Table of contents for December 25, 2017 in TIME Magazine

TIME’s 2017 Person of the Year selection of “The Silence Breakers”—the courageous women and men who spoke up about sexual harassment and assault—started a conversation that continues weeks later. The choice began trending on social media immediately after editor-in-chief Edward Felsenthal announced it on NBC’s Today on Dec. 6, and more people visited TIME.com that day than on Election Day in 2016. In the weeks since, writers and editors have received dozens of messages from readers who said they found comfort and solidarity in the choice—and who wanted to share their own stories. (If you have a story to share, please write to letters@time.com.) Here’s a glimpse at the reactions so far: @RWITHERSPOON: All of these individuals are such an inspiration. I am in awe of their courage to speak…

AROUND THE WORLD Follow Nour and Yousef, Rahaf’s parents, through a 3-D Google Voyager rendering of their movements out of Syria, through Turkey and Greece (where Rahaf was born) and finally to a new studio apartment in Germany. DIRECT MESSAGES Watch videos from baby Heln’s first year interspersed with text-message conversations between her mother Taimaa and the Finding Home reporters, chronicling the family’s ups and downs as they seek asylum in Europe. Reporting for this project is supported by a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and Merck for Mothers (known as MSD for Mothers outside the U.S. and Canada)…

Court rejects transgender ban Transgender people will be allowed to enlist in the military starting on Jan. 1, the Pentagon confirmed, after a federal judge rejected a legal challenge from the Trump Administration to delay an Obama-era repeal of the long-standing ban. NYC bombing suspect charged Prosecutors brought federal terrorism charges against Akayed Ullah, who is accused of detonating a pipe bomb near New York’s Port Authority bus terminal on Dec. 11. “I did it for the Islamic State,” he allegedly told police. 6,700 Rohingya killed in Myanmar Doctors Without Borders released a conservative estimate that 6,700 Rohingya Muslims were killed over a single month by Myanmar government forces between August and September. The U.N. has described Myanmar’s crackdown as “ethnic cleansing.” France to seek age limits for Facebook A…

THE EASIEST PART ABOUT GOING TO THE moon is, well, going to the moon. Once you’ve got funding and a crew, and a rocket and spacecraft on the launchpad, just gas up and go. We did it before, and we can do it again. The trick is all that other stuff that has to come first—especially the money, the rocket and the spacecraft. Details like those are worth keeping in mind in the wake of President Trump’s just-signed Space Policy Directive, which sets NASA on a path to get Americans back to the moon and eventually to Mars. The most encouraging part of the announcement is that it comes at the end of an orderly process. In June, Trump re-established the National Space Council, an advisory panel that had not…

PEOPLE OFTEN ASKED MARSHALL LOEB, A LONGTIME EDITOR at TIME, Fortune and Money who died at 88 on Dec. 9, why he refused to sell his company stock when its price would waver. “You dance with the girl that brought ya,” he’d explain with a twinkle in his eye. Affable, tireless and steadfastly loyal, Loeb reinvigorated Fortune and Money, and collected virtually every major award in business journalism. As a teenager, his curiosity led him to travel to postwar Germany to understand what made Nazism possible. As an adult, he prowled the halls of the Time & Life building, chomping on gum and driving his adoring staff to complete the next magazine issue to his exceedingly high standards. Loeb grew up a Jewish kid in Depression-era Chicago, and though he…

THIS IS WHAT MAY HAPPEN WHEN YOU BECOME A NOBEL Peace laureate—at least according to Beatrice Fihn. On the morning the prize winner is named, a man with a very strong Norwegian accent will call you up. After too much preamble, he’ll get to the point: You and your organization have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, an achievement that puts you in the company of luminaries like Martin Luther King Jr. and the Dalai Lama. And if you’re Fihn, the executive director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) and a 2017 Nobel Peace laureate, you will vaguely suspect the whole thing is a prank. “It was really a shock,” she says of the call on Oct. 6 revealing that ICAN had been awarded the Peace Prize.…

I ALWAYS LOOKED forward to Thanksgiving. It was never just my immediate family—my parents invited extended family, family of the extended family and whoever else was left in the neighborhood. All stragglers were welcome. My mom made the quintessential Americana Thanksgiving meal, though her prized side was a rutabaga dish that I only remember my dad eating, and not always willingly! In November 2012, I wasn’t going to make it to our home in Pass Christian, Miss. Myelodysplastic syndrome had taken away my health and deflated my holiday spirit. I had just been released from the hospital after spending 30 days in isolation following a bone-marrow transplant. My only goal was to make it to 100 days post-transplant—my survival depended on it. During my journey to rebuild my immune system,…

