Innholdsfortegnelse for 01/04/2019 i Newsweek International

FOR A MOMENT, THE SOUTH Korean official was silent. It was late December, and, with negotiations between the United States and North Korea at a stalemate, I had asked a straightforward question: What, exactly, does the “denuclearization” of the Korean Peninsula mean? The matter is at the heart of the historic talks Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un began in Singapore last June. The South Korean official, a senior adviser to President Moon Jae-in, let out a deep sigh. “There is no consensus,” the official said, “not between us and the U.S., not between North Korea and the U.S.; not, frankly, even within our own government.” That answer is the principal reason why the once-thawing relations between the two sides now seem to be getting colder. Trump, of course, had…

JUST AS DINOSAURS CHARACTERIZED THE CRETACEOUS PERIOD, which ended with their extinction 66 million years ago, and mammals made up the Holocene, which extends to the present day, many scientists believe we need to designate a new geologic age, called the Anthropocene, that reflects the impact of humankind on the planet. That raises the question, What will constitute the most salient feature of the Anthropocene in the fossil record? It’s likely to be chicken bones, according to a study by Carys Bennett, from the U.K.’s University of Leicester, and colleagues published last month in Royal Society Open Science. Humans eat a lot of chicken, which means a lot of chicken bones are being buried, and many of them are likely to survive in fossilized form. According to Bennett’s paper, 65.8…

A Turkish-backed Syrian fighter trains in a camp in the countryside on December 16. Turkey has supported Syrian opposition fighters to battle the Islamic State militant group along its border, but tensions spiked with the U.S. in December as Ankara threatened an offensive against American-supported Kurdish militia—which Turkey considers a threat. President Donald Trump later announced plans to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria, which could weaken the Kurdish opposition.…

AT A GLAMOROUS EVENT IN DECEMBER AT THE NEW York Public Library in Manhattan, an international who’s who—Princess Beatrice of York, model Karlie Kloss, David Rockefeller, Wendi Deng Murdoch and Kerry Kennedy among them—gathered to honor the closest thing philosophy has to a rock star: Martha Nussbaum. The elegant source of their admiration was being celebrated at the third annual Berggruen Prize Gala; the award, which includes a $1 million endowment, is given to “thinkers whose ideas have helped us find direction, wisdom, and improved self-understanding in a world being rapidly transformed by profound social, technological, political, cultural, and economic change.” The 71-year-old Nussbaum, a moral philosopher and law professor at the University of Chicago, is passionately concerned with justice and how it affects the personal and political. But her…

LAST MAY, FOX CANCELED Brooklyn Nine-Nine after five seasons, two Golden Globes, three Emmy nominations and too many Tumblr GIFs to count. The cast of the feel-good sitcom—starring SNL alum Andy Samberg as an immature but gifted New York Police Department detective named Jake—figured that was it. “I may or may not have been a crazy, crying, screaming lady walking through JFK the day of cancellation,” says Melissa Fumero, who plays Amy, Jake’s competitive, rule-abiding foil and eventual wife. But within a few hours, Twitter lit up with support for the show; #RenewB99 began trending worldwide, with everyone from Hamilton’s Lin-Manuel Miranda to Star Wars’ Mark Hamill lamenting Fox’s decision. “We were all texting each other that day,” says Samberg. “Like: ‘Are you guys seeing this? We got canceled, but…

AN UNSEASONABLE ICY COLD SWEPT INTO Washington in mid-December, like a celestial omen that winter was coming for Donald Trump’s presidency. With the sentencing of three former key aides, including his personal lawyer Michael Cohen, and the guilty pleas and prosecutorial cooperation agreements of others, the administration seemed suspended between the end of the beginning and the beginning of the end. In guarded conversations on the edges of holiday cocktail parties in the capital’s power corridors, Republicans, Democrats and longtime “deep state” bureaucrats seemed to recognize that a turning point had been reached. The end, perhaps, was in sight, if not near. “I can’t imagine he’ll escape the traps Robert Mueller has set for him,” one top former national security official whispered, speaking of the special counsel investigation on condition…

Mass shootings, #Metoo, faMily separation, climate change, impeachment. The world is dark and getting darker. Or at least that’s what it seems like from the relentless barrage of push alerts and Facebook posts blowing up our phones. In turn, we get angry, we despair, we withdraw. It’s a vicious cycle, with seemingly no reprieve. “We in the media—because of our own need for eyeballs and clicks and profits—we’re not telling the healing stories,” says author Irshad Manji, who is among the people Newsweek spoke to about how to move beyond fear and begin to fix our nation’s problems. “We’re telling the stories of the conflicts. We need to hear both.” BY Stacey Abrams I BELIEVE IN ASKING THREE questions before moving forward: What do I want? Why do I want…

DAWN RICHARD GOT HER BREAK as a member of the girl group Danity Kane, which briefly ruled airwaves in the mid-2000s. But Richard’s solo material, under the name DAWN (previously styled as D∆WN), eschews Top 40 hooks for inventive R&B grooves. Her latest album, new breed, signifies a fresh start after the artist completed a heady trilogy of albums. “It’s my personal journey as a black woman from New Orleans,” Richard, 35, says. Her upbringing “really dictated how I went through life, with music, men, love, loss—everything.” ORIGIN STORY She was raised by a funk singer dad and a dancer mom in the 9th Ward, and new breed teems with references to the New Orleans neighborhood, with its radiant musical heritage of street parades and brass bands. Her grandfather jammed…