Innehållsförteckning för March 31, 2023 från The Week Magazine

Remember how chummy Donald Trump was with Vladimir Putin? As a candidate, Trump begged for Putin’s election assistance; as president, he said he trusted the Russian leader over U.S. intelligence; and as ex-president (last year, the very day before Russia invaded Ukraine) he praised Putin as a “genius.” It seems fitting, then, that both men are facing justice in the same week. Putin’s indictment by the International Criminal Court (see Best columns: International, p.15) brands him an accused war criminal. Trump’s looming indictment in New York (see Main stories, p.4) will make him the first U.S. president to be charged with a crime. These men were once the most powerful on the planet, and they are being forced to answer for their actions. In both cases, the courts are starting…

Staff at an Iowa cemetery noticed that their resident goose, Blossom, seemed lonely after her companion passed away last year. So general manager Dorie Tammen took out a personal ad in the local paper in search of a partner for her “youthful, adventurous, and lively” goose. A nearby couple quickly responded: Their widower goose, Frankie, was similarly lonely after the loss of his mate. Tammen arranged a “blind date” for the birds on Valentine’s Day, and since then, they’ve spent nearly all of their time together. Orthopedic surgeon Felicity Fishman knows that getting an operation can be a scary experience, so when her young patients wake up from one, they’re greeted with a special surprise: a custom, hand-drawn piece of artwork on their cast. “It was about giving them a…

Across the drought-ravaged West, Americans are painting their lawns green. Brian Howland, 53, who paints lawns in Phoenix, says dead, yellow grass can be turned a lush green with sprayed pigments for as little as $250. The only giveaway is texture. “People say, ‘Wow, the yard looks amazing,’” Howland said, “and you take a step and it goes ‘crunch.’” Publishers of a textbook used in Florida schools have removed all references to race from the story of Rosa Parks. Mindful of a new state law banning material that might make white people feel racial “anguish,” the textbook states that Parks “showed courage” when she refused to “move to a different seat” on a bus—but does not mention Parks was told to move because she was Black. In other news Biden’s…

Arnold Schwarzenegger wishes he could live forever, said Mark Leibovich in The Atlantic. At 75, the former action star and governor of California still wakes by 6 a.m. in his Brentwood mansion, drives to Santa Monica, and then bikes 3 miles to Gold’s Gym in Venice. It’s a treacherous ride, with no helmet and little regard for traffic lights, but he loves interacting with people. Drivers often recognize the former bodybuilder, Terminator, and governor as they screech to a halt. “It’s like a Norman Rockwell,” he says. “We talk to the bus driver. We do the garbage man, the construction worker. Everyone’s got their beautiful, beautiful jobs and professions.” Decades of wear on his shoulder joints and multiple heart-valve surgeries have left the former Mr. Universe capable of bench-pressing…

Conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch will marry a fifth time, after proposing last week to Ann Lesley Smith, a former San Francisco police chaplain. Murdoch, 92, whose media empire includes Fox News and The Wall Street Journal, told the New York Post that he and Smith, 66, plan to wed this summer and are “both looking forward to spending the second half of our lives together.” They met last September, a month after Murdoch finalized his divorce from model Jerry Hall. “I dreaded falling in love” again, Murdoch said, “but I knew this would be my last. It better be.” Smith’s late husband, country singer Chester Smith, also ran TV and radio stations. “I speak Rupert’s language,” she said. “We share the same beliefs.” Olympic rowing legend Ted Nash…

David Brooks The New York Times “The conventional wisdom” is that the Republican presidential nominee in 2024 will be one of two “anti-woke” populists—Donald Trump or Gov. Ron DeSantis, said David Brooks. But what if the primaries offered Republican voters an actual choice between angry, grievance-based populism and the optimistic conservatism of one of the popular Republican governors in Georgia, New Hampshire, and Virginia? In Georgia, Gov. Brian Kemp—who refused to go along with Trump’s Big Lie—has made his state “a hub for green manufacturing,” attracting big investments in electric-vehicle technology that create jobs and prosperity. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin and New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu also offer viable center-right pragmatism, and “are warm, upbeat people who actually enjoy their fellow human beings.” Contrast that with the “dour, humorless”…

