Innholdsfortegnelse for 29/01/2016 i Newsweek International

Jakarta, Indonesia—Police take cover as they pursue suspects after a series of bombs killed at least two people and wounded 24 others on January 14 in the capital city of the world’s most populous Muslim country. The Islamic State militant group (ISIS) claimed responsibility for the attacks, and Jakarta’s police chief, Tito Karnavian, said those responsible took their orders from an Indonesian named Bahrun Naim, who is believed to be in Syria. Two of the attackers died in suicide bombings, and the other three were killed by police.…

Texel Island, the Netherlands—Three out of five beached sperm whales lie on a shoreline on January 13; all died after being stranded for several hours. According to the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, a group beaching is especially rare in the Netherlands, as the North Sea is too shallow for the deep-diving mammals. Sperm whales can measure up to 60 feet and weigh up to 50 tons. Officials are investigating what caused the whales to be stranded. In the same week, dozens of short-finned pilot whales were beached in Tamil Nadu, India, and at least 73 died.…

“WE CAN’T STOP NOW.... AND IF WE DIE, OTHERS WILL FOLLOW OUR PATH.’’ AT THE PALESTINIAN refugee camp Qalandiya, just north of Jerusalem, residents have turned the community center into a mourning area for the nine young men from the camp who have died in attacks on Israelis or clashes with Israeli forces since October. On a recent afternoon, men sat on plastic chairs in the center, sipping black coffee and talking about the year ahead. Hope was in short supply. “If there is no political solution, this haba[rising] will continue and escalate,” says Jamal Lafi, head of a local residents committee. The latest wave of violence erupted last fall, after Israeli police clashed with Palestinian demonstrators at Jerusalem’s most hotly contested religious site, known to Jews as the Temple…

“IT’S NOT LIKE WE WORRY ABOUT DYING FROM CIGARETTES.” On a warm morning in December, a few dozen Syrians from Aleppo and Idlibformer students, teachers, vegetable sellers and farmers—gather in an abandoned firefighting training center near the Syrian-Turkish border. They have come here to learn advanced rescue skills that they will use to teach newly recruited emergency workers back home. They are members of the Syrian Civil Defense, known as the White Helmets—the largest civil society group in Syria and one that is nonsectarian, neutral and unarmed. The site looks like a deserted campground, aside from the burned-out bus in the middle of a neighboring field and collapsed concrete buildings that they use for simulation exercises. The exact location of their training center is undisclosed, and most of them ask…

THE MATRIX ENERGY Mine No. 1 in eastern Kentucky stretches 7 miles to its deepest point. Tiny cars creak along tracks laid on the ground in the bowels of the operation, opened in 2004, and miners here collect 4,500 tons of coal each day. But Jon Thorson, a professor of pharmaceutical sciences at the University of Kentucky and director at the Center for Pharmaceutical Research and Innovation, isn’t all that interested in fossilized carbon. He believes the true value to be found in the mine lies in the soil and rocks. Thorson is digging for blockbuster drugs. Natural medicine is often associated with ancient civilizations or bogus alternative treatments endorsed by celebrities. However, unique compounds in plants, soil and the sea have played a major role in modern treatments for…

Joint Base Andrews, Maryland—President Barack Obama arrives home aboard Air Force One after a town hall meeting in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on January 14. After his final State of the Union speech, the president pledged to spend more time meeting Americans face to face. Republicans criticized Obama’s portrayal of the state of the country as overly optimistic and slammed him for not mentioning the 10 U.S. Navy personnel briefly detained by Iran after they strayed into Iranian territorial waters in the Persian Gulf. After a flurry of diplomatic phone calls, Iran released the sailors unharmed.…

HISTORY DOESN’T repeat itself, Mark Twain supposedly once said, but it sure does rhyme sometimes. In 1997, once vibrant emerging markets in Asia began toppling one by one. Currencies cracked. International credit markets came under intense pressure. Oil prices plunged as the Asian financial crisis spread to Russia—which defaulted on its debt—and other parts of the former Soviet Union. Through it all, the largest economy in the world, the United States, sailed on almost unperturbed. Its gross domestic product continued to increase at a rate that many economists now believe is unattainable—more than 4 percent per year—even as growth slowed in the developed economies of Western Europe. Nearly two decades later, with China sending shockwaves through global stock markets, the tune sounds familiar. But it’s important to pay attention not…

9, 473 Copies of Mein Kampf sold in 1925, THE FIRST YEAR IT WAS AVAILABLE 15,000 Presale orders for first edition available in Germany SINCE WORLD WAR II For the first time since World War II, a new edition of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf has been published in Germany, and it’s proving even more popular than when it first came out. The new two-volume book, in which Hitler says Jews are “the personification of the devil,” comes in at 2,000 pages, including 3,700 annotations. The Germany-based Institute for Contemporary History, which has been researching the Nazi regime since 1949, self-published the book. Magnus Brechtken, deputy director of the institute, says it had 15,000 orders by January 8, when it went on sale with an initial print run of 4,000. Days…

