Innehållsförteckning för August 19, 2022 från The Week Magazine

Vladimir Putin is holding Brittney Griner hostage. The women’s basketball star is a center for the Phoenix Mercury who—because WNBA players are chronically underpaid—plays in the off season for a Russian team in Yekaterinburg. She’s made huge contributions to both U.S. and Russian sports, and has never failed a drug test. But when Moscow authorities caught her at the airport with less than a gram of cannabis oil, a prescribed medication that the 6-foot-9 athlete uses for chronic pain, they saw an opportunity to treat the American like a drug dealer. She was sentenced to nine years (see The World at a Glance, p.9). To free her, U.S. officials have offered to trade Viktor Bout, a notorious Russian arms dealer now in federal prison for selling weapons to Colombian rebels,…

What happened China this week continued its largest-ever military exercises around Taiwan, punishing the island for hosting U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Calling Pelosi’s visit last week “malicious and provocative,” Beijing unleashed a barrage of missiles, some flying directly over Taiwan and landing in Taiwanese and Japanese waters. For four days, it conducted a simulated blockade of the island with live-fire drills involving some 200 planes and 40 ships, and then it began a round of anti-submarine and sea-assault exercises. In addition to staging the ongoing military display, China said it would put sanctions on Pelosi and her family. It also suspended talks with the U.S. on climate change, drug trafficking, and other transnational issues, and closed some communications channels between its military and the Pentagon. During her daylong…

Lions Not Sheep, a Utah-based company that sells apparel emblazoned with pro-Trump, pro-gun slogans, has paid a $211,335 fine for replacing the “Made in China” tags on its clothing with “Made in the USA” tags. Under a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission, the company must notify all customers of its deception—including purchasers of its “Let’s Go Brandon” cap and “Give Violence a Chance” T-shirt. The residents of New York’s prisons must be called “incarcerated individuals” instead of “inmates” or “prisoners,” under a new law. “We as a society have thought of incarcerated individuals as less than people,” said Democratic State Sen. Gustavo Rivera, who sponsored the bill. “The use of the word ‘inmate’ further dehumanizes and demoralizes them.” In other news Trump takes the Fifth in N.Y. deposition Former…

Maria Bakalova had long dreamed of being a serious actress, said Hunter Harris in New York magazine, but her breakout role was in a Borat movie. Growing up in Bulgaria, she was obsessed with the brooding films of Danish director Lars von Trier. But in the credits of films she liked, “there were not a lot of Eastern European names like mine,” says Bakalova, now 26. “So I was like, Huh, so that’s never going to happen.” So she sent an audition tape to the makers of Borat Subsequent Moviefilm; when they invited her to London for a screen test, she half-expected it to be “a human-trafficking situation.” She was cast as Tutar, Borat’s mischievous teenage daughter who suggestively lures Rudy Giuliani into a hotel room, where he’s seen…

Kim Kardashian and Pete Davidson have broken up, ending a nine-month romance that generated enormous attention and triggered taunts and threats from Kardashian’s ex-husband Kanye West. Kardashian, 41, and the former Saturday Night Live cast member, 28, reportedly split over their age difference and competing priorities while Kardashian raises four children in Southern California. “Pete is totally spontaneous and impulsive and wants her to fly to New York, or wherever he is, on a moment’s notice,” a source told the New York Post. “Kim is a really dedicated mother, and her kids will always come first.” Davidson, who’s been shooting a film in Australia, also has spoken of wanting kids of his own. After news broke of their split, West posted a mock front page of The New York…

Zachary Faria Washington Examiner If you’re a Republican who hates seeing the Biden administration pushing through lots of big-spending progressive legislation, said Zachary Faria, you can blame Donald Trump. The Senate is 50-50 mainly because Republicans lost both Georgia run-off elections in January 2021, when “Trump was still throwing a temper tantrum” over his defeat in November. He told Georgia voters that their elections were “rigged,” discouraging them from voting, and in campaign appearances virtually ignored the Republican candidates while berating Republican state officials for not overturning the election. With many disgusted Trump voters staying home, Democrats pulled a shocker and won both races. If not for Trump, Joe Biden would have entered office with a 52-48 Senate that would have stymied most of his plans. That Trump fiasco followed…

