Innholdsfortegnelse for September 30, 2024 i Time Magazine International Edition

The work of encouraging trust in our democratic process ultimately comes down to each of us While many Americans may have Nov. 5, Election Day, circled on their calendars, the presidential election is already well under way. In-person voting has started in Pennsylvania, perhaps this year’s most-contested state. It will begin this month in four others, ranging from Minnesota to Vermont. Absentee ballots for military and overseas voters are required to be mailed out by Sept. 21. In truth, “Election Day” is now months long. But, though the past three elections witnessed historically high turnout, polls still show widespread unease among Americans about the integrity of our election system. Satisfaction with how democracy works in the U.S. is at an all-time low. Unease has spread among Americans about the durability…

India’s highest court instructed striking junior doctors to return to work in a Sept. 9 order, after weeks of protests that followed the rape and murder of a trainee medic in Kolkata. Some doctors in the state vowed to continue pressing their demands as the protests spread beyond India’s borders after the order. Thousands of diaspora Indians protested on Sept. 10 in 130 cities across 25 countries, including the U.S., to demand justice, organizers told Reuters. DOCTOR’S MURDER The victim was a 31-year-old trainee doctor at R.G. Kar Medical College, a government-run hospital. Her severely injured body was discovered by colleagues the morning of Aug. 9 after she reportedly fell asleep in a seminar room during a 36-hour shift. A man was arrested for the crime on Aug 10 and…

More than perhaps any other material, cement is the glue that holds the globalized world together—especially our cities. But producing it requires huge amounts of fossil fuels, and the industry is responsible for up to 8% of global greenhouse-gas emissions, according to a 2023 study in Nature. Efforts to tackle the issue have historically centered on things like fuel and efficiency. But some companies have another option, which could be a win-win for the climate and the cement industry: creating carbon-negative building materials by storing excess carbon dioxide in concrete. Paebbl captures carbon from the atmosphere and combines it with ground olivine rock to create a rock powder or slurry. That can be used as an inert industrial filler or ingredient in building materials like concrete. The process, known as…

In July, I read a study that found texting with a therapist is about as effective as meeting with one over video. I was shocked. How could a strong bond between patient and provider—one of the best predictors of success in therapy—form over text? But as I dived into the research, I kept finding the same thing: that meaningful therapeutic relationships can be built just through the exchange of words on a screen. Text therapy really does seem to work. It may even offer unique benefits, says Thomas Derrick Hull, one of the researchers behind that July study and a former executive at virtual-therapy provider Talkspace. It’s both immediate (you can fire off a message as soon as a difficult feeling arises) and asynchronous (your therapist can take time to…

A few years ago, someone posted a photo of a man walking through Brooklyn with a copy of Conversations With Friends tucked in the back of his trousers, the words SALLY ROONEY peeking out above his waistband. It was an accessory that telegraphed as much about his personal style as his choice in attire did. Less than a month earlier, the book critic Constance Grady had published an essay titled “The Cult of Sally Rooney,” deeming it “aspirational” to be a fan: “If you read Sally Rooney, the thinking seems to go, you’re smart, but you’re also fun—and you’re also cool enough to be suspicious of both ‘smart’ and ‘fun’ as general concepts.” Thanks in part to endorsements from Taylor Swift, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Lena Dunham, Rooney, the 33-year-old…

In the minds of many voters, nothing less than American democracy is on the line in 2024. Some see threats on multiple fronts: foreign interference, artificial intelligence, a polarized electorate. Others are most worried about candidates who have undermined faith in our voting systems. The 11 people on this list—Democrats and Republicans, public officials and private individuals, business leaders and civil rights crusaders—are working to boost voter participation, reverse disenfranchisement, and combat misinformation. Their efforts help not only defend democracy, but also strengthen it. Read more at time.com/democracy-defenders Lucille Wenegieme EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, HEADCOUNT Lucille Wenegieme sees her job as a straightforward one: “We turn music fans into voters.” That’s the mission statement of Headcount, which leverages the fan bases of some of the world’s biggest artists to get out the…

More than half of all car trips in the U.S. are less than 3 miles, and the maximum distance most people will walk to get to public transit is around ¼ mile. If some of these journeys could be substituted with lower-emitting forms of transport like shared scooters, bikes, or ride-sharing, it could help cities lower their carbon emissions, says Colin Murphy of the nonprofit Shared-Use Mobility Center. According to the North American Bikeshare and Scootershare Association, shared micromobility offset about 74 million lb. of CO2 emissions by replacing auto trips across North America in 2022. Bird, an e-scooter ride-sharing company operating in more than 400 U.S. cities, including Oswego, N.Y., estimates using e-scooters there instead of more polluting transport could remove 56 tons of CO2 annually. Ride-sharing offers an…

