Table of contents for April 25, 2016 in TIME Magazine

CHINA AND RUSSIA The two countries plan to build a bridge by starting from either side of the Amur River, aiming to meet in the middle and complete construction within three years. INDIA AND SRI LANKA In December, India's Transport Minister announced a 14-mile sea bridge and tunnel had received funding, though Sri Lanka's government said it wasn't aware of the plans. RUSSIA AND THE U.S. A Russian oligarch proposed a plan in 2015 for a highway linking Siberia and Alaska via a 55-mile crossing over the Bering Strait. The cost was projected to be in the trillions. BAHRAIN AND QATAR Construction on the Qatar-Bahrain Friendship Bridge was first proposed in 1999 but, ironically enough, has been long delayed by squabbles between the neighbors.…

As the pews filled at New Shiloh Baptist Church on Easter Sunday, the theme of the Rev. Harold Carter Jr.'s sermon--Is Jesus Here Now?--seemed fitting. Here in West Baltimore, where abandoned homes outnumber businesses and murders are often the only thing that makes news, the past 12 months have felt more like the devil's work than that of a higher power. "If He is not here," said Carter from the pulpit, "it certainly would explain a lot of things." New Shiloh sits at the spiritual nexus of a city awaiting resurrection. It was less than a mile away, on April 12, 2015, that Freddie Gray was thrown into a police van before dying of a spinal injury under still-murky circumstances. It was here, in the sanctuary, that Gray's death was…

Listen to some presidential candidates' stump speeches and it's easy to believe the U.S. isn't as competitive as it used to be--that onetime industrial powerhouses such as Akron, Ohio, and Pittsburgh are unable to keep up with low-cost alternatives in China. That is a myth. After years of research, we found that cities in the Rust Belt--the areas of the Northeast and Midwest purportedly in decline--are some of the smartest places on earth, where universities, big businesses and tiny startups are collaborating closely and sharing brainpower. While it's true, for example, that Akron may have lost jobs in the tire business, it is now home to hundreds of polymer companies, part of a massive statewide presence in the polymer and specialty-chemical industry. And just outside Albany, N.Y., whose economy has…

Given the pestilence that is passing for a policy debate on the Republican side this year, it's been easy to overlook the subtler follies of the Democrats. But the party is slipping into ancient, discredited fantasies about social issues like criminal justice and welfare reform. It took Bill Clinton to speak some truth unto protest recently, when he was interrupted by a clutch of young scholars claiming that his 1994 crime bill had "devastated" poor neighborhoods. "I don't know how you would characterize the gang leaders who got 13-year-olds hopped up on crack and sent them out onto the street to murder other African-American children. Maybe you thought they were good citizens," he said, in a righteous distemper. "You are defending the people who kill the lives you say matter!"…

The men eased past the picketers and police barricades, through a security-studded lobby and up to the eighth floor of a federal building named for Ronald Reagan. Inside an airy rotunda, guests in jackets and ties mingled over pork sliders and seafood tacos served by black waiters in tuxedos. There were celebratory speeches during dinner, crème brûlée for dessert. Apart from the racial epithets wafting around the room, the Saturday-night banquet seemed more like a wedding reception than a meeting of white nationalists. The event was sponsored by the National Policy Institute (NPI), a tiny think tank based in Arlington, Va., dedicated to the advancement of "people of European descent." NPI publishes pseudoscientific tracts with titles like "Race Differences in Intelligence," runs a blog called Radix Journal (sample post: "My…

The Broadway season has been fairly quiet since the smash opening of Hamilton last summer. But things are about to heat up with a burst of highly anticipated new musicals. Along with the recently opened Bright Star--Steve Martin and Edie Brickell's tuneful if rather lumbering bluegrass show--they represent the most eclectic slate of new musicals to jam into one season in years. The most buzzed-about is Shuffle Along, or, The Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed (opening April 28), partly a revival--of a landmark black musical revue with songs by Eubie Blake--and partly a backstage drama about the show's troubled history. George C. Wolfe's new production could become a landmark itself, with choreography by Savion Glover and a stellar cast headed by six-time Tony winner…

LOVE IT After more than a century, the National Weather Service promised to cease using all capital letters in its announcements: "[We] will stop yelling at you." Three men stranded on a remote Pacific island were rescued after writing the word HELP in palm fronds on the sand, which was spotted by a military plane. Tokyo is getting its very own hedgehog café, where customers can pay to cuddle with the prickly creatures. As part of an installation in Puglia, Italy, artist Edoardo Tresoldi built a new version of an ancient church using nothing but wire mesh. After a recent meal in New York City's Meatpacking District, Jim Carrey reportedly left a $225 tip on a $151 bill. Melissa McCarthy revealed that she will be involved in Netflix's upcoming Gilmore…