A 58-year-old woman was charged with driving a golf cart down Florida’s busiest interstate highway while carrying an open bottle of Jack Daniel’s. A truck driver saw Diane Hawk “passing out while driving” in the center lane of Interstate 95 in Brevard County, police said. The trucker used her semi to guide the cart onto the shoulder, then grabbed the keys from the protesting driver. Hawk was charged with disorderly intoxication. A celebrated French physicist caused an online furor by tweeting a purported image of a “distant star” taken by the James Webb Space Telescope, which in reality depicted an illuminated slice of chorizo. Étienne Klein praised the “level of detail” in the star photo to his more than 91,000 followers, but after thousands of comments and retweets, he admitted…

RUSSIA Silvia Stöber Tagesschau (Germany) Russia has lost tens of thousands of troops on the front lines in Ukraine, said Silvia Stöber, but the Kremlin doesn’t want to risk a domestic outcry by calling up its reserves to replenish the ranks. Instead, our investigation has found, Moscow has been “recruiting contract soldiers” from the prison system and from far-right militias, who are “lured with higher than usual pay.” The Defense Ministry has been drawing on the networks of Wagner Group, the paramilitary force led by an ally of Vladimir Putin that has become notorious for torturing and killing civilians in Africa. Wagner recruiters have lowered their standards to supply cannon fodder for Ukraine; now, “not even drug tests are carried out before duty.” The Russian military has even partnered with…

Firearms used in crimes in states with strong gun restrictions are often brought in from states with loose restrictions, such as Georgia, Texas, and Florida, federal data shows. In Massachusetts, 79 percent of the guns connected to criminal investigations came from out of state in 2020, up from 63 percent in 2015.The Wall Street Journal The number of Americans without health insurance hit a record low of 8 percent at the beginning of the year, according to an analysis by the Department of Health and Human Services. More than 5 million people have gained coverage since 2020, the department estimates, due to expanded premium subsidies and increased outreach to help people enroll in Obamacare plans.USA Today At least 12 states have passed laws expanding “safe haven” laws for surrendering infants,…

“It’s very hard to find someone who’s successful and dislikes what they do. Except if they’re a lawyer.”Malcolm Gladwell, quoted in Elle “Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down.”Oprah Winfrey, quoted in The Augusta Chronicle “When you strike at a king, you must kill him.”Ralph Waldo Emerson, quoted in the Financial Times “It is always a risk to speak to the press: They are likely to report what you say.”Hubert Humphrey, quoted in Politico “To be loving is to be open to grief, to be touched by sorrow, even sorrow that is unending.”bell hooks, quoted in NPR “A happy arrangement: Many people prefer cats to other people, and…

Antitrust push hits roadblocks Plans for much-anticipated bipartisan antitrust legislation are stuck in congressional “limbo,” said Ryan Tracy in The Wall Street Journal. “If passed, the law would bar huge online platforms, such as Amazon’s e-marketplace, Apple’s app store, and Google’s search engine from giving preferential treatment to the company’s own products and services.” While antitrust action has had strongest support from progressive Democrats, some Republicans have also voiced their support. But the bill has run into opposition from several quarters, notably California’s congressional delegation, which sees it as targeting the states’ companies. The tech industry has grown more optimistic that the legislative push has lost momentum. “If the bill had the support its supporters contended,” says one industry lobbyist, it would already “be a law.” The misery of…

Older adults are often advised to take vitamin D supplements to help prevent bone fracture, but a new study suggests they might be wasting their time. After previous research showed that the vitamin increased calcium absorption and helped reduce bone deterioration, the National Academy of Medicine recommended in 2011 that the general public consume between 600 and 800 international units (IUs) of the stuff every day. For the new study, reports NBCNews.com, researchers followed almost 26,000 adults, average age 57, for five years. They found that over that period, those who took 2,000 IUs of vitamin D a day were no less likely to suffer a bone fracture than those who did not. The only exceptions were the people who already had a severe vitamin D deficiency—and even then,…

