Innholdsfortegnelse for 01/25/2019 i Newsweek International

1965  “Businessmen love it. Workers fear it. The government frets and investigates and wonders what to do about it,” Newsweek said of technology’s swift rise. It left society at an inflection point. For manufacturers, the possibilities in industry seemed boundless, but the fret over joblessness loomed large: 35,000 jobs were vanishing each week in the United States. Some things never change—in fact, they multiply. Over 40 years later and the fretting continues, with now millions of jobs disappearing thanks to automation and artificial intelligence. 1970 An economic and industrial renaissance was causing Americans to begin to “take stock of what full production does to their quality of life.” The big “issue of the ’70s,” the report said, was ushering in the Age of Conservation, where ecology and pollution were “daily…

On Donald Trump’s first visit to Beijing as president in late 2017, as trade tensions with China were building, the Chinese laid the hospitality on thick. There were tours of the Forbidden City, visits to museums housing priceless antiquities and elaborate banquets with President Xi Jinping and the rest of the Chinese leadership. When it came to substance, Beijing signed letters of intent for deals with U.S. companies ostensibly worth $250 billion, and Xi pressed Trump on the value of a series of high-level, biannual talks between Washington and Beijing known as the “strategic and economic dialogue.” Robert Lighthizer, along for the visit as Trump’s U.S. trade representative (USTR), was not happy. Begun during the George W. Bush administration and continued under President Barack Obama, the SED, as it became…

BLONDIE’S SINGLE “HEART OF Glass”—released 40 years ago this month—wasn’t supposed to be a hit. It wasn’t even supposed to be on an album. When the band entered the studio to record 1978’s now-classic Parallel Lines, “Glass” was an abandoned disco experiment from years before. Their producer, Mike Chapman, persuaded them to salvage it by pumping up the backbeat. By the spring of 1979, the glittery dance-pop anthem was “a commercial phenomenon,” says Blondie drummer Clem Burke, pushing the band from a fixture on New York’s underground punk scene to international stars. Singer Debbie Harry, guitarist Chris Stein and Burke recently marked the song’s anniversary with a 12-inch vinyl EP that resurrects early incarnations. There’s another milestone as well: In mid-March, the band will perform in Cuba for the first…

As a professional soccer player in New Zealand, Tim Brown spent a lot of time in sneakers covered in flashy logos and bold patterns. So when he started Allbirds, a San Francisco–based shoe startup, in 2016, he wanted to keep things as simple as possible: The insanely comfortable kicks come in only a handful of muted colors and styles, and they retail for just $95. (High-tops go for $115.) “Humility is how we’ve approached the design,” says Brown. “We’re whispering when everyone else is shouting.” It has proved to be a winning formula—Allbirds sold its millionth pair last March, and the company is worth upward of a billion dollars. Brown and co-founder Joey Zwillinger are also leading the way in sustainability, using renewable materials like merino wool and eucalyptus tree…

Beef generates 11 times more greenhouse gases than wheat and uses 20 times the water. Enter Ethan Brown’s Beyond Burger, which requires 99 percent less water than a quarter-pounder and just half the energy. The catch? This delicious whopper isn’t made of cow—it’s plant-based, with the look, taste and texture of red meat. (The patties even “bleed” beetroot juice.) Launched in 2016, Beyond Burgers are available at TGI Friday’s, Whole Foods Market and thousands more restaurants and grocery chains, along with Beyond Meat vegan sausages and chicken strips. The reviews have been stellar—some 25 million Beyond Burgers have been sold to date—and Brown’s “meat” is far lower in cholesterol than the real thing while still high in protein.…

Temie Giwa-Tubosun is fighting Nigeria’s devastating blood shortage with LifeBank, an online brokerage that directly connects blood banks and hospitals. “We’re like Amazon for blood banks,” she says. “Once we have their order, we deploy it where it’s needed, using motorbikes and trucks.” Since beginning in Lagos in 2016, LifeBank has moved 11,000 pints and saved at least 2,500 lives. Giwa-Tubosun has already expanded into oxygen delivery and hopes to add vaccines and anti-venom.…

