Inhoudsopgave van April 10, 2017 - TIME Magazine

Throughout President Obama's eight years in office, he slowly but surely issued environmental regulations that, taken together, positioned the U.S. as a global leader in the fight against climate change. Many of those policies may now be dismantled. On March 28, President Trump, accompanied by energy-sector executives and coal miners, arrived at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and signed an Executive Order that dramatically shifts the direction of U.S. policy and curtails some of the most significant Obama-era regulations. The order, billed by Trump as a measure to promote energy independence and create jobs, targets a slew of environmental measures, including the centerpiece of Obama's efforts to reduce global warming, the Clean Power Plan, which mandates a 32% reduction in carbon emissions from power plants by 2030. Under Trump's order,…

The Apollo program was a triumph of image control, especially when it came to the photographs. Thousands of shots were taken during the 11 Apollo flights, but only the best were released. That's a shame, because it's the outtakes--astronauts posing awkwardly, the sun's blinding flares--that capture the missions as the half-improvised camping trips they were. Now a group of European designers have assembled 225 of the least-seen images in the book Apollo VII--XVII. You may have seen the views captured through the spacecraft windows, but you've never seen how dirty those windows got. You've heard about the scientific instruments left behind, but you've never seen the makeshift contraptions they really were. The Apollo missions were flown by fallible humans just trying to put in a week or two of work…

Appalachia is not what it used to be. Hunger no longer stalks the hollows and ridges of a region once emblematic of American poverty, and no one lacks electricity. "Except for that one guy who comes in for car batteries," says Tim Groves, from behind the counter at Advance Auto Parts in Woodsfield, Ohio. "That's because he doesn't want electricity," explains Jason Covert, the store manager. "He wants to be off the grid." So, progress. Yet when it comes to the Internet, the region remains as backward and stunted as its stereotype. Decades into the information age, folks in these parts continue to make do with dial-up. Across much of America, a generation has come of age without even once hearing the stutter, squeal and shhhhhh of a home computer's…

The most congested choke point for train traffic in North America is here in Chicago. It's where trains carrying Iowa corn meet black tankers full of North Dakota oil, where railcars with Wyoming coal rattle past others with Michigan SUVs. One-quarter of all rail traffic in the U.S.--1,300 trains a day--transit this city, including six of the seven biggest railroads in the country. Almost anything traveling from coast to coast comes through here, where train traffic has become so tangled that old railroad hands like to joke it takes trains three days to get from Los Angeles to Chicago--and three more to get through Chicago. The massive traffic jam is made worse by the fact that the region's busy commuter rail systems must compete for limited track space with the…

It's a lesson apt for a book about faith: Things happen for a reason. The waves of conservative Protestant influence that have swept American life at various points in history have often seemed to come out of nowhere. The emergence of the Christian right's political influence in the 1970s, for example, just as experts said religion was losing its place in U.S. culture, was shocking. But in her new major work on the subject, The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America, historian Frances FitzGerald (who won a Pulitzer in 1973 for Fire in the Lake) shows how the origins of these booms are discernible from afar. Her book makes the case so well, it leaves readers with the feeling that we should all be paying closer attention. The Evangelicals, as…

IS TRUTH DEAD? The April 3 cover story on President Trump's use of the truth provoked a massive response. In the New York Times, Frank Bruni wrote that the President's "delusional" statements in his interview with Michael Scherer could qualify him as "poet laureate of the sandbox." But Pamela Trull of Homewood, Ala., wrote that she believes liberal and conservative media alike share blame for today's problems with truth, for mixing news and opinion. Responding to the evoking of TIME's iconic 1966 "Is God Dead?" cover, Bob Hunt of Sun City West, Ariz., noted that the bigger question is, rather, "Does truth matter?" Meanwhile, Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne tweeted a reminder that in 1969, another TIME cover asked if God were coming back to life. "Here's hoping the truth…