'Nobody is above the law. How many times do I have to say it?' President Obama, vowing that political considerations will not affect the federal investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server while she was Secretary of State $394,000 Price paid at auction for the chair J.K. Rowling sat in while writing Harry Potter 1.06 million Distance in miles traveled by John Kerry during his tenure as U.S. Secretary of State, surpassing predecessor Hillary Clinton's mark 'Aspiration and wealth creation are not dirty words.' David Cameron, British Prime Minister, releasing his tax returns under pressure following revelations in the so-called Panama Papers that he once held interests in his late father's offshore fund 'I don't know why that word is so scary to people.' Jennifer Lawrence,…

British Prime Minister David Cameron made his tax returns public on April 11, under pressure from revelations in the Panama Papers about his father's offshore investment vehicle. Although he has not been accused of any wrongdoing, the feud over his finances adds to the controversies the embattled PM is facing: FRACTURED PARTY The referendum on Britain's membership in the E.U. planned for June 23 has exposed a deep rift in Cameron's ruling Conservative Party, with six members of his Cabinet breaking with the Prime Minister to lobby for a "Brexit." Former party leader Iain Duncan Smith resigned from the front bench in March in a move widely seen as a challenge to Cameron's leadership. TAX TROUBLES Cameron unveiled new rules to tackle tax evasion after the Panama Papers, but the…

CANADA The 96-ft.-high Wood Innovation and Design Centre in British Columbia (right), built in 2014, has locally made engineered wood, like laminated veneer lumber, in its structure. AUSTRALIA Forte in Melbourne is a 105-ft. timber apartment building that uses cross-laminated timber (CLT), which is said to have the same structural strength as concrete and steel. BRITAIN The "Toothpick" is what Londoners are calling plans for a 984-ft. tower unveiled on April 8. The skyscraper's architects say using timber will reduce the weight of the building.…

In America, guns are often discussed as a storied part of a national identity that grew, over time, from Revolutionary War militias, the Second Amendment and rough life on the frontier. But in her new book, The Gunning of America, Pamela Haag argues that this narrative is not as organic as it appears; rather, it was crafted by gun manufacturers eager to sell more weapons. Most early Americans, she writes, viewed guns as basic tools; in the early 1800s they were necessities for hunting and farming. But as fewer Americans performed those tasks in the early 20th century, gunmakers had to up their marketing ante to make people want guns--even if they didn't really need them. So began the campaign, she writes, to make gun use about "honor rather than…

GRINNING FACE WITH SMILING EYES On average, subjects interpreted Apple's icon as significantly more negative than Google's. PERSON RAISING BOTH HANDS IN CELEBRATION Subjects said Microsoft's icon looked more "exciting," while LG's looked more like "praise hands." SLEEPING FACE Descriptions for Google's version emphasized "sleepy," whereas Microsoft's looked "sad" or "down." --S.B.…

VOLUNTEERMATCH aggregates volunteer opportunities with organizations across the U.S., sorted according to your location and interests (like animals or arts and culture). Listings include information about the required time commitment so you can find something that works for your schedule. (volunteermatch.org) [This article consists of 3 illustrations. Please see hardcopy of magazine or PDF.] GIVEGAB offers a personalized search, similar to VolunteerMatch--but also lets you connect with fellow volunteers, set service goals and keep track of where you've worked. (givegab.com) VOLUNTEERSPOT helps you organize and plan volunteer events--think school bake sales and church rummage sales. The free version helps you create an event page, send email invites and collect contributions all in one place. (volunteerspot.com) CHARITY MILES lets you give while you work out. The app donates 25¢…

The vast distance between war and war stories is typically filled, in books as in life, by the sort of bluster that gets people pushed onto battlefields in the first place. Accounts true to the experience line a short shelf that includes E.B. Sledge's With the Old Breed, Paul Fussell's Doing Battle and Neil McCallum's Journey With a Pistol. And now Eric Fair's Consequence: A Memoir. Fair saw no fighting in his war, yet his book has the stifled anger and hollow feeling of remembered combat. Having left the Army before 9/11, he arrived in Iraq as a private contractor. He knew Arabic and had a yearning to be part of things. He interrogated Iraqis in plywood booths, the walls of which shook from the impact of thrown bodies. He…

You wanted to adapt this John le Carré novel for years. When the book came out in 1993, I tried to option it. I was far too late, and the great Sydney Pollack had it. The world turns, and 20-odd years later it comes back to life, by which point of course I'm far too old and creaky and bald to play [the hero] Jonathan Pine, but we have to resign ourselves to these processes. What attracted you to the story? After the Cold War, I--and I'm sure many others--worried that not only would spies be out of work but so would spy writers. Le Carré, being the genius he is, found something even more compelling: the world of arms dealing and the skulduggery that is even now being revealed…

One of the most mortifying moments in my life as a working mother was the day I went to my eldest child's elementary school to talk about my job and the teacher asked him what I did for a living. My son's answer? "She fires people." A more accurate response would have been "She goes to meetings," but I couldn't really blame the kid for skipping the mundane parts. Back then, in a (clearly misguided) attempt to help my children understand what I did during our time apart, I had taken a friend's advice to make my job seem really dramatic! Full of extreme highs and lows! To hold their interest! Which I did, until I realized that if my children were asked to describe my workplace, it would have…