(PublicAffairs, $32) Josephine Baker was the embodiment of “the spirit of the Jazz Age,” said Moira Hodgson in The Wall Street Journal. She left St. Louis poverty behind for a life in Paris, where she became the most famous entertainer of her time as well as a fearless opponent of the Nazis. The legendary Black American singer, dancer, and actress has long been celebrated for her heroism in World War II as part of the French Resistance. Now, in a new biography, journalist and historian Damien Lewis adds another accomplishment by arguing that Baker was also a British spy. In a book “written in the breathless style of a thriller,” Lewis describes how the globally celebrated performer became an unlikely but remarkably effective operative, using her acting skills to…

Megan Giddings is a professor and novelist whose new book, The Women Could Fly, is set in a dystopia in which witches are real and single women are monitored by the government. Below, she recommends six books that weave magic into their narratives. The Witch of Eye by Kathryn Nuernberger (2021). A beautifully written blend of poetry, nonfiction, and research into what it means to be a person trying to do good—in this case, through herbalism and spells—and what happens when people treat that as a threat. The Ballad of Perilous Graves by Alex Jennings (2022). Jennings’ debut novel is filled with music, magic, and play. Reading it will immerse you in an alternate New Orleans filled with spellwork, and into the mind of a deeply empathetic writer who…

  3 Among contemporary singer-songwriters, Emily Sprague “has long stood out,” said Matt Mitchell in Paste. The 28-year-old records ambient music under her own name, and as the voice of the band Florist writes gentle indie-folk songs “more profound, quick-witted, and deeply resonant” than most artists working in a similar vein. Sprague went solo to mourn her mother’s death on 2019’s Emily Alone, but she has reunited with her bandmates for this “meticulously crafted” fourth Florist album, a collection of 19 atmospheric songs that together convey one message—that “love and family will endure through anything.” The four friends recorded the album on a screened-in porch in New York’s Hudson Valley, said Marcy Donelson in AllMusic. But the record, in blending acoustic, electronic, and ambient sounds, creates its own environment. The…

Gluten-free beers didn’t use to be very good, said Tony Rehagen in Bloomberg. To replace wheat and barley, brewers often turned to sorghum, a grass that can impart “an off-putting sweet-sour punch.” Today’s innovators, though, are finding ways to use buckwheat, rice, millet, and even sorghum—now specifically malted and roasted for brewing—to create delicious beers like these: Ghostfish Grapefruit IPA A “strong grapefruit nose” helps this sorghum-and-brown-rice brew from Seattle “stand toe to toe with any respectable session IPA.” Glutenberg Blonde This millet-and-corn blonde from Quebec “has the tart-sour taste of the best crushable summer cans.” Ground Breaker Dark Ale This “lightly roasty” ale—made with malted rice, quinoa, and Belgian-style candi syrup—hails from a Portland, Ore., brewery that’s 100 percent gluten-free.…

On a recent trip to Sequim, Wash., “my goal was to consume as much lavender as I could,” said Andrea Sachs in The Washington Post. Each summer the fragrant purple herb flourishes in this arid pocket of the Pacific Northwest, where the sunny climate could pass for southern France, and friendly locals “enthusiastically wave at passersby.” The 16 mostly family-run farms that have made Sequim “the Lavender Capital of North America” sell flower-infused products from lotions and body mists to cookies and vinegars. In Sequim, I “chewed, sipped, and crunched the aromatic shrub; face-scrubbed and body-soaked in it; and cooked and cleaned with it.” At Victor’s Lavender Farm—one of several on Old Olympic Highway—I filled my bike’s basket with a handpicked bouquet, then pedaled to Rain Shadow Lavender Farm,…