A Connecticut man ditched his shoes nearly two decades ago and has gone barefoot year-round ever since. Joseph DeRuvo Jr. of Norwalk first went shoeless while awaiting surgery for painful bunions, but felt so much better that he canceled the surgery and went barefoot permanently. The Pilates instructor is daunted by neither snow, ice, nor broken glass, but his wife acknowledges the pair “get thrown out of a lot of places” after other customers complain. “Navigating the terrain is easy,” he said. “Navigating people is tricky.” A University of South Florida biomedical engineering professor is living underwater for 100 days to test the effects on his body. Since March 1, former Navy diver Joe Dituri has been living in a pressured environment in Jules’ Undersea Lodge, a 100-square-foot habitat 25…

MALAYSIA Wong Chun Wai The Star You’d think that Malaysians would be cheering the Best Actress Oscar won by our own Michelle Yeoh, said Wong Chun Wai in The Star. With her star turn in Everything Everywhere All at Once, the Malaysian-born, ethnic Chinese actress became the first Asian to take home the statuette. Instead of pouring accolades on her, though, her homeland has been buzzing about a “viral critique” that called Yeoh out for pursuing her film career in Hong Kong and the U.S. Of course, the idea that she should have stayed here is ridiculous. Malaysia “is just too small a market for her to bloom; that’s the harsh reality.” It’s likely that the real beef Malaysians have with Yeoh isn’t with her work. Many are still upset…

“Middle age is when you’ve met so many people that every new person you meet reminds you of someone else.” Ogden Nash, quoted in The Knowledge “Me to 99.99 percent of men: Please speak to me like an intelligent adult. Me to my financial adviser: Please speak to me like I’m the dumbest person to ever live on this planet.” Writer Sophie Vershbow, quoted in Huffington Post “Hollywood is like high school with money.” Talent agent Michael Ovitz, quoted in The Wall Street Journal “Be the heroine of your own life, not the victim.” Nora Ephron, quoted in Time “The art of love is largely the art of persistence.” Psychologist Albert Ellis, quoted in San Diego Jewish World “War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought…

China’s expanding espionage effort Google researchers warned that the scope of Chinese spying on Western targets is likely “far broader than currently known,” said Robert McMillan and Dustin Volz in The Wall Street Journal. Recent state-sponsored cyberattacks represent “a new level of ingenuity and sophistication from China,” and Beijing-linked hackers have learned to evade common cybersecurity tools. To execute their attacks, “instead of infiltrating systems behind the corporate firewall,” hackers are targeting software built by networking companies such as VMware or Citrix Systems—and sometimes the firewalls themselves. In one instance, hackers linked to China attacked remote-access and security software made by SonicWall with a hack that would let them keep access to devices even when its software was updated. Satellite internet aids illegal mining Starlink satellite internet is helping…

A 5,000-mile-wide, patchy mass of brown seaweed—so vast it can be seen from space—is heading for Florida. The seaweed, known as the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt, floats harmlessly most of the year, providing shelter and breeding grounds for sea creatures. When it reaches a shore, though, it starts to rot, producing toxic fumes and pollution that can choke vital habitats and drive tourists from beaches. Some seaweed from the belt generally arrives in the Gulf of Mexico in May, but this year it has already reached the Florida Keys, as well as Mexican resort beaches like Cancún and Tulum, and is piling up in huge globs. “These blooms are getting bigger and bigger, and this year looks like it’s going to be the biggest year yet on record,” Brian…

Catherine Lacey is the author of the acclaimed novels Nobody Is Ever Missing, The Answers, and Pew. Biography of X, her new novel, is narrated by a writer who, while working on a biography of her deceased artist wife, uncovers layers of secrets. Proxies: Essays Near Knowing by Brian Blanchfield (2016). This collection of essays is about the desire to know, the certainty that we will fall short in that knowing, and the wonderful detours and excitements we can find when we take indirect paths toward knowledge. Blanchfield wrote each essay—about everything from abstraction to the children’s game “sardines”—with the rule that he was not allowed any research, that he had to use himself, his memories, and his incomplete understandings as the sole source. Like all the books here,…

3 The second album from Christian McBride’s New Jawn quartet is “somehow even more expressive than its predecessor,” said Matt Collar in AllMusic. Drummer Nasheet Waits, trumpeter Josh Evans, and saxophonist/bass clarinetist Marcus Strickland complete the bassist’s maverick ensemble, whose post-bop and avant-garde jazz is “easily” some of the most adventurous music the 50-year-old Philadelphian has made. The absence of chordal instruments such as piano and guitar “allows these players to move freely in and out of a harmonic structure, guided by close-voiced intervals that flicker from consonance to dissonance,” said Larry Blumenfeld in The Wall Street Journal. You can hear how adept they are at “blending grit and beauty” on the “knotty yet seductive” Eric Dolphy tribute, “Dolphy Dust.” And while nobody can match the buoyancy of Ornette Coleman…

