Home//The Week Magazine/April 27, 2018/In This Issue
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018Editor’s letterPeople in the journalism trade (like me) are fond of quoting Thomas Jefferson’s statement that he’d rather have “newspapers without government” than “government without newspapers.” As a 25-year veteran of newspaper work, I’m inclined to agree—and this year has vividly proven Jefferson’s point. Power corrupts, public servants sometimes lie, and institutions hide their dirty secrets. To function properly, a democracy needs the impertinent watchdogs of the free press to challenge authority and hold it accountable. For proof of that, consider the contributions made by the winners of the 2017 Pulitzer Prizes for journalism, announced this week. Among them: the stories that finally brought Harvey Weinstein’s monstrous predations to an end.With months of painstaking work, reporters from The New Yorker and The New York Times tunneled under the wall of threats,…2 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018It wasn’t all badA Girl Scout troop from New York City is being saluted for its cookie-selling skills. Troop 6000 was founded in 2016 to offer youngsters who live in homeless shelters the Girl Scout experience. Last week, the group began its first ever cookie sale, and hoped to sell 6,000 boxes. Within two days, the girls had shifted 17,000, with hundreds of buyers queuing up at their stall. “It’s important to show other girls that it doesn’t matter where they’re from, they could still be a Girl Scout,” says 10-year-old Sanaa, a Troop 6000 member.In her day job, Lhakpa Sherpa washes dishes at a Connecticut Whole Foods. For fun, she climbs Mount Everest. The 44-year-old single mom holds the world record for summits of Everest by a woman and plans to return…1 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018Only in AmericaA 20-year-old man is suing a publisher for damages over a fraudulent book his father wrote claiming his son went to heaven and met Jesus following a 2004 car crash. Alex Malarkey, who was left paralyzed by the accident, said two years ago that his father, Kevin, totally fabricated the best-seller and did not share the millions he made. The lawsuit demands that Alex’s name be “completely disassociated from the book.”A Nevada woman has refused to sing the national anthem before a minor-league baseball game because she can’t carry a gun into the stadium. Alishia Wolcott said she was “thrilled” to be asked to sing before a Reno Aces game until she learned the stadium had installed metal detectors that would “strip me of my Second Amendment rights.”Boring but importantJustices…1 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018Bourdain’s rocky pathAnthony Bourdain doesn’t consider himself a celebrity chef, said Howie Kahn in The Wall Street Journal. It’s been almost two decades since he actually worked in a kitchen. Bourdain, 61, had been a competent chef, but he’s a storyteller at heart: It was his gritty insider’s view of the restaurant trade, Kitchen Confidential, that propelled him to global stardom. “The word ‘celebrity’ is not a compliment,” says Bourdain, now the globetrotting host of CNN’s Parts Unknown. “But I’ll live with it since it’s afforded me so many things.” When he was a young line cook at the Rainbow Room, a chef sexually abused him, grabbing his rear end every day until Bourdain stabbed the offending hand with a meat fork. “I sunk that thing in up to the knuckle. I…1 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018GossipMariah Carey has revealed that she has bipolar II disorder and is finally getting treatment after years of denial. The 48-year-old singer-songwriter—whose erratic behavior has created speculation throughout her career—told People she was first diagnosed after being hospitalized for an emotional and physical breakdown in 2001. “I didn’t want to believe it,” Carey said. “I didn’t want to carry around the stigma of a lifetime disease that would define me and potentially end my career.” Carey has a less acute form of the disorder, but it has caused periods of depression that alternated with periods of irritability, sleeplessness, and hyperactivity. She’s now managing her condition through therapy and medication. “I’m hopeful we can get to a place where the stigma is lifted from people going through anything alone,” Carey said.…2 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018Why Trump pardoned LibbyMarcy WheelerThe New York TimesWhy did President Trump suddenly pardon I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby last week? asked Marcy Wheeler. That’s obvious: He was sending “a message to Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen, and any of his other close aides” who face prosecution in the Russia investigation. Libby was convicted in 2007 of disclosing the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame in an act of political retribution that may have been ordered by Vice President Dick Cheney. Libby had already regained his law license and his right to vote, so Trump’s pardon “will change nothing.” It’s entirely symbolic, reminding those who might incriminate Trump in either the Cohen or Russia investigations that he can rectify their legal problems if they—like Libby—remain silent. As legal strategy, this has two flaws: One is that…1 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018I read it in the tabloidsHundreds of people recently gathered in the Indian village of Harpur to watch a Hindu holy man perform a bizarre show of strength—pulling a car tied to his private parts. The man, known as Penis Baba, can be seen in a video putting a white towrope under his robes and apparently attaching it to his member. He then staggers backward, pulling the compact car some 100 feet down a dirt road. Baba said that his performance was the result of “the power of God—the power of devotion.”A New York man ended up in the hospital with severe head pain after he scarfed a super-hot chile pepper during a pepper-eating contest. Moments after swallowing the Carolina Reaper pepper—more than 400 times spicier than a jalapeño, making it one of the world’s…1 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018Europe: Joining the U.S. to strike SyriaThe West had to take a stand, said Le Monde (France) in an editorial. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad crossed a red line once again this month by blasting his own people with chemical weapons, killing dozens—many of them children—in the rebel-held Damascus suburb of Douma. The U.S., U.K., and France had no choice but to hit back, smashing the dictator’s chemical-weapons facilities with airstrikes and Tomahawk missiles. The three allies are “all too conscious of the disastrous consequences” of their failure to act in 2013, after Assad killed nearly 1,500 civilians with sarin gas in the Damascus suburbs. French planes were fueled and ready to launch, but the British and Americans balked. Since then, the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons at least 85 times. And yet “a night of…2 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018You must wait your turn to have a babyJAPANEditorialMainichi ShimbunWomen being discouraged from having children? That’s the last thing you’d expect in a country suffering a steep demographic decline, said the Mainichi Shimbun. Yet in those Japanese workplaces where women make up most of the staff, that’s exactly what’s happening. Managers are telling female employees to wait their “turn” before having a baby. In one recent incident that caused a public outcry, an employee at a child care center who discovered she was pregnant was chided by her boss for “selfishly breaking the rules.” He had drawn up a strict schedule for female staff to take time off to give birth and she had ruined it. In another incident, a 26-year-old working at a Tokyo cosmetics firm was told by a supervisor that she’d be allowed to have…1 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018Pompeo: Why his confirmation is in jeopardy“Amid a series of difficult Senate confirmation fights facing President Trump,” Mike Pompeo’s nomination for secretary of state “was supposed to be the easy one,” said Elana Schor and Nahal Toosi in Politico.com. But after combative hearings of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week, Pompeo’s nomination is in real trouble. Committee Democrats grilled the CIA director on his previous, hard-line statements that we should tear up the Iran nuclear deal and overthrow North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. They questioned him about reports that