Regulators are investigating Goldman Sachs’ poor handling of Apple Card user complaints, said Hugh Son in CNBC.com. The bank disclosed it was facing a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau probe last week “over a range of billing and service issues” related to its credit-card partnership with Apple. “Apple Card users doubled to 6.4 million by May 2021 from a year earlier,” and Goldman has “struggled to handle the influx of disputed transactions.” Some customers say it takes the bank months to resolve issues, even with evidence of fraud. SoftBank: Giant loss for a top tech investor The global selloff in tech stocks handed SoftBank a bruising quarter, said Min Jeong Lee and Takahiko Hyuga in Bloomberg. The Japanese company, one of the world’s most influential tech investors, this week “posted a…

Unfair training agreements A class-action lawsuit against PetSmart is shining a light on “training agreements” that leave workers mired in debt, said Caitlin Harrington in Wired. Lead plaintiff BreAnn Scally enrolled in PetSmart’s “Grooming Academy” after seeing promotions advertising the four-week program as “free.” As a condition of enrollment, however, Scally had to sign a “training agreement” provision stating that “if she left PetSmart within two years, she owed $5,000 for her training and $500 for grooming tools.” Scally’s not alone: “As burned-out nurses quit in droves during the pandemic,” for instance, many found themselves ensnared by similar provisions. Workers at hair salons, IT firms, and trucking companies are also increasingly victimized by employer-driven debt. Some agreements require repayment “even when a worker has been laid off.” Beefing up…

Jerusalem Demsas The Atlantic Marc Andreessen believes “It’s Time to Build,” just so long as it’s not in his backyard, said Jerusalem Demsas. That’s title of the essay the co-founder of venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz wrote in 2020 urging California to ease regulations to alleviate the state’s chronic housing shortage. Now, Andreessen and his wife, Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen, are protesting development in their own hometown. Atherton, Calif., is “America’s most expensive ZIP code”—the kind of place no teacher or police officer could afford to live. Atherton’s planning department proposed modestly increasing the town’s zoned capacity to permit a few multifamily properties. This will “MASSIVELY decrease our home values,” the Andreessens objected in a public comment sent to the mayor and city council with the subject line “IMMENSELY AGAINST multifamily development!”…

Albert Woodfox endured the worst the U.S. prison system had to offer. In 1972, while incarcerated at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, built on a former slave plantation known as Angola, he was convicted on flimsy evidence of killing a corrections officer, a charge he denied. He was held alone in a 6-by-9-foot cell for nearly 44 years—the longest solitary confinement in U.S. history—and was gassed, beaten, and brutally strip-searched. He and two other Black inmates in extended solitary became known as the Angola Three, whose long sentences made them an international cause célèbre. “Our cells were meant to be death chambers,” Woodfox said in 2020. “We turned them into high schools, universities, debate halls, law schools.” The New Orleans native first landed in Angola in 1965 for “a series…

There are probably few centenarians happier—or busier—than Norman Lear, said Christina Dugan Ramirez in People. The writer and producer of more than 100 shows recently turned 100, and he still has 23 projects in development. “My awards and accolades,” he said, “don’t mean as much as the drive to the studio today. I still explode with joy, excitement, interest, and utter delight every time.” He started his television career shortly after serving in the Army during World War II—“My mother begged me not to enlist, but I couldn’t take it anymore”—writing for a number of variety shows, including one that starred Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin. In 1971, he ushered in a new era of TV history with CBS’s All in the Family, a sitcom that frankly addressed bigotry,…

Charles Coleman Slate The police officers who killed Breonna Taylor are far from “outliers,” said Charles Coleman. Last week, the Justice Department charged four officers involved in the 2020 raid that killed Taylor in her Louisville apartment with lying to get a no-knock search warrant and then coordinating their stories after she was wrongfully shot to death. Dozens of similar cases strongly suggest it’s not just a few “rogue cops” who have “an aversion to the truth.” After the murders of 19 children and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas, police and public officials initially promoted “a false narrative that painted cops as heroes.” Thanks to video footage, we now know hundreds of cops stood around, fearful of risking their own lives, as children were being executed. Last month, when a…

