Table of contents for March 27, 2017 in TIME Magazine

7 | Conversation 8 | For the Record The Brief News from the U.S. and around the world 9 | Why Trump is slow to staff his government 12 | India's Prime Minister scores a huge win in a state election 14 | Ian Bremmer on the impact of the latest WikiLeaks disclosures 16 | The GOP divided over health care 18 | A guide for filing taxes late 20 | South Korea's President is ousted The View Ideas, opinion, innovations 23 | Republicans come around on climate change 27 | How the color green came to represent Ireland 28 | What to know about the border adjustment tax 30 | How interest-rate hikes could benefit penny pinchers 32 | James Stavridis on the dangers of a weak State Department…

DIED Amy Krouse Rosenthal, prolific children's-book author and short-film maker, at 51. In early March, Rosenthal penned an emotional New York Times Modern Love column about life after her imminent death, titled "You May Want to Marry My Husband." • Howard Hodgkin, Turner Prize--winning British artist known for his abstract paintings and prints, at 84. Hodgkin, whose creations were often inspired by the colors and warmth of India, worked up until his death, with two exhibitions of his work due to open this year. • Carol Field, food writer, at 76. Her 1985 cookbook, The Italian Baker, introduced America to breads like ciabatta and focaccia. OFFERED A conditional place to study at a U.K. university, to Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai. The 19-year-old human-rights activist, who was speaking at…

With a month to go until tax day, missing the filing deadline may seem like a distant danger. What's more, this year you have three extra days. Because April 15 falls on a Saturday and Monday, April 17, is a holiday in Washington, D.C., the 2017 filing deadline is April 18. Still, many Americans go right down to the wire--and past it. In 2016 a quarter of tax returns came in during the first three weeks of April. This year 1040s are trickling in more slowly, possibly because many early filers faced refund delays: until mid-February, the IRS was holding back many of those checks as part of a program to combat the growing problem of tax-identity theft. Procrastination notwithstanding, finishing on time is a challenge. Tax-filing early birds tend…

Any novel set in the music biz rightly aspires to stereophonic meaning, but the reverberations of Hari Kunzru's White Tears echo long after it's done. Part ghost story, part travelogue, White Tears is a drugged-out, spoiled-rotten treatise on race, class and poverty of the soul. Kunzru, the author of four previous novels, has nailed a specifically American style of bourgeois appropriation through his main characters, Seth and Carter, 20-something white guys whose friendship is staked on a fetish for music. Carter is the alpha by virtue of his bank account--richer than Croesus but mortified about it. Seth, the sidekick and narrator, becomes consumed by the fallout of their forged recording of an invented black musician. These kids are stupidly privileged, and they are not all right: even before they were…

CLAIM: "They may have been phony in the past, but it's very real now," press secretary Sean Spicer said on March 10 of Trump's views on the Labor Department's latest jobs report. REALITY: The Labor Department's methodology has not changed since Trump called jobs reports "phony" as a candidate. CLAIM: Asked about Trump's claim that Obama wiretapped him, adviser Kellyanne Conway said on March 12 there are many ways to surveil, including "microwaves that turn into cameras." REALITY: There is no evidence that Obama watched Trump through microwaves. Spicer later said the comment was a joke. CLAIM: "This is something that was done to a large extent because of ... the policies of this new Administration," Trump said on March 6 of an ExxonMobil announcement about an expansion…

The war on secrecy keeps escalating. In the latest case, WikiLeaks claims to have uncovered documents--which it has labeled Vault 7--that show how U.S. intelligence agencies can evade encryption to access smartphones and core devices on the "Internet of things." Assuming the documents are authentic, they also purportedly reveal how U.S. intelligence agencies have compromised operating systems supplied by leading U.S. tech firms without any cooperation from the firms themselves. It's the latest example of "forced transparency," or the revelation of secrets that can quickly undermine a powerful person, an organization or even a government. The leak will boost the cyber capabilities of governments the U.S. doesn't want to help. It probably doesn't reveal much that China and Russia (and Israel) don't already know. But Iran and North Korea may…

If there's one thing people associate with St. Patrick's Day--and by extension, Ireland itself--it's the color green. And with good reason: the Emerald Isle is famous for its verdant landscapes, and there's a bright green bar on its national flag. But green wasn't always synonymous with Irish pride. During the 16th century, experts believe, the national color was blue; when Henry VIII identified as King of Ireland, that was the color of his flag. (In fact, the Irish presidency is still represented by a blue flag with a harp.) That started to change during the Great Irish Rebellion in the 17th century, during which displaced Catholic landowners and bishops rebelled against Protestant settlers and their English allies. One of the rebel leaders, Owen Roe O'Neill, used a green flag with…

