Table of contents for March 13, 2023 in TIME Magazine

The U.S. Department of Energy now believes that COVID-19 most likely resulted from an accidental leak from a Chinese lab, according to news reports. It made the conclusion with a low level of confidence, the Wall Street Journal reported Feb. 26, citing anonymous sources. Not every U.S. intel agency agrees with the Energy Department. SPLIT DECISION “There is not a consensus right now in the U.S. government about exactly how COVID started,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Feb. 27. A 2021 report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence revealed that of the nine groups that investigated COVID-19’s origins, five decided that transmission from animal to human was the most likely cause. On Feb. 28, FBI Director Christopher Wray told Fox News that the FBI…

Abortion is still available in South Carolina until 22 weeks of pregnancy, but intense efforts are under way to limit access. Dozens of state lawmakers back a bill that would make people who get abortions subject to the death penalty and another that would ban the procedure after 12 weeks. From afar, such fervor among conservative politicians to take advantage of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision makes sense. The state has loud and rowdy pockets of deeply conservative and religious individuals, and its politics reflects that tradition. But the latest data tells a different story of a post-Dobbs world. Last year, 50% of South Carolinians said that abortion should be legal in most or all cases, up from 48% in 2018, according to the Public Religion Research Institute,…

It’s been 13 years since Masih Alinejad hugged her mother. That realization hits her during a TIME interview in early February, followed by another one: “Oh my God, I forgot my mom’s face,” she says, wide-eyed and shaking her head in disbelief. She stops and composes herself. “Look, I don’t want to cry on camera.” Alinejad, 46, understands the power of her platform. Exiled from Iran since 2009, the journalist and activist has long spoken out against Iran’s restrictions on women, calling the compulsory hijab “the Berlin Wall” of the regime. Her campaign alarmed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who not only rails against her in speeches but even sent his minions to kidnap her in July 2021. One year later, a similar plot was to end in assassination, according…

Quinta Brunson does what she does—currently, creating, executive-producing, co-writing, and starring in the comedy series Abbott Elementary—for everyday people, taking inspiration for the characters from teachers in her own life. The showrunner’s mother, Norma Jean Brunson, was a teacher for 40 years in the Philadelphia school district where Abbott is set. And the woman who gave the fictional school its name, Joyce Abbott, was Brunson’s sixth-grade teacher, who recently retired after 25 years. The mockumentary’s satirical yet loving portrayal of teachers, janitors, principals, and parents trying to make ends meet at an underfunded public school is a homage to their real counterparts everywhere. Reflecting the diversity of West Philadelphia, the sitcom’s teachers include a queer man; an Italian divorcée; and Brunson’s buoyant yet bumbling Janine Teagues, who just wants her…

You haven’t been feeling well lately. You’re more tired than usual, a bit sluggish. You wonder if there’s something wrong with your diet. Or maybe you’re anemic? You call your primary-care doctor’s office to schedule an appointment. They inform you the next available appointment is in three weeks. So, you wait. And then you wait some more. And then, when you arrive on the day of your appointment, you wait even more. You fill out the mountain of required paperwork, but the doctor still isn’t ready to see you. You flip through a magazine for a while, then scroll through your phone until you’re finally called. You wait a little longer in a scratchy paper gown, then talk to your physician—if you can call it talking, since she’s mostly staring…

INTERNATIONAL FEATURE The Quiet Girl Set in 1980s rural Ireland, Colm Bairead’s understated drama about a withdrawn young girl (Catherine Clinch) who blossoms when she’s sent off to spend a summer with kindly relatives is one of this year’s gently glittering gems. ANIMATED FEATURE Marcel the Shell With Shoes On Dean Fleischer-Camp uses the story of a lonely mollusk named Marcel (voiced by Jenny Slate) to fashion a gentle meditation on the importance of community and the ways in which loss can sometimes open a door to unexpected joy. DOCUMENTARY FEATURE All the Beauty and the Bloodshed Laura Poitras’ extraordinary documentary follows artist and activist Nan Goldin in her tireless—and ultimately successful—fight to bring down the Sackler family, longtime patrons of the arts whose fortunes were amassed largely from highly…

What to put on the cover for our 100th birthday? To answer that question we reached back through the decades for inspiration. The 144 images that make up this week’s cover were drawn from the more than 5,200 that TIME has published over the past century—zoomed in to offer a new perspective on the iconic images. There’s at least one cover from each of the past 100 years, and every U.S. President since TIME’s founding. (That’s 18, to be exact, starting with Warren G. Harding on the second issue of TIME in 1923.) Richard Nixon, who holds the record for most TIME covers (55), appears four times on this commemorative cover. You will also find world leaders and sports icons; activists and astronauts; musicians, artists, authors, and actors; great…