AUSTRIA Katharina Zwins and Clemens Neuhold Profil A pro-vaccine Austrian doctor was bullied to death, and Austrians are blaming the authorities, said Katharina Zwins and Clemens Neuhold. Lisa-Maria Kellermayr took her own life in July after anti-vaxxers hounded and threatened her for months. Knife-wielding extremists tried to get into her office posing as patients multiple times, and Kellermayr was forced to spend $100,000 on security and finally closed her practice altogether. Her worst tormenter was a German man who messaged her relentlessly, saying he would kill her staff. While Austrian authorities said they couldn’t discover the man’s identity, it took a young German hacker just a few hours to do so. Austrians are now asking “Why wasn’t the doctor better protected?” and “Why can’t the authors of rampant hate on…

Researchers have used a cutting-edge technique to restore a heartbeat and other cellular function in pigs an hour after their deaths. The successful experiment suggests that cells don’t die as quickly as previously assumed—which could mean that human organs earmarked for transplant can be preserved for much longer. Researchers from Yale University used the OrganEx perfusion system, similar to a heart-lung machine, to pump synthetic fluid through the pigs’ circulatory system, helping distribute oxygen and prevent blood clots. The researchers found that certain key cellular functions were still working in the heart, liver, and kidneys up to six hours after treatment. The science is still at an early stage, but if the same method can be applied to humans it would massively extend the window for organ transplants. “The…

(Avid Reader, $26) The debut novel by award-winning poet Clare Pollard, Delphi “distills something elusive and upsetting” about pandemic life, said Lynn Steger Strong in The New York Times. Told through the eyes of a British classics professor—who frets over her failing marriage, her struggling 10-year-old son, and her own aging—the novel captures the mundanity of lockdown so effectively that it feels “almost otherworldly” when tragedy finally strikes. But even that flourish feels true to life. “How often, in our distracted attempts to see the future, have we missed the catastrophes unfolding right in front of us?” There is “something deeply comforting about this whole story,” said Samantha Schoech in the San Francisco Chronicle. In “compact, concise language,” Pollard captures an experience we’re all still processing, and “the vulnerability,…

Inventing the It Girl by Hilary A. Hallett (Liveright, $32.50) Hilary A. Hallett’s biography revives the story of Hollywood gadfly Elinor Glyn “with great thoughtfulness and taste,” said Alexandra Jacobs in The New York Times. Born in 1864, Glyn gained fame by writing scandalous, wildly popular romance novels—including one novella, adapted into a 1927 silent film, that made an icon out of “It Girl” Clara Bow. Hallett spent “a heroic decade-plus” researching Glyn’s wild life, and though her book can be florid and over-rounded, that tone “suits the topic.” Mercury Pictures Presents by Anthony Marra (Hogarth, $29) “Mercury Pictures Presents should come with popcorn and a 78-ounce Coke,” said Ron Charles in The Washington Post. Anthony Marra’s novel begins as a comedy, as a feisty up-and-coming producer working at…

  3 King Princess thrives on emotionality, said Maura Johnston in Rolling Stone. Since her debut single, “1950,” went viral four years ago, the Brooklyn-based artist has emerged as “one of Gen Z’s leading queer pop icons,” and her second album traffics in the same “conversational lyrics, husky voice, and disarming honesty” that propelled her to her breakthrough at age 19. Beginning with the opening track, “I Hate Myself, I Want to Party,” Hold On Baby balances the artist’s struggle to weather life’s blows with “moments of musical and lyrical beauty.” This talented 23-year-old is “at her most compelling when she does the unexpected,” said El Hunt in NME. Unfortunately, “far too much of this record trudges by in a not-especially-memorable blur.” King Princess has released strong singles that don’t…

Surviving the extremes… Alone Participants in this riveting series are given a handful of tools and sent into harsh wilderness locales to survive or tap out. Along the way, viewers get an education in foraging, building shelters, and other survival necessities. History.com Survivorman If you’re ever stranded, you’ll be thankful you binged these episodes from Les Stroud. From the Kalahari to the Cook Islands, the survival expert drops himself into far-flung locales with no resources and a one-man camera rig to document how he fares. YouTube Life Below Zero This National Geographic series has been around for 18 seasons, but you don’t need to watch them all to gain respect for the tough rural Alaskans it depicts, who live off the grid through brutal winters with the nearest neighbor…

