Table of contents for November 6, 2023 in TIME Magazine

We hope sharing these stories can help hold a space for peace The scene as recounted by Eyal Nouri is almost too painful to tell: his uncle, Said Moshe, was killed in front of his aunt Adina. His last sighting of Adina is from a photograph posted online: “You see her on a motorcycle,” Eyal says. “She’s sitting in the middle between the two terrorists. Think about the situation. A few minutes ago she saw her husband, the one that she loved for the last 50 years, murdered in front of her eyes, and now they’re taking her to an unknown place in the Gaza Strip.” Adina Moshe, 72, is believed to be one of nearly 200 hostages taken by Hamas following the Oct. 7 Massacre, which killed at…

The news reports are alarming to say the least: Paris, the city known for its style, cuisine, and romance, has a bedbug problem. But what’s behind the invasion? How did the insects manage to infiltrate so much of the city? With Paris hosting the first Olympics in the post-COVID-19 era next summer, those questions aren’t just matters for idle conversation. BEDBUG BASICS Bedbugs feed almost exclusively on human blood, and find their meals by homing in on the carbon dioxide we exhale. Because they are cautious creatures, they feed when we’re asleep or relatively immobile while sitting on a couch or chair, before scurrying back into tiny cracks and crevices in mattresses or between walls and floors. They are remarkably hardy genetically, and can inbreed with little problem for…

After more than three years of covering COVID-19, I’ve essentially become a human search engine for friends and family who have questions about the virus. And during this ongoing wave of infections, I’ve been struck by how many people are still wondering if, and for how long, they need to isolate if they get sick. In fact, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) policy hasn’t substantively changed since late 2021. Its guidance still says that anyone who tests positive for COVID-19 should isolate themselves from others, including those in their household, for at least five full days. During that period, the sick person should skip in-person school or work, avoid other public places, and, if possible, stay away from others at home. If that’s not an option,…

How are you feeling these days? I feel good in my mind, but my health is not very good. I have COPD, which reduces my lung capacity, and other problems too. For part of this year I couldn’t hear almost at all until I got a hearing aid. In your memoir Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin), you write that you had to enter “a new frame of mind to become Sylvester Stewart again to tell the true story of Sly Stone,” referring to your birth name. What was that like? People liked to say there were two personalities in me. A doctor said it when I was in rehab, that Sylvester was welcome in meetings but Sly couldn’t come. My dad even said there were Sly days and…

In Poland, an unexpected surge of voters ready for change has ousted a populist coalition government in favor of a pro-E.U., more moderate group of leaders. The Law and Justice Party, in power since 2015, won the most parliamentary seats. But its coalition partners didn’t perform well enough to allow current Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski to form another government. It’s a striking win for politician Donald Tusk and his Civic Coalition. It’s also great news for the European Union, which can expect a new government in Warsaw that will respect E.U. rules on democracy and rule of law. The biggest surprise on election day was a turnout estimated at 73%, the highest figure in postcommunist Poland’s history. It’s a result all the more striking given Kaczynski’s unapologetic use of…

PORTRAITS OF GRIEF The stories of Israel’s missing, in the words of their family members With reporting by Leslie Dickstein, Mathias Hammer, and Julia Zorthian ‘Bring my daughter home. She is only an innocent child.’ —Keren Schem, 50 Schem’s daughter Mia, 21, is missing after attending the Nova music festival She went to the party Friday night with a friend. I woke up on Saturday morning and I saw what was happening. I called her: the phone was ringing and there was no answer. I called the friend too but his phone was off. The only thing I know is that Saturday morning at 7:17, she sent a message to one of the people in the party: “They are shooting us. Please come save us.” I’m a single mom. I…

OUTDOORS Trunk show ePlant TreeTag After wildfires ripped through Maui in August, staff at ePlant set up 15 of their TreeTags on the Lahaina region’s largest banyan tree, which had been damaged, to help arborists understand how to help it recover. The TreeTag sticks into the trunk, combining sensors and AI to measure growth, keep track of water and light inputs, monitor carbon capture, and store the data in the cloud. “Trees have their own unique way of communicating, and our sensors are like their translators,” co-founder and CEO Graham Hine says. Anyone with trees in their yard will find the information helpful in keeping them healthy. —Pranav Dixit DESIGN Boundary-pushing instrument Roland 50th Anniversary Concept Piano Old meets new with Roland’s 50th Anniversary Concept Piano. The Japanese Nara oak…

