Newsweek International June 21 - June 28, 2024

1997 “Bobby is the purest star of the clan, the most messianic in his zeal to follow his father’s example,” Newsweek said of then 43-year-old Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in a story about his family’s political dynasty. The quote holds up almost 30 years later as Kennedy continues an unconventional run for the presidency. Recent polls show him averaging around 10 percent of the vote in battleground states like Pennsylvania and Arizona according to a May New York Times/Philadelphia Inquirer/Siena College poll, making him the most popular third-party candidate the U.S. has seen in decades. 1983 “Even the faithful were startled by the pope’s swift attack on almost everything [Wojciech] Jaruzelski stands for,” Newsweek said of Pope John Paul II’s hard stance against the Polish Communist government. Today, Pope Francis…

In FocusTHE NEWS IN PICTURESSANNERVILLE, FRANCE Paratroopers from the British, Belgian, Canadian and U.S. militaries perform a parachute drop to commemorate the 80th anniversary of D-Day near the Banneville-la-Campagne Commonwealth War Cemetery on June 5. Operations on the Longest Day, June 6, saw around 10,000 Allied troops killed and wounded, but ultimately ended in the liberation of France and Western Europe from Nazi Germany in 1945. An estimated 150 American WWII veterans, most around 100 years old, traveled to Normandy for the ceremonies, where they were honored by world leaders including French President Emmanuel Macron, U.S. President Joe Biden and members of the British royal family.…

In FocusCAPE CANAVERAL, FLORIDA NASA’s Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore leave the Kennedy Space Center on June 5 to board the CST-100 Starliner—Boeing’s first time sending astronauts into space. The capsule docked at the International Space Station, where the pair will spend a week, 26 hours after launch, Boeing said. It came despite thruster issues and helium leaks, which officials said did not endanger the crew, the Associated Press reported.…

Periscope NEWS, OPINION + ANALYSIS YOUTH CHILD MARRIAGE REMAINS LEGAL IN MOST U.S. states, leaving minors open to abuse and vulnerabilities within the legal system, advocates say. Only 12 states currently have a minimum marriage age of 18 with no exceptions, and about 300,000 children have gotten married since 2000, according to Unchained At Last, an organization that fights for laws banning child marriage. Advocates warn that married minors face unique challenges in breaking out of poverty, are left vulnerable to physical and emotional abuse and may struggle to gain access to the systems intended to protect abuse victims. Jenn Bradbury, now 45, is among those who got married before becoming an adult. At 16 years old, she wed a 44-year-old friend of her father—having been, she told Newsweek, groomed…

The COVID-19 pandemic raised alarms across the world on many fronts. Fears of a new virus running rampant, first and foremost. But as the world locked down in a bid to control the virus’ spread, other concerns arose, like securing face masks and ventilators, computer chips and car parts—and even toilet paper. Exposed by the pandemic was the tenuous nature of the worldwide supply chain. NEW YORK TIMES global economics correspondent Peter S. Goodman explores these fault lines and how they came to exist in his new book, HOW THE WORLD RAN OUT OF EVERYTHING (Mariner, June). In this excerpt, Goodman analyzes how, decades earlier, businesses worldwide began to rely on China to improve their bottom line by providing cheap labor for manufacturing and an expansive market of consumers, culminating…

Q _ Why did you write this book? A _ I was living in London and had written a lot of Brexit stories and decided to do a story about the actual manifestations of Brexit. Once the deal came into being and there were trade barriers, I started to call around to importers throughout the U.K. and heard lots of now familiar stories of horrendous barriers, but also I heard that shipping was in crisis and this I didn’t understand through the lens of Brexit. Why was it that suddenly the cost of moving electronics or components for pharmaceuticals multiplied literally tenfold from Asia to Ireland to Northern Ireland in the space of less than a year? As I started to dig into that, I realized this was actually a…