Politician I plan to keep building bridges of understanding in Minnesota, and throughout the U.S., to bring us closer together. As I get to know people everywhere in our state, I see kindness and generosity, and a willingness to seek understanding and acceptance of what makes us who we are. In these times, there are so many people looking for ways to fight for a more just, loving, peaceful world united in diversity. By introducing myself as the first Muslim, or the first refugee, or the first woman of color that some of these communities have met, I hope to break down more barriers, have meaningful conversations and bring us together to take on the greater effort to build shared prosperity for everyone in America. Omar, the first Somali- American…

Mexico will pick a new President on July 1. Corruption scandals, anemic growth and drug-related violence have boosted support for veteran leftist Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Brazil will vote on Oct. 7, with hopes to turn the corner after economic doldrums and spiking crime following the impeachment of former President Dilma Rousseff. Nicolás Maduro has vowed to seek re-election as President of crisis-wracked Venezuela in 2018, although whether a vote will be free and fair, or will even happen, is anyone’s guess. Egypt will vote around April. Exiled former Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq has announced his intention to unseat President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, who is expected to seek a second term. General elections must be held in Pakistan by Sept. 3 following the judicial ouster of pro-U.S. Prime Minister Nawaz…

THE SUN HAD SET ON THE NORTHWEST SIDE OF Omaha, and the Christmas lights had come on when a carload of young political canvassers pulled up in front of a brick house in the tony neighborhood known as Champions Run. The activists, some of them still in high school, checked the app that picked their specific political targets and hustled to the front door to make their pitch for GOP Representative Don Bacon. Their talking points focused on Bacon’s service as an Air Force brigadier general and wing commander at nearby Offutt Air Force Base, and his support of the Republicans’ tax-cut package.“Did you vote for him last time?” one of the super PAC’s volunteers cheerfully asked the voter, who greeted the visitors on his front steps. It was 341…

‘There’s not a public, private or political persona. There’s just Jacinda.’—GREGORY FOUNTAIN, one of Ardern’sformer high school teachers THE EXECUTIVE WING OF NEW ZEAland’s parliament is nicknamed the Beehive, and there has been a new buzz about it since Oct. 26, when Jacinda Ardern, 37, became the world’s youngest female leader. On the shelves of her Cabinet room, a 19th century edition of William M. Thayer’sWomen Who Win is proudly displayed. Ardern knows something about that. She tells TIME of her desire to “give [women] a sense of hope that there is a path, that you can find yourself in these wonderful situations.” That Ardern’s path took her to the prime ministership vindicates the power of that kind of hope. What comes next is hard, as this center-left leader manages…

Ksenia Sobchak, the Russian journalist, socialite and reality-TV star, plans to challenge Vladimir Putin for the presidency during the elections set for March. Do you even believe these elections will be free and fair? No. An election is not just throwing ballots in a box. It requires candidates to have equal access to the media, to campaign on equal terms, to hold debates. All of that is missing in Russia. So we cannot consider these elections fair in any case. Plus, only Putin can decide whether to put your name on the ballot. Why would he do that if you actually pose a challenge? Such guesswork only leads to paranoia. The most important thing is to fight on, to try to do everything possible for them to let me run.…

You can’t put too high a price on good health, but does that mean a new cancer treatment merits a half-million-dollar price tag? That’s the cost of the much lauded CAR-T cell therapy, which was recently approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) because it can wipe out malignant cells in one shot. It’s a steep price, but it provides something that multiple rounds of chemotherapy and radiation cannot: a potential cure. Compare that to the lifetime cost of treating the cancers for which CAR-T was approved, and it almost sounds like a deal. The high price is partly due to the billions of dollars it costs to develop new drugs. There’s also pharmaceuticalcompany markup, of course. Manufacturers can charge what they want for a new drug, especially for…

Entrepreneur On a personal level and in my work, I plan to focus my energy on what I can do to change gender dynamics, to see an actual lasting change in the current landscape of incredibly misogynistic behavior that is pervasive in almost every category in our world. I would love to get serious about investing in female-founded companies. I would also love to get involved in mentoring young women who are just getting started, or to expand my reach to help other women build impactful companies. I’m currently writing a book, which comes out next year, and I hope to expand that into a children’s book on gender norms. We need to make sure the language we are teaching our children about gender dynamics and relationships is one we…

Emoji fans could have dozens of playful new pictographs to liven up their text messages in 2018, with 130 characters slated for release. One big trend among the latest additions: diversity. This year’s emojis add a wider range of physical attributes, including redheaded, curly-haired and balding characters. “There is a responsibility to ensure that the people shown on the emoji keyboard reflect the diversity of the world that we’re in,” says Jeremy Burge, founder of Emojipedia and a member of the Unicode Consortium, the group that approves or rejects ideas for new emojis.…

