Table of contents for March 21, 2016 in TIME Magazine

China's National People's Congress (NPC) convened on March 5 to rubber-stamp the state's new policies. But beyond political pageantry, it was the condition of the world's second largest economy that captured global attention. Last year, China narrowly missed its target of 7% GDP growth, recording its slowest uptick in 25 years. Here's what's holding it back: PARTY POLITICS China's budget plan, unveiled at the NPC along with a forecast of 6.5% to 7% growth for 2016, featured 21st century economic buzzwords: green growth, IT investment and entrepreneurship. Yet even as Beijing pledges to nurture an innovation economy, President Xi Jinping is glorifying the Communist Party and tightening media and Internet controls. Fewer foreign companies are investing in a China that's closing itself off to the world. OVERCAPACITY With global demand…

The 'Car Wash' investigation into corruption in Brazil, focusing on kickbacks at the state oil corporation Petrobras, has implicated dozens of politicians and executives in recent months. Lately, some of the country's best-known political figures are becoming tangled in its web: LUIZ INÁCIO LULA DA SILVA On March 4, police questioned the popular ex-President, known widely as Lula, for allegedly giving preferential treatment to two building firms connected to Petrobras. Although he denies wrongdoing, he is the most senior politician yet linked to the scheme. JOÃO SANTANA Police arrested Santana, the highly influential former campaign chief to President Dilma Rousseff, on Feb. 23 for allegedly receiving $7.5 million from executives at the center of the scandal. EDUARDO CUNHA Brazil's top court agreed March 3 to permit charges against…

'I don't want to end my career this way.' Maria Sharapova, Russian tennis star, who is awaiting word on a penalty after announcing March 7 that she'd failed a drug test at the Australian Open for taking meldonium, a heart drug that was recently banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency Zootopia netted $75 million in its first weekend, topping Frozen GOOD WEEK BAD WEEK SeaWorld faced revived claims of whale mistreatment, thanks to a legal complaint 'Millions of people look at that pretty picture of America he painted and they cannot find themselves in it.' Former President Bill Clinton, saying President Barack Obama bears some of the blame for this "wacky election" because his descriptions of the economy do not align with the realities Americans know firsthand $55 million Amount…

Everyone needs friends. For the moment, Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan doesn't have enough of them. Turkey's government and European leaders are working to forge a deal to better manage the migrant crisis, but it's unlikely to produce the results Europeans want--and Erdogan may soon become even more isolated. The Turkish President's loudest current fight is with Russia's Vladimir Putin. In November, after Turkey shot down a Russian plane that strayed into Turkish airspace while flying over Syrian territory, Putin quickly announced sanctions that have had a real impact on Turkey's banking, tourism and construction sectors. There is no domestic pressure on Putin to back down, and Turkey will continue to bear the brunt of his anger. Turkey's NATO allies aren't happy with Erdogan either. Washington is angry that Turkey…

George was a great inspiration to me, with his orchestral arrangements and production. The albums he made with the Beatles just had that wonderful sound and made me want to make good music too. It was Rubber Soul that inspired me to write Pet Sounds. My favorite of his arrangements is for the song "Yesterday," because the violins sound so sweet. I also loved that song from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, "She's Leaving Home." It absolutely blew my mind. In 1997, I got to be in the recording studio with George, who died March 8 at age 90, for a documentary. It was a thrill. I was in awe of him when I finally got to work with him all those years later. I just remember he was…

The Standard American Diet, often referred to as SAD, isn't exactly a sterling example of healthy eating, but a new study in the journal BMJ Open suggests it may be worse than previously thought. When scientists surveyed the eating habits of a representative sample of more than 9,000 Americans, they found that nearly 60% of their calories came from so-called ultra-processed foods like soft drinks, snacks, cakes, pizza and frozen meals. Those foods tend to be higher than whole foods in salt and fat, but they also contain added flavors, colors, emulsifiers, hydrogenated oils and other things not found in the average kitchen. They're high in sugar too. The study found that nearly 90% of the sugar in the U.S. diet isn't coming from fruit; it's coming from ultra-processed foods,…

We first got excited about web startups because they didn't have to follow the script. Two kids in a dorm room could develop a platform that would change the world with little or no capital behind them. More than disrupting a particular industry, these companies had the potential to disrupt business itself, and we--the common people--would all be better and richer for it. Or so the thinking went. Then the rapid growth of companies like AOL and Amazon--no matter the strength of their underlying businesses--whetted Wall Street's appetite for exponential growth. And young founders took the bait, prioritizing inflated valuations over sustainable business models. The ideal shifted from building a company to getting it acquired. And so the startup scene became a version of Flip This House: buy low, sell…