When the Washington, D.C., police department began sharing pictures of the District's missing children on social media earlier this year, its goal was simply to spread the word. Then the faces of more than two dozen black and Latino kids and teens began circulating on Twitter in March, and people took notice in a way the city's police may never have intended. Many in the capital's black community were startled by the posts. Some grew infuriated, believing police had not done enough to respond to or to publicize what appeared to be a wave of disappearances. Activists saw a racial dimension to the apparent scarcity of news coverage of scores of black and brown youth vanishing, their names left unspoken. Outrage spread virally, as it tends to on social media.…

Unless you think trees are secretly waging war on humans, the great Northeastern blackout of Aug. 14, 2003, wasn't caused by an attack. When a transmission line in northern Ohio began to sag because of the intense summer heat, it tangled with the branches of a nearby tree, causing the wire to trip offline. One thing led to another in a perfect storm of equipment and human failure, and in barely four hours, more than 50 million people in the northeastern U.S. and Canada had lost power, including New York City. Power wasn't fully restored for days, and the blackout, the biggest in North American history, would cost some $10 billion. That accident showed the U.S. grid for what it was: an antiquated piece of 20th century technology struggling to…

Clean water is as vital to the nation as roads and bridges, but it's a piece of infrastructure Americans tend to take for granted--until something goes wrong. The latest reminder came in the form of the water crisis in Flint, Mich., in 2015, during which thousands of residents were exposed to lead and other dangerous toxins. Plenty of cities rely on an aging network of lead pipes, however. The disaster in Flint emerged only after officials failed to properly treat the water supply itself. While Flint may be a tragic outlier, water- and wastewater-treatment systems across the nation are far beyond their expiration dates and failing. East Coast cities like Philadelphia and Newark, N.J., routinely struggle with water-main breaks that disrupt the local economy, snarl traffic and leave residents without…

The names--Andrew, Katrina, Sandy--are reminders of the devastating storms that hit U.S. shores every few years, claiming lives and causing billions in damage. But in many coastal cities, they can also serve as lessons in the crucial effort to guard against the increasing threat of climate change. New Orleans finally made a long overdue investment in its flooding defenses after Katrina hit in 2005. The result is a new $15 billion, 130-mile levee system that allows the city to close 220-ton gates along waterways and pump water from the sewage system. In New York City, after Sandy paralyzed the nation's economic capital, officials approved a project known as the Big U to protect the southern half of Manhattan. The barrier serves as a sea wall, keeping water out of the…

There are a lot of firsts at this year's Whitney Biennial, the Whitney Museum of American Art's survey of contemporary art in the U.S. every two years. It's the first Biennial at the museum's new downtown New York City location, the capacious Renzo Piano--designed quarters it moved into in 2015. It's the first time both curators are people of color--Mia Locks and Christopher Y. Lew are Asian American--and, at 34 and 36, they're possibly the youngest pair to hold the job. It's also the first Biennial under Donald Trump's presidency. It's this last first that has most clearly shaped the response to the work of the show's 63 artists and collectives, on display until June 11. Though the pieces were conceived and selected before the election, they are being shown…

There is a unique kind of modern-era rage that erupts when you call your credit-card company because you don't recognize a charge on your bill. Maybe it's true that your spouse made the charge, but the fact that your spouse wasn't listening when you asked about it is not the reason for the rage. The rage--and it's not anger or frustration; it's rage--comes when you have to have a "conversation" with a machine, or press 585 buttons on your phone in order to reach a real human in Sioux Falls or Bangalore. There is something about talking to a machine that has replaced a person that is simply ... enraging. Unless that machine is my vacuum robot, a.k.a. Roomba. I can talk to my Roomba all day. Our conversations, while…

Three days after Khalid Masood mounted the March 22 attack in London, Muslim community organizers in the British city of Birmingham held a rally to show that extremists do not represent their faith. The country's right-wing newspapers had latched on to the fact Masood had lived most recently in the city, where 1 in 5 is a Muslim, describing it as a "hotbed of jihadism." The people of Birmingham felt compelled to peacefully show that wasn't the case. The low-key march was in keeping with the characteristic stoicism displayed by most Britons after the "lone wolf" rampage in the shadow of Big Ben killed four and injured around 50 in the span of 82 seconds. Lawmakers in Parliament resumed their duties the following day, as did the country's office workers,…