MEG WOLITZER HAS BUILT HER REPUTATION BY tapping into the zeitgeist, particularly as it relates to women, from the inequities within a marriage in The Wife (2003) to a teen girl grappling with death in the YA novel Belzhar (2014). When it’s published in the spring, The Female Persuasion will be her first book for adults since her 2013 smash hit The Interestings. Much has changed in the feminist movement, and for all women, since then, and this book observes those changes with a gimlet eye. “I don’t think I’m any kind of a Cassandra, of course. These are things that we’ve all been thinking about for a long time,” Wolitzer tells TIME. “But it’s true that in this moment, there is a particular kind of pointed tension.” The Female…

GLOBAL GAMES The coming year brings several big-ticket international events, including the XXIII Winter Olympics, beginning on Feb. 9 in Pyeong Chang, South Korea. Competition there will continue on March 9 for the XXIII Winter Paralympic Games. The men’s FIFA World Cup will kick off on June 14 in Moscow. SPEED DEMONS Tens of thousands of runners will compete in the Boston Marathon on April 16; cyclists will speed through the three-week-long Tour de France starting on July 7, and auto racers will compete in the Australian Grand Prix, the first of the 21-race Formula One World Championship, on March 25. On May 5 the Kentucky Derby will be the first leg in horse racing’s coveted Triple Crown. TEAM SPIRIT Super Bowl LII is scheduled for Feb. 4. The NCAA’s…

J.K. Simmons’ latest project, the Starz drama Counterpart (Jan. 21), has him engaged in high-stakes espionage, but the actor is keeping the show grounded. “I’m just trying to play a believable human being,” he says. “Or in this case, two of them.” That’s right: the Oscar winner, best known for roles like the sadistic conductor in Whiplash and a white supremacist on Oz, plays Howard, a meek cog within a mysterious governing system. He moonlights as Howard Prime, another version, who appears once it becomes clear that his bosses are concealing a parallel universe. Howard Prime is everything Howard isn’t: confident, brash, assured. In other words, he’s a J.K. Simmons character. But it’s the mild-mannered Howard—like a sci-fi version of John le Carré’s George Smiley, a functionary drawn into wild…

Author I’d like to rebalance my life. I’m really looking forward to switching gears and slowing down a bit. I regularly meditate, and one thing I’m excited about is trying qigong—an ancient practice, similar to tai chi, that is all about slowing down the way you move and letting the energy flow. I think rebalancing will boost my creativity, which is good because I’m going to be producing and writing a TV show next year; when I’m traveling and touring, I find it hard to think. So I’m looking forward to having much more relaxation time, building up fewer air miles and living a healthier life. Kwan is a Singaporean-born novelist whose best seller Crazy Rich Asians has been adapted into a movie, due out in August…

At the height of the migration crisis that hit Europe in 2015, a photograph circulated on social media showing a lone police officer standing arms across trying to block a country road near the Austrian border while hundreds of migrants passed by him on either side. For me, this picture was paradigmatic of the crisis: the sense of a loss of control and of being overwhelmed by developments. Between the summer of 2015 and the spring of 2016, Austria became one of the European countries most affected by the migration and refugee crisis. In the peak year of 2015, Austria counted the third highest per capita rate of asylum applications in the E.U., outnumbered only by Sweden. It was not the first time in recent history that Austria has admitted…

In “The Silence Breakers” (Dec. 18), we misstated when the claims settled by Bill O’Reilly and Fox News were first disclosed. The New York Times reported in April that Fox and O’Reilly had settled five claims against him. O’Reilly left the network later that month. In “Party of One” (Dec. 11), we misstated Senator Jeff Flake’s views on Hillary Clinton. In his recent book, Flake said he opposed her candidacy for President on policy grounds, contrasting that position with those of people who seemed to think Clinton was “one of the darkest figures in human history.” In the same issue, in the review “No Home on the Range on Epic-Scale Godless,” we misidentified the creator of the series. It is Scott Frank, not its executive producer Steven Soderbergh.…

‘We can talk about the weather.’ REX TILLERSON, U.S. Secretary of State, said on Dec. 12, calling for a meeting with North Korea two months after President Trump said the diplomat was “wasting his time” trying to talk to the Hermit Kingdom. Three days later, Tillerson reversed course 3,500 Approximate age, in years, of ancient Egyptian tombs that were discovered on the west bank of the Nile in the city of Luxor $11 million Amount of money that YouTube channel Ryan Toys Review, hosted by a 6-year-old, earned from June 1, 2016, to June 1, 2017, putting him on Forbes’ 2017 list of the world’s highest-paid YouTube stars ‘IF ANYONE CAN MAKE IT, YOUR DAD CAN.’ JOE BIDEN, former U.S. Vice President, to Meghan McCain, daughter of Republican Senator John…

