Time Magazine International Edition June 7, 2021

I WAS CATCHING UP THE OTHER DAY WITH A FRIEND, WHO ASKED HOW REMOTE WORK HAD been going, and I mentioned that sometimes late in the day, when my youngest child has had it with the closed door in the attic office space I share with my wife, I slip into the kids’ backyard treehouse to finish my Zoom calls. We both laughed, and marveled at how much the pandemic had changed work and life. “I’m sure you’re the first editor of TIME to work out of a treehouse,” he said. How much has changed? That’s the question Joanne Lipman explores this week, with cities and businesses across the U.S. finally beginning to reopen. Distancing and mask requirements are being loosened for vaccinated people (though of course it’s hard to…

IN INDIA’S DEFENSE RE “A NATION OVERwhelmed” [May 10–17]: Developing countries don’t have the financial power of the U.S., nor do they have a health care system similar to that of the U.K. So when a pandemic hits those countries, unfortunately, there will be fatalities. In such circumstances, no world leader can save every citizen. India is doing its best. M. Patel, LONDON MAKING AN IMPACT RE “TIME 100 MOST INFLUential Companies” [May 10–17]: You say Airbnb turns “spare residences and bedrooms into rentals for travelers.” “Spare residences”? These homes are being scooped up by investors who care even less than Airbnb does about who occupies them. How would you feel if the house next door in your quiet subdivision had a different occupant every three days, and here and…

‘Aung San Suu Kyi is always confident in herself, and she is confident in her cause and confident in the people.’KHIN MAUNG ZAW, lawyer for the former Myanmar leader, speaking with the AP on May 24 ahead of her first appearance in court since her Feb. 1 arrest by the country’s military junta ‘It brings indescribable sadness to know that the BBC’s failures contributed significantly to her fear, paranoia and isolation.’PRINCE WILLIAM, in a May 20 statement responding to the results of an investigation that found former BBC reporter Martin Bashir had faked documents and lied to secure his famed 1995 interview with William’s mother Princess Diana ‘I AM 107 YEARS OLD AND HAVE NEVER SEEN JUSTICE.’VIOLA FLETCHER, the oldest known survivor of the 1921 Tulsa, Okla., race massacre—in which…

VACCINATED AMERICANS WILL BE ABLE TO visit Europe this summer, after E.U. leaders agreed to open the bloc’s borders to foreign tourists on May 18. Although the E.U. hasn’t set an exact date for the reopening, the news is a boon for the air-travel industry, which suffered plunging revenues due to COVID-19 restrictions. Bookings for highly lucrative transatlantic routes have surged, and executives are enthusiastically touting the concept of “revenge travel,” predicting passengers will fly more than usual in 2021 to make up for months of being grounded. But revenge on the virus comes at a cost for the climate. The pandemic succeeded at something policymakers and campaigners have been powerless to do: ending decades of almost uninterrupted rapid growth in aviation’s carbon dioxide emissions, which fell by a record…

A COMMERCIAL FLIGHT FROM ATHENS HAD almost reached its destination of Vilnius, Lithuania, on the afternoon of May 23 when a Belarusian fighter jet sped toward it in midair, ordering its pilots to divert to Minsk, Belarus’ capital. Once the aircraft was on the ground, security agents forcibly removed journalist Roman Protasevich, 26, and his girlfriend, law student Sofia Sapega, 23, from the plane and detained them—an incident the airline later labeled “aviation piracy.” And for those fighting to end the 27-year rule of Belarus’ President Alexander Lukashenko, any sense of safety within the E.U. has since vanished. PRESS FREEDOMS The arrest of Protasevich, a co-founder of Nexta, a hugely popular news channel run by Belarusian dissidents on the Telegram platform, is part of a crackdown in recent weeks on…

N.Y. grand jury convened for Trump probe Prosecutors in New York have convened a special grand jury to determine whether former President Donald Trump should be indicted on criminal charges related to his “business dealings,” the Associated Press reported on May 26. Trump has denied any wrongdoing. India seeks removal of ‘variant’ posts In a May 21 letter, India’s Information Technology Ministry asked social media firms to remove content on their platforms referring to the “Indian variant” of COVID-19, calling such references “false.” The World Health Organization has warned against location-based names for variants, but many place names have become widely used. CDC: Stop kissing your chickens The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said May 20 that recent salmonella outbreaks—including at least 163 illnesses and 34 hospitalizations in…