Trump once asked him to get the FBI to scale back the Russia investigation. Even Republicans chipped in, asking him whether he’d ever push back against the president’s worst instincts. Pompeo’s evasive answers—that he now favors diplomacy over confrontation, and that Trump never asked him…2 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018Social media: What Facebook knows about youFacebook knows far more about you than you probably understand, said Natasha Singer in The New York Times. The data that users voluntarily supply—age, relationship status, employer, location—is just the tip of the iceberg. Facebook methodically scrutinizes “the minutiae” of its 2.2 billion users’ online lives, and its cyberstalking “stretches far beyond the company’s well-known targeted ads.” It regularly tracks the websites and apps that users visit, thanks to its “ubiquitous Like and Share buttons” and to invisible monitoring code that’s dropped onto other websites. It collects “biometric facial data” for photo tagging without asking for “opt-in consent.” And it shares granular insight about its users’ interests and activities with advertisers, to help buttress its $40.6 billion–a-year ad business. “The inner workings of Facebook’s data-harvesting behemoth are so byzantine,” said…2 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018The black holes at the galaxy’s coreScientists have finally confirmed the existence of a dozen black holes at the heart of the Milky Way—and they believe there may be many thousands more. Lying at the center of our galaxy is a supermassive black hole, Sagittarius A*, that is about 4 million times the mass of the sun. Astronomers have long suspected that Sagittarius A* is surrounded by black holes. But because these enigmatic celestial bodies are invisible—their gravitational field is so strong that even light can’t escape—they’re extremely hard to find. In this case, scientists studied old observations gathered by NASA’s Chandra X-ray telescope to look for “binary” systems: black holes with an orbiting star, which together emit telltale radiation. They identified 12 black holes in total, all within a few light-years of Sagittarius A*. Because…1 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018A finger’s point about migrationA roughly 90,000-year-old finger bone found in Saudi Arabia’s Nefud Desert adds to mounting evidence that early human migration out of Africa was considerably more complicated than previously thought. The remains are the earliest Homo sapiens fossil discovered on the Arabian Peninsula, and the oldest outside Africa and the Levant. Until relatively recently, most scientists believed that modern humans first left Africa in a single migration some 60,000 years ago. But along with other recent finds—including 80,000-year-old human teeth in China and tools dating back 65,000 years in Australia—the finger bone suggests our ancestors actually left the continent much earlier, in several different routes. “There’s a growing picture that this old model of single-rate expansion is inaccurate,” lead author Huw Groucutt, from the University of Oxford, tells The Washington Post.…1 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018VarinaCharles Frazier’s “splendid” fourth novel marks a welcome return to form, said Dan Cryer in Newsday. Arriving two decades after Cold Mountain, his award-winning Civil War–era love story, Varina revisits the eventful life of Jefferson Davis’ second wife and makes this forgotten woman “a symbol of wit and grit, open-mindedness and tolerance.” Born in Mississippi and educated in Philadelphia, Varina Howell was 18 when she married Davis, unaware that leadership of the Confederacy lay 15 years ahead in her husband’s future. Readers meet her in 1906, when she’s visited by a black man who believes she saved his life in 1864. Frazier tries, “sometimes a little laboriously,” to make Varina heroic, said Mark Athitakis in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Though she didn’t reject the South’s slaveholding culture until it was…1 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018In partners and rivalsEisenhower vs. Warrenby James F. Simon (Liveright, $36)It’s said that Dwight Eisenhower cursed the day he chose Earl Warren to lead the U.S. Supreme Court, said Michael O’Donnell in The Atlantic. But the fraught relationship between the two men took “at times surprising” turns, and James Simon is the ideal scholar to catch every nuance. His sympathies “clearly lie with Warren,” a true civil rights champion. His Ike, though at times hard to admire, backed the cause when his support was most needed, presenting a case for cautious leadership.Fatal Discordby Michael Massing (Harper, $45)Erasmus and Martin Luther, both critics of the Catholic Church, “might have been natural allies,” said Rebecca Newberger Goldstein in The New York Times. Instead, they were fierce foes, and this “inspired” examination of their dispute proves…2 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018Invasion of Privacy4“Cardi B is the new American Dream,” said Sheldon Pearce in Pitchfork.com. Still feeling the afterglow from her chart-topping 2017 single “Bodak Yellow,” the Bronx-born stripper turned reality TV star turned rapper has emerged, on her full-length debut, as a “first-rate” song maker. “At once brazen and vulnerable,” Invasion of Privacy turns up the in-your-face personality that won Cardi fame but also offers glimpses beneath her armor. She has honed her wordplay since her debut, and she “wields her voice like a weapon” on “Money Bag” and “She Bad,” letting her Bronx accent and punchy inflections “forge each syllable into a snap.” Some lyrics are “laugh-out-loud funny,” others are “immensely clever,” and quite a few are both. What’s more, “she is more versatile than most rappers or pop stars of…1 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018Borg vs. McEnroeDirected by Janus Metz Pedersen(R)3A classic showdown, in headbands and short shortsSorry, Bjorn Borg—we had you all wrong, said Richard Whittaker in The Austin Chronicle. In this new dramatization of one of tennis’ most storied showdowns, the unflappable Swede of legend is portrayed as having been just as volcanic a young man as his rival, John McEnroe, and Swedish actor Sverrir Gudnason strips Borg bare to reframe the classic 1980 Wimbledon men’s final. Here, it’s not the consummate sportsman versus Superbrat; “it is rivalry as silent kinship.” Let’s face it, though, said Rafer Guzman in Newsday. “The real selling point here is watching Shia LaBeouf, one of the most widely reviled actors in showbiz, play his tennis industry doppelgänger.” Notorious for his own public outbursts, LaBeouf appears to have been…1 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018New on DVD and Blu-rayThe Post(20th Century Fox, $30)Steven Spielberg’s recent Best Picture contender is “the best movie about newspapers since All the President’s Men,” said the Chicago Sun-Times. Meryl Streep is “astonishing” as Post CEO Katharine Graham, who teams with editor Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks) to reveal the Pentagon’s Vietnam lies.Ingrid Bergman’s Swedish Years(Criterion, $70)Movie lovers will find “much to savor” in this box set of Ingrid Bergman’s early Swedish films, said The Wall Street Journal. The six-disc trove includes the Hollywood legend’s first credited role and offers proof that “real movie stars are not so much made as born.”Genius(20th Century Fox, $30)National Geographic’s recent series about Albert Einstein’s life “will answer every question you never had about space and time relativity,” said the Los Angeles Times. “Beautifully shot and written,” the 10-part…1 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018The Handmaid's TaleWhen we last saw Offred, she was in the same fix she was left in by Margaret Atwood’s classic dystopian novel: pregnant and riding away in a black van to an uncertain future. After a first season showered with Emmys, Hulu’s adaptation is ready to extend the story into uncharted territory, though guided by Atwood and her vision of an America that has tipped into Christian totalitarianism. So is Elisabeth Moss’ Offred being rescued by the resistance, or is she being punished after failing to stone Janine? It’s a question the novel’s fans have pondered for decades. Available for streaming Wednesday, April 25, Hulu…1 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018Wine: Today’s ChiantiChiantis are getting more charming almost by the day, said Patrick Comiskey in the Los Angeles Times. Though the popular Italian table wine will always be “somewhat grippy,” vintners are learning to finesse the acid and tannins in sangiovese grapes. Where Chiantis of the past were “all but unpalatable without a mouthful of spaghetti,” classicos like these can proudly stand on their own.2014 I Fabbri Lamole ($22). “It’s rare to find any red wine as direct as this one.” Aged in steel, it has rustic tannins that become more refined with air.2014 Montebernardi ($24 a liter). An hour after it’s opened, this light Chianti “unfurls like a hibiscus flower,” its herbal edges softened by dusty plum and cherry flavors.2015 Monteraponi ($30). This silky, “impossibly sexy” wine delivers a delightful range…1 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018The first hotel in outer spaceSpace tourists might soon have a comfortable place to rest their heads, said Justin Bachman in Bloomberg.com. The Houston-based startup Orion Span recently announced plans to launch “the first luxury hotel in space” by the end of 2021, with guests welcome sometime in 2022. The 35-by-14-foot Aurora Station will orbit 200 miles above Earth and have room for four guests and two crewmembers—most likely former astronauts, Orion Span says. A 12-day stay, including round-trip rocket flights, will cost $9.5 million a person, and for that hefty fee guests will see 384 sunrises and sunsets as they race around the planet. Prospective visitors can put down an $80,000 refundable deposit for a future stay right now, but some experts suspect the startup’s time frame is overly ambitious. After all, the new…1 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018Dresses for spring weddingsRebecca Vallance Ravena MidiDarted along the bodice, this crepe midi in antique rose creates a silhouette sophisticated enough for the most formal wedding. A lace-up cutout in back enhances the drama.$147, net-a-porter.comSource: TheTrendSpotter.netTed Baker London Hailie Skater DressA midday garden affair needs a touch of romanticism, too. The bold zigzag and scalloped edge on this skater dress add snap to its dusky rose Palace Gardens print.$289, nordstrom.comSource: TownAndCountryMag.comBoden RivieraGrab attention while staying loose with this sleeveless cotton-linen midi in mimosa yellow. The flattering waist tie sits just above two generous front pockets. Also available in snapdragon red.$140, boden.comSource: Brides.comBorgo de Nor IsadoraFrida Kahlo meets Leonora Carrington in the purple orchids and brilliant saffron of this satin maxi with a wraparound skirt and asymmetrical ruffle detail. Pair it with beige accessories…1 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018This week: Homes in BoulderGreenbriar This mid-century modern home sits close to area parks and trailheads. The four-bedroom, recently renovated 1959 ranch features an open floor plan, vaulted ceilings, oversize windows, and oak floors throughout. The property includes large trees, raised beds for vegetables, landscaped flower gardens, and a two-car garage with a studio. $1,995,000. Jon Hatch, RE/MAX of Boulder, (303) 513-2834Whittier Built in 2004, this four-bedroom home stands on a tree-lined street near Sunshine Canyon and the university. Interior details include walnut floors, crown molding, plantation shutters, and a master bath with a spa soaking tub. The two-car garage has a lower-level studio with living room, bathroom, and two offices. $2,775,000. Karen Bernardi, Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage, (303) 402-6000Flagstaff Located in the desirable West Rosehill subdivision, this six-bedroom home looks out on the…2 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018What the experts sayThe price of procrastination“Procrastinating on financial matters can cost you big in the long run,” said Russ Wiles in AZCentral.com. Many Americans struggle with the pressure of planning for retirement, drafting a will, or developing a savings plan. Some are gripped by the fear of making a mistake, while others are intimidated by not knowing how to proceed. Delaying some matters can be especially costly. One of the worst financial behaviors is paying only the minimum on your credit cards, thinking that you will eventually ramp up payments. Compounding interest will just sink you further in debt. There’s also no better time than now to make sure that you have enough savings to cover three to six months’ worth of expenses, and to get serious about retirement. “Even individuals who…2 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018America’s subscription boomThe EconomistSubscriptions are the hot new thing in business, said The Economist, seen by many executives “as the holy grail” of profitability for delivering a recurring stream of revenue. Amazon Prime, Netflix, and Spotify are a few of the best-known subscription-based businesses, and venture-capital firms “are pouring money” into more, including companies that deliver “meals, pills, or even fresh underpants.” But a business model built around locking in customers has its limitations, and companies should take care before they jump on the bandwagon. Yes, subscriptions help firms better predict future revenues and build deeper relationships with consumers. Technology has also made it “easier to rent rather than own assets,” such as cloud storage space. But the model has its drawbacks. Landing customers in the first place can be “eye-wateringly expensive,”…1 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018The Oscar-winning director who loved rebelsMilos Forman defied categorization. The director made 10 films during his four-decade career, each vastly different from the others. There was One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, his Oscar-winning adaptation of Ken Kesey’s novel about revolt and repression in a psychiatric hospital, and Amadeus, a lush biopic of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, which won Forman his second Oscar for best director. Yet Forman’s movies all shared a common theme: that of a rebel struggling to break free. Having grown up in Communist-dominated Czechoslovakia, Forman felt an affinity with those who stood up to tyranny. “I lived in a society where people who called for censorship won,” he said. “You develop this admiration for people who have the courage to buck the system.”Born in the town of Caslav, outside Prague, Forman became…2 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018The drill instructor who became a war movie iconAt age 17, R. Lee Ermey was given a simple choice by a judge: “Son, you can join the military or go to jail.” The teenage miscreant enlisted in the Marines, beginning a journey that would end in Hollywood. His experience as a drill sergeant led him to be cast as one of the most memorable characters in 1987’s Full Metal Jacket. As Gunnery Sgt. Hartmann, Ermey dominates the film’s first half, berating the new arrivals at a Marines boot camp. Eyes bulging and his jaw jutting, he names one recruit “Private Snowball” and asks another rhetorically, “What is your major malfunction?” The insults were of his own invention. “It was terrifying to those actors,” Ermey said. “My objective was intimidation.”Raised in Kansas and Washington state, Ermey was a self-described…1 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018Hot stuffThis week’s question: A New York man rushed to the hospital with agonizing headaches after he scarfed a super-spicy Carolina Reaper chile pepper during a pepper-eating contest. Please come up with a medical term for the misery caused by eating overly incendiary food.Last week’s contest: The Russian ambassador to the U.S. has complained that no one in Washington—including House majority and minority leaders and Vice President Mike Pence—is willing to meet and talk with him. If Ambassador Anatoly Antonov were to write a memoir about his lonely life in D.C., what title could he give it?THE WINNER: “The Spy Who Was Left in the Cold” Jay Ripps, Mill Valley, Calif.SECOND PLACE: “Very Quiet on the Western Front” Anthony C. Chiarella, Oradell, N.J.THIRD PLACE: “From Russia Without Love” Alan Levy, New…1 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018Trump still wants out of SyriaWhat happenedPresident Trump signaled this week that he was sticking to his plan to withdraw all 2,000 U.S. troops from Syria in the coming months, after launching a limited set of missile strikes on the Syrian regime in response to a chemical-weapons attack that killed more than 40 civilians in Douma. In a joint pre-dawn mission with France and the U.K. last Saturday, the U.S. and its allies fired 105 Tomahawk and other missiles to destroy three facilities linked to the Syrian