The number of active home listings nationwide jumped 31 percent from a year earlier, a record-high increase for a third straight month, according to Realtor.com. In June, 824,000 single-family homes were under construction in the U.S., more than at any time since October 2006. Bloomberg A survey of 2,300 renters and 740 landlords across the U.S. found that 71 percent of renters saw rent hikes in the past year and an average increase of 14.6 percent, or $275 per month. Miami topped the list with a 31 percent average bump in rent. The Hustle Families with children in elementary through high school will spend an average of $864 on school supplies this year, $168 more than in 2019, according to the National Retail Federation. Total spending is predicted to match…

This week’s question: Scientists at MIT have developed a stick-on patch that produces high-resolution images of the wearer’s internal organs—which they think one day can be transmitted to cellphones. What would you call a companion app to this revealing new medical invention? Last week’s contest: An Indiana-based personal trainer runs on all fours like a dog for at least 30 minutes a day, a routine he says has left him “crazy ripped.” If he wanted to popularize this workout routine among other humans, what should he call it? THE WINNER: “Wolf-Pack Abs” Karen Riseng, Millburn, N.J. SECOND PLACE: “CrossFetch” Erica Avery, Greenfield, Mass. THIRD PLACE:“Barkour” Rebecca Burgan, Grass Valley, Calif. For runners-up and complete contest rules, please go to theweek.com/contest. How to enter: Submissions should be emailed to contest@theweek.com.…

Good week for: Motorists, after gas prices continued falling for 57 straight days, reaching an average national price of $4.01 per gallon—down a dollar from mid-June. Alarm systems, after Fred Everitt of Mississippi was awakened at 2:30 a.m. by his cat, Bandit, who was frantically scratching his arms to alert him that two burglars had invaded his home. After scaring the intruders off, Everitt called Bandit his “guard cat.” Taste, after Domino’s Pizza closed the last of the 29 pizza restaurants it opened in Italy, ending a seven-year effort to sell its Americanized version to Italians. The chain cited stiff competition from local “‘Mom and Pop’ restaurants.” Bad week for: Cracker Barrel, the iconic Southern restaurant chain, which received furious blowback for adding meatless “sausage” patties to its menu. “You…

Gabriel Byrne remains haunted by the sexual abuse he suffered as a child, said Sean O’Hagan in The Observer (U.K.). Raised in working-class Dublin, he was abused by members of the Christian Brothers when he was an altar boy and then again by a priest when he was 11. “They dealt in fear and humiliation,” he says. “Some of that goes deep inside you and takes a long time to get rid of.” He began acting “almost by accident” when, on a friend’s advice, he joined a local theater group. But he lacked confidence, and he felt “utterly lost” after moving to London in the late 1970s, where his accent got him typecast as IRA terrorists and drunks. “I was never not conscious of the fact that I was…

Editorial The Washington Post Vaccine skepticism is like a deadly virus, said The Washington Post, and it is killing people as it spreads across the U.S. and the world. Even before the coronavirus hit, the anti-vax movement had taken root here, fueled by a debunked paper that falsely linked vaccines with autism in children. During the pandemic, anti-science cranks and far-right libertarians served up “a dangerous cocktail of doubt, suspicion, and fear about vaccines,” insisting that mandates designed to fight a deadly, infectious disease violated their “medical freedom.” Today, many Americans, particularly Republicans, exhibit a “general hostility toward science and medical expertise.” While 89 percent of Democrats trust the CDC, for example, just 41 percent of Republicans do. That mistrust kills: Scientists estimate that 200,000 American lives would have been…