Not by chance did the era of worldwide free trade—globalization—coincide with the hope of successive U.S. governments that the capitalism that was lifting billions of people out of poverty would also show China the merits of democracy. The two were invariably linked, after all, in the Cold War that the West had won. But China preferred to launch a new rivalry, promoting a new authoritarian system that offers the wealth of capitalism while exploiting elements (surveillance, centralization) of what generates so much of that wealth: digital tech. That’s why the Biden Administration announced on Oct. 17 that it is tightening export controls on semiconductor chips used for artificial intelligence and the equipment used to manufacture them. AI is considered key to efficiencies that could provide not only huge advantages in…

DIED Suzanne Somers Entrepreneurial actor Suzanne Somers was never a dumb blonde. Her breakout character—Chrissy Snow on the ABC sitcom Three’s Company—may have been, but Somers herself was an actor, businesswoman, author, and health and wellness spokesperson. She died on Oct. 15 at age 76 after a battle with breast cancer. “I’ve been playing what I think is one of the best dumb blondes that’s ever been done, but I never got any credit,” she told the New York Times in 1980. “I did it so well that everyone thought I really was a dumb blonde.” Three’s Company ran from 1977 to 1984, and quickly became one of the country’s most popular shows. At the start of the show’s fifth season, Somers asked for a pay raise from $30,000…

On a rack at the front of Burke’s Book Store in Memphis is a postcard showing the shop in an earlier era, overhung by a billboard that’s no longer there. GRISHAM IS COMING, it says in big red letters, next to a photo of the youthful lawyer turned author. His brow is knitted, mouth pursed. Below, a line of people wait for the store to open. John Grisham picks up the postcard and looks at it. “Oh, yeah, I remember those days,” he says in his honey-thick drawl. The image is from a book signing for The Chamber, in 1994. It’s a memento of the heady days of his early success, when he released a succession of best sellers that became hit movies. People camped out in line for his…

Allie Phillips never wanted to be a politician, but she had always wanted to be a mom of two. When Phillips found out she was pregnant in November 2022, her 5-year-old daughter, Adalie, was thrilled too. “Her eyes got big and her jaw just dropped open,” Phillips says. She and her husband planned to name the baby Miley Rose. But after a scan when she was around 19 weeks pregnant, doctors told Phillips that the fetus had problems with several organs—conditions “not compatible with life outside the womb,” a doctor told Phillips. Miley Rose would likely die before birth; the longer Phillips stayed pregnant, the worse her own health could become. Phillips, who lives in north Tennessee, could not get an abortion in her home state. After the Supreme…

Aviv Kutz, a member of Kibbutz Kfar Aza, was a childhood friend of a very close friend of mine. Aviv and his wife Livnat and their three children have lived in Kfar Aza for years. Although the Kutz family endured many Hamas rocket and mortar attacks on their kibbutz, parents and children continued to hope for peace. Every year the Kutz family organized a kite-flying festival, meant to create a small peaceful space in the war zone. Colorful kites—some displaying peace messages—were flown near the border fence with Gaza. Livnat’s sister, who participated in the festival in previous years, said that “the idea is to fly the kites near the fence, to show Gaza that we only want to live in peace.” This year’s kite festival was planned for…

Have you ever had an intense experience—fallen madly in love, say—only to look back years later and feel it had happened to a different person, a person who had walked through a dream, and survived it, to get to the self you were destined to become? That’s the feeling Sofia Coppola captures in her quietly extraordinary Priscilla, which is adapted from the story told by Priscilla Presley in her candid and moving 1985 memoir Elvis and Me. Maybe we all have to survive our teenage dreams; the things we want at age 14 are rarely the best for the long term, and luckily, most of us don’t get them. But the teenage Priscilla Presley got what she yearned for. Priscilla invites us to walk side by side with her, but…

Since humankind has been walking upright, and maybe even when we still had fins for arms, we’ve been attracted to shiny, shimmering things. In concert, Taylor Swift is exactly that. Tickets for the Eras Tour, Swift’s first concert tour in five years—set to conclude in November 2024—were costly and difficult to get, which meant you had to either be very lucky or fall within a certain income bracket to participate. But the spirit of the Eras Tour is now available to almost everyone in the form of a concert film, one that is perhaps unsurprisingly exuberant and delightful. Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour is 2 hr. 48 min. of an irresistibly shiny, shimmering Taylor Swift. She’s the lure skimming through the water; we’re the gawping trout, dazzled to the…