On the day before the Michigan primary, when there still seemed a glimmer of a sliver of a possibility that John Kasich might emerge as the sane Republican alternative to Donald Trump, the governor of Ohio was having fun at a town meeting in Monroe, Mich. He barged into the middle of his wife Karen's attempt to introduce him. "What did you just say?" the candidate asked, looking, as usual, as if he'd just gotten out of bed. She'd just said that they "smiled and laughed every day." And now she added, "You smiled at me this morning." He said that was only because she had shared a box of chocolate-covered cherries with him. "My staff knows," he went on, "I never share." With the casual, slightly goofy tone established,…

"My life didn't really begin until I met Ronnie," Nancy Reagan wrote in her memoirs, a statement so ingenuously at odds with the mood of her era, not to mention the facts of her life, that it reinforces a larger truth. She was the Wife, the one with the Gaze, so devoted, so protective, that her own life and works, her needs and dreams, could be folded and fit into a tiny beaded handbag and tucked away as she focused every therm of energy on the American epic that was Ronald Reagan. "Nancy came along," Reagan once said, "and saved my soul." Those who loved him should thank her, for never was a public man so faithfully served by a very private woman who read his needs, enabled his strengths,…

Superheroes may rule movie screens, but they've done a pretty good job of colonizing television too. Netflix has made the biggest bet on the comic-book genre. Jessica Jones and Daredevil--about a blind lawyer, played by Charlie Cox, who uses super senses to fight crime by night--are part of a strategy to combine four different Marvel characters into a team-up series, The Defenders, somewhere down the line. Resolution can't come soon enough. The second season of Daredevil, available in full on March 18, compounds the failures of the first. Last year, Daredevil burst onto the scene as a shockingly violent series, but all its gore was in service of a lackluster story; the nihilism was the point. The Season 2 introduction of the Punisher (Jon Bernthal), a brutal vigilante inspired by…

The actor discusses the second season of Schitt's Creek, a comedy about a wealthy family that loses it all. Levy co-created the series with--and stars alongside--his son Daniel. His daughter Sarah is also in the cast, and his brother Fred is a producer. How did you react when your kids told you they wanted to go into show business? When my wife Deb got pregnant, we thought, Do we want to stay in Los Angeles and raise our kids in the show-business environment or go back to Canada where it's sane and civilized? We went back to Toronto. And the big irony: they all went into show business. The tough thing for a parent is to look at them and say, "Do they have what it takes?" They did. Your…

Let's face it: There aren't many relationships that need full and constant honesty to function. In fact, it's kind of the opposite. Keeping certain opinions or online purchases to ourselves is an essential kindness in marriage. I even know people who curate what they tell their therapist for fear of not being a likable enough client. "I need someone in my life who likes me just for the me I want to see myself as," they say. And of course we know that our social-media feeds are really just an endless personal infomercial. Studies show we also lie to our doctors about what we eat and drink and smoke. And they hedge right back. They don't like to tell you you're 15 lb. overweight any more than your best friend…

Lengthy filibusters are most common in the U.S., with none more famous than Strom Thurmond's 24-hour stand against civil rights legislation in 1957. But the tactic of speechifying to block a bill's passage is also used around the world. On Feb. 23, South Korean lawmakers broke records attempting to block legislation. Here's more on that and other lengthy filibusters. 192 Hours South Korea The eight-day attempt to block an antiterrorism bill saw 39 lawmakers, including Lee Jong-kul, launch speeches. Before the filibuster's comeback in 2012, legislators would wrest control of the chamber through violent shoving and stacking furniture. 58 Hours Canada This marathon filibuster in 2011 was a team affair, with 103 lawmakers making back-to-back 20-minute speeches to halt a bill on union contracts. Stalling tactics aren't rare in Canada:…

DIED Raymond Tomlinson, 74, computer programmer and inventor of modern email, who first used the @ symbol to separate user names from server addresses. Tomlinson said in 2012 he chose the now iconic sign purely because "it denoted where the user was ... at." Pat Conroy, 70, author of The Prince of Tides, The Great Santini and The Lords of Discipline. His works were inspired by his abusive father and his time in South Carolina. Elizabeth Garrett, 52, Cornell University's first female president, of cancer, just eight months into the job. OPENED The world's most expensive train station, in downtown Manhattan. The $4 billion World Trade Center Transportation Hub, designed by Santiago Calatrava, ended up costing about twice its original budget and opened seven years late. RETIRED Peyton Manning, 39,…

SALT MAKES PEOPLE OVEREAT People took in more calories and ate 11% more pasta when it had lots of salt, regardless of its fat content. Salt may dull the fullness signals the body is supposed to feel, the study authors speculate. THIS NUTRIENT FILLS YOU UP Fiber isn't the only filling nutrient. Eating food with a higher protein count made people feel fuller than they did when they ate food with less protein, found a new analysis of five studies. SOME CAFFEINE CAN SPIKE BLOOD PRESSURE When people in a small study drank two energy drinks, their blood pressure rose and they had an altered heart rhythm two hours later, compared with when they drank flavored seltzer.…

