dissipate their erotic energies in similar seemingly riskless substitutes for human contact, particularly video games and pornography.” Yuval Levin in TheDispatch.com…

Mail on Sunday The U.S. is holding a British citizen in inhumane conditions, said Sarah Vine. Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime companion of financier and convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, may well be guilty of procuring underage girls for sex with Epstein and his powerful friends. Her trial began last week, and if it ends in a conviction, she deserves a long prison sentence. Until that point, however, the 59-year-old publishing heiress is supposed to enjoy the presumption of innocence. Yet for the past 16 months, Maxwell has been treated “like a convicted criminal.” She has been held in solitary confinement in New York City’s “notorious” Metropolitan Detention Center, stuck in a “10-foot by 12-foot prison cell with an open sewer for a toilet and a rat for company.” She claims…

Haaretz Israel is a “world anomaly” in assuming that all of its men want children, whether they are alive to raise them or not, said Yael Hashiloni-Dolev and Zvi Triger. Take the recent case of Israeli border patrol officer Barel Shmueli, who was shot dead by a Palestinian gunman during last summer’s Gaza riots. Shmueli’s parents are petitioning the government to pass a law that would allow them to use their son’s harvested sperm to father a child with a surrogate. The request sounds unusual, but in Israel, there have been dozens of court cases since the 1990s involving parents or widows of fallen soldiers making similar requests, and many are successful. Every few years, such a case raises calls for blanket legalization of the practice. The underlying…

Joe Biden is going for gold in “geopolitical jousting,” said Stephen Collinson in CNN.com. The United States is reportedly ready to “mount a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics” in protest of China’s many human rights abuses. Biden still plans to send American athletes to February’s Games, but would pull the entire official U.S. diplomatic delegation, thereby depriving Chinese leader Xi Jinping of “some of the glory of hosting the world’s top leaders at a glittering gathering.” A diplomatic boycott is the least Biden can do, said Jim Geraghty in NationalReview.com. China has locked Uighur Muslims in genocidal re-education camps, blocked investigations into the origins of Covid-19, “cracked down further on Hong Kong,” and “disappeared” tennis star Peng Shuai after she accused a former vice premier of sexual…

House Democrats have delivered on “a key pillar of President Biden’s domestic agenda,” said Clare Foran in CNN.com. The House passed the Build Back Better bill last week on a 220-213 vote despite unanimous GOP opposition. The sweeping, $1.9 trillion bill delivers “on long-standing Democratic priorities,” providing universal pre-K, extending a child tax credit that pays most parents up to $300 a month per child, increasing Pell Grants for needy college students, expanding Medicare to pay for some home care for seniors, and allotting $550 billion to address climate change. It offsets costs with a 15 percent minimum tax on large corporations, a tax surcharge on the wealthiest Americans, and an IRS funding increase projected to yield at least $207 billion in revenues. The Congressional Budget Office estimated the…

Something peculiar is happening to sensitive bird species in the Brazilian Amazon: They’re shrinking in size and growing longer wings. A study that looked at 77 species of birds in the region found that all weighed less today than they did four decades ago, and that about 80 percent of the species had developed longer than-average wingspans. The researchers aren’t entirely sure what’s driving these body changes, but their analysis points to a familiar culprit: climate change. In total, the team examined the weights of 14,842 birds and the wing lengths of 11,582. When they paired this data with temperature and precipitation records from the past 50 years, they found a correlation: The birds tended to become lighter after a hot, dry spell. Interestingly, the changes in climate appeared…

(Bloomsbury, $27) Elif Shafak “understands the interconnectedness of all things great and small,” said Claire Messud in Harper’s. The Turkish novelist’s latest spans decades, cutting between a London teenager grieving her mother and 1974 Cyprus, when Turkey’s invasion tore her parents apart for more than 25 years. Shafak leavens the darkness of the story with a magical realist streak—even entrusting a large share of the narration to a fig tree that grew in London from a Cypriot cutting and “serves as a bridge between characters, times, and places.” The effect of this unusual literary device is mixed, said Leone Ross in TheGuardian.com. The conceit works when the tree is describing the complex ecosystem that sustains it, but the tree also expresses human feelings, such as love and jet lag,…

The Correspondents by Judith Mackrell (Doubleday, $30) The six World War II journalists profiled in this engaging book were “a formidable bunch,” said Caroline Moorehead in The Wall Street Journal. Martha Gellhorn, Lee Miller, Sigrid Schultz, and the others were “bold to the point of recklessness, resourceful, inquisitive, crusading, and utterly determined.” Though their stories sometimes “merge and blur,” The Correspondents puts across “a powerful picture of the overwhelming struggle these women were forced to endure to make themselves heard.” Miss Dior by Justine Picardie (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $40) Fashion designer Christian Dior had a little-known muse, said Rachel Cooke in TheGuardian.com. The original “Miss Dior,” his heroic sister Catherine, was a Resistance member during World War II. Arrested, tortured, and sent to a concentration camp in 1944,…