After being sexually assaulted in college, Harvard grad Amanda Nguyen took on a criminal justice system she describes as “broken.” Launching the nonprofit Rise, she became the power behind the Sexual Assault Survivors’ Rights Act, which includes the right to not have a rape kit destroyed before the statute of limitations expires, the right to receive copies of police reports and the right to be notified of your rights. Its unanimous passage in 2016 “means equality under the law for all survivors,” says Nguyen. “[It] clears a path to justice in an otherwise complicated labyrinth of patchwork laws.” Though nominated for a Nobel Prize, as a young woman of color, Nguyen is still sometimes discounted in the corridors of power. “But we are laser-focused and data-driven; we keep our heads…

THROUGHOUT 2018, THE ARAB world continued to hit new lows. We stand before brutality led by bloodthirsty generals, despotic princes and corrupt politicians. It is a scene that will burden the conscience of humanity for many decades to come. All of this has been due to one reason: the assassination of hope. If anything good ever came out of the past year, it is the fact that the brutality of the official Arab regimes has been fully exposed for all to see. The question now: How will the West respond? When the Arab Spring began in 2011, it heralded two values: freedom and dignity. It was led by a new generation equipped with enormous energy, forward-looking hope and a profound conviction that democracy was the solution; religious, cultural and ethnic…

LI XIANGFU GREW UP IN A ONE-ROOM SHACK, LIT ONLY by a single bulb that dangled from the ceiling, in a desperately poor part of Henan province, about 500 miles from Beijing. His father, after losing his leg in an industrial accident, was unable to work. His mother toiled every day in the wheat fields. When I first met Li, in the summer of 2001 on a long train ride through central China, his life was about to change profoundly. He was on his way home from Beijing’s Tsinghua University—China’s version of MIT—after graduating with honors. He was about to start his first job after college, as a software engineer for a company then little-known in the West: Huawei. Founded in 1987 as a manufacturer of phone switches, Huawei was…

The statement from Apple CEO Tim Cook, issued just after the New Year, was chilling for stock market investors. “We believe the economic environment in China has been further impacted by rising trade tensions with the United States. As the climate of mounting uncertainty weighed on financial markets, the effects appeared to reach consumers as well.” Largely as a result of that, Cook said, Apple would not reach its previous forecasts for sales and profits in the current quarter. Apple’s stock promptly tanked, as did the broader market. To what extent trade tensions affect Apple’s results is hard to quantify. A slowing Chinese economy also contributes, as does the diminishing appeal of Apple’s pricey phones in a market where cheaper domestic competitors have improved their products. Apple, however, is a…

Mindy Scheier realized how limited clothing options were for the disabled when her son, Oliver, wanted to wear jeans to school. Diagnosed with muscular dystrophy, Oliver usually just wore sweats that could fit over his leg braces. “No mainstream brand was including the disabled buyer,” she says, “and the adaptive clothing that existed was medicinal, not stylish.” So Scheier founded Runway of Dreams, which educates retailers about designing for people with disabilities, one of the largest market segments in America, with a collective disposable income of about $490 billion. “We show them they can adapt what they have with Velcro and magnets and enclosures,” she says. Partnering with Tommy Hilfiger on a line of adaptive clothing in 2016 was a watershed moment. “It proved this was viable,” Scheier explains. “Then…

After proving neutrinos have mass, Takaaki Kajita, a physicist with the Super-Kamiokande observatory in Japan, was co-awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 2015. “I wanted evidence that the oscillations of neutrinos and those of anti-neutrinos are different. This could be the first step toward the understanding of the emergence of matter in the universe,” he says. Now, Kajita and his colleagues, as well as other teams in the U.S. and Europe, are working to complete construction on a gravitational wave interferometer, which could help uncover the origins of heavy metals like iron and gold. “Gravitational waves are a new way to observe the universe,” says Kajita, who joined the Kamioka Gravitational Wave Detector (KAGRA) project in 2009. “Black holes and neutron stars can be studied by observing these waves.…

WHEN REPORTS ARRIVED IN EARLY JANUARY that Jamal al-Badawi, a long-sought Al-Qaeda militant, had been incinerated in a U.S. airstrike in Yemen on New Year’s Day, President Donald Trump let out a whoop. “Our GREAT MILITARY has delivered justice for the heroes lost and wounded in the cowardly attack on the USS Cole,” Trump tweeted on January 6. Badawi, at large for over a decade, had quarterbacked the October 12, 2000, attack on the guided-missile destroyer with an explosives-laden boat as it lay at anchor in the Yemeni port of Aden. The Pentagon had taken nearly a week to verify the news, perhaps keeping in mind that many a top terrorism target, including Osama bin Laden and Islamic State leader Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, were once declared dead, only to pop…