Forget everything you’ve heard about being single—starting with the assumption that it means ready to mingle. The marriage rate has been decreasing for decades, and more people than ever before are living solo: nearly 40% of adults in the U.S. are unpartnered, up from 29% in 1990, according to the Pew Research Center. About half aren’t interested in dating or a relationship. Evidence suggests that people in romantic relationships tend to be happier and have greater life satisfaction than singles, but—as with all relationships—it’s complicated. Research has found, for instance, that people in unhappy marriages have equal or worse health outcomes compared with those who were never married. Another important caveat: the singles who have the hardest time with their relationship status tend to be divorced people. Widowhood is also…

With its 12-point plan to end the war in Ukraine, China has taken a significant step toward center stage in international politics. In the past, it has avoided the risks and responsibilities that come with a leadership role on foreign policy questions that aren’t directly relevant to China’s national security. Now that Xi Jinping has consolidated vast power at home, he’s ready to assert his country’s influence in new ways. Yet, direct intervention in Russia’s war on Ukraine is fraught with risk for China, its relations with America and Europe, and the entire global economy. What’s in China’s peace plan? Despite Western suspicions that the proposal is designed mainly to help Russia, it calls for formal respect for Ukraine’s sovereignty, protections for Ukrainian civilians, an end to interference with…

When Ayisha Siddiqa talks about poetry, her face lights up. For the 24-year-old Pakistani human-rights and climate defender, poetry represents hope—a way to bring humanity back into the staid, high-level conversations that increasingly occupy her time. At the annual U.N. climate conference in Egypt in November, she shared an original poem titled “So Much About Your Sustainability, My People Are Dying” as an unvarnished rebuke of leaders’ failure to act on climate change—the effects of which were made clear by Pakistan’s deadly floods last summer. Her mission is deeply personal. At 14, Siddiqa realized how unsafe the environment can be after witnessing the illness and death—including of her grandparents—that came from her community’s polluted river water. At 16, she experienced another awakening as she became aware of the link between…

For Verónica Cruz Sánchez, the past year has felt like traveling back in time. Since 2000, Cruz’s feminist activist network, Las Libres, has transformed the experience of getting an abortion in Guanajuato, a deeply conservative Mexican state that had criminalized abortion in almost all circumstances. Cruz and her colleagues have worked to distribute misoprostol, a WHO-approved abortion pill, across Guanajuato, helping women feel confident in its safety, and inspiring similar networks in other Mexican states. But north of the border, the mood is more tense. “In the U.S., the women we see are terrified,” Cruz says. “They have very little knowledge about the pills.” Over the past 18 months, Cruz, a pragmatic, fast-talking 52-year-old who has campaigned for social-justice organizations since she was a teen, has expanded Las Libres into…

Angela Bassett, fresh out of grad school in the ’80s, intended to be a star. When she got an agent—a big deal for any actor early in their career—the man she was dating at the time tried to tell her it was thanks to his influence and largesse rather than her own abilities. “I refused to buy into what was underneath that,” Bassett, 64, says. “If anyone tried to make me believe that it was because of them and not my own talent, effort, perseverance, I wasn’t going to accept that.” The relationship ended, and Bassett flourished. Onscreen and onstage, her range is dizzying. As Tina Turner in the 1993 film What’s Love Got to Do With It, sinking herself into the story of “a Southern girl who conquered the…

Going into a Feb. 4 junior featherweight bout in New York City, Ramla Ali, the professional boxer, fashion model, and philanthropist who represented Somalia at the Tokyo Olympics, felt less than her best. She had been coughing all week. Her warm-up left her fatigued. After Round 2, she returned to her corner—and felt pain in her chest. She tried to stay positive. “But inside,” Ali says, “I was dying.” Ali, 33, won the 10-round battle against Australia’s Avril Mathie in a unanimous decision that kept her undefeated as a pro. After the fight, she was diagnosed with a viral respiratory infection and a partially collapsed lung caused by pneumonia. Such a performance in the face of adversity bodes well for her chances to ascend the fight ranks. “My next aim…