If you enjoy a good Bordeaux blanc, there’s a sweet cousin from nearby that “you don’t want to miss,” said Arielle Weg in Wine Enthusiast. Sauternes is a subregion of Bordeaux where sémillon and sauvignon grapes produce “a deeply flavorful” wine that’s nothing like the “subpar, sugar-laden” offerings that have spoiled sweet wine’s reputation. Try pairing these Sauternes with blue cheese, foie gras, or a dessert, like cheesecake, that’ll be slightly less sweet than the wine. 2019 Château Suau ($24). This “unctuous” Sauternes tastes of dense orange marmalade and apricot. It should age until 2025. 2020 Château d’Arche Soleil d’Arche ($34). Ready to drink now, this sweet wine sets fresh citrus against a honeyed background. 2020 Château Suduiraut ($35). This rich Sauternes, sold in 375 ml bottles, “gets a…

“Bluebird Backcountry may be the only place of its kind in the world,” said Kari Bodnarchuk in The Boston Globe. At this “ingenious and laid-back” ski area in northern Colorado, “it’s safe to backcountry ski in a wilderness environment—even with a tween by your side.” Bluebird allows only 200 skiers each day, but it’s welcoming to both experts and beginners, including children. There are no lifts or permanent structures on the 1,200-acre property 30 minutes from Steamboat Springs. Staffers simply scan tickets at the trailheads, and a ski patrol team is on hand for anyone who needs help. Visitors can choose from among 28 runs or join various classes, including women’s alpine touring clinics and a course on skiing with your dog. My son Sam and I saw many happy…

Responding to Microsoft-backed ChatGPT, Google made its own long-awaited artificial intelligence chatbot, Bard, available to the public this week, said Gerrit De Vynck and Nitasha Tiku in The Washington Post. “The bot, based on tech that has been under development by the company for eight years, can answer questions, write text, and have informative conversations on nearly any subject.” Google rushed to finish Bard after competitors like OpenAI and Microsoft thrilled and alarmed users with their AI capabilities. Finance: Banks turn to Dimon to navigate crisis “Jamie Dimon is getting involved in rescuing banks again,” said Nicholas Gordon in Fortune. JPMorgan Chase’s CEO was leading discussions this week about saving First Republic Bank, which has come under intense investor pressure since the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. In 2008, JPMorgan…

Help not really wanted “Ghost listings” are haunting job seekers, said Te-Ping Chen in The Wall Street Journal. Turns out it’s not uncommon for companies to post listings for jobs they have no real intention to fill. A survey by Clarify Capital of more than 1,000 hiring managers last summer found that “27 percent reported having job postings up for more than four months.” Among those with long-term listings, “close to half said they kept the ads up to give the impression the company was growing.” A third said they did it “to placate overworked employees.” Employers defend the listings as necessary for “stocking a pool of ready applicants” while the quitting rate for workers reached record highs. Job seekers, however, say that applying for positions lately can feel…

Rick Newman Yahoo Finance All the pundits and politicians criticizing the government for bailing out Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank ought to be reminded of this fact: “Any president, of any party, would have done the same thing,” said Rick Newman. Indeed, a Republican president, George W. Bush, “did just that in 2008.” Economists broadly agree that Bush’s bailouts “prevented a depression that might have persisted to this day,” but they were still deeply unpopular. “President Biden is now battling the impression that the bank rescues of 2023 are a repeat in miniature of the 2008 bailouts.” It’s true that no matter how the White House tries to spin it, these were bailouts: The government is choosing to intervene in private-sector business and prevent losses. However, “Biden is right…

Even in ensembles brimming with talent, Lance Reddick stood out. He specialized in authority figures, whether it was principled but world-weary narcotics detective Cedric Daniels in the celebrated HBO drama The Wire, the mysterious Matthew Abaddon in Lost, special agent Phillip Broyles in the Fox sci-fi series Fringe, or LAPD Commissioner Irvin Irving in Amazon’s Bosch. With ramrod-straight posture, finely sculpted cheekbones, and a sonorous baritone that lent his every utterance gravitas, he had an effortlessly magisterial onscreen presence. “Intensity is not something I try to do,” he said in a 2010 interview. “It’s just kind of the way that I am.” The Baltimore-raised son of a music teacher and a public defender, Reddick trained as a pianist and “was initially headed for a life in music,” said Rolling…