“Robert Plant and Alison Krauss are masters at dusting off generations-old tracks and making them saunter to a fresh, personal rhythm,” said Olivia Lane in Pitchfork.com. Fourteen years after their first collaboration won an Album of the Year at the Grammys, the former Led Zeppelin frontman and the acclaimed bluegrass singer have dug up another collection of excellent folk, country, and soul songs and put a dark, spacey spin on each of them. With T Bone Burnett producing again, Raise the Roof opens with an ardent cover of a song by the contemporary Tejano band Calexico and peaks with the late pairing of the record’s only original, “High and Lonesome,” and a cover of a Merle Haggard–Dean Holloway ballad in which Krauss delivers her “most empyreal moment.” Despite the…

FAO Schwarz Castle Blocks The 75-piece set of blocks that built this castle will encourage years of creative play. $28, amazon.com Source: Wirecutter.com Cinnamon Annie This “soft, squeezable” rag doll might have to be your first gift purchase for 2022. Each one is hand cut and sewn by a former Atlanta schoolteacher—which takes time. $85, stepstitches.com Source: OprahDaily.com Brio Pinball Challenge This new tabletop game is “pinball with a twist.” Each player tries to score on the other’s goal, and the spinning yellow paddlewheels add an element of chance. $60, brio.us Source: Fatherly.com Rock and Roll It Rainbow Piano Mukikim’s roll-up keyboard goes anywhere a kid goes. Settings include piano, violin, and full orchestra. $60, mukikim.com Source: NYMag.com Purrble You can’t help but pet a Purrble. Its heart races…

Ford and the fledgling EV maker Rivian canceled plans to collaborate on an electric vehicle, said Mike Colias in The Wall Street Journal. The two companies said last week the decision to back out of an agreement struck in 2019 was “mutual” after they had each elected “to focus on their own projects.” The split with Ford comes less than two weeks after Rivian made its public debut on the markets with a blockbuster offering that raised $13.7 billion—“pushing Rivian’s valuation past that of both Ford and General Motors” even though Rivian has almost no revenue. Ford retains a 12 percent stake in the company. Covid: Disney World rolls back vaccine mandate Disney World put its vaccination requirement on hold after Florida effectively blocked corporate vaccine mandates, said Bryan…

The disappearing estate tax Revenue from the estate tax has been sliced in half in two years, said Ben Steverman in Bloomberg.com. “Just 1,275 wealthy families paid $9.3 billion in estate tax in 2020,” according to the IRS’s latest data release. As recently as 2018, the agency had collected more than $20 billion from nearly 5,500 families, and it averaged $17.9 billion in revenue in the four years before that. But “the dramatic decline is largely the result of the tax overhaul enacted by Republicans in 2017, which doubled the amount that wealthy couples can pass to heirs without triggering the levy” to $23.4 million. “The modern estate tax was introduced in 1916 to help counter the growth of dynastic wealth.” Since 2016, U.S. billionaires have doubled their collective…

Bloomberg.com Amazon’s standoff with Visa is a sign of things to come, said Paul Davies. Last week, the e-commerce giant stunned consumers in the U.K. by announcing it will stop accepting Visa credit cards next year. Amazon wouldn’t say precisely what caused it to turn to the nuclear option of blocking Visa, maintaining only that Visa was “more intransigent than other payment services in negotiations to reduce costs over time.” While Visa has delayed raising its fees because of the pandemic, they have been creeping upward for years, and Visa now says it plans to raise the fee that merchants pay for online transactions from $1.90 to $1.99 for every $100 spent. Walmart and Kroger have had deadlocks with Visa over fees in the past. But today, “payment technology…

To his students at Bard College, Justus Rosenberg was a beloved professor of literature and a dedicated mentor. Few knew that the tweed jacket–wearing academic, a faculty member at the Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., school for nearly 60 years, was also a World War II hero. In France, Rosenberg had been a key member of a U.S.-backed effort to spirit some 2,000 refugees out of Nazi Europe, among them leading intellectuals, writers, and artists, including Hannah Arendt, Marc Chagall, and André Breton. Rosenberg shepherded his illustrious charges across the Pyrenees to neutral Spain, narrowly escaped deportation to a Polish concentration camp, and later joined the French Resistance and fought alongside the U.S. Army, which gave him a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart. Rosenberg didn’t talk about his exploits extensively until…