government’s chemical-weapons program. To avoid provoking Russia—which along with Iran is backing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad—the Pentagon avoided hitting any targets near Russian forces. The strike came only 10 days after Trump told the Joint Chiefs of Staff he wanted to remove all U.S. troops in Syria by…5 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018Comey: What his book actually revealsThis isn’t the first time we’ve had to ask this question, said Alex Shepard in NewRepublic.com, but “is James Comey helping?” When President Trump fired him as head of the FBI last May, Comey was already notorious for spotlight-grabbing intrusions into the 2016 presidential election that helped get Trump elected. Now here comes Comey again, with a new memoir, A Higher Loyalty, and a barrage of media appearances in which he is hammering his contention that Trump is “morally unfit to be president.” Trump, Comey writes in his book, is a serial liar who inhabits a “cocoon of alternative reality” and runs his administration like a Mafia boss, complete with “loyalty oaths” and an “us-versus-them worldview.” In an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, Comey stopped just short of accusing Trump…3 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018Teacher strike endsTeacher strike endsOklahoma CityOklahoma teachers ended a nine-day statewide strike last week after winning the largest pay hike in state history. But they failed to compel lawmakers to reverse a decade’s worth of steep cuts to education funding. The walkout started on April 2, just after Oklahoma lawmakers voted to grant teachers an average raise of $6,000, with educators hoping to win more concessions. Lawmakers later passed an additional $40 million in education funding, though that figure fell well short of educators’ demands. Union leaders still called for the strike’s end, urging teachers to shift their efforts to electing sympathetic legislators in the midterm elections. “There comes a time, when if what you’re doing is not getting the results you seek, there is wisdom in shifting focus,” said Alicia Priest,…4 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018New Zealand’s pregnant prime ministerJacinda Ardern will soon become the second prime minister in world history to give birth while in office, said Helena de Bertodano in The Sunday Times (U.K.). Ardern, 37, found out she was pregnant only six days before taking office in October. (Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto was the first prime minister to give birth, in 1990.) Arden has had to field some awkward interview questions, such as when a male TV journalist asked exactly when she got pregnant, and another asked how she planned to give birth. “I just said, ‘Like everyone else,’” Ardern recalls. “Do I need to describe it to you?” But in a country that prides itself on its progressive politics, most Kiwis have taken her pregnancy in stride. New Zealand became the first country in the world…1 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018Hungary’s ‘illiberal democracy’Viktor Orban is leading Hungary away from the rule of law and human rights—but with popular support. How?How has Orban changed Hungary?He is turning it into a crony capitalist state with what is effectively one-party rule. Viktor Orban’s right-wing Fidesz party, which has had a supermajority in Hungary’s parliament since sweeping to power in 2010, has changed the constitution and enacted stringent laws guaranteeing it dominance. Fidesz controls all branches of government, including the judiciary. It has gutted the independent press, with the media now dominated by outlets that overtly support Fidesz and Orban. Businesses that are close to the party, or to Orban and his cronies, get favorable contracts, while those that are not face punishing taxes and regulations. “Authoritarian capitalism,” says Hungarian economist Gabor Scheiring, is the “new…5 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018A global plastics crisisEmily AtkinNewRepublic.comWhen a dead sperm whale washed up on a beach in Spain earlier this year, said Emily Atkin, scientists were shocked to discover “64 pounds of plastic in its stomach and intestines.” Throughout the world, discarded plastic is infiltrating and killing wildlife, ravaging coral reefs, and contaminating birds, fish, and the food chain. It is making its way into our bodies, with unknown health effects. Humans already put 19 billion pounds of plastics into the oceans every year, and that toxic avalanche will double by 2025. Recycling and bans on plastic bags and straws can “make a small difference,” but this scourge is truly an international problem, with Asian countries contributing the vast majority of ocean plastic. “Like human-caused climate change,” plastic pollution requires an international agreement with “binding…1 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018Time to eat American FrankenfoodUNITED KINGDOMSean O’GradyIndependent.co.ukBrexit is going to force Britons to be less picky about their food, said Sean O’Grady. Leaving the European Union and its massive common market means the U.K. will need to strike a free-trade deal with the world’s largest economy, the U.S.—and America sure as hell isn’t going to let us sell it our steel, Rolls-Royces, and banking services if we don’t take its chlorinated chicken and hormone-laced beef in return. Just look at the latest annual report setting out America’s wish list with trade partners, including the EU. The U.S. wants to scrap all manner of restrictions, including many of our rules limiting pesticide use and requiring strict standards of animal welfare. It objects to the “country-of-origin labeling” regulations that tell consumers where meat comes from—probably out…1 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018India: Hindu nationalists accused in child-rape casesIndians are aghast at the sickening gang rape and murder of a Muslim girl, said Harinder Baweja in the Hindustan Times. Police in the state of Jammu and Kashmir say 8-year-old Asifa Bano was grazing her family’s ponies in a field when she was kidnapped, drugged, and locked inside a Hindu temple. Over the next four days, she was raped repeatedly by at least four Hindu men; finally, they bashed in her skull and dumped her body in a forest. Police say the perpetrators wanted to terrorize the girl’s ethnic group, Bakherwal nomads, into leaving the area. The attack occurred in January, but shot to national attention last week after charges were brought against eight men, including the temple’s custodian and four policemen—two of the officers are said to have…2 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018Paul Ryan: Judging his term as House speakerIt seems like ancient history now, but House Speaker Paul Ryan was once hailed as “both the GOP’s ideological standard-bearer and its future,” said James Hohmann in The Washington Post. In 2015, the conservative policy wonk reluctantly bowed to pressure to take the speaker’s chair as the only member of Congress who could unite Republicans after a right-wing rebellion against John Boehner. But last week the 48-year-old Ryan announced that he’d be joining Boehner in retirement—another casualty of his party’s bitter factionalism. When he first became a national figure in the 2000s, Ryan portrayed himself as a small-government, free-market libertarian whose primary mission was reining in Washington spending and Big Government. Mitt Romney tapped Ryan as his running mate in 2012 to shore up his appeal with grassroots conservatives. Now,…4 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018Russia investigation: Can Trump shut it down?OK, “this is not a drill,” said Christian Farias in NYMag.com. When federal agents last week raided the offices and home of President Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen, the president and White House floated new threats that special counsel Robert Mueller may be fired. “We’ll see what happens,” Trump said, while his spokesperson, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said Mueller has “gone too far” and that Trump “certainly believes he has the power” to fire Mueller himself. Because of the terms of the former FBI director’s appointment, it’s more likely Trump would have to sack Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who oversees the Russia probe, then get another Justice Department official in the line of succession to either fire Mueller or significantly curtail his investigation. Two Trump associates told The Wall Street…2 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018What’s