Pat McCormick’s intense drive made her the first diver to sweep all golds in two Olympic Games. In 1948, she skipped her high school graduation for the U.S. Olympic trials but missed qualifying by less than one-hundredth of a point. Four years later, in the 1952 Olympics, she won in both women’s diving categories—and repeated the feat in 1956. “In ‘48, I just wanted to make the team,” she said. “I was standing there crying after I came up short, and that’s when I decided I would win a gold medal in the next Olympics. Then I thought, ‘Why not go to two Olympics and win four gold medals?’” Born in Seal Beach, Calif., McCormick was “a miniature beach bum,” said the Los Angeles Times, hanging out at Muscle…

Vlad Beliavsky never imagined he’d fire a gun, said Simon Hattenstone in The Guardian. After studying psychology, the Ukrainian wrote a self-help book called The Pyramid Mind, hoping his “mind-management model” would help people control their emotions and avoid unnecessary conflict. He considered himself a pacifist. But when Russia invaded Ukraine last year, Beliavsky, 33, enlisted in the army. “There was no other option,” he says. “The smartest people in the world tried to negotiate with Russia and failed. I came to believe that in some cases you just need to stand up and fight back.” He helped defend Kyiv from invasion and wonders what happened to the Russians he shot at. “I hope I didn’t kill anybody,” he says. “Things happened so fast that you just don’t see…

Will Bunch The Philadelphia Inquirer Republicans are using their control of statehouses “to take over stuff run by Black people,” said Will Bunch. In many red states, governors and GOP-dominated legislatures have decided to “simply override election results in blue-dot localities” whose residents and leaders are people of color. Mississippi’s House of Representatives recently introduced legislation that would transfer certain policing and judicial powers in the majority-Black capital Jackson from local control toward the police who patrol the mostly white, “heavily GOP statehouse.” The Capitol Police has already doubled its staff and expanded its operations into parts of Jackson, setting up traffic checkpoints, arresting people, and investigating crimes. Many of Jackson’s leaders are incensed: Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba has called it “plantation politics.” In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott seized…

SPAIN Nuno Brito Jorge Público (Portugal) A ban on watering lawns and gardens, a mandatory 40 percent reduction in the use of water for irrigating crops, the closure of public drinking fountains. This isn’t happening in the middle of August, said Nuno Brito Jorge. In Catalonia, where I’ve been living, it’s the reality in early March. Some 6 million people here are currently affected by water restrictions. That’s because last year was the driest in a century for this region of eastern Spain. We’ve been in what’s categorized as “severe drought” for 30 parched months, leaving reservoirs that supply cities such as Girona and Barcelona at just 28 percent capacity. The rest of Southern Europe is at risk of following, and “sooner than you think.” Some Portuguese cities are under…

The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed the first-ever national drinking water standards for PFAS synthetic chemicals, reports CNN.com. Also called “forever chemicals,” the compounds are common in household items such as nonstick pans and water-repellent clothes. But they have been linked to a myriad of serious health problems, including cancer, obesity, thyroid disease, high cholesterol, decreased fertility, and liver damage. Under the new EPA rules, water systems would have to monitor for those six chemicals and work to reduce them if they exceeded a certain threshold. “This is a tremendous step forward,” says EPA Administrator Michael Regan. “We anticipate that when fully implemented, this rule will prevent thousands of deaths and reduce tens of thousands of serious PFAS-related illnesses.” Even before the rule was announced, manufacturers of PFAS chemicals…

(Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $28) The youngest-ever winner of the Booker Prize is back, 10 years later, with another elaborately plotted, “enormously readable” work, said Kevin Power in The Guardian. In a remote corner of New Zealand, a doomsday-fearing U.S. mogul and an eco-activist collective named after the forest that defeats Macbeth take interest in the same plot of land. “It’s hippies versus billionaires: a scenario full of comic potential,” and Eleanor Catton, author of The Luminaries, proceeds to unspool a “hugely entertaining” thriller that fails only by showing us nothing new. You’ll be rooting against the mogul and for Mira, the leader of Birnam Wood, said Ron Charles in The Washington Post. “But Catton writes with a satiric edge that leaves no survivors,” and her grasp of Mira’s…

