Innholdsfortegnelse for 07/21/2017 i Newsweek International

Hamburg, Germany—President Donald Trump arrives at a working session during the G-20 summit on July 8. More than 20 heads of state from the world’s leading economies, including Germany, Russia, Brazil and China, met for the 12th G-20 summit on July 7 and 8. In what may have been the most discordant G-20 summit in years, several world leaders distanced themselves from Trump, voicing their disagreement with U.S. policy on trade and climate change.…

IT WAS MID-AUTUMN last year, and the presidential campaign was ending. That’s usually the time when major party nominees hone their message as they try to rally their core voters and sway the few undecided. But on October 22, Donald Trump devoted one of his precious remaining speech opportunities to a topic he’d hit on before but never to such a degree: big media companies and why they need to be broken up through antitrust laws. Sure, attacking the media is regular shtick for Trump, a former TV star who recently tweeted a doctored video of him pummeling a pro wrestling executive with the CNN logo affixed to his head. But generally his tantrums and tirades are about how the media is full of “losers” or is “unfair” or “failing”—in…

 SITTING OUTSIDE his grocery shop in the Nyabugogo slum in Kigali, Rwanda, in June, Francis Nduwimana described his longing for a change in leadership in the presidential election on August 4. “We are tired of Kagame, but we cannot express our views openly,” said Nduwimana, an ethnic Hutu, in his vernacular language of Kinyarwanda. “If you criticize him, you will be accused by the government agencies of dividing the country, and you will either be imprisoned or killed.” “IF YOU CRITICIZE ›KAGAME›, YOU WILL BE ACCUSED OF DIVIDING THE COUNTRY, AND YOU WILL EITHER BE IMPRISONED OR KILLED.” As Rwandan President Paul Kagame—an ethnic Tutsi who has been in power since 2000—runs for another seven-year term, many Rwandans, particularly ethnic Hutus, share Nduwimana’s fear. They see a government that is…

“ONLY 21 LAYERS OF FABRIC STOOD BETWEEN THE SKIN OF NEIL ARMSTRONG AND THE LETHAL DESOLATION OF A LUNAR VACUUM.” THE SPACE SUIT is torn between humanity’s two chief desires: exploration and protection. None more so than the one some of us will be wearing on Mars—which could determine astronauts’ survival while farther from Earth than humans have ever traveled before. But what people end up wearing on Mars is not just about being protected: What’s the point of going all the way to the red planet if we can’t act as humans do? We need to be able to bend down on one knee to collect a rock sample, or use our uniquely opposable thumbs to grip a tool and make a repair. Space suits are as important as…

EVEN WHEN it threatens to turn into Apocalypse Now in a wobbly stretch near the end, War for the Planet of the Apes never ceases to be a movie, never turns into a product. That’s to say that the filmmakers have conceived it as a dramatic and emotional experience and not just the scheme of a studio marketing department, the craven and transparent impulse that hobbles so many big summer movies. In fact, they have made a consistently intelligent, morally thoughtful and often beautiful picture. Director Matt Reeves, who helmed the second film in the franchise, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, co-wrote the script with Mark Bomback. Together they have created a story that is coherent and credible, with character motivation fully thought out. Equally impressive, the physical…

IT WAS CRACK. That’s what many thought in June 1986 when Len Bias, the University of Maryland basketball star just drafted by the Boston Celtics, died after a celebration. The latest urban menace had claimed someone white America knew—and liked. But it wasn’t crack. An autopsy eventually revealed that Bias had used ordinary powdered cocaine before collapsing in a fatal seizure. Yet the misperception lingered, and the fear of crack spread. Crack was whack, and it was everywhere. Or so it seemed. Christopher Johnson points to this discrepancy in his excellent six-part podcast 100:1: The Crack Legacy. His persuasive, insightful thesis: That the aggressive policing behind the recent deaths of black men like Freddie Gray had its roots in the 1980s and early ’90s, when the law enforcement response to…

