Innholdsfortegnelse for 05/04/2018 i Newsweek International

WHEN MARTIN SH RELI, FORMER CEO OF Turing Pharmaceuticals, raised the price of Daraprim, which treats dangerous infections, from $13.50 to $750, the public was appalled. But lost in the outrage over predatory pricing was one crucial fact: What Shkreli did was completely legal—and common. Between 2012 and 2017, for example, the price for Nitrostat, which prevents and treats chest pain, increased by 477 percent, from $15.91 to $91.76. Nothing about the medication changed during those years—not its chemical formula, not its uses and not the manufacturing process. Pfizer, which sells Nitrostat, offered no explanation for the spike. In fact, according to a report published in March by the minority staff of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, prices for the top 20 drugs prescribed to older Americans rose…

The multilingual versions of the second volume of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China were launched in London on April 11, at a ceremony attended by over 300 political and business leaders, academics and representatives of publishing agencies from 14 countries and regions. Chinese wisdom The second volume unveiled during the London Book Fair, contains a collection of 99 articles, including Xi’s speeches, conversations, instructions and congratulatory messages between August 2014 and September 2017. The book was published in Traditional Chinese, English, French, Spanish, German, Russian, Japanese, Arabic and Portuguese, and serves as a supplement to the first volume launched in September 2014 and published by Foreign Languages Press, a publishing house under the China International Publishing Group (CIPG). The first volume contains articles arranged in 18 topics, incorporating 79…

WHAT HAVE HUMANS DONE TO DESERVE DOGS? They greet us when we come home, comfort us when we’re sad and generally act as loyal companions. Now, researchers are investigating whether tumors in dogs may help treat tumors in humans. (Talk about loyalty.) In early April, the Jackson Laboratory, which breeds and sells research mice to universities and drug companies, began collecting samples of canine tumors. Cells from these tumors implanted into mice could help test new drugs and improve our understanding about how cancer develops and progresses. A veterinary surgical center in Connecticut that treats dogs diagnosed with cancer is providing the initial samples. But the plan is to collect many more. In many cases, the cells in a dog’s cancer look and act the same as they would in…

THREE DECADES AGO, ONSTANTY GEBERT BROKE the law. Constantly. He took part in anti-government protests. He wrote for underground newspapers. And he helped organize a secret university that taught subjects forbidden by the state. But since the fall of Poland’s Communist government in 1989, Gebert says, he’s tried to respect the rule of law that Poles fought so hard for. That is, until earlier this year, when Poland’s ruling far-right Law and Justice Party (PiS) made it illegal to blame the country for Nazi atrocities during World War II. Gebert felt he had to speak out. So in March, days after the law went into effect, the 64-year-old Jewish journalist made such a claim in an article for his Warsaw-based newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza. “Many members of the Polish nation,” he…

It’s nothing personal, cat people. But when it comes to studying human cancer, feline tumors aren’t used nearly as often as those in dogs. While cats can develop a type of skin cancer on their heads and in their mouths that some researchers are using as a model for human head and neck cancers, dogs are more frequently diagnosed with tumors that overlap with human cancer. “It’s been a little bit easier to find diseases that really match up,” says Purdue’s Dr. Christopher Fulkerson. In other words, scientists could put a cat’s tumor in a mouse used for human cancer research, but why would drug companies focused on human cancer want them? An additional problem: Feline tumors may not be caught as frequently as canine tumors. Owners who permit their…

HEALTH IS LARGELY DEPENDENT on what we take into our bodies. But when the doctor asks about what we ate a week ago, or even a day ago, remembering is often harder than confessing to a late-night doughnut. Fortunately, at least for the virtuous but forgetful, a tiny gadget is here to help. Researchers at the Tufts University School of Engineering have created a miniature sensor that can be mounted right on a tooth. Measuring just 2 by 2 millimeters, the sensor, shaped like a hollow square, can communicate wirelessly with a mobile device. As the wearer consumes food and beverages, information about their content is directly transmitted to the device, which can then be sent to your—or your doctor’s—cellphone. Three separate layers allow the sensor to monitor diet. In…

ON CHESIL BEACH IS LESS THAN 40,000 WORDS, but each is as polished and integral to Ian McEwan’s novella as the famous pebbles that make up the 18 miles of protected beach along England’s Dorset coast. Its moody beauty is the honeymoon backdrop for McEwan’s 2007 book, in which a brief marriage will end after a night of disastrous sex. McEwan’s pace is brisk and his tone often comic, at least for the reader; for the lovers, Florence Ponting and Edward Mayhew, the story will end in crippling shame and regret. McEwan has written several original screenplays but finds the process exasperating and protracted, so he’s let others adapt his best-selling novels into films: The Comfort of Strangers (1990), Enduring Love (2004) and Atonement (2007). He felt differently about On…

 IN 2011, WHEN NEW GIRL DEBUTED, THERE WAS TREPIDATION AMONG SOME critics: Posters featuring star Zooey Deschanel played up the manic pixie dream girl (super quirky characters, often with bangs) she’d popularized in her films, including (500) Days of Summer and Elf. The assumption was: more of the same. But over time, New Girl creator Liz Meriwether and Deschanel cleverly subverted the stereotype: Jess is glitter-and-polka-dot twee, yes, but also ambitous, independent and smart. The Fox show, which almost ended last May, came back for a brief seventh season, mostly to resolve the on-again-off-again relationship of Jess and Nick (Jake Johnson); their fate will be decided in the May 15 finale. “It’s fun to watch them work toward, hopefully, resolving the issues that were holding them back,” says Deschanel, who…