Interest in Earth’s only natural satellite is running high now that China’s Chang’e 4 has landed on the far side. China plans a sample-return mission later this year and hopes to put astronauts on the ground by 2036. Many countries and entrepreneurs are interested in mining the moon for helium-3, a potential source of clean energy, and ice that could be converted to rocket fuel for a trip onward to Mars. 220,400 Amount of fuel, in pounds, to power vehicles leaving the lunar surface from a base. 27 → Number of days it takes for the moon to rotate on its axis—the same time it takes to orbit the Earth, which is why we always see the same side. 59% Portion of the moon’s surface we can see from Earth. 1/6…

“Without change, there is no innovation, creativity or incentive for improvement,” said physicist William Pollard. “Those who initiate change will have a better opportunity to manage the change that is inevitable.” That’s especially true in the 21st century, as accepted practices quickly become outdated and the mistakes of the past result in existential consequences. Success in 2019 means not only reacting to change but anticipating it. It means innovation. In this special Newsweek feature, created in partnership with Ricoh, we’re saluting innovators who have developed creative solutions to the problems that face our world—pollution, economic disparity, war, discrimination and more. Who have leveraged heightened globalization, increased awareness and cutting-edge technology to make their dreams come true. These men and women aren’t just bringing new ideas to market, though. They’re shifting…

Katherine Lo is revolutionizing the hotel industry with Eaton Workshop, a concept that’s part accommodation, part co-working space and part cultural incubator. “My generation is more fluid,” says Lo. “There’s a lot more connection between what we work on and our personal passions.” The Eaton Workshop in Washington, D.C., houses a wellness center, a cinema and its own radio station, while the new Hong Kong outpost includes a food hall and yoga studio. (Workshops are also planned for Seattle, San Francisco and Toronto.) The hope is to attract creative spirits with a space that fuels social change, whether that’s in the library (crammed with social-justice titles), the gallery (displaying political works from local artists) or even the front desk (where copies of LGBTthemed books banned in Hong Kong are available).…

As founder and CEO of Fuseproject, Yves Béhar is known for socially responsible design—a $100 laptop for poverty-stricken children, a robot that keeps seniors company, a wearable sensor that measures exposure to ultraviolet rays. But the Swiss designer’s newest idea really hits home: Tiny prefabricated houses that can be installed in your backyard. Ranging from 250 to 1,200 square feet, these “accessory dwelling units” cost less than $300,000 each and aim to address California’s affordable-housing shortage. Made from environmentally friendly materials, they take a day to build and can be customized to suit homeowners’ tastes and the local climate. Béhar, who is also planning an ADU for under $100,000, sees possibilities for them in suburban and farm areas too. But he knows he doesn’t have all the answers: In 2015,…

It was a vacation to Bali that made Andrew Cooper and Alex Schulze realize how grave marine pollution had become. “The plane was landing, and I saw what I thought were big lines of seaweed,” recalls Schulze. “But they were actually little tide pools of plastic. The beach was just covered in plastic.” Avid surfers, the two college friends founded 4ocean, a for-profit that recycles ocean plastic into bracelets that sell for $20, with proceeds used to remove another pound of plastic from the water. Since January 2017, 4ocean has sold $30 million worth of bracelets and dredged over a million pounds of trash. Their success, says Cooper, comes from creating a demand for the plastic, 8 million tons of which is dumped into the ocean annually. “We wouldn’t be…

This former mobile-gaming entrepreneur is challenging eBay with Mercari, a marketplace app that topped $1.1 billion valuation in 2018, becoming Japan’s first unicorn startup. Started in 2013, Mercari (“to trade” in Latin) boasts 10.5 million users in Japan, where it has generated 93 billion yen ($850 million) in gross merchandise volume. Shintaro Yamada credits the app’s ease of use for its popularity: “All you have to do is take a picture of the item, fill in the description and tap a button.” The American market has been tougher to crack, but the company has brought on former Facebook Vice President John Lagerling to run Mercari U.S., which now boasts 100,000 new listings daily. Yamada’s goal is to build a global Mercari “ecosystem,” with members using their IDs for both online…