Mosul, Iraq—A suspected Islamic State group fighter kneels in a basement on July 3 as Iraqi forces continue their advance against the militants in Iraq’s second largest city. On July 9, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi arrived in Mosul to congratulate Iraqi forces for taking control of the city from ISIS, ending several months of fighting that killed thousands of people. Though the government’s victory in Mosul signifies the extremist group’s continued loss of territory, it does not mean the end of the fighting, as ISIS still controls other small cities and towns throughout Iraq.…

 IN THE Soviet Union of my youth, Josef Stalin was invisible. His predecessor in the Kremlin, Vladimir Lenin, was everywhere, from the pins on our school uniforms to the statues or busts that seemed to adorn every public space. In those statues, his arm was always raised, palm outstretched, exhorting us toward the glorious socialist future. My native city had decided that Lenin superseded Peter the Apostle in world-historical import, so St. Petersburg became Leningrad. Stalin once had his own city—Stalingrad, the site of a ferocious World War II battle—but after the mustachioed despot’s myriad sins were exposed, the city reverted to Volgograd in 1961. PUTIN “REPRODUCED TOTALITARIAN SOCIETY WITH ONLY DISPARATE ELEMENTS OF STATE TERROR — ENOUGH TO REMIND PEOPLE WHAT’S POSSIBLE.” Stalin’s fall from grace was the doing…

“I KNOW IT’S ALSO BLOOD, SO IT’S A LITTLE BIT OUT OF MANY PEOPLE’S COMFORT RANGES.” IF YOU GIVE a mouse a cookie, he’s going to ask for a glass of milk. But if you give a mouse a transfusion of blood plasma from a much younger mouse, you can improve his cognitive and neurological functions—and reverse the effects of aging. The scientific studies are fairly remarkable. In 2014, researchers at Stanford University demonstrated that infusion of young blood plasma in mice “is capable of rejuvenating synaptic plasticity and improving cognitive function.” In other words, blood can help keep mice young. Can this work on humans? Jesse Karmazin, a 32-year-old physician and graduate of Stanford University’s medical school, says yes. Karmazin is the founder of Ambrosia LLC, a company charging…

THE BIG SICK , the autobiographical rom-com from Silicon Valley star Kumail Nanjiani, is about an unlikely relationship. And not just the true-story romance that develops between Nanjiani and his future wife, Emily (played by Zoe Kazan), who suffers a life-threatening medical crisis. The funnier and ultimately endearing bond that blossoms is between Nanjiani and his comatose girlfriend’s blunt-speaking dad, Terry, played by Ray Romano, the co-creator and star of, among other things, Everybody Loves Raymond. Casting must have been weird for you, Kumail, since the characters are based on people you know. Are Ray and Emily’s dad alike? NANJIANI: No! Very different. Emily’s dad is Southern, and obviously Ray is not. It actually really helped us to see this more as a story rather than our story. ROMANO:…

SEXY IS a matter of taste. For me? Beyoncé. Boom! The Tesla all-electric automobile. Ka-powee! And you might want to sit down for this one: plywood! For most of you, when it comes to tripping one’s trigger, plywood probably occupies a space just below tofu or cement. But for me, a carpenter long before I became an actor, it is deserving of sonnets and love songs. I was therefore thrilled to learn that London’s Victoria and Albert, the world’s leading museum of art and design, was mounting the first exhibition devoted to plywood. What were they waiting for? The versatile wood sandwich has been mocked for far too long. Consider how many modern comforts depend on plywood—everything from furniture to homes to the occasional fuselage and wings of airplanes, like…

Lukeville, Arizona—A human skull sits under the sweltering sun near the Mexican border on July 3. Due to extreme temperatures, the summer months are always more perilous for migrants. But this year, the number of dead among people who have crossed the border is way up across the state, compared with the same period in 2016. This increase comes as the U.S. and Mexico continue to bicker over a proposed border wall—and as American authorities are apprehending fewer and fewer migrants trying to cross. As Chelsea Halstead of the Tucson-based Colibrí Center for Human Rights told The Arizona Republic: “Less people are crossing, and more people are dying.”…