In the fall of 2010, Masonia Traylor's life changed overnight. Then 23, she was living with her new boyfriend in Atlanta and working as a pharmacy technician at a nearby drugstore. She took good care of herself, always went for an annual checkup, and ever since she graduated from high school, she had made it a practice to get tested for HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. Every year, her tests would come back negative. Until one didn't. "At first I felt like the test was a lie, that the labs got mixed up," she says. "Then I started to feel guilt. I felt like I was being punished for not waiting to have sex until I was married." It was October when her doctor told her she had tested…

'We must consider if viri probati is a possibility.' Pope Francis, vowing to consider ordaining married men (the Latin translates to "proven men") who are already actively involved with the Roman Catholic Church to address priest shortages 2,000 Estimated extra steps that Pokémon Go players walk daily compared with people who don't play the game $500 Approximate amount a San Diego man stole from a Girl Scout cookie stand before being caught in a nearby motel 'We don't know that yet.' Scott Pruitt, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, denying that carbon dioxide is the "primary contributor" to global warming, despite ample evidence to the contrary 'THE TRUTH WILL BE KNOWN.' Park Geun-Hye, former South Korean President, further denying wrongdoing two days after the nation's Constitutional Court removed her from…

THE PHILIPPINES President Rodrigo Duterte chose not to stay in Manila's Malacañang Palace because it is supposedly haunted, opting instead for a house across the river called Bahay Pagbabago. URUGUAY Former President José Mujica refused to move into the lavish presidential mansion in 2010. The onetime leftist guerrilla lived at his wife's farmhouse during his five-year term. MALAWI Former President Bakili Muluzi, who came into power in 1994, refused to stay in the "obscene opulence"of the $100 million official residence, built by former autocrat Hastings Banda.…

For a national health care plan, the GOP replacement for Obamacare has never looked particularly healthy. Moderate Republicans don't like the American Health Care Act (AHCA) because it would balloon the ranks of the uninsured. Conservatives say it doesn't go far enough to roll back federal subsidies and regulations. And that was all before the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the closest Capitol Hill gets to having an actual scientific panel, delivered a blunt diagnosis on March 13, with hard numbers about who would be helped and hurt under the new bill. It would shave $337 billion off the federal deficit over the next decade, while lowering average premiums for some after 2020 in comparison to current law. But other elements of the prognosis were jarring, including the estimate that 24…

Much ink has been spilled about millennials in the workplace. But how should employers approach the generation following them? In Gen Z @ Work, David Stillman and his son Jonah surveyed this new wave of workers--specifically, those born between 1995 and 2012--to reveal several key takeaways. Unlike millennials, they write, Gen Z-ers have been living with the Internet since birth, and 91% of them say that a company's technological sophistication would affect their decision to work there. They also have a more DIY attitude about job skills, thanks to their love of YouTube how-tos. And because of their FOMO (fear of missing out), the Stillmans write, they want to have "a lot in the hopper at all times"--in fact, 75% of the subjects surveyed say they're interested in jobs where…

A roundup of new and noteworthy insights from the week's most talked-about studies 1 STRAWBERRIES TOP LIST OF 'DIRTY' PRODUCE Strawberries topped the Environmental Working Group's annual "Dirty Dozen," which ranks the produce with the most pesticide residue. (Spinach placed second.) On the opposite end of the spectrum: sweet corn and avocados, which were dubbed the least pesticide-contaminated. 2 'PINK NOISE' COULD HELP OLDER PEOPLE'S MEMORIES A study in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience found that 13 people over age 60 who took memory tests before and after sleeping performed three times as well on average when they dozed while listening to pink noise, a mix of high and low frequencies. 3 MOST AMERICAN KIDS FALL FOR FAKE NEWS A survey from Common Sense Media found that less than 45% of…