new in techYouTube collecting kids’ data?More than 20 consumer advocacy groups have filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission “claiming that YouTube has been violating a children’s privacy law,” said Sapna Maheshwari in The New York Times. The complaint argues that YouTube “has been collecting and profiting from the personal information of young children on its main site,” in violation of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, which requires companies to get parents’ consent before collecting data on children under the age of 13. YouTube’s terms of service say the site is not meant for anyone under 13, and the platform directs younger viewers to YouTube Kids, which contains filtered videos. But the groups contend that YouTube still “collects data on children under 13 through its main site, where cartoons, nursery-rhyme…2 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018Sunscreen for coral reefsScientists in Australia have come up with an unlikely way to protect the Great Barrier Reef from climate change: using sunscreen. Greenhouse gases accumulating in the atmosphere are causing the oceans to become warmer and more acidic. When coral reefs are stressed by heat, they lose their bright, vibrant color and turn ghostly white. A resilient reef can recover from this “bleaching” process if water temperatures return to normal quickly; if not, the coral eventually dies. To combat this phenomenon, researchers from the University of Melbourne and the Australian Institute of Marine Science designed a “sun shield” to sit on the water’s surface above the corals. Some 50,000 times thinner than human hair, the biodegradable layer is made from calcium carbonate, a component of coral skeletons. Tests found that it…1 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018Antidepressants and pregnancyTaking commonly prescribed antidepressants during pregnancy could affect the development of the baby’s brain, reports Reuters.com. Scientists at Columbia University scanned the brains of 98 newborns. The mothers of 16 infants had taken selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs)—such as Zoloft, Celexa, and Prozac—during pregnancy, while 21 had suffered untreated depression. The others did not suffer from depression. The MRIs showed that the babies who were exposed to an SSRI in utero showed greater volume in the amygdala and the insular cortex, areas of the brain involved in mood regulation and the processing of intense emotions. They also had more connections between these brain regions than the other infants did. Study co-author Jiook Cha says it’s now clear that “SSRI medications have an influence on fetal brain development.” But she cautions…1 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018Junot DíazJunot Díaz is a very brave man, said Julianne Escobedo Shepherd in Jezebel.com. In an essay published last week in The New Yorker and addressed to a fan he brushed off at an event years ago, the Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist revealed a secret he’d kept most of his life: He was raped when he was 8 by an adult he trusted, and had never really recovered. “That s--- cracked the planet of me in half,” Díaz wrote in his blunt confession. “More than being Dominican, more than being an immigrant, more, even, than being of African descent, my rape defined me.” It was why, he says, he attempted suicide in high school, and why his 20s and 30s were a dance of denial. “‘Real’ Dominican men, after all, aren’t raped,”…1 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018The RiderDirected by Chloé Zhao(R)4An injured rodeo cowboy searches for new purpose.“How many stirring moments does it take to make a great movie?” asked Joe Morgenstern in The Wall Street Journal. “Whatever the number, The Rider has more than enough.” That’s partly because most of the characters in this “poetic, laconic, and ineffably beautiful” drama are real people playing slightly fictionalized versions of themselves. The story centers on Brady Jandreau, a South Dakota rodeo cowboy who is forced to give up riding—the thing he lives for—when a bucking bronco fractures his skull. Director Chloé Zhao “clearly understands that universal conflict between desire and reality,” said David Sims in The Atlantic. Brady, while coming to terms with his new life, suffers seizures, works menial jobs, and fights with his father. But the…1 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018The Week’s guide to what’s worth watchingGeniusOne great mind gives way to another. After an Emmy-nominated debut season featuring Geoffrey Rush as Albert Einstein, this scripted biographical series turns to Antonio Banderas for a 10-part portrait of Pablo Picasso. Banderas, who grew up in the same Málaga neighborhood as the legendary Spanish artist, creates a Picasso as consumed by lust for his muses as he is by new ways of seeing. Clémence Poésy and Poppy Delevingne co-star. Begins Tuesday, April 24, at 9 p.m., National GeographicNova WondersThe PBS series that sets the bar for science documentaries is launching a spin-off to tackle some big questions. The Nova team has signed up three charismatic young co-hosts—a neuroscientist, a mathematician, and an AI developer—who in early episodes will investigate the mysteries of the human microbiome and the possibility…2 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018Restaurants without bordersBrenner Pass Richmond, Va.One of the South’s most gifted chefs is breaking out into new territory, said Bill Addison in Eater.com. Brittanny Anderson’s Brenner Pass conjures “an Alpine state of mind”—taking both its name and culinary inspiration from a mountain corridor that divides Austria from Italy but weds several neighboring mountain cultures. The elevated German fare Anderson created for Metzger—still Richmond’s best restaurant—has a place in the larger venture’s warm, contemporary dining room. But she’s also able to dip into France, Switzerland, and beyond, “zeroing in on the richly comforting foods—cheeses, pastas, polenta, lake fish enriched with dairy, pork in its infinite iterations—that sustain hearty souls in the provincial mountain terrain.” Surprisingly, the house fondue is a bland, chalky affair. But plenty else is wonderful, including mussels in a paprika…3 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018A magical tour of the Beatles’ LiverpoolThe day I suggested to my Beatles-obsessed husband that we should visit Liverpool, “I won points for the rest of our marriage,” said Liz Robbins in The New York Times. I’ve never been a Fab Four fanatic—not like Ricky, a fount of Beatles trivia who started playing the band’s songs on guitar when he was 13. But as we made our way from Abbey Road to Penny Lane, meeting fellow fans from the U.S. and as far away as Uruguay, I was able to marvel at how four Liverpool lads united the world, “and continue to do so,” even 54 years after they charted their first overseas No. 1 single.“Where does one begin the story of the Beatles in Britain? At the crosswalk, of course.” Hours after landing at Heathrow…2 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018Hotel ZacharyChicago“Holy cow, architecture fans!” said Blair Kamin in the Chicago Tribune. This handsome new brick-and-glass hotel sits right across the street from century-old Wrigley Field, and—if you don’t mind obstructed views—you can watch the Cubs play from many of the east-facing guest rooms. Named after the stadium’s architect, the seven-story 173-room hotel “can get a little theme-parky.” But the theme is architecture, not the Cubs, and on the whole, Hotel Zachary “strikes an effective balance between ceding center stage to Wrigley and making its own statement.”hotelzachary.com; doubles from $197Last-minute travel dealsA villa in BarbadosPort Ferdinand, a luxury resort in Barbados, is offering 35 percent off all villas booked by April 30. A one-bedroom villa overlooking the marina costs $445 a night midweek in June. The offer is valid for stays…1 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018How to read a bottled-water labelPurified refers to water from any potable source (a tap) that has had any contaminants removed, usually through filtration, distillation, or reverse osmosis. Because purification also removes beneficial minerals, you might see the phrase “electrolytes for taste”—indicating that minerals were added back in.Alkaline is just that—water with a pH level above neutral. Some purveyors claim it helps with digestion; “others, much, much more.”Ionized indicates that the water has been exposed to an electrical