 IN ZUG, a tiny Swiss town 20 miles south of Zürich with million-dollar Alpine views, a small machine is doing big things. One of the 10 bitcoin ATMs installed across Switzerland by Zug-based Bitcoin Suisse, the machine accepts Swiss francs and euros in exchange for a slip of paper with a code that represents the equivalent amount in bitcoin. Scan the code with your smartphone, and the currency is yours. “WHAT WE’RE TRYING TO DO IS DECENTRALIZE THE FINANCIAL SYSTEM.” The ATM isn’t really necessary. Bitcoin has no physical form. Instead, it is made up of lines of computer code conceived in 2009 by a coder working under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. For those who wish to purchase the digital currency but find the prospect of the transaction difficult to…

 GANGA GAUTAM STOOD AT THE BACK OF A HIGH SCHOOL CLASSROOM IN KATHMANDU, NEPAL, HELPLESSLY WATCHING AS A TEENAGE GIRL STARTED BLEEDING. “Teachers see a drop-off in the performance of girls once they reach menarche.” Gautam, a professor of English education at Tribhuvan University, was observing one of his students teach a class two years ago. Three girls were sitting on a bench next to him, and one of them was clearly in distress. “I noticed that she was menstruating. The blood was coming,” he says. “She wasn’t prepared. She didn’t have a pad, and there was a male teacher teaching.” Gautam saw the young girl open her pen and drip ink over the blood in an effort to hide it. As soon as class ended, she placed a piece…

FOR MANY health-conscious people, bread is a little slice of hell. Burgeoning shelves of multi-grain loaves—or friends passing around sourdough starters and attaching the word artisanal to the ancient combination of yeast, flour and water—have led consumers to believe whole grain bread is healthier than industrial white bread. That trend has made for a lot of expensive sandwiches. Fortunately, a new study by researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science is here to cut through the confusion. In the study, published in Cell Metabolism, researchers randomized 20 participants to consume either processed white bread or artisanal whole wheat sourdough in order to compare the effects of each on the body. The study was conducted in Israel, so the researchers used the Israeli equivalent of Wonder Bread. The whole grain group…

“I’M GWEN,” she says, as if she could be anyone else. Gwendoline Christie is tall. This won’t come as a surprise to fans of Game of Thrones, the show that features the 38-year-old actor as the dutiful and fearless warrior Brienne of Tarth. And yet, when meeting Christie on a Friday morning in the rooftop bar of a London music venue, the full 6 foot 3 inches of her can still take you aback, even without her character’s coat of armor. For the uninitiated, Game of Thrones is based on George R.R. Martin’s wildly popular fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire, of which there are five novels, with two more planned. The books are set in a vaguely medieval world on fictional continents where the leaders of seven…

“THE AUTHOR LAYS DOWN A KIND OF DARE WITH THE FURIOUS BRIO OF HER PROSE.” THE AUTHOR of The Incest Diary describes how she was first raped by her father when she was a toddler—raped by a man who claimed his 3-year-old daughter wanted it. She calls herself “Anonymous,” this woman who writes in a trance-like fever of testimony, in a book meant to be hurled across the room and then urged on others for its dirty, shocking content. She describes how her father continued the sexual abuse of his daughter until she was 21. “He said he couldn’t help it,” she declares in the affectless voice of a trauma survivor. “He told me it was my fault. It must have been my fault. He said that he couldn’t help…

WELCOME to Dutchess County, New York. The streets are clean, the lawns neat, and the crime rate is zero. Move here and you’d remain entirely untroubled by undesirable people or experiences. But there’s a snag. This bit of suburban real estate is a tabletop model crafted from paper and plastic in the studio of artist James Casebere. You could trample all over it in a Godzilla costume, but you couldn’t live in it. Casebere is one of the Pictures Generation, artists who arrived in the 1970s, intending to unsettle the conventions of photography by making those conventions part of their subject matter. For the past five decades, he has been reproducing small sections of the world as scaled-down architectural models. When photographed, they expose the ideas upon which the built…