Bringing tech into the bedroom can be more harmful than helpful. Glancing at your phone before hitting the sack may be distracting and, more important, the blue light its screen emits is known to make falling asleep more difficult. But that's not true for all gadgets. These smart-home devices want to invade your bedroom with the aim of improving your slumber. Helps you fall asleep MUSE HEADBAND, $249 Falling asleep can be more difficult than staying asleep. With its headband, Muse hopes to train the brain to handle stress more efficiently, making it easier to relax. The gadget uses sensors to measure brain activity and then feeds that data to an app that guides you through meditation exercises. A number of less expensive or free meditation apps attempt to do…

High up in airport control towers and in darkened tracking facilities, a technological revolution is set to take your next flight into the 21st century. Known as NextGen, the joint Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and aviation-community program to modernize the skies is sidelining radio technology, which has been largely unchanged since the 1940s, and replacing it with GPS. The $30 billion--plus, multi-decade program marks a high-tech leap for the National Airspace System, the network of people, procedures and equipment that takes your plane from gate to gate. The fixes aren't sexy. They are measured in seconds and gallons of jet fuel saved and CO[subscript 2] emissions prevented. But they add up to the most comprehensive investment in the backbone of the nation's skies in history. For decades air-traffic controllers have…

The worst bottleneck along America's 25,000 miles of inland waterways is in a stretch of southern Illinois where the Ohio River meets the Mississippi and the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers splinter off. There, boats carrying thousands of tons of grain, coal and steel can sit idle for days, a floating traffic jam that stretches for miles. The culprit: Lock and Dam 52, one of the 239 critical--and in many cases crumbling--structures that move vessels along the rivers mythologized by Mark Twain. These inland waterways are one of the most overlooked and vital parts of the nation's infrastructure, a water highway that accounts for 14% of all domestic freight per year, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers. But the system is aging. Most of the locks and dams--which raise…

New York City is connected to New Jersey by two decrepit single-track train tunnels running beneath the Hudson River, each 106 years old and in desperate need of an overhaul. Their concrete is cracking. Both tunnels flooded during Superstorm Sandy, and chlorides from the seawater further damaged walls, tracks and electric cables, resulting in frequent delays. If either of the tubes were to be shut down for an extended period--a distinct possibility, given their age and compromised condition--some 75% fewer Amtrak and New Jersey Transit trains would run between New York and New Jersey. The increased gridlock in Manhattan alone, according to one transportation economist, would result in $300 million in lost productivity per year. But the harm would ripple far beyond the Big Apple. The tunnels are a critical…

Commuters who cross the Ohio River between Cincinnati and Covington, Ky., know to expect traffic jams on the Brent Spence Bridge. Constructed in 1963, the span was built to accommodate 80,000 vehicles a day. As a critical link in the trade corridor running from Michigan to Florida, it now carries twice as many. In its age and overuse, the Brent Spence aptly reflects the overall state of bridges throughout the U.S. There are 614,000 of them, and about 40% are more than 50 years old. About 9% need significant maintenance or replacement, a figure that has steadily decreased over the past quarter-century, as governments put limited resources into bridges most at risk of collapse. The thing is, falling down isn't the only way a bridge can fail. Older spans like…

When the great classic Hollywood filmmaker George Stevens put his career on hold to enter the service in 1943, he left behind a treasure box of entertainments like the luminous Astaire-Rogers musical Swing Time and Woman of the Year, the gingery comedy that united Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. Upon his return, Stevens made some of the finest films of his career, A Place in the Sun and Giant among them. But for very specific reasons, he no longer had the heart to make the light comedies he'd become known for. Five Came Back, Laurent Bouzereau's superb documentary, adapted by Mark Harris from his 2014 book, streaming now on Netflix, shows us why. The picture focuses on five directors--Frank Capra, William Wyler, John Ford, John Huston and Stevens--who left thriving…