current, which is one way to create alkaline water.Spring means the water is from a spring. Curious about the source? Look for a phone number on the label, and call for details.Vapor-distilled tells you the water was boiled into steam and then condensed. That makes the water slightly acidic—“and therefore not particularly healthy until electrolytes are added…1 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018Banking: Big banks make $2.5B from tax cut“Big banks just received the first installment of benefits” from the new corporate tax law, said Michael Rapoport in The Wall Street Journal. “The haul: more than $2.5 billion”—in just the first quarter. The combined earnings of Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, and Bank of America grew by that much thanks to the lower corporate tax rate of 21 percent. Without the tax savings, Wells Fargo would have seen its earnings drop from the first quarter of 2017, “and much of the year-over-year growth at Citigroup and Bank of America would be gone.” Earnings growth at JPMorgan would have fallen to 28 percent instead of being 35 percent.Goldman Sachs didn’t necessarily need the tax law to “get its groove back,” said Emily Flitter in The New York Times. The…1 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018Charity of the weekFor more than 50 years, Fidelco Guide Dog Foundation (fidelco.org) has been dedicated to helping the blind enjoy a sense of independence by supplying German shepherd guide dogs trained to keep their blind partners safe. Fidelco’s guide dogs are bred from Bavarian herding and East German bloodlines, and are known for their intelligence, temperament, and stamina. Fidelco takes the dogs through a rigorous two-year training program supervised by internationally accredited trainers, and custom-matches the animals to their blind partners. The guide dogs are provided at no cost, thanks to donors’ generous support. Since its founding, Fidelco has placed more than 1,500 guide dogs across North America.Each charity we feature has earned a four-star overall rating from Charity Navigator, which rates not-for-profit organizations on the strength of their finances, their governance…1 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018Trump’s ‘fixer’ in growing legal jeopardyWhat happenedAmid mounting alarm and anger from President Trump, a federal judge this week denied requests from his lawyers to review materials seized from his longtime personal lawyer and self-described “fixer,” Michael Cohen. Federal Judge Kimba Wood is weighing whether to appoint an independent lawyer to review the seized materials to see if any documents are shielded under attorney-client privilege before they are handed to investigators. The Justice Department revealed that Cohen had been under criminal investigation for several months over his business dealings when the FBI seized documents and hard drives from his office and home in early April. Among the records investigators were looking for were materials related to a $130,000 payoff to porn star Stormy Daniels and communications about the notorious Access Hollywood tape. Trump’s advisers believe…3 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018Good week/bad weekGood week for:Samuel Taylor Coleridge, after a coffin containing the Romantic poet’s remains was discovered in a London wine cellar. “You could see it as appropriate,” commented Richard Coleridge, great-great-great-grandson of the hard-drinking author of Kubla Khan.Close shaves, when an asteroid nearly four times the size of one that leveled 500,000 acres of Siberian forest in 1908 missed Earth by only 119,500 miles last weekend. Startled astronomers had detected it less than a day earlier.Louisiana’s animals, after the state Senate passed a bill banning bestiality. “[If] you vote against this bill, good luck explaining it,” said Sen. J.P. Morrell. Ten senators then voted against it.Bad week for:Scott Pruitt, when Congress’ Government Accountability Office ruled that the scandal-plagued head of the Environmental Protection Agency violated the law when he installed a…1 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018Apology to CaribbeansLondonBritish Prime Minister Theresa May apologized this week to the thousands of Caribbeans who have been legal British residents for decades but were recently wrongly identified as illegal immigrants. Members of the “Windrush generation”—Caribbeans from former British colonies, named after the 1948 ship that brought the first wave of foreign workers invited to help rebuild the U.K. after World War II—who arrived before 1973 had an automatic right to settle in the U.K. But some of those immigrants, especially those who arrived as children on their parents’ passports, have been denied services such as health care, and some were deported because of rule changes implemented in 2012. The new rules require residents to prove their legal status, but the Caribbeans were never issued any immigration documents.New bloodHavanaRaúl Castro, 86, was…7 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018The man who was almost a BeatlePete Best has secured his place as a footnote in rock ’n’ roll history, said James Hall in The Telegraph (U.K.). In 1959, Best’s mother opened the Casbah Coffee Club in Liverpool, where the young trio of George Harrison, John Lennon, and Paul McCartney helped paint the walls before playing there on opening night. Later, when their band, the Beatles, needed a drummer, they remembered that Best owned a drum kit and invited him to join. Best played with the Beatles for two years, until he was abruptly fired in August 1962, just months before the hit single “Love Me Do” was released. Now 76, Best accepts the decision. But what still rankles is that his bandmates got manager Brian Epstein to do the firing. “He said, ‘Pete, I don’t…1 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018The crisis no one is facingRobert SamuelsonThe Washington PostRepublicans and Democrats have the same plan for the massive hole in the federal budget: “Do nothing,” said Robert Samuelson. The latest projections from the Congressional Budget Office are “gruesome.” Thanks to falling revenue from Republican tax cuts and a bipartisan spending binge, the deficit will leap to $1 trillion by 2020, with the federal government adding another $12.4 trillion to our $21 trillion national debt over the next 10 years. Exploding the deficit during a strong economy makes no sense, and may lead to rising interest rates—and at some unpredictable point, to a collapse in U.S. creditworthiness. “Political expediency” is to blame. “It’s more popular to increase spending and cut taxes than the opposite.” Balancing the budget will require annual spending cuts and tax increases that…1 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018Viewpoint“The IRS’s biggest problem is that it has nowhere near enough money to do the job asked of it. Enforcement personnel have dropped precipitously at the agency, including a 30 percent drop in auditors between 2010 and 2017. Contrary to the popular perception, Americans generally think their taxes are reasonable. It’s not paying that gets them incensed, but the notion—real or imagined—that others aren’t paying their fair share. Crippling the IRS makes that perception more real by enabling tax cheats to get away with their games.”Pat Garofalo in NBCNews.com…1 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018Now we look worse than everPOLANDJerzy HaszczynskiRzeczpospolitaPoland’s gag law on Holocaust culpability has utterly backfired, said Jerzy Haszczynski. The law, passed in February, makes it a crime to attribute Nazi atrocities to the Polish nation or people, or to use the phrase “Polish death camps” to describe Nazi German concentration camps in occupied Poland. One could see the ruling Law and Justice party’s intention in this legislation; Poles find it infuriating to be unfairly blamed for the horrors of Auschwitz. But the law was understandably seen in Israel and the U.S. “as a gag stuffed in the mouth of the last Holocaust survivor.” Governments denounced it, and newspapers around the world began listing every instance of Polish complicity in roundups or killings of Jews here during World War II. The result was a global “outpouring…1 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018Spurning our repugnant neighborCANADADoug SaundersThe Globe and MailAmericans don’t need to wonder who lost Canada, said Doug Saunders. Right after Donald Trump was elected president, Canadian regard for its most important trading partner crumbled. According to a new poll, more than half of Canadians now hold an unfavorable view of the U.S.