Ask experts how to fix American education and you'll hear the same answer again and again: more courses in STEM--or science, technology, engineering and math. In his new book, Andrew Hacker takes issue with that idea--specifically, mandating geometry, calculus and trigonometry. These subjects are not only unnecessary for most careers, he argues, but so difficult that they can turn people off education entirely. Research shows that struggling with math requirements is the No. 1 academic reason students don't finish high school or college--even if they're pursuing degrees in art or cosmetology. Of course, this doesn't mean U.S. schools shouldn't improve math programs; it's important for students to master arithmetic and basic algebra (think: solve for x). But overly tough expectations have created "intractable barriers for students whose aptitudes lie outside…

There are many benefits to napping--including, new research shows, fending off colds and improving cardiovascular health. Here's how to do it well: 1 PICK A REGULAR TIME A daily schedule helps train your body to know when it's nap time, says W. Christopher Winter, a board-certified sleep-medicine physician. He recommends late morning or early afternoon to avoid interfering with your night sleep. 2 SET YOUR ALARM FOR 20 TO 25 MINUTES That's enough time to help you wake up refreshed without falling into deeper stages of sleep--at which point you wake up groggy, thanks to a phenomenon called sleep inertia. 3 AVOID STIMULI Turn off your phone and find the darkest, quietest place you can, since a bright, boisterous environment can keep you from falling asleep or wake you up…

Coming out is never easy. But it's harder yet when your family is predisposed to obsessive secrecy. This is what young Kenny (Noah Galvin) faces on ABC's The Real O'Neals. While he's scared to admit he's gay, he doesn't yet know that his parents are planning to violate their Catholic faith by divorcing, or that his older brother and younger sister are, respectively, an anorexic and a kleptomaniac. That's a lot for one show to cover. But The Real O'Neals has a very capable star: Martha Plimpton, playing Kenny's mother, is just trying to keep up her family's ordinary appearance in the eyes of onlookers, who seem to see only that the O'Neals are messy, in an ordinary way. The quiet rage behind Plimpton's quest for normalcy--"You still have that?"…

To eat your way through a city is to find its heart. No one would know that better than Los Angeles Times food critic Jonathan Gold, the subject of Laura Gabbert's agile and perceptive documentary City of Gold. As passionate about his hometown of Los Angeles as he is about tracking down the most sublime taco, Gold has built a career by fanning out into the city's marvelously varied ethnic neighborhoods to find the out-of-the-way gems that most traditional restaurant critics would ignore. A good review from Gold can turn the tiniest food truck into a gastronomic hot spot. The lives of the people who run these modest establishments--some of them fairly recent immigrants--can be changed in a snap. The lives of people who really love to eat are enriched…

Susan B. Anthony made a prediction in 1877: one day women would be liberated enough not to marry, ushering in "an epoch of single women." That epoch, according to Rebecca Traister's All the Single Ladies, is now. There are more unmarried than wedded American women, and they are a stealth political and cultural force. Single Ladies is less concerned with what it feels like to be a single woman--like the empowerment of installing one's own AC--than with how we got here and what it means. Women no longer need partners, but married people still enjoy health, tax and other benefits unavailable to individuals. Traister's point: the old model isn't coming back, and the new one needs to be attended by serious policy changes. The elephant in the chapel is that…

LOVE IT The Disney Channel announced a fourth installment of its popular High School Musical franchise. Spotify made a "birthing playlist" of songs to help women in labor. Among them: Pearl Jam's "Just Breathe" and "Under Pressure" by Queen and David Bowie. Kobe Bryant autographed sneakers for two young fans after they guessed the name of his dog. (It's Crucio, a reference to a Harry Potter curse.) Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau visited a pair of baby pandas at the Toronto Zoo. A family found a crumpled bag full of Ty Cobb baseball cards in a deceased relative's home; they're valued at more than $1 million. Design firm Kikkerland is selling a night-light in the shape of a slice of pizza on a paper plate. Kendrick Lamar released a surprise…

There are not many movies where the female love interest is older than the male. Is that part of why Doris appealed to you? The gender reversal was secondary to the story of a coming of age of a person of age. I saw the love-affair part of it almost as part of her coming out of her shell as if she were 13. Can you compare love in your 60s to love as a teenager? When you have that feeling, when you have a mad, passionate crush on someone, it's the same when you're 70 as when you're 13. You're awkward, and you're afraid you're doing the wrong thing, and you put yourself out there in ways you don't even think about. We stay who we are no matter…