Table of contents for January 20, 2020 in TIME Magazine

WHAT YOU SAID ABOUT … PERSON OF THE YEAR Many readers hailed TIME’s decision to highlight the work of individuals who stood up for ideals bigger than themselves in the 2019 Person of the Year issue (Dec. 23/30). Terry Mead of Glendale, Ariz., called teen climate activist Greta Thunberg, 2019’s Person of the Year, “a beacon of hope in a night of denial and self interest.” And Marguerite Hauberg of Volcano, Hawaii, wrote that the story about the public servants who reported concerns about President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine, who were named 2019’s Guardians of the Year, “should be read by every American.” But the choice of Person of the Year always prompts debate, and 2019 was no exception. Some critics argued that Thunberg hasn’t accomplished enough to…

WITH A BANDAGED HAND AND BRUISES ON his back, student Santosh Singh says he no longer feels safe at Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), one of India’s top schools. On Jan. 5, he and some 30 others were injured when masked men stormed the campus, armed with rods, bats and stones to attack students who were protesting a fee increase. “I thought they were going to kill us,” Singh tells TIME. MOB RULES To Singh, it seems clear who the masked men were. “They were ABVP goons,” he says, referring to members of a right-wing Hindu nationalist student organization affiliated with the BJP, the party of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “Their slogans, their style of talking, and the word they love the most—traitors—was on their lips when they…

UNDERGROUND Mexican drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán broke out of the Altiplano top-security prison in Mexico in July 2015 via a mile-long tunnel with a motorbike, and an all-terrain vehicle waiting for him at the other end. ON THE LAM In 1979, three Black Liberation Army activists broke fellow member Assata Shakur out of a New Jersey prison—where she had been sent after a murder conviction—by taking two guards hostage to gain use of a prison van. BUSTING OUT Frank Morris and brothers Clarence and John Anglin vanished from Alcatraz in 1962 after boring through prison walls with spoons and floating away on a makeshift raft made of 50 raincoats.…

The sudden, shocking killing of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani is one of those moments when a big door swings violently on a seemingly small hinge. How can the death of one man, largely unknown to the U.S. public, cause such an extraordinary range of potentially dangerous outcomes? Iran has an immediate set of choices to make. Its range of options within the Middle East is wide, and the most obvious one would be direct attacks against U.S. personnel in Afghanistan (where the Iranians have deep pockets of influence), Iraq (doubling down on taking out the U.S. embassy), Syria or Saudi Arabia. These could be done with improvised explosive devices, surface-to-surface missiles or direct combat missions by Iranian special forces. The Iranians could also turn to the sea, striking U.S.…

IN THE EARLY 1980S, A YOUNG TAIWANESE STUDENT newly enrolled at the London School of Economics heard a knock at her dormitory door. A pair of bedraggled British students were there to ask Tsai Ing-wen if she wanted to subscribe to a newspaper. In the spirit of collegiality, she readily agreed. “It was only later that I discovered it was a communist newspaper,” she tells TIME, laughing. “I eventually told them to keep my check but just stop sending the newspaper.” More than 30 years later, Taiwan’s political leader is still fending off unwelcome leftist overtures. Elected President of the self-governing island of 23 million in 2016, Tsai set out to steer it further from China’s orbit. Taiwan has its own military, its own passport and the world’s 21st largest…

FICTION A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD JENNIFER EGAN 2010 Egan’s mold-breaking structure, which switches between different characters with each chapter, has become a favorite trick of modern novelists—but the book also captures something timeless: how aging can wreak havoc on connection. MY BRILLIANT FRIEND ELENA FERRANTE 2011 Two girls bond when one of them drops the other’s beloved doll down a shaft, the other follows suit and they try to retrieve them. So begins a tale that traverses the spectrum of interpersonal behaviors from cruelty to tenderness. GONE GIRL GILLIAN FLYNN 2012 Crackling prose, palpable dread and sharply drawn characters are all present in Flynn’s story of a marriage unraveled. But she elevates her page-turner above clichés, rendering a story that’s both a sharp feminist critique and an engaging…

In your new movie Clemency, you play a prison warden in a facility with death-row inmates. What did you do to prepare? My filmmaker, Chinonye Chukwu, took me on a tour of prisons in Ohio, and I met with three female wardens and a deputy warden. Was there something they had in common? They all came to their positions from the mental-health professions, or social services, or public health. They were all women trained to deal with human beings in extremis. And they were solid. They would all be women I’d be at a book club with or go to church with. They were people who are trained in not being demonstrative emotionally. But as we see with [my character] Bernadine, overseeing an execution, especially multiple ones, weighs on…

Earthquake rattles Puerto Rico A 6.4-magnitude earthquake rocked Puerto Rico after it hit offshore in the predawn hours of Jan. 7. It was the largest in a series of quakes that struck the island in the first week of the year. At least one person died and eight were injured in the city of Ponce, and more than two-thirds of the island lost electricity. Methodist Church proposes split The United Methodist Church may split over differences in belief on LGBTQ clergy and marriage equality, according to a proposal announced on Jan. 3. Currently, “practicing” members of the LGBTQ community cannot become pastors, and pastors are barred from performing same-sex marriages. A vote on the proposal is scheduled for May. China fights mysterious illness Health officials in China struggled to…

FAMILIES HUDDLE ON A ONCE PICTURESQUE beach as their homes burn behind them. Baby koalas, their fur singed, cling to their mothers as they face a fiery demise. And military helicopters whomp overhead, searching the charred landscape for stragglers looking for a last-minute escape. These bracing scenes illustrate a terrifying reality on the ground in Australia, where more than two dozen people and millions of animals have died in wildfires that have destroyed more than 25 million acres since December and that are not expected to be contained anytime soon. The blazes, so large that they’ve created their own weather systems, have sparked widespread panic, prompted a military deployment and caused billions of dollars in damage. “We’re in the middle of a war situation,” says David Bowman, director of the…

NANCY PELOSI ISN’T WILD ABOUT THE QUESTION. The impeachment of President Donald Trump is under way, and I’ve asked the Speaker of the House if she thinks it’s the most important thing she’ll ever do. We’re sitting in her elegant office in the Capitol, on gold-upholstered armchairs around a low table topped with a vase of hydrangeas. Over her shoulder, the sweeping view of the National Mall is shrouded in wintry clouds. For a long moment, the Speaker goes silent as she seems to compile in her mind the list of accomplishments she’d rather claim as her legacy. “Apart from declaring war, this is the most important thing that the Congress can do,” she finally says. “I’m most proud of the Affordable Care Act. But this is the most serious…

THE IDLER WHEEL … FIONA APPLE 2012 Apple’s fourth album is full of dualities: inner demons and materialized threats; arch observations and moments of true sadness; white-hot anger and tender love. The tension between those elements animates this unpredictable, skeletal album, which finds Apple in full vocal bloom as she gives words workouts: just hear how alone on the shambolic “Left Alone” is stretched, again and again, to its breaking point. DAMN. KENDRICK LAMAR 2017 Picking just one of Lamar’s releases for a decade-end list is tricky—even Untitled Unmastered, his 2016 collection of demos, is a solid hip-hop record. But with 2017’s DAMN., Lamar dived even deeper into his own head while expanding his sonic palette even further, adding Rihanna hooks (on the woozy “Loyalty”) and Fox News drops (on…