When some of the biggest donors to conservative causes made explicit their electoral opposition to a second term for Donald Trump way back in February 2023, it came as something of a shock to the Republican orbit. After all, the powerful network organized under the auspices of billionaire industrialist Charles Koch had officially remained neutral in Trump’s 2016 and 2020 campaigns, a sign of how uncomfortable his allies were with the nominee whose positions were so far afield from their own. But by the time the network gathered at the start of 2023, its position on Trump was not really a point of discussion. The deadly Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, was finally a step too far. The chief of the network’s main political arm, Americans for Prosperity, told…

CAMILA Mendes ACTING AUTHENTICALLY From her breakout role on Riverdale to her star turn in Do Revenge, Camila Mendes is no stranger to playing a seemingly unshakable, popular high school girl with complex emotions and motivations. But sometimes, she says, it can be “exhausting” to generate that kind of self-assuredness. “When I’m playing characters more like me, it’s a different energy.” After portraying the ambitious but out-of-place Ana Santos in the rom-com Upgraded, she said her dad told her it was nice to see her play a character truer to who she is. Mendes, 30, says that while she’s not looking to play only Latina characters, she always tries to infuse some sort of Latinidad into her roles so they feel more authentic to her. In Do Revenge and Upgraded,…

Why do you think Donald Trump asked you, and not a family member, to introduce him at July’s Republican National Convention? Listen, he and I are really, really good friends. What I think, and from what his kids have told me, I am the one guy he connects with. They call it “bro-out”—we bro-out together. Coming out of the conventions, there’s been a fair bit of commentary about masculinity. The RNC featured Hulk Hogan; DNC highlighted Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff’s self-effacing humor. It’s been labeled “toxic” vs. “tonic” masculinity. Has our politics offered competing visions of what it means to be a man? It’s a great question. This friend of mine was telling me, she’s got a girlfriend who was saying, “You know what, I’m way more attracted to Trump’s…

When Donald Trump in May became the first former President ever to be criminally convicted, one question was answered and a whole new set arose. Perhaps most important: Would Americans vote this fall with the Republican presidential nominee behind bars? The answer turns out to be no, but only because his sentencing is being postponed. Judge Juan Merchan, who oversaw Trump’s criminal case in Manhattan over falsifying business records, said on Sept. 6 that he will announce the sentence on Nov. 26, to avoid any question of interfering with the election. Trump was supposed to learn his fate on Sept. 18, about seven weeks before Election Day. Trump faces up to four years in prison after a 12-member jury in Manhattan unanimously pronounced him guilty of 34 felony charges—though he…

DIED James Earl Jones A great actor, a great voice Because everybody knows who Star Wars’ Darth Vader is, nearly every mainstream news report of James Earl Jones’ death must lead with that role. But Jones, who was born in Mississippi in 1931 and died on Sept. 9, did so much more—he was so much more. He worked so frequently—in movies, theater, and TV—that we can only believe he truly loved his craft. Jones was nominated for an Oscar only once, for his starring role in Martin Ritt’s 1970 boxing drama The Great White Hope. In 1969, for playing the same role on Broadway, he’d won his first Tony Award; another came in 1987, for his performance as Troy Maxson in August Wilson’s Fences. Jones also won three Emmys and…

The fruit vendor Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation 14 years ago inspired Tunisians to topple their longtime dictator and kicked off the 2011 Arab Spring. Of all the countries in the region that caught the revolutionary bug, Tunisia was the only one that managed to build a multiparty democracy with separation of powers and freedom of expression, for a while becoming the poster child of successful democratization. Then came President Kais Saied, an uncharismatic constitutional lawyer, who was elected in 2019 on a populist anticorruption platform that played to Tunisians’ postrevolutionary disillusion with political gridlock and economic stagnation. Five years later, the birthplace of the Arab Spring has become the scene of alarming democratic backsliding. The first major sign of trouble was in 2021, when Saied used the COVID-19 pandemic to centralize…

In August, the EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF) committed to sending $27 billion to a range of organizations to support community climate and clean-energy projects. Within months, the funding will accelerate everything from local solar to residential energy efficiency, bringing the benefits of the energy transition to U.S. backyards. Jahi Wise, who ran the implementation of the GGRF, told me on Sept. 3 it would fund tens of thousands of projects. “It’s a vote of confidence in American communities and the American people,” he says. ‘It’s a vote of confidence in American communities.’—JAHI WISE, FORMER GGRF DIRECTOR Indeed, the program, created by the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), has been praised by environmental groups for bringing the energy transition to people’s doorsteps, particularly in low-income areas and communities of color.…

A perceptive, generous-spirited child draws on her imagination when she’s subjected to the cruelty of a boarding-school headmistress. A lone astronaut, cradled in a damaged space capsule and having lost any hope of returning to Earth, experiences a hallucination that saves her life. A young household servant, abandoned by the man who’s gotten her pregnant, miscarries—though his betrayal helps her define what family truly means to her. Loneliness, so universal it has virtually become trademarked the Human Condition, is everywhere in art, and in life: we tend to fetishize it, or at least dab it with a perfume of sentimentality. But Alfonso Cuarón, now more than 30 years into a wide-ranging career that spans pictures like the Frances Hodgson Burnett adaptation A Little Princess, the space reverie Gravity, and the…