“In 2011, I loved the internet. The endless expanses of information, the sense that the mind’s reach could be limitless. My life, my career, and my identity were digital constructs as much as they were physical ones. I pitied those who came before me, fettered by a physical world I was among the first to escape. A decade passed, and my certitude faded. Online life got faster, quicker, harsher, louder. Smartphones brought the internet everywhere, colonizing moments I never imagined I’d fill. Many times I’ve walked into a public bathroom and everyone is simultaneously using a urinal and staring at a screen.” Ezra Klein in The New York Times…

SWITZERLAND Clemens Wergin Die Welt (Germany) When NATO sent out a request asking its members and partners to take in wounded Ukrainian soldiers for treatment, Switzerland declined, says Clemens Wergin. Bern claimed that if the soldiers recovered and returned to the fight, it would endanger Switzerland’s “famous neutrality.” The Swiss wouldn’t even take in wounded civilians, because officials said they’d be “almost impossible” to distinguish from combatants. That’s a ridiculous excuse: If it were true, no country could ever take in war refugees. Such a petty and faux-legalistic refusal is particularly “offensive” considering the “red carpet” treatment Bern extends to Russian oligarchs close to Vladimir Putin. For decades, the Russian ultra-rich have been stashing their ill-gotten wealth in Swiss bank accounts, vacationing in luxurious Alpine chalets, and sending their children…

NEW ZEALAND Josh Martin Stuff New Zealand is so “late to the border-reopening party,” said Josh Martin, that it may take years to fully revive a tourism industry that was once our “biggest export earner.” After closing down in March 2020, New Zealand just opened its borders to noncitizens last week, and the announcement barely made a ripple. While New Zealand was admired for its successful pandemic response—it lost only about 1,620 people to Covid, one of the lowest rates in the world—it also earned a reputation for being “unnecessarily burdensome” to enter, and that now “works against it in a very crowded market.” Travelers who once might have dreamed of a trip across the world will likely go for “a closer option,” somewhere that isn’t prone to sudden border…

Democrats are making “a dangerous gamble” that has revealed them as hypocrites, said Zachary Wolf in CNN.com. In the belief it will make it easier to win general elections in November, Democrats and aligned groups have spent roughly $44 million in Republican primaries to lend support to extremist, Trump-endorsed election deniers running against moderate Republicans. Even while warning that Trump’s Big Lie about the 2020 election endangers American democracy, Democrats have provided underhanded support to far-right MAGA candidates in at least four gubernatorial races, a U.S. Senate race, and a House race. Last week, Michigan Rep. Peter Meijer, who voted to impeach Trump, was a casualty of the Democrats’ strategy, losing a primary to former Trump administration official John Gibbs, a kook who has retweeted claims about Democrats and…

“Budapest is the new Rome,” said William Galston in The Wall Street Journal. And for “many populist-nationalist conservatives, Viktor Orbán is their political pope.” That explains why the Hungarian prime minister traveled to Dallas last week—after a pit stop in New Jersey to hobnob with his ally Donald Trump—to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). In a widely criticized speech given in Romania two weeks prior, the self-described “illiberal” Orbán warned that the West was becoming “a mixed-race world,” and said that countries with a lot of immigrants and intermarriage “are no longer nations.” Those remarks—which his top aide compared to Nazi rhetoric—evidently offended no one at CPAC. In fact, the far-right leader remains a “role model for America’s right-wing populists,” said The Washington Post in an…

At the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean nearly a thousand miles off the coast of Portugal, researchers have found lines of holes on the ocean floor—and they have no idea what caused them. The small holes are spaced fairly regularly, 4 or more inches apart, and some of the lines extend to more than 6 feet long. They “look human-made,” the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Ocean Exploration project said on Twitter, “but the little piles of sediment around them suggest they were excavated by…something.” The NOAA is so stumped that it has asked the public to get in touch if they have any ideas. Suggestions so far include that the marks were made by aliens or that they are the breathing holes of some kind of creature that…

