Table of contents for November 30, 2020 in TIME Magazine

STEEP SHEEP A trio of breeders pooled funds to purchase a 6-month-old Texel lamb with “all the best genetics,” as British newspaper the Guardian reported, at an auction in Scotland in August. The price? Nearly $490,000. BULL MARKET Charles Herbster, chairman of President Trump’s agriculture and rural advisory committee, paid over $1.5 million for a year-old Angus bull at a North Dakota auction in 2019, nearly doubling the previous world record for a single bull sale. FANCY FISH The most expensive koi carp ever sold fetched $1.8 million at an auction in 2018 after being judged Grand Champion at the All Japan Nishikigoi Show, a renowned koi competition, the year before.…

AT ALA MOANA BEACH PARK, NEAR DOWNTOWN HONOLULU, lifeguard Mo Freitas is ready for the water to get a bit more crowded. When Hawaii Governor David Ige in March instituted a mandatory two-week self-quarantine for anyone coming to the state, the move effectively stopped tourists from visiting. Now—even as the U.S. hit 11 million COVID-19 cases as of Nov. 15—Hawaii, like Freitas, is welcoming them back. “It was a nice break for lifeguards when they weren’t here,” Freitas says, “but it’s a good thing that they’re returning, for our businesses and for many people on the island.” Tourism, the single largest source of private capital for the state’s economy, brought Hawaii $17.75 billion last year, so it’s not surprising that the state is among those hit hardest by the…

FOR FOUR YEARS, Donald J. Trump has kept both U.S. foes and allies off-balance with his “America first” approach to global politics. For a world that had grown accustomed to the U.S. as rule-maker rather than rule-breaker of the international order, Trump’s embrace of “What have you done for us lately?” international relations was understandably jarring. But it also served to open up new frontiers in U.S. foreign policy. Only someone with Trump’s disregard for protocol could have engaged the North Koreans as quickly as he did; only someone with Trump’s willingness to bring military and economic power quickly to bear could so quickly reshape the power balance of the Middle East in Israel’s—and, by extension, the U.S.’s—favor. Biden is about to discover firsthand he is dealing with the…

NOTHING ABOUT THE CURRENT COVID-19 EXPLOSION SHOULD COME AS A SURPRISE. AS THE VIRUS SPREAD THROUGHOUT SUMMER AND FALL, EXPERTS REPEATEDLY WARNED WINTER WOULD BE WORSE. They cautioned that a cold-weather return to indoor socializing, particularly around the holidays, could turn a steady burn into a wildfire. Throw in a lame-duck President, wildly differing approaches by the states and a pervasive sense of quarantine fatigue, and the wildfire could easily become an inferno. So it has. The U.S. is now locked in a deadly cycle of setting, then shattering, records for new cases and hospitalizations. On Nov. 13, a staggering 177,224 people in the U.S. were diagnosed with COVID-19. As of Nov. 17, more than 70,000 coronavirus patients were hospitalized nationwide. And unlike in earlier waves, which were fairly…

WE ARE AT WAR WITH A VIRUS THAT IS CURRENTLY KILLING Americans at the rate of two 9/11s a week—by Christmas it could be three. If 1,000 Americans were dying each day in a war, we would act swiftly and decisively. Yet we do not. The virus is winning. The U.S. government has put most of our eggs in the vaccine basket, and despite the vaccine’s always being one more month away, we have a long road ahead before a safe, effective one is widely available. We need a multipronged public-health strategy that includes a national testing plan that utilizes widespread frequent rapid antigen tests to stop the spread of the virus. It would significantly reduce the spread of the virus without having to shut down the country again…

‘THIS ISN’T A GAME.’MICHELLE OBAMA, urging a “smooth transition of power” from the Trump Administration to that of President-elect Joe Biden, in a statement shared on Instagram on Nov. 16 ‘Not everybody gets the chance to read one’s obituary while still alive.’ABDOULAYE WADE, President of Senegal from 2000 to 2012, in a Facebook post on Nov. 16, after a French news site accidentally posted his obituary, along with those prewritten for around 100 other famous figures who are, in fact, still alive 76 Number of queens—each capable of forming her own colony—found in a single “murder hornet” nest destroyed in October in Washington State, confirmed by scientists on Nov. 10 ‘I’m not going to be bullied into not following reputable scientists and medical professionals.’GRETCHEN WHITMER, governor of Michigan, in an…

Texas-based grocery chain H-E-B usually spends November preparing for the city of Houston’s annual Thanksgiving parade. But this year—with tens of thousands of Texans fighting COVID-19 infections and millions of Americans still out of work—that parade was canceled. Instead, the city, the Houston Food Bank and the grocery company are combining their resources to orchestrate a massive food-distribution event. H-E-B employees, pictured Nov. 17, are packaging boxes full of Thanksgiving necessities in preparation for high demand. Jessica Higginbotham, second from right, is thankful she was able to cook dinner for her five children on Nov. 17. She survived heart and kidney transplants in 2019; she and three other members of her family had COVID-19 this year. The health issues, paired with her husband Jeremiah’s losing hours at work, cost…