WON The Masters tournament, by Danny Willett, who beat defending champion Jordan Spieth in one of the biggest upsets in the history of golf. It was Willett's first major title and the first Masters win for an Englishman in 20 years. DIED Howard Marks, 70, legendary Oxford-educated drug smuggler jailed for running an international hashish and marijuana ring in the 1970s and '80s. After his release he wrote the best-selling autobiography Mr Nice. • Will Smith, 34, former star defensive end for the New Orleans Saints. Police say Smith was fatally shot in New Orleans by a man who rear-ended his car in an apparent case of road rage. • Ed Snider, 83, founder of the Philadelphia Flyers, the first expansion team in hockey to win the Stanley Cup. He…

2015 was on average the warmest year globally since record keeping began nearly 150 years ago--and the 2016 average is shaping up to be even hotter. A strong El Niño deserves the brunt of the blame. The unusually warm Pacific Ocean surface waters that mark an El Niño event amplify heat over land. Temperatures spiked around the globe as El Niño began last fall, leading to month after month of record-breaking heat. Global temperatures this past February were 2.2°F above the 20th century average, making it the most anomalously hot month on record. But man-made global warming is still playing a lasting role in the record heat. "That's how we will see the effects of climate change: the extremes will become more extreme," says Michael Mann, a climate scientist at…

Susan Shaheen knows carpools. For 20 years she's been studying what transport gurus call shared mobility, dissecting factors that make it successful, like shorter wait times. Though you might think choosing how to get to work is simple, Shaheen will tell you that especially in urban areas, there are countless factors in play, from the time of day you're on the move to whether you own a smartphone. And more than any of the tech executives giving speeches lately about how we all should rethink our relationship to our cars, she knows just how revolutionary that could be. Walking the halls of one of the nation's oldest departments dedicated to transportation research, at the University of California, Berkeley, the engineering professor wonders how our lives would have turned out if…

You don't often hear central bankers say, "I don't know." That's because monetary wizards, like brain surgeons and rocket scientists, tend to cultivate an aura of omniscience. Their high-powered computers crank out supposedly precise answers to complex questions about where the global economy will be in the next five minutes or the next five years. But Federal Reserve Board Chair Janet Yellen has never been allergic to uncertainty. In a recent interview with TIME, Yellen made it clear there are plenty of things about the economy both at home and abroad that the Fed--not to mention economists, investors, politicians and the rest of us--doesn't grasp right now. Unemployment has dropped to precrisis levels, but wages remain stagnant. The traditional relationship between job creation and inflation seems to have broken down.…

White men on green paper. From the days of ancient Rome, when Julius Caesar and his successors filled the empire with coins bearing their likenesses, rulers and nations have used their money--both coins and the folding stuff--to define themselves. The unity of the U.K. is summed up in the face of the Queen. France, before the euro, decorated its currency with artists and philosophers. In the U.S., for more than a century, the pantheon of faces featured on paper bills has been limited to a small number of Caucasian guys: Presidents, plus a pair of founders. That monotony appeared to give way last year when the Obama Administration announced plans to put a woman on the $10 bill, with a design to be unveiled in 2020, just in time for…

Two years ago, there was an uproar in the usually quiet children's-book world: frustrated by the overwhelming whiteness of kids' books, readers took to social media to protest with the hashtag #WeNeedDiverseBooks. Publishers took note. In 2013, children's books featuring black, Latino, Asian or Native American characters accounted for only 8% of those released in the U.S., according to the Cooperative Children's Book Center at the University of Wisconsin--Madison. In 2015, that number rose to 15%. There's still a long way to go. One group that could perhaps especially use some fictional representation these days: Muslim-American kids. As fear about ISIS has stoked hostile rhetoric in certain quarters, these kids have felt the effects. Muslim-American parents have reported a spike in schoolyard bullying in recent months, with kids getting taunted…

From the minute some enterprising soul first plugged a guitar into an amp, bored kids everywhere have been making three-chord symphonies out of their crummy lives. That's the spirit John Carney (Once, Begin Again) captures in Sing Street, set in 1985 Dublin. Fourteen-year-old Conor (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) has been moved from his posh school to a terrible new one, and his parents, broke and unhappy, are splitting up. With the spiritual guidance of his stoner older brother Brendan (sleepy-sexy Jack Reynor), he forms a band. What else is there to do? Before long, Conor and his mates have come up with a handful of pure pop confections, with some cheerfully rough-around-the-edges music videos to match. He also earns the affection of a winsome aspiring model (Lucy Boynton). You've seen every element…

You write that most James Brown biographers aren't stupid enough to try to present a complete picture of his life. Why did you want to try? The American cultural landscape is skewed toward who can scream the loudest. In his time, James Brown could scream--but there's a deeper level of his cultural importance, which I felt wasn't really addressed by other books. And I look at him also from the perspective of being a black musician as well as a writer, so he was very important to me. The subtitle is Searching for James Brown and the American Soul. How do you define soul? I don't think soul is necessarily a black thing. Dolly Parton has soul. Willie Nelson is loaded with soul. Jonathan Demme has soul. Soul is really…