Black Ball by Theresa Runstedtler (Bold Type, $29) Theresa Runstedtler’s new book is “a wise, engaging, and frankly overdue survey of a crucial moment in sports history,” said Chris Vognar in the Los Angeles Times. The author, a sports historian and former NBA dancer, presents the 1970s as the decade when the Black athletes who dominated pro basketball walked a delicate line to seize player rights while facing pushback from white fans and owners. It’s a reminder that “you simply can’t divorce sports from the times in which they are played.” Serving Herself by Ashley Brown (Oxford, $30) This nuanced biography “should go a long way to remedy the unpardonable disappearance of Althea Gibson from the American imagination,” said Tunku Varadarajan in The Wall Street Journal. A trailblazer who…

3 “For Yves Tumor, headphone space is holy space, a sanctuary in which all sorts of transfigurations become possible,” said Jayson Greene in Pitchfork. Since 2015, the art-rock auteur has approached the possibilities of recorded music with “near-religious devotion,” building “darkly sensuous” soundscapes from complementary layers of beauty and noise. Tumor’s fifth ambitious statement piece is “an ecstatic fusion of alt-rock and R&B”—like a cross between My Bloody Valentine and Prince. “It’s difficult to imagine many richer-sounding rock records being released this year.” Tumor “relishes keeping the listener off balance,” said Wren Graves in Consequence. On songs such as “Echolalia” and “Heaven Surrounds Us Like a Hood,” the Miami-born experimentalist “treats us to beauty only to force us to examine that pleasure from a critical distance.” The enigmatic lyrics “reward…

Time for action… The Woman King Did Viola Davis deserve a 2023 Oscar nomination? She was terrific in this fall action thriller as the leader of the real-life West African women warriors who inspired the all-female army in Black Panther. Netflix Plane He’s like Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger with abs. In this modest early-2023 theatrical hit, Gerard Butler plays an airline pilot who safely crash-lands on an island only to see his passengers taken hostage by armed rebels. To save the day, he enlists a convicted murderer played by Luke Cage’s Mike Colter. $20 on Apple TV The Northman If Terrence Malick directed the History Channel’s Vikings, it might resemble this beautiful, bloody Norse action epic. Alexander Skarsgard is terrifyingly good as a Viking prince who will stop at nothing…

U.S. sales of previously owned homes rose in February by the most since 2020, with contract closings up 14.5 percent. However, median prices fell 0.2 percent to $363,000, the first year-over-year monthly decline since 2012, according to the National Association of Realtors. Bloomberg Manheim, which auctions used cars to dealers, reported a 4.3 percent increase in used-vehicle prices in February, the largest increase for that month since 2009. USA Today General Electric, struggling to restore its former glory, said it would cancel $14.4 million in stock awards to CEO Larry Culp for failing to meet performance goals. For 2022, GE reported Culp’s compensation as negative $23.8 million. The Wall Street Journal Last year, some 3.2 billion people played video games, about 4 in 10 people worldwide. In rich countries, two-thirds…

One of the bedrock principles of human rights is that human well-being is furthered by the advance of democracy. The Carter Center (cartercenter.org), founder by former President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, has observed 114 elections in 39 countries to help strengthen democracy. It has worked to support activists for democracy in authoritarian states; earlier this year, the center helped secure the release of more than 200 political prisoners in Nicaragua. In recent months, it has worked to facilitate delivery of aid to earthquake survivors in Syria and to increase voter participation to speed the transition to democracy in Tunisia. In addition to promoting democracy, the center’s work extends to health initiatives around the world, such as eradicating river blindness in Nigeria. Each charity we feature has earned…

Good week for: Finland, which has been named the world’s happiest country by the U.N. World Happiness Report for a sixth straight year. The Finns, the report said, enjoy relatively long life expectancy, high per capita wealth, personal freedom, and strong social bonds. Dad jokes, which may help children’s psychological development. A new study found the cringing embarrassment caused by a dad’s lame, punny jokes teaches kids how to endure awkward moments. Hints, after President Biden strongly suggested that he will seek re-election at a White House event honoring people in the arts. While congratulating novelist Colson Whitehead for winning two Pulitzer Prizes, Biden said he is “kinda looking for back-to-back myself.” To Bruce Springsteen, he joked, “Some people are born to run.” Bad week for: Country life, after new…