—the first time that’s happened since pollsters began charting the relationship some 40 years ago. “It is not a subtle drift.” We were “overwhelmingly positive” about America until November 2016, when the numbers dropped off a cliff. More Canadians now list the U.S. as a negative force in the world than cite North Korea. We’ve even soured on Britain, because that country has been contorting itself to stay close to Trump’s U.S. At the same time, our admiration for Germany and Sweden—countries…1 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018NotedThe U.S. has accepted only 11 Syrian refugees fleeing the carnage of the country’s civil war so far this year, down from 15,479 in 2016 and 3,024 in 2017. “I think you can call it a backdoor ban, except that it’s so blatant,” said Becca Heller of the International Refugee Assistance Project.NPR.orgIn 2015, Donald Trump listed 19 companies that were paying him so they could sell Trump-branded consumer goods, including ties, steaks, and underwear. But his presidency has driven off customers, leaving only a Panamanian company selling Trump bed linens and a Turkish company selling Trump furniture.The Washington PostFisher Island, a 216-acre private island off the coast of Miami, is the richest ZIP code in the U.S. The average income there was $2.5 million in 2015, more than $1 million…1 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018Innovation of the weekMitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems has broken ground in Japan on a hydrogen-fueled plant that will be run by artificial intelligence, said Jim Polson and Naureen Malik in Bloomberg.com. The plant will dispense with the need for human operators and run autonomously, according to Paul Browning, the chief executive of the operation. AI will be able to better coordinate power systems and make them more flexible, Browning said. If all goes to plan, “the plant will be capable of diagnosing system failures before they happen and dispatching its own power based on weather and supplies in the market.” The company says the facility will use power from wind or solar to convert water to hydrogen, then burn it based on demand. “There’s going to be autonomous cars,” Browning said, “There’s also…1 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018The evolution of eyebrowsIt’s a question that has long puzzled scientists: Why are human eyebrows so expressive? Hominins that lived 200,000 to 600,000 years ago boasted a prominent brow ridge, which gave their face a permanently intimidating look and may also have served a structural purpose, as it allowed their skulls to withstand the force of chewing on the tough materials they ate. But modern humans evolved to have a long, smooth forehead with notably agile eyebrows. In a new study, researchers at the University of York in England have offered up a new theory for that evolutionary change. They believe early humans developed more expressive eyebrows out of necessity—that as the species developed increasingly sophisticated forms of communication, social interaction became more vital to their survival. Whereas the thick brow of their…1 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018Sharp: The Women Who Made an Art of Having an Opinion(Grove, $26)Michelle Dean’s new book could so easily have been a group catfight, said Maureen Corrigan in The Wall Street Journal. She has chosen, after all, to profile 10 women writers known for their strong opinions, and “there are so many stores to tell, so much bad behavior to revel in, and so many zingers to quote.” When Mary McCarthy met a young Susan Sontag at a 1964 party, she cut the upstart down to size by saying she smiled too much to be a seasoned New Yorker. Pauline Kael once wrote of a Joan Didion novel that she “read it between bouts of disbelieving giggles.” But instead of inviting us to gorge on pure dish, “Dean has pulled off a much rarer achievement”: She’s written an “entertaining and erudite”…2 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018Chosen by Sara ShepardSara Shepard’s new novel and first adult thriller, The Elizas, is narrated by a woman whose recent brush with death may or may not have been a suicide attempt. Below, the Pretty Little Liars author names six favorite stories of deception.You by Caroline Kepnes (Atria, $17). The narrator, Joe, presents a genial face to the world, but readers get the privilege of access to his darkest thoughts and gruesome actions—all conveyed in a surprisingly sympathetic voice. It’s a cautionary tale that reminds us that we never know who anyone is beneath the surface, and that a good enough actor can fool us all.The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith (Norton, $16). People who choose to assume someone else’s identity have always fascinated me. I read this novel years ago and…2 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018Adrian Piper: A Synthesis of Intuitions 1965–2016Museum of Modern Art, New York City, through July 22Whatever your level of interest in conceptual art, Adrian Piper “shows us how to do it right,” said David Velasco in Artforum.com. For more than five decades, the Berlin-based, New York City–born artist has been the most generous of innovators, creating work that “kicks open your mind” without picking fruitless fights. And if you visit New York’s MoMA this spring, you will quickly learn why the museum has given her current retrospective an entire floor—an unprecedented amount of square footage for a living artist, said Victoria Stapley-Brown in TheArtNewspaper.com. “It takes that much space to cover the breadth of Piper’s work.” After a brief period of producing psychedelic drawings and paintings as a 1960s art-school student, the biracial polymath embraced conceptual…2 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018The Tree of Forgiveness3John Prine is back, and it’s “a soul-deep treat to be in his company once again,” said Jim Fusilli in The Wall Street Journal. The country singer-songwriter’s first album in 13 years is “prime Prine”—“simple, instantly memorable” melodies paired with sharp lyrics that “tell of the agonies and absurdities of life that often stand side by side.” Prine, 71, has twice battled cancer, and his fans won’t be surprised that The Tree of Forgiveness frequently ruminates on death. “Yet it is never maudlin.” Just listen to the casual warmth of the ballad “Summer’s End” or to the rousing “When I Get to Heaven,” in which Prine jokes about all the fun he plans to have in the afterlife. Though Prine’s voice has been ravaged by time, its creakiness “only serves…1 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018Sweet CountryDirected by Warwick Thornton(R)4A just killing triggers a manhunt across Australia.This beautiful new Western hits “painfully close” to home, said Chris Nashawaty in Entertainment Weekly. Though set in the 1920s Australian outback, its “spare, deliberately paced, and almost biblical” story of racial injustice summons the ghosts of America’s past. When an Aboriginal stockman kills a white farmer in self-defense, the killer and his wife flee, and a manhunt ensues. And though the story is simple, “the visuals are gorgeous, capturing the cruel beauty of the desert.” Despite bursts of violence, the film is “overwhelmingly quiet,” lingering over ambient sounds as the fugitives, Sam and Lizzie (first-time actors Hamilton Morris and Natassia Gorey-Furber), traverse Australia’s Northern Territory, said April Wolfe in the VillageVoice.com. The silences help us see the world through…1 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018Movies on TVMonday, April 23Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black PearlThe swashbuckling franchise curtain-raiser introduced Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow, here bent on rescuing his ship from a nefarious rival. Keira Knightley co-stars. (2003) 6 p.m., AMCTuesday, April 24Cactus FlowerWalter Matthau, Ingrid Bergman, and Goldie Hawn co-star in a comedy about a scheming dentist adored by two women. (1969) 10:15 p.m., TCMWednesday, April 25Life Is BeautifulRoberto Benigni wrote, directed, and won two Oscars for this moving comedy-drama about a father who, for love of his son, makes a game of their life in a Nazi concentration camp. (1997) 6 p.m., ShowtimeThursday, April 26Patriot’s DayMark Wahlberg, Michelle Monaghan, and J.K. Simmons co-star in an effective dramatization of the manhunt following 2013’s Boston Marathon bombing. (2016) 7:45 p.m., ShowtimeFriday, April 27Crazy…1 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018Peruvian