“LITERARY STUDIES PEOPLE CLAIM THIS IS THE FIRST NOVEL EVER TO BE WRITTEN.” “USUALLY, in this area, no visitor gets in,” Verena Lepper tells me on a gray Friday morning in Berlin. She gently closed a set of double doors behind us, careful not to create any vibrations in the walls. We were standing in a room that was white from floor to ceiling, without a single scuff. It felt more like an airlock on a spaceship than a vestibule in the city’s Archaeological Center, completed just four years ago. There, I would sign my third guestbook of the day. The procedure was not just a German reflex for meticulous record-keeping but also a security policy: Inside was the nation’s largest collection of papyri, among the four largest in the…

VISIT ROME and you’re almost guaranteed to return home with memories of fresh pasta, ripe tomatoes and peppery olive oil. Heavenly, right? Well, not quite as divine as this: Pope Francis has turned grocer, and since early 2015, visitors to the city have been able to go to his farm and purchase its produce. Perched in Rome’s southern hills, about an hour’s drive from the Vatican, is Castel Gandolfo, the pope’s summer residence. The full complex, the Pontifical Villas of Castel Gandolfo, spans 136 acres, of which 62 are used for farming. Much of what Francis eats—from fresh olives to caciotta cheese—comes from this land. Unlike some of his predecessors, Francis does not appear to be particularly interested in relaxing at the retreat, which features gardens, historic ruins and a…

Madaya, Syria—A girl crosses a road as an aid convoy waits to enter the town on January 11. “U.N. teams have witnessed scenes that haunt the soul,” U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said after convoys reached the town, where Syrian government forces are conducting a siege affecting 42,000 people. “The elderly and children, men and women, who were little more than skin and bones: gaunt, severely malnourished, so weak they could barely walk and utterly desperate for the slightest morsel.” Ban said the use of starvation as a weapon is “a war crime.” At least 32 people have starved to death in the past month, according to UNICEF.…

THERE’S A NO-FLY ZONE ABOVE PORTER RANCH BECAUSE “FUMES FROM THE GAS LEAK COULD BE IGNITED FROM THE AIR.” IN THE WINTER of 2008, a Los Angeles Times real estate column profiled Porter Ranch, a collection of subdivisions in the San Fernando Valley that feels utterly removed from the huge city on whose northern edge it lies. The neighborhood is “graced with lush parks,” the Neighborly Advice column gushed, and “attracts residents seeking sanctuary from the urban hubbub.” Until very recently, you would have had to do a considerable amount of Internet sleuthing to discover that Porter Ranch, home to 30,000 people, is not the pristine, quasi-rural paradise promised by its developers and boosters. The hills that frame its Instagram-ready backdrop also cradle the Aliso Canyon Storage Facility, where the…

“IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO CONCLUDE TO A REASONABLE DEGREE OF PSYCHIATRIC OR PSYCHOLOGICAL CERTAINTY THAT MR. GALLAGHER WAS SEXUALLY ABUSED AS A CHILD.” ON OCTOBER 9, 2015, a former Philadelphia altar boy reported to the office of Dr. Stephen Mechanick to undergo a court-ordered forensic psychiatric evaluation. It took nearly three hours because the two men had a lot of ground to cover. Daniel Gallagher is a slender 27-year-old with a wispy beard who is better known as “Billy Doe.” Under that pseudonym, he made national headlines in 2011 when he claimed to have been serially raped as a fifth- and sixth-grader at St. Jerome’s parish by two priests and a Catholic schoolteacher. Gallagher subsequently became the Philadelphia district attorney’s star witness at two historic criminal trials. His graphic…

NOBODY’S GOING TO CONVINCE MY STEPFATHER TO BELT OUT “LET ME CALL YOU SWEETHEART” AS A WAY TO IMPROVE HIS BRAIN. THE TECH INDUSTRY needs to stop being so dunderheaded about technology for old folks. For the past decade, the industry has been laser-focused on transforming life and work for one rocketing market segment—i.e., 25-year-olds with money. It has routinely avoided, underestimated or remained ignorant about the world’s other rocketing market segment—old people and the family members who take care of them. This is personal. Like so many baby boomers, I have parents who could really use new ways of dealing with things like memory loss, immobility, shrinking social circles, boredom and, of course, escalating health care needs. I’ve searched for products and services that would be truly helpful and…

TRAFFIC LIGHTS ARE TIMED TO ALLOW CYCLISTS WHO MAINTAIN A 12 MPH PACE TO TRAVEL THROUGH THE CITY WITHOUT STOPPING. IT WILL BE the most spectacular bicycle bridge ever built, stretching between two skyscrapers on the Copenhagen waterfront, high enough for a cruise ship to pass underneath. But when the Danish capital announced in early January that after eight years of discussion, construction on the bridge would finally begin this year, it raised concerns among urban planners and ordinary citizens. They worried about who exactly it was for: By choosing looks over access, was a city renowned for its dedication to smart urban design trading function for flash? Or was it, once again, proving it deserves its reputation as the most bike-friendly city in the world? Copenhagen has perhaps the…