(Soft Skull, $23) Perhaps it shouldn’t have come as a surprise to Lynne Tillman that her elderly mother might someday need round-the-clock care, said Elissa Altman in The Boston Globe. “It shouldn’t come as a surprise to any of us as we watch our parents change, grow old, grow ill, and die.” Yet when her mother developed a rare health condition that left her entirely dependent on others, Tillman and her sisters were staggered by the role reversal of caring for their parent over 11 years of profound sickness. In this “heartbreaking and exasperating” memoir, Tillman leads us through a meandering landscape of hospitals, pill cases, and home help, all while wrestling with her own resentfulness. “The vagaries of caregiving can be shocking to those who haven’t done much…

Mohsin Hamid has been seeking the wisdom of the ancients, said The New York Times. Roughly five years ago, the Reluctant Fundamentalist novelist says he “decided to read from back to front, historically speaking.” His project began with the Sumerian “Instructions of Shurup-pak,” written on clay tablets by an anonymous author about 4,600 years ago, and extended to the poems collectively known as Enheduanna’s hymns. The ancient texts made him consider the biases underpinning literary history. Learning that the first named author in human history was a woman—Enheduanna—raised “all sorts of questions in my mind,” Hamid says. Hamid’s project also made him contemplate how little has changed, said Tim Adams in The Guardian. “If you look at human culture from ancient Sumerian texts onward, people have tried to use…

  3 Behold “the possible future of jazz fusion,” said Bill Meredith in JazzTimes. Keyboardist Domi Louna, 22, and drummer JD Beck, 19, may look like quirky Gen Z pop artists, but the two prodigies “conjure sounds of vintage Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea, Billy Cobham and Vinnie Colaiuta.” Anyone who thought that accomplished electrified jazz wouldn’t survive another generation “might not be able to believe what they’re hearing.” Hancock is a featured guest on the duo’s debut album, as are Snoop Dogg, Busta Rhymes, Anderson .Paak, and Thundercat, said Kieran Press-Reynolds in Pitchfork. Even so, the album “can start to taste like gentrified coffee shop fodder, or two students trying so hard to impress their professors they write something robotically pristine.” Listeners who became fans by watching the duo…

Two weeks ago, torrential rainstorms flooded eastern Kentucky, killing at least 37 people, displacing hundreds of residents, and leaving more than 10,000 without power in one of the country’s poorest regions. All Hands and Hearts (allhandsandhearts.org), a national disaster-relief charity, responded immediately with on-the-ground aid. The group’s volunteers are coordinating with other responders and official agencies to provide services such as mucking and gutting flooded homes. The state has also set up an emergency fund, the Team Eastern Kentucky Flood Relief Fund, to support those affected by the disaster. In addition, several regional organizations, including the Foundation for Appalachia Kentucky and Appalachian Regional Healthcare, as well as the Red Cross’ Kentucky branch, are collecting donations to purchase generators, food, and medical supplies. Each charity we feature has earned a…

Shira Ovide The New York Times The federal antitrust lawsuit over a massive book-publishing merger ignores the elephant in the courtroom, said Shira Ovide: Amazon. Last week, a federal trial began to determine whether Penguin Random House, already the largest book publisher in America, can buy one of the other “Big Five” book houses, Simon & Schuster, for $2.18 billion. The Justice Department sued to block the merger, protesting further consolidation in the industry on the grounds that it will hurt authors. Stephen King, who testified for the government, agrees, saying competition for titles through advance payments is what keeps authors like himself in business. But this case “is about much more than books and the earnings of big-name authors.” It’s about whether industries need to form their own…

Olivia Newton-John’s bright smile was as much her calling card as her sweet voice. The wholesome Australian singer rose to fame in the 1970s with a series of gentle hits including “I Honestly Love You” and “Have You Never Been Mellow.” Then came Grease, the 1978 musical in which she played Sandy, a virginal transfer student who falls for John Travolta’s greaser Danny at a 1950s Southern California high school. The blockbuster—which ends with Sandy morphing into a vixen in skin-tight pants—made Newton-John a superstar, propelled by hits including the duet “You’re the One That I Want.” Newton-John echoed Sandy’s transformation in her own career, with a turn toward rock and spandex that yielded the steamy “Physical,” which hit No. 1 in 1981. But she always maintained the winsome…