Innholdsfortegnelse for 09/07/2018 i Newsweek International

The state warns single females of the pitfalls of being a “leftover woman.” IS THERE ANYTHING LESS romantic than parental pressure to marry? Try government pressure. The August Qixi festival is known as Chinese Valentine’s Day, and as millions of young men and women spent the day looking for love or strengthening their budding relationships under family scrutiny, the ruling Communist Party was butting in. Encouraging singles to settle down isn’t just a family issue anymore: It has become a matter of state concern. China is one of the fastest-aging populations in the world, with rapidly declining fertility rates caused largely by the one-child policy instituted in 1979. The U.N. recently estimated that the number of Chinese citizens over 60 will hit 440 million by 2050, a figure larger than…

With fewer smoggy days and more blue skies, the winter of 2017-18 in Beijing and the neighboring areas of Tianjin and Hebei Province was regarded as heralding in the initial success of the battle against air pollution in China. Yet the government isn’t prepared to rest on its laurels as evidenced by its most recent action plan which encompasses a bigger vision. Official figures from the meteorological authorities show that in 2017, only 21 heavy pollution days were recorded in Beijing and its vicinity, a much lower figure compared with 58 in 2013. That was the peak year for pollution when the Central Government introduced its Action Plan on Air Pollution Control and Prevention. Since then, pollution has seen a steady decline. Monitoring stations across China recorded 27.5 smoggy days…

The big fear among military planners is that some trigger-happy nuclear nation mistakes a conventional attack as a prelude to war. THE EXISTENTIAL DREAD OF NUCLEAR WAR IS NOT UPPERMOST in many people’s minds these days. It’s easy to forget that Russia and the U.S. have thousands of nuclear-tipped missiles pointed at one another, in a constant state of readiness. But the relatively recent threat of cyberwarfare is bringing a terrifying new precariousness to this decades-long standoff. The U.S., Russia, China and other countries depend on satellites and computer networks to control their nuclear arsenals. Satellites help monitor rival powers’ activities, and computer networks transmit status updates for the nuclear weapons and coordinate targeting. During the Cold War, the U.S. and Soviet Union stayed clear of each other’s nuclear satellite…

YAKUZA GAMES HAVE BEEN WILDLY popular in Japan since their debut in 2005, and for good reason: Set in the world of the Japanese organized-crime groups called yakuza, they have over-the-top fisticuffs, high-stake schemes and dramatic plot twists. When protagonist Kazuma Kiryu isn’t busy brawling, he wanders the captivatingly seedy vice district of Kamurocho, based on the Tokyo nightlife area of Kabukicho, singing karaoke and gambling. The release of the critically acclaimed prequel, Yakuza 0, in 2017, pushed the series’ popularity beyond Japan. To take advantage of the more powerful Play-Station 4 hardware and appeal to a burgeoning Western audience, Sega is rolling out modernized remakes of earlier games in the franchise. The second of the revamped five, Yakuza Kiwami 2, debuted on August 28. (Kiwami means extreme.) In addition…

“Skewed birth rate casts single guys on the scrapheap.” IT WAS THE FALL OF 2005, AND VLADIMIR PUTIN, in his second term as Russia’s president, was holding a televised Q&A session with the nation. Toward the end of the program, a middle-aged woman asked him to comment on media reports that the government wanted to increase the age at which Russian citizens can retire and claim—as almost all of them do—a state pension. The question was an important one for Putin, whose popularity after he first came to power in 2000 was partly due to his success in ensuring that senior citizens would receive their pensions in full and on time, something that had rarely happened under his predecessor, President Boris Yeltsin. Putin stared directly into the camera. “I am…

IT’S NOT OFTEN THAT OTTAWA PROVOKES an international brawl. The issue: Saudi Arabia’s detention of several prominent women’s rights activists. Canada’s Foreign Ministry posted a tweet urging their immediate release—and Riyadh took it badly. Accusing Canada of “blatant interference in the kingdom’s domestic affairs,” Saudi Arabia pulled its ambassador from Ottawa and expelled his Canadian counterpart, giving him just one day to clear out of Riyadh, the Saudi capital. Trade with Canada was frozen, the managers of Saudi wealth funds were told to sell Canadian holdings, and airline links between the two countries were severed. The kingdom also halted payments for some 10,000 Saudi students enrolled at Canadian universities and 5,000 patients undergoing treatment there. The fierce reaction bore all the hallmarks of 32-year-old Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, commonly…