Warsaw Poland and Slovakia last week became the first NATO countries to promise Ukraine the fighter jets it has been desperately requesting for its battle against Russian invaders. Poland said it would send four MiG-29s, and the next day Slovak authorities said they would transfer their country’s entire fleet of 13 MiGs. Ukrainian pilots already know how to operate and maintain those Soviet-era fighter jets, so they’ll require no new training. Western nations, including the United States, have balked at providing Ukraine with more advanced fighter jets, such as U.S.-made F-16s. NATO forces would need to train the Ukrainians to fly the complex aircraft, which also require extensive and expensive maintenance. Russia downplayed the announcements. “You get the feeling that these countries are just getting rid of old, unneeded…

Brett Goldstein almost gave up acting before he landed a role on Ted Lasso, said Jeremy Egner in The New York Times. Goldstein, 42, spent decades as a journeyman actor toiling in London’s comedy and theater scenes and writing plays. A fan eventually brought him to the attention of an American TV producer, who cast him in a failed pilot in 2017. By then, Goldstein was in his late 30s and thinking he’d blown his shot. “I had a sort of epiphany of ‘I’ve missed my window,’” he says. But then the producer invited him to join the writing staff for Ted Lasso—a lifelong English soccer fan, Goldstein could provide some expertise the Americans lacked. While writing scripts, he became fascinated with the scowling, profane, over-the-hill soccer star Roy…

Tom Frieden The Wall Street Journal Three years after the Covid pandemic began, “governments are declaring victory, and most people are eager to resume their pre-pandemic lives,” said former CDC director Tom Frieden. The virus led to more than 1.2 million U.S. deaths, and more than 20 million globally, but the death toll could have been far, far worse. Multiple studies found that indoor closures in the first, pre-vaccine stage of the pandemic “prevented at least 50 percent of infections and deaths in 2020, with masking further decreasing spread.” In New York City, for example, deaths dropped by 100 a day in April to 40 a day two weeks later and just two by July. Masks were actually “surprisingly effective” in reducing viral transmission. Crew that wore masks during…

“‘Socialism’ has faded as a rallying cry because this conservative movement can hardly pretend to be horrified by big government, and it has learned that its voters aren’t especially interested in cutting spending programs either, at least the ones that benefit them. Attacking wokeness fills that void—we might even cheekily call this the GOP’s successor ideology—with an alternative that is malleable enough to apply to nearly any situation. But the malleability is also a weakness. If wokeness is an explanation for everything, it is also an explanation for nothing.” David A. Graham in The Atlantic…

NETHERLANDS Benno de Jongh Omroep Groningen The fury of Dutch farmers has ignited a new political awakening, said Benno de Jongh. The Farmer-Citizen Movement (BBB), a populist party that didn’t exist four years ago, swept provincial elections last week to become the largest faction in the Senate. The farmers are angry over the government’s insistence on slashing nitrogen emissions to meet an EU climate goal, a policy they say will require them to give up their livestock and livelihoods. But it wasn’t just farmers that voted BBB. It was urbanites. It was those who’d never before voted. It was “even vegetarians.” All were united in disgust at “our current crop of leaders,” whose arrogance is only outdone by their incompetence. It’s perfectly fine, of course, for a government to argue…

RUSSIA Georgy Stepanov Moskovsky Komsomolets Russia has become a land of designer fakes, said Georgy Stepanov in Moskovsky Komsomolets. The economic sanctions imposed after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine have led to “the departure of dozens of Western brands from the country and the growth of the shadow sector.” Where Russian consumers used to pride themselves on sporting real labels, now they “see nothing shameful” in buying knockoffs. That’s partly because they couldn’t afford the real thing even if it were available. Plummeting oil and gas revenues and an ever-increasing deficit have hurt the economy as a whole and plunged ordinary Russians into financial distress. These counterfeit goods can cause harm, both to consumers and the economy. Sure, a fake Gucci bag won’t hurt you, but what about counterfeit medications…

“The schism is here,” said Nick Catoggio in The Dispatch. “Republicans are fracturing over Ukraine.” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis went on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show last week to “pander” to the GOP’s pro-Kremlin MAGA wing, calling Russia’s genocidal invasion of Ukraine a “territorial dispute” and arguing that Ukraine’s victory isn’t a “vital” U.S. interest. By bending a knee to Carlson, DeSantis “aligned” himself on Ukraine with his chief 2024 presidential rival, former President Trump. But DeSantis’ cynical attempt to win over Trump voters brought cutting condemnations from traditional conservative hawks such as Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. Graham even likened DeSantis to Neville Chamberlain, the British leader who sought to appease Hitler. The party of Reagan, said David French in The New…