National-anthem feuds took center stage in 2017 after U.S. President Donald Trump took issue with how some NFL players were kneeling during the anthem to protest racial inequality and police brutality, a movement that was popularized the year before by Colin Kaepernick. Political leaders in other countries are now taking stronger steps to defend their own national anthems. THE PHILIPPINES A Filipino man was arrested on Nov. 18 for refusing to stand while the national anthem was played at a movie theater. Lawmakers had taken steps in June to require that Filipinos sing “Lupang Hinirang” with “fervor” or else face fines of up to $2,000 and jail time. TURKEY Teachers who were fired in a government purge have held months of hunger strikes in protest. In response, Ankara officials banned…

Trump’s Jerusalem move sparks action The leaders of 57 majority-Muslim countries jointly urged the international community to recognize East Jerusalem as the occupied capital of the Palestinian state, a rebuke against President Trump, who announced on Dec. 6 that the U.S. would recognize Jerusalem as the Israeli capital. Lawmaker takes life after sex claims Dan Johnson, a Republican state lawmaker in Kentucky, died, apparently by suicide, on Dec. 13. He had been accused of sexually assaulting a teenage girl in 2013, which he denied. Australia grounds pedophiles Australia implemented what officials called a “world-first” law barring registered child-sex offenders from international travel. The law took immediate effect on Dec. 13, when a pedophile was turned away from Sydney Airport. Military drone helps fight wildfires A military reaper drone assisted firefighters…

DIED Edwin M. Lee, the mayor of San Francisco, at 65. Lee was previously San Francisco’s human-rights commissioner and was the first Asian-American to be elected mayor of the California city. London Breed has been appointed acting mayor. > Simeon Booker, the trailblazing African-American journalist known for his pioneering coverage of the civil rights movement, at 99. > France’s rock-’n’-roll icon Johnny Hallyday, known as the “French Elvis,” at 74. Hallyday sold more than 110 million records during his 55-year career. AGREED A deal to buy most of 21st Century Fox by the Walt Disney Co., in a roughly $52.4 billion transaction. The deal, which includes Fox’s movie studios TV networks FX and Nat Geo, is the biggest acquisition in Disney’s history. CONFIRMED By Apple that it has bought the…

The period from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day is supposed to be a season of joy. But some of us can barely muddle through. In collaboration with Sheryl Sandberg and her initiative OptionB.Org, which provides resources for people facing adversity, TIME asked five influential people to write about confronting grief, trauma and illness during the holidays. These contributors, including Gabby Giffords, Patton Oswalt and Robin Roberts, offer actions big and small to help find moments of cheer.…

UGH, YOU’RE ALONE on the holidays. Every single cliche about solitude in winter pounces on you. The sun takes its sweet time heaving itself into the sky every morning and then scuttles away too quickly right after 5 p.m. Trees are skeletal against a concrete sky. Life and motion and love all seem zombified. You see happy families scurrying, laughing. Places to go. People to see. You’ve got no one. And unlike other people, you did have someone. Someone you’d bend reality to have with you now. But they’re gone, faded into the gray planet you’re trapped on. It’s a world that now has a bitter flavor of mocking for all of its holiday trimmings. Can you build a spaceship and point it toward a world with a brighter sun,…

page 30 POWER THE DEMOCRATIC WIN IN ALABAMA THAT WILL SHAKE UP 2018 • THE MASTERMIND LEADING THE GOP CHARGE • THE RADICAL PRINCE RESHAPING SAUDI ARABIA • THE SOCIALITE WHO WANTS TO RUN RUSSIA • HOT-BUTTON TOPICS TO WATCH FOR—AND MORE page 54 INNOVATION A CENTURY-OLD MEDICAL TREATMENT THAT’S SAVING LIVES • THE LAST CASES OF POLIO• THE NEXT PHASE IN THE CLIMATE FIGHT • THE DO-GOODER ROBOTS THAT WANT TO SAVE YOU • THE GENERATION THAT’S CHANGING WHAT IT MEANS TO GROW UP—AND MORE page 70 CULTURE THE MODERN GENIUS OF A WRINKLE IN TIME • THE OLYMPIC SKIER ON A MISSION • MEG WOLITZER’S TAKE ON FEMINISM • NEW IDEAS IN NONFICTION • THE BROADWAY STAR WITH A HISTORY LESSON • THE TV SHOWS WORTH TUNING IN…