PlayStation’s new Spider-Man: Miles Morales game was uniquely positioned to respond to our current moment. Instead, its creator Insomniac bends over backward to avoid any nuanced conversation about racism in policing. While there’s lots to love, like the thrill of swinging through a gorgeously rendered New York, players will notice that police are largely missing from the crime-fighting game. Miles, a Black–Puerto Rican Spider-Man and son of a cop, may have complicated feelings about criminal justice. But we never hear them. At one point, private security guards aim to kill Miles, even as he puts his hands up; passersby pull out their phones to film. But since the men with the guns are masked corporate stooges, not police officers, the moment loses its power. Even more so than books…

THE SUN HAS BARELY RISEN ABOVE THE GLASSY surface of Long Island Sound. A breeze sweeps over an island half a mile from the Bronx where 15 workers watch a backhoe remove the layer of soil that separates a mass grave from the outside world. There are 1,165 identical pine caskets stacked three high, two wide in this football-field-size pit. The men are here to find and dig up casket No. 40-3. The backhoe churns up a layer of gray sand, a sign that the caskets are close. Already sweating in their hazmat suits, the workers climb 10 ft. down into the hole, shovels in their gloved hands. The grave is more than two months old. The smell seeps through their protective masks. As they dig, three coffins come into…

THE DENSE KELP FOREST OFF THE SOUTHERN tip of South Africa is home to some of the earth’s most diverse sea life, including sharks, rays and, once upon a time, a common octopus that has just had an uncommon run as the star of the Netflix documentary My Octopus Teacher. Her onetime den lies a couple of dozen feet off the coast of Cape Town suburb Simon’s Town. The octopus is long gone—octopuses rarely survive more than 18 months in the wild—but her co-star and “student,” filmmaker Craig Foster, still visits her former home in daily dives that are as much about pilgrimage as they are about science. “When an animal has such an influence on you … you can’t help but love the environment that made her,” he…

Weeks after the votes were counted and winner named, two realities are clear. First, Donald Trump is growing increasingly unhinged in his quest to retain his grip on power. Second, only conservative media can prevent vast segments of the GOP base from descending further into the President’s miasma of conspiracy theories. Trump’s Twitter feed is full of debunked rumors and false claims, but in the late morning of Nov. 12, he reached a new level of wild speculation. In all caps, he tweeted, “REPORT: DOMINION DELETED 2.7 MILLION TRUMP VOTES NATIONWIDE. DATA ANALYSIS FINDS 221,000 PENNSYLVANIA VOTES SWITCHED FROM PRESIDENT TRUMP TO BIDEN. 941,000 TRUMP VOTES DELETED. STATES USING DOMINION VOTING SYSTEMS SWITCHED 435,000 VOTES FROM TRUMP TO BIDEN.” He cited the Trump-friendly One America News Network as the…

THIS YEAR ON MY MOTHER’S BIRTHDAY, IN OCTOBER, I WOKE up from one of many dreams I’ve had about her since her death. I’d been sitting with family and friends in my grandmother’s backyard, our lawn chairs scattered across a carpet of sun-dappled grass. We were all talking, sharing memories of my mom. I don’t remember the specific stories, but I know there was joy, more laughter than tears—even though, in my dream, my mom was also gone. Like so many grieving families in 2020, we haven’t been able to gather or mourn together. My mother died of cancer in May, and my husband, kids and I had to watch the small funeral service via livestream from across the country. Until the day before, I wasn’t sure we would…

VACCINES NORMALLY TAKE DECADES TO DEVELOP and test, but two COVID-19 shots, from Moderna and Pfizer (in partnership with BioNTech), have gone from nonexistent to about 95% effectiveness in 10 months. Public-health officials and governments now have the dual challenge of convincing the public that the vaccines are both safe and scientifically sound, as well as figuring out how to distribute billions of doses. Here’s what we know so far about how that’s going. WHEN CAN I GET VACCINATED? That depends. Manufacturers have already begun producing vaccines, betting that they will be effective, so they can be ready to ship if the FDA authorizes them, possibly as soon as December. Still, doses will be limited this year and will be reserved for those at highest risk of infection, such…

TO FIND THE MOST FAMOUS MUSICIAN IN UGANDA, SIMPLY PUNCH HIS NAME INTO UBER. If you follow directions to Bobi Wine Residence or Bobi Wine Road, you’ll eventually find yourself on a rutted mud track that winds through the remnants of an old banana plantation on the fringes of the Ugandan capital, Kampala. When TIME visits in September 2019, the man himself greets us at his front door. He is wearing boxing gloves. Out of breath and sweating, Uganda’s most unlikely presidential candidate proffers a fist bump and apologizes for a training session gone long. “I’m getting ready for Museveni,” Wine jokes, referring to the country’s current President. A onetime guerrilla leader, Yoweri Museveni has ruled the nation for more than three decades through a combination of deft politicking, questionable…