Time Magazine International Edition August 17, 2020

CLIMATE CROSSROADS I AM ALARMED HAVING read your in-depth coverage on climate change in the July 20–27 issue. What a tragic time to have a U.S. President who devalues science and therefore has failed to lead the nation in both treating COVID-19 and accepting the reality of global warming. Joslin Ruffle,NEW PROVIDENCE, N.J. HUMAN OVERPOPULATION is the cause of all of these issues. Forcing everyone to eat fish isn’t an answer. Educating people to love our planet hasn’t worked. Technology has never worked. We have to make it socially unacceptable to have more than two children—or better yet, encourage no children at all. Greg Weiss,CORNUCOPIA, WIS. CHANGE FOR HONG KONG RE “SECURITY LAW BRINGS a Chill to Hong Kong” [July 20–27]: The catalyst to prompt the enactment of the new…

‘He believed that in all of us, there exists the capacity for great courage.’BARACK OBAMA, former U.S. President, in a July 30 eulogy for Congressman John Lewis ‘Even the very worst among us deserves to be fairly tried and lawfully punished.’O. ROGERIEE THOMPSON, federal appeals-court judge, in a July 31 ruling that tossed out the death sentence facing Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and sent the case back to a lower court for resentencing 126 Number of items of Fyre Festival merchandise and other “minor assets” up for auction by the U.S. Marshals Service, according to a July 30 news release, three years after the music event stranded hundreds in the Bahamas; proceeds will go to victims of convicted ringleader Billy McFarland ‘WE FACE A GENERATIONAL CATASTROPHE.’ANTÓNIO GUTERRES, U.N. Secretary-General,…

FIRST THEY WENT AFTER HUAWEI. THEN IT WAS gummy bears singing Adele. TikTok—the social-media platform where primarily Gen Z users share dance routines and zany memes involving crooning fruit candies and the like—has become the latest flash point in the escalating tech war between the U.S. and China, with President Donald Trump threatening on July 31 to ban the app on national-security grounds. U.S. government experts warn that TikTok—the U.S. subsidiary of Beijing-based ByteDance—could be used to spread misinformation and funnel user data to the Chinese state. In response, ByteDance CEO Zhang Yiming insisted his firm fully respected “user data security, platform neutrality and transparency.” But, seeing the writing on the wall, ByteDance has moved to sell TikTok to Microsoft, after the latter’s CEO Satya Nadella received assurances from Trump.…

EUROPE’S LONGEST-SERVING LEADER, Alexander Lukashenko, is facing an unprecedented challenge as he runs for a sixth term as President of Belarus in elections on Aug. 9. A former teacher with no political experience, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya has emerged as his main rival, pledging to restore democracy. “For the first time in his 26-year rule, Lukashenko knows the majority don’t support him,” says Aleksandr Feduta, a former aide to the incumbent. BELORUSSIAN BULLY Lukashenko has ruled the former Soviet republic of 9.5 million people since 1994. His regime was dubbed “Europe’s last dictatorship” by President George W. Bush in 2005. He has jailed opposition leaders, repressed independent opinion polls and held elections deemed “severely flawed” by the European Parliament. Now, anger has mounted over his mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic (he dubbed…

Census count will be cut short The U.S. Census Bureau announced Aug. 3 it will end field data collection by the end of September, one month earlier than previously stated. The bureau said the change should not affect the results, but civil rights groups argue it will make underserved populations harder to accurately tally. Work begins on disputed Indian temple Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi hailed the “dawn of a new era” Aug. 5, as workers laid the foundation stone for a controversial temple on the site of a demolished mosque. Erecting a temple on the spot, said to be the birthplace of the deity Ram, has been a long-term goal of Modi’s Hindu nationalist party. Trump skirts Congress on DOD appointee President Donald Trump appointed controversial retired brigadier general…

TRAVELING TO MARS IS USUALLY A LONELY business—with a single spacecraft taking off from a single launchpad for the seven-month trip to the Red Planet. That appeared to be the case again on July 30, when NASA’s Perseverance rover roared off the pad at Cape Canaveral atop an Atlas V rocket. But this time the ship will have plenty of company. On July 19, the United Arab Emirates made its first bid to join the Mars game, launching the 3,000-lb., 10-ft.-tall Amal, or “Hope,” spacecraft on a mission to orbit Mars for at least two years while studying its atmosphere. Four days later, China launched its Tianwen-1, or “Questions to Heaven,” spacecraft, a three-part ship with an orbiter, a lander and a six-wheel, 529-lb. rover. And a fourth mission, a…