chicken soupEvery home cook could use a new chicken soup recipe, “especially one that comes together as easily as this one does,” said Bonnie Benwick in The Washington Post. A simplified version of Peruvian aguadito de pollo, it starts with a green puree and gets a kick from jalapeño. For a more traditional take, sub in cilantro for the parsley.Peruvian chicken soup1 small jalapeño1 small onion, peeled and quartered1 rib celery, coarsely chopped1 clove garlic, peeled¼ cup flat-leaf parsley, stems included1 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil2 cups chicken broth, preferably no-salt¼ cup dried quinoa1 large boneless, skinless chicken breast half, tenderloin removed1 cup frozen peasflaky sea salt and freshly ground black pepper1 or 2 limes, for servingCut jalapeño into strips, discarding stem, seeds, and ribs. Combine in a blender or food processor…1 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018An oasis outside VegasNinety minutes west of Las Vegas, deep in the Mojave Desert, sits a tiny community that’s a world apart from the bright lights of the Strip, said Kate Silver in The Washington Post. Some visitors come to Tecopa, Calif. (population 150), for the hot springs, others for the date milkshakes served at the China Ranch, a working date farm. “I come for the profound quiet at Cynthia’s,” a retreat where three giant tepees and half a dozen repurposed trailers look out on lush palms and loping hills. During the day, my husband and I take ATVs out to tour an old mine and a cemetery where the grave markers are simple painted wooden crosses. At night, we head to Steaks and Beer, a hole-in-the-wall that serves a filet mignon doused…1 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018The 2019 Jaguar I-PaceAutoweek.comThe latest crossover with no engine under its hood “could finally be the vehicle that changes everything for Jaguar.” Due to arrive in the fall, the battery-powered I-Pace will be the first luxury plug-in SUV from a mainstream brand, and it also happens to be “a handsome machine from every angle” and “the best-built Jaguar in the 83-year history of the brand.” Jaguar badly needs a big seller besides its F-Pace, and providing the first true alternative to Tesla’s Model X ought to be the answer.Wired.comThe I-Pace promises a 0 to 60 mph sprint in 4.5 seconds—“enough to shove you back into the seat and elicit a giggle or two.” It also has a range of 240 miles between charges, which matches the similarly priced entry-level Model X. “As ever,…1 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018For enhancing your email experienceAstro uses artificial intelligence to help you focus on the important stuff in your inbox and on your calendar. Once the free app syncs with your Gmail account, its virtual assistant can remove clutter, unsubscribe from junk, create follow-up reminders, and highlight emails that might need your attention.Trove is a lot like Astro, offering numerous organizational tools, plus unique features such as a button that lets you “nudge” people who haven’t replied. But Trove’s focus is on staying in touch with key contacts, and it doubles as a network for professional associates and teammates who communicate often.Newton charges $5 a month (or $45 a year), but it works with pretty much any email account and comes loaded with powerful features, such as one-click cleaning, receipt scanning, and options to “send…1 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018Taxes: IRS systems collapse on tax dayThe Internal Revenue Service gave taxpayers an extra day to electronically file their returns this week, after a catastrophic computer glitch knocked the agency’s site offline on tax day, said Jeff Stein in The Washington Post. “Senior government officials were at a loss to explain” what caused the “stunning breakdown,” which left last-minute filers unable to process or pay their taxes on April 17. The agency said it undertook a hard reboot of its systems but declined to say why the site crumpled.Autos: Tesla’s troubles continueProduction on Tesla’s troubled Model 3 sedan has skidded to a halt again, said Dana Hull in Bloomberg.com. The electric-auto maker shut its assembly line temporarily this week after founder Elon Musk admitted “mistakes” are hindering “his most important car.” It’s the second time this…2 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018College: Appealing a financial aid package“If you are thinking about negotiating your university-bound child’s financial aid offers, you had better start working on your pitch,” said Gail MarksJarvis in Reuters.com. Inbound freshmen have until May 1 to accept or reject aid offers received earlier this month from universities. While it used to be rare that parents would appeal a student’s aid package, it’s now virtually standard practice. “With the final tab for private college running more than $70,000 a year and public universities close to $35,000, a great deal of money is at stake.” The average aid package trims $20,000 per year from private college fees and $6,000 from state universities. But proceed carefully. “What may look like the largest offer might not be the best,” said Jessica Dickler in CNBC.com. “Terms aren’t always clear,”…2 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018Global trade: Could the U.S. rejoin the TPP?President Trump can’t seem to make up his mind about the Trans-Pacific Partnership, said Natasha Bach in Fortune.com. Last week, Trump instructed his stunned economic advisers to look into re-entering the Obama-era trade pact with 11 Pacific Rim countries that he had effectively killed his first week in office. Pulling the U.S. out of the TPP was one of Trump’s few consistent policy positions on the campaign trail, where he’d repeatedly derided the pact as a “job killer” and a “disaster.” But he seemed to be waffling in recent weeks, after hearing complaints from farm-state Republican lawmakers that their constituents were going to suffer from his trade practices. By this week, however, the “brief flirtation” with the TPP appeared over yet again, said Shawn Donnan in the Financial Times. After…3 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018Reform the Postal Service needsJoe NoceraBloomberg.com“Let’s put aside for a moment the real purpose” of President Trump’s call for reforms to the Postal Service, said Joe Nocera. He believes, of course, that changes might harm Amazon’s business, and by extension CEO Jeff Bezos, who owns The Washington Post. But if Trump’s motives are off, his aim is spot on. “The post office does indeed need to be reformed.” It’s Congress that deserves much of the blame. Back in 1971 the Postal Service became an independent agency, answering no longer to the president, but to lawmakers. Over the years, the Postal Service has proposed reform after reform to save money, from ending Saturday delivery and closing rural post offices to offering banking services. Every time, “Congress said no.” Then in 2006, when the post office…1 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018The stand-up matriarch who ruled L.A. comedyMitzi Shore was godmother to a generation of comics. David Letterman, Jay Leno, Roseanne Barr, Chris Rock, Robin Williams, and Jim Carrey were just a few of the performers who cut their teeth at Shore’s iconic Los Angeles stand-up club, the Comedy Store. When she took over the venue in 1974 as part of a divorce settlement with her husband, comedian Sammy Shore, it was a variety room with comedians squeezed in between musicians and other acts. Shore decided to focus entirely on stand-up. Her timing was perfect. Two years earlier, Johnny Carson had moved The Tonight Show from New York to Los Angeles, making the city a mecca for comics hoping to appear on the show, and the Comedy Store became the place to get discovered. “We’re like a…2 min
The Week Magazine|April 27, 2018How gun culture has changedAs an avid hunter and devoted gun enthusiast, I’m rarely out of reach of a firearm, said David Joy. But I don’t see any need for assault weapons designed for mass human slaughter.Two weeks before Christmas, I had a 9 mm pistol concealed in my waistband and a rifle with two 30-round magazines in the passenger seat beside me. I was driving down from the mountains to meet a fellow I didn’t know at a Cracker Barrel off I-40 in the North Carolina foothills. He wanted to buy a Kel-Tec Sub-2000, and I had one for sale. Other than that, I didn’t know him from Adam except for a few Facebook messages.We were both members of a Facebook group where people post pictures of firearms and buyers private-message to ask…11 min