CRAIG RICHARD COULD NOT STOP WATCHING Bob Ross paint. It was 1983, and Ross’s television show, The Joy of Painting, had recently premiered on PBS. Richard, then in his early teens, would come home from school in Massachusetts, flip on the TV, and settle in as the painter brought clouds, mountains and “happy little trees” to life on a blank canvas. Ross famously narrated his creative process in a voice that topped out at a murmur. “There was something hypnotic and calming about it,” Richard recalls. “I would put a pillow down on the floor and end up dozing off halfway through one of his paintings. I don’t think I ever saw him finish one.” During viewings, Richard often felt a euphoric, tingly sensation in his head and upper body.…

ARTHUR YORINKS FIRST MET Maurice Sendak in 1970, when Yorinks was 17 and Sendak was 42. “I read an article about him in The New York Times and thought, If I meet this guy, it will help me move out of my parents’ house,” says Yorinks. “It made no sense, but I was determined.” He remembers their first phone conversation vividly: “Toward the end, Maurice asked me what I thought of Winnie-the-Pooh. I blurted out, ‘Oh, I hate that book.’ There was a pause. I thought, Oh God, I’m an idiot.” Yorinks laughs. “Then he pipes up with, ‘Why don’t you come for lunch next Tuesday?’” Thus began a beautiful friendship between a celebrated artist—among Sendak’s most famous books is Where the Wild Things Are—and an aspiring author, who would…

IN 2015, MILLIONS OF SYRIAN refugees were streaming across land and sea borders in an effort to escape a brutal war that had been raging for four years. Many chose to take the dangerous journey, in rickety boats, across the Aegean Sea to Greece, a country in the midst of its own crisis, this one economic. To take some of the burden off Athens—and shut down the so-called Balkan route—the European Union offered Turkey a deal in March 2016: The country (which is not part of the EU) would get roughly $6.6 billion in assistance if it would take the majority of those refugees. In addition, the EU would accept one refugee already living in Turkey for every person Turkey took back, though the EU capped the number it would…

THE CROWN PRINCE KNOWS HOW TO PLEASE. In early March, Mohammed bin Salman, commonly known as MBS, was at Buckingham Palace for lunch with Queen Elizabeth II. It was the first official visit for the 32-year-old, and press coverage was glowing. “He’s a revolutionary!” proclaimed The Daily Telegraph. British conservatives loved MBS’s proposal to privatize Saudi Aramco, his state’s oil company, and list it on the London Stock Exchange—a nice boost to the flagging British economy, as well as his reputation as an economic reformer. Later that month, he was in the Oval Office with President Donald Trump, followed by stops in Los Angeles, New York, Houston, Silicon Valley and Seattle to meet with Hollywood and tech elite—including Oprah Winfrey, Elon Musk and Google executives. This grand tour marked the…

Think ASMR is strange? Oh, it gets much stranger. No matter how eccentric your interests, there is a corresponding subreddit—that is, a meeting place dedicated to a specific topic on the social media website Reddit. Put another way: If you can dream it, you can meme it. Memes, for those who have successfully avoided the internet for the past two decades, are the jokes, images, videos, dances, challenges, etc., posted by millions of individuals with odd fixations, excess creativity or perhaps too much free time. To wit, a brief taste of what’s out there. A ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US An early, influential meme that spread from internet forums to T-shirts circa 2001. The phrase originated with a poorly translated sentence in a Japanese video game and became…

“I’m starting to feel like Nick Hornby’s muse. He enjoys telling his dirty little secrets through me.” EIGHT YEARS AFTER THE BBC SITCOM THE IT CROWD ENDED, Chris O’Dowd still gets asked to recite the catchphrase of his exasperated computer technician character: “Hello, IT. [Pause.] Have you tried turning it off and on again?” The Irish actor doesn’t mind. “It was my first big job, so I feel very warm toward it,” he says. Just please note that there’s new stuff, like Get Shorty, which has returned to Epix for a second season. Loosely based on the 1990 Elmore Leonard novel of the same name, the show, co-starring Ray Romano, has the 38-year-old O’Dowd playing a violent mobster trying to launch a Hollywood career. There’s also the new film Juliet,…