The world isn’t reducing carbon emissions nearly fast enough to prevent “catastrophic warming” by the early 2030s, said Sarah Kaplan in The Washington Post. That was the grave conclusion of a comprehensive new report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) this week. The report warned that humanity is rapidly burning through its “carbon budget” to avoid warming beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit)—the threshold beyond which the impacts will become severe. If current emissions trends continue, the report says, planetary warming could blow past 1.5 degrees in a decade, and reach 3.2 degrees Celsius (5.8 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century. Millions will die as a result of rising sea levels, heat waves, drought, famine, infectious disease, and other warming-induced disasters. To…

(Hachette, $31) “If ever there was a rock ’n’ roll tale begging to be told, the odyssey of Leon Russell would be it,” said Brad Cohan in Spin. In his six-decade career, the “hugely influential piano visionary, bandleader, songwriter, and producer” worked with everyone from Phil Spector to Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones. The Oklahoma native toured with Jerry Lee Lewis as a teenager before moving to Los Angeles and joining the session musicians known as the Wrecking Crew. His 1970 solo debut album featured George Harrison and Eric Clapton, plus the ballad “A Song for You,” which has been covered by more than 200 artists. And then the ’70s ended and he faded away—at least until Elton John went searching for his long-haired hero, helping put him…

Sometimes the publishing world doesn’t have to look far for a new breakout star, said Celia McGee in The New York Times. Jenny Jackson, 43, who signed a reported seven-figure deal shortly after cranking out her first novel during the pandemic lockdown, has spent her entire two-decade career as an editor at Knopf and its paperback division, Vintage. She has, she says, “the most boring résumé in publishing.” But she has also fostered the careers of many best-selling writers who were surprised to learn that their industry ally possessed previously hidden writing talent. “It was like finding out your spouse is an Olympic equestrian,” says Kevin Kwan, author of Crazy Rich Asians. Chris Bohjalian agrees, calling Jackson’s instant best-seller, Pineapple Street, “the novel Jane Austen would have written if…

2 U2’s unusual new album is “neither a disaster nor a triumph,” said Alexis Petridis in The Guardian. The storied rock band decided to give largely acoustic treatment to 40 songs from its back pages, and despite scattered great moments, the nearly three-hour set “struggles to hold your attention.” Highlights include a brassy take on “Red Hill Mining Town” and inventive guitarwork by the Edge on “11 O’Clock Tick Tock” and “The Fly.” But the band’s big anthems, more often than not, “don’t work in soft-focus miniature.” Actually, they work so well that they should silence U2 doubters, said Joe Gross in Rolling Stone. “This is U2 for the coffeehouse,” and the spare arrangements prove “these are sturdy songs,” not just simple melodies boosted to grandeur by dazzling guitar effects.…

Scott Lincicome The Atlantic If you are frustrated by 18-wheelers clogging U.S. highways, an antiquated 1920 shipping law bears much of the blame, said Scott Lincicome. The Jones Act, formally known as Section 27 of the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, requires that shipping of goods within the U.S. “be conducted on vessels that are built, owned, flagged, and crewed by Americans.” The idea of “Ship American” sounds nice in theory, but what it looks like in practice a century later is “not much shipping of anything in America at all.” Building a container ship in the U.S. costs five times as much as it does abroad. The number of oceangoing U.S.-made ships in service has dwindled from about 250 in the 1980s to just 91. There is not a…

John Jakes brought American history to life. Writing more than 80 books, including Westerns, fantasies, and mysteries, Jakes won mass acclaim for his multipart works of historical fiction. His historical novels, rich with carefully researched period details, turned events involving real-life figures such as Ben Franklin into page-turners full of adulterous affairs, revenge scenarios, secret documents, and bitter rivalries. The formula was a hit with readers. All eight of his books in The Kent Family Chronicles, which tracked seven generations of a fictional family from the American Revolution onward, were best-sellers in the 1970s, while the Civil War trilogy that followed, North and South, was just as popular. Jakes won less favor with critics, who found his prose rather workmanlike. But he made no apologies, saying his goal was…