Innholdsfortegnelse for 08/24/2018 - 08/31/2018 i Newsweek International

THE UNITED NATIONS ENTITY for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, also known as U.N. Women, is the youngest division of the U.N., founded in 2011, to set global standards for seeking gender equality. So it was jarring to learn of an ongoing 13-month sexual misconduct investigation into a senior adviser. A U.N. Women spokesperson did not name the subject of the investigation but acknowledged the individual is still on its payroll, though “not currently performing any active function.” But Newsweek has learned, from five sources with knowledge of the investigation, that the subject is Ravi Karkara, senior adviser to an assistant U.N. secretary-general, and that he is accused of using his prestige and position to sexually harass at least eight men. The sexual misconduct allegations include obscene comments…

AFEW MONTHS AFTER RADHA KRISHNAN TOOK HIS LIFE, his wife, Rani, was holding her husband’s skull in her sun-beaten hands—the most powerful evidence she could find of a growing disaster back home. She had joined 1,000 farmers in traveling thousands of miles to New Delhi to demand a drought relief package for the farmers of Tamil Nadu, India’s southernmost state. Krishnan’s public suicide was a last, hopeless protest. In February 2017, after his crops had failed for the third year in a row and with no chance of repaying his loans, he sat on the street outside the local bank and drank from a bottle of pesticide. He died a few hours later, leaving his wife and four children. An estimated 59,300 farmers in India have taken their lives in…

FILMMAKER BING LIU WOULD PREFER THAT you don’t call his documentary “the Boyhood of skate videos,” as one Indiewire headline described it. Not that he doesn’t hold Boyhood director Richard Linklater in the highest regard (Liu’s particularly fond of 1990’s Slacker); it’s just that the comparison only “highlights the time aspect of Minding the Gap.” Like Linklater, Liu filmed his subjects over a period of years (four, so not Boyhood’s remarkable 12), but, he says carefully, “I was going for something a little more emotionally and thematically fresh.” It’s Liu’s polite way of saying that his movie—which premiered at Sundance and comes out in theaters and on Hulu August 17—contains none of the rose-colored nostalgia evoked in the work of Link-later, which often features coming-of-age scenarios. Liu’s movie follows two…

JASON ISAAC, A FOURTH-generation Texan and conservative state representative, has a clear memory of his first mind-expanding encounter with marijuana. It was January 2015, and the Texas state Capitol building was swarming with lawmakers returning to work. Two women were sitting on the stairwell opposite his office, waiting for him. He sat down with the pair—his constituents—and heard their stories. One had a child with intractable epilepsy, the other a child with severe autism. Both said their young kids suffered uncontrollable seizures, hurting themselves and family members. Prescription medications had consistently failed to treat the symptoms. The moms were asking for the freedom to try something new. Cannabidiol (CBD)—a chemical compound in marijuana that does not make people high—is believed to alleviate seizures. But giving it to their children in…

SINCE EARLY JULY, MUSLIMS FROM AROUND THE WORLD HAVE been arriving in Saudi Arabia for the hajj, the annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca and one of the world’s largest recurring mass gatherings. Along with the pilgrims arriving from over 180 countries—an estimated 2 million by the time the annual ritual ends in late August—are 25,000 health workers to monitor their health. In recent years, infectious disease outbreaks have spiked because of civil unrest, conflict and mass migration across the Middle East and North Africa. “Wars, and the chaos they leave behind, often provide the optimal conditions for the growth and re-emergence of communicable diseases,” wrote Rasha Raslan of the American University of Beirut in a 2017 article published in Frontiers in Public Health. In Syria, for instance, the seven-year civil…

INTERPOL’S DEBUT ALBUM, Turn On the Bright Lights, is one of those mysteriously great records that landed in precisely the right place at the right time: early-2000s New York City. Turgid nü-metal was on the decline and rock was on the rise. Interpol had been gigging, releasing EPs and amassing hype since 1997. CBGB was still a club and not yet a branding exercise appropriated by Target. The city was affordable for bands: Hypergentrification had not yet rendered Manhattan a playground for bankers and real estate vultures. And then the towers fell. Recorded just two months after the World Trade Center attacks—and released in 2002—Bright Lights had a moody urgency that caught the ear of critics eager for a new authenticity. “I felt a magic when we were writing the…

“Russians are looking for every opportunity to continue their efforts to undermine our fundamental values.” WHAT’S THE MOST WORRISOME foreign intrusion into the United States: unauthorized immigrants, Chinese imports or interference in our democracy? For President Donald Trump, it’s immigrants and imports. He doesn’t care much about the third. “Border security is national security,” Trump said on July 13 as he threatened a government shutdown if Congress didn’t come up with money to build a wall along the Mexican border (at an estimated cost of between $21 billion and $80 billion). Meanwhile, Trump ordered his administration to consider raising tariff rates already proposed on $200 billion of Chinese goods, from 10 percent to 25 percent, prompting China to threaten higher tariffs on $60 billion more of American goods. Yet Trump…

NEW YORK CITY’S BARCLAYS Center hosted a new set of athletes on July 27: two dozen people playing the video game Overwatch. More than 10,000 fans of Blizzard Entertainment’s highly successful online shooting game gathered to watch two teams, the Philadelphia Fusion and the London Spitfire, compete for the $1 million prize in the Overwatch League (OWL) Grand Finals. Professional gaming, known as esports, has surged in popularity over the last decade. In 2017, the global market grew to $696 million, according to gaming and mobile analytics firm Newzoo, and market revenue is expected to hit $1.5 billion by 2020. This isn’t an overnight success story, however; the roots of modern esports tournaments stretch back decades. And Blizzard was there. An Orange County–based game developer and publisher, Blizzard was founded…