Ask ChatGPT to “write a fictionalized biography of Fleetwood Mac in the style of an oral history,” and the bot will respond with a flurry of hilariously realistic clichés about the “wild ride” that is rock stardom. “We were making records that people really connected with,” says one imagined band member. “It was a wonderful feeling.” Another observes that “the success was great, but it also came with a lot of pressure.” This uncanny-valley conversation could’ve been ripped from the pages of Taylor Jenkins Reid’s 2019 novel Daisy Jones & the Six. Structured as an oral history and openly influenced by Fleetwood Mac’s tumultuous romances, it traces the slow rise and abrupt combustion of a 1970s L.A. rock band. “I felt connected to them in a way that I hadn’t…

The numbers keep rolling in to confirm: Things look very good in the U.S. economy. Employers added half a million jobs in January, more than twice as many as economists had predicted. Spending by U.S. households rose 1.8% over December, and retail sales jumped at a higher rate than they had for nearly two years. You’d think it would be time to kick back, sip a martini, and celebrate. But it’s not. The continued strength of the U.S. economy means the Federal Reserve’s efforts to slow inflation by increasing interest rates are not working as quickly as they’d hoped. Inflation rose 5.4% in January from a year ago, according to data from the Fed’s preferred index released Feb. 24. The Fed wants inflation to be around 2% and will keep…

Since taking over as CEO of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences last July, Bill Kramer has been putting out fires. The Academy is still dealing with the fallout of Will Smith’s slapping Oscars host Chris Rock. And in January, a celebrity-backed campaign that some accused of violating Academy rules powered Andrea Riseborough to a surprise Best Actress nomination for her performance in the little-seen To Leslie, boxing out two Black actors who had been considered contenders, Viola Davis and Danielle Deadwyler. The Academy launched an investigation but decided not to rescind Riseborough’s nomination. Kramer spoke to TIME about the controversies and adding a “crisis team” for the big night. ‘We have a whole crisis team … We’ve run many scenarios.’ —Bill Kramer, Academy CEO Academy President Janet Yang…

Breaking barriers Sept. 22, 1947 By Spike Lee In my unhumble opinion, Jackie Robinson is the greatest American in history/herstory. I met him only once. It was in his later years, at a Long Island University basketball game, which was played at what used to be the Paramount Theatre, where Frank Sinatra sang to thousands of Bobby Soxers, at the corner of DeKalb and Flatbush, across the street from Junior’s cheesecake, in the People’s Republic of Brooklyn, New York. During halftime, my Father pushed me toward Jackie, whose head was full of gray. At first I couldn’t believe this man was the great Jackie Robinson. I went up to him and said, “My name is Spike Lee and I know who you are.” His big hand swallowed mine. Jackie…

You don’t rise to the top of Japan’s most venerable whiskey company without the occasional hangover. So it’s no surprise that Makiko Ono—who on March 24 becomes CEO of Suntory Beverages and Food, part of a conglomerate best known for producing Jim Beam and Maker’s Mark—has advice on a post-libation restorative. “When I was younger, energy drinks,” she says. A more stubborn headache is getting women into the upper echelons of business. Worth some $10.4 billion, Suntory is the most valuable company under female leadership in Japan, where less than 1% of the top stratum of listed firms have a woman as CEO. Women occupy only 8% of board seats at Japanese public companies, compared with 26% in the U.S. and 45% in France. Though Japan boasts the world’s third…

On an April 2022 afternoon, nearly two months into the war in Ukraine, Olena Shevchenko’s altruism was met with brutality. As she unloaded supplies from Poland to be distributed around a war-torn Kyiv, a man caught her off guard. Attacking her with pepper spray, he screamed, “Pervert, get out of our city!” Shevchenko, 40, is no stranger to this kind of hostility. Since she co-founded the Kyiv-based nonprofit Insight in 2017 to support women and LGBTQI communities, she’s become one of the most recognizable advocates in Ukraine, and has been attacked seven times in the past five years. Before the war, her initiatives were often met with resistance; nowadays, she finds getting people to understand her mission is even more complicated. “Why are you talking just about women? Why not…

She could see them from her perch onstage: a kid and their parents, getting up to leave. It happened at a concert in Florida last year—one of many where Phoebe Bridgers took a moment between songs to share her opinion that abortion is health care. Five years since she launched her career, Bridgers, 28, has a dedicated base of fans who she thinks of as being like-minded; sometimes, speaking out on the issues that matter to her can feel like adding more noise to an echo chamber. But then there are moments like this, when she watches a young person walk away from her, led by adults who probably don’t like her music any more than they like her message. And that’s when she recognizes that her voice has power.…