In military parlance, a "missing man" formation is a poignant aerial tribute to a fallen comrade. A group of jets come flying toward the crowd, and suddenly one of them shears off into the sunset, leaving a symbolic empty spot in the formation. It is a sad reminder of the value of those we lose. Today's State Department is in danger of becoming a missing man in the interagency formation. We need to move quickly to shore up this absolutely vital element of our national security. Storm clouds are gathering: a new Secretary with no diplomatic experience being obviously marginalized by the White House; massive budget-cut proposals; empty positions across the department, from top to bottom; little to no visible consultation on key diplomatic issues, from a one-China policy to…

In Park City, Utah, students are lining up at a local high school to get their locker assignments for the semester. Extracurricular clubs have set up tables to attract new members. It's only midday, but the Gay-Straight Alliance, a group with outposts at about a quarter of American secondary schools, already has 47 names on its sign-up sheet. Sitting behind piles of rainbow-colored paper cranes--a hot fundraising item--the group leaders are counting the different identity labels they've encountered. Sure, there's lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender. But there are more. Way more. "There are people who are pan," says 17-year-old club president Grace Mason, meaning pansexual. There's also aromantic, asexual, genderqueer, two-spirit and on and on. Hyperindividual, you-do-you young people from across the U.S. are upending the convention that when it comes…

What was it like to return to your Trainspotting character Renton after two decades? I was surprised he was still there, ready to go. The only time I've come back to characters was with the Star Wars trilogy, but this was a gap of 20 years. It seemed like Renton was inside there, ready to come out when we needed him. It was odd but wonderful. The sequel is about a lot of things: friendship, betrayal, nostalgia. What was the main draw for you? It taps into something about being in your mid-40s. I'm starting to feel it myself, this feeling of looking back at your life and trying to look forward at the rest of your life. It's not just a film about nostalgia. It's much more a film…

START Suffer from superhero overload? Watch The Americans instead--its spies' superpower is rocking many wigs. Select a caffeine boost Bodega coffee, black Peppermint mocha Frappuccino with extra whipped cream Are leggings pants? You'd rather listen to: Björk's lush soundscapes Or Katy Perry Shakespeare's greatest hero is: NO! A power suit should be: YES! Who is your favorite Olympian? The evolved Hal of Henry IV The tragic Hamlet The better billionaire is: Black or blue Neon Usain Bolt Gabby Douglas Team Watson Team Sherlock Richie Rich Daddy Warbucks POWERLESS In this office comedy, mortals make safety gear to prevent damage during heroes' fights. NBC THE POWERPUFF GIRLS Three kindergartners transform into a flaming kitty to battle villains. Cartoon Network THE FLASH In this campy comic-book show, the Flash finds a need…

Never has trying to "have it all" felt as visceral as it does in New Yorker writer Ariel Levy's memoir, The Rules Do Not Apply. A member of the first generation of women told they could do anything, Levy, now 42, spent her 20s and 30s consumed by wanderlust, evading the claustrophobia of monogamy and motherhood: "To become a mother, I feared, was to relinquish your status as the protagonist of your own life." As a result of her nomadic existence, she cheats on the woman she marries. But after watching a friend struggle to get pregnant, Levy realizes she could lose the opportunity to have a family she didn't know she wanted. "My life had been an ugly, roiling mess, but I was going to pull it all together…

In the mid-'oos, when a strain of rock known as indie seized America's hipper enclaves, the parameters of the genre were celebrated on the web by the blog Pitchfork and onstage by bands like Spoon, the Shins and Bright Eyes, the project of Conor Oberst. The Nebraska-born singer-songwriter retired the band in the early 2010s but still delivers elliptically confessional lyrics in a trembling voice. James Mercer, the last remaining original member of Albuquerque, N.M.--spawned band the Shins, has a winsome voice that especially shines amid crunchy melodies. Spoon, who hail from Austin, have a winking cool that makes their flinty songs delectably inscrutable, even when they incorporate big horns and crashing pianos. This month, all three acts are releasing new albums. Oberst's Salutations (March 17) is a sequel to…

You write in The Chessboard and the Web that national security today requires the use of networks, not just traditional rivalries and alliances, which you call "the chessboard." How does that square with the rise of nationalism? If Hillary Clinton had been elected, my book would have been aligned with government policy. Instead, the chessboard is resurgent. Trump's Inaugural Address was a classic statement of chessboard politics. You write, "The starting point here is not competition between states but the well-being of citizens globally," which seems like the opposite of "America first." Yet President Trump, with his millions of Twitter followers, seems to understand the power of networks. I think he deeply understands--or intuitively feels--the power of direct connections with voters. But like Barack Obama, he is finding there is…