ON THE MOVE 1. ROYAL NUPTIALS Prince Harry and Meghan Markle will wed at St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle (May 19). Markle, an American, plans to become a British citizen afterward. 2. PAPAL PRESENCE Pope Francis will make an apostolic journey to Chile and Peru (Jan. 15–21), and although it is not yet confirmed, he is expected to visit Ireland for the World Meeting of Families (August) and Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia (fall 2018). U.S. President Donald Trump also has international travel plans, having accepted an invitation to visit Singapore (date TBD). He may also go to London (early 2018). 3. MONEY TALKS Business and political leaders will come together at the World Economic Forum in Davos (Jan. 23–26) and World Economic Forum on Latin America in São Paulo…

WHEN CORINTHIAN COLLEGES AND ITT Technical Institutes collapsed in 2015 and 2016, respectively, after allegations of fraud and misleading marketing, it seemed like a moment of reckoning for the for-profit college industry. Tens of thousands of students were left with no degrees or those not worth the paper they were printed on, plus millions of dollars in student-loan debt. President Obama’s Education Department passed regulations aimed at streamlining the process to forgive loans taken out by defrauded students. Relief has yet to arrive. Nearly 100,000 studentloan borrowers with billions in total debt from an array of mostly for-profit schools are still waiting for their accounts to be cleared, and the process put in place to help them—known as “borrower defense to repayment”—has ground to a halt. The Education Department has…

NEBRASKA’s 2nd District Republican Don Bacon is chasing a second term in the least conservative part of the Cornhusker State. In 2016, the former high-ranking military officer was the only Republican nationwide to defeat a Democratic incumbent in a congressional race, and both sides expect a tight contest next year in the Omaha-area district that Bacon carried by 3,464 votes. Bliss’s super PAC has already been on the ground in Nebraska for 10 months. TEXAS’s 23rd District Republican Will Hurd represents this vast and sparsely populated swath of West Texas. Hurd is fighting history; he is the fourth Congressman to represent the district since the 2006 election, and he would be the first to win a third term since 1996. A former CIA officer, Hurd won by just 3,051 votes…

MEETINGS OF THE MINDS 1. GADGET GLORY From smart homes to artificial intelligence, cutting-edge technology will be on display in Las Vegas at CES. (Jan. 9–12) 2. HER HACK Boston University’s She Hacks Boston is set to be the largest-ever computer-science hackathon for women and nonbinary individuals. (Jan. 26–28) 3. MEDICAL MEET-UP Doctors, political insiders and health care experts will converge on Washington for the American Medical Association’s National Advocacy Conference. (Feb. 12–14) 4. COOL-KID CONVENTION Some of the brightest minds in media and tech will meet in Austin for the annual SXSW festival. Highlights this year include sessions on regenerative medicine, space travel, biohacking, artificial intelligence and more. (March 9–18) 5. FUTURE THINKERS U.S. News & World Report’s annual STEM conference in Washington defines the science, technology, engineering and…

Engineer In 2018, NASA will finally have built all the flight hardware and critical elements of the Space Launch System (SLS), our next-generation deepspace exploration rocket. The agency is managing to a December 2019 launch schedule for the first flight test of the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft beyond the moon and back. Here on earth we’ll be busy preparing the SLS for its biggest test yet: firing all four rocket engines of the core stage, the last stop before delivery to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida for launch. At the same time, we’ll continue to develop innovative technologies, from complex 3-D printing of rocket parts to habitats built from Martian soil, making it possible to safely and sustainably mount human exploration missions to the moon, Mars and beyond.…

Breakthroughs in artificial intelligence are making robots smarter and more capable. They’re also helping spread fear that robots are coming for our jobs. That’s not exactly the case yet. In fact, 2018 will see the debut of robots from manufacturers ranging from Honda to WeRobotics that are more likely to save lives than steal paychecks. Case in point: when natural disasters like earthquakes or floods strike, it is dangerous to send rescuers into buildings that are at risk of crumbling at any minute. That’s when rescue robots like the Rooster, from Israeli firm RoboTiCan, are designed to be called into action. The highly durable Rooster can roll through wreckage in search of survivors, using advanced sensors and communications gear to survey an area for survivors and relay its findings back…

THE SQUARE AND THE TOWER Historian Niall Ferguson posits that much of human history has been shaped by networks—the Illuminati, Facebook—rather than hierarchies. ALGORITHMS OF OPPRESSION The tools we use to search the Internet reflect embedded racism and sexism, argues USC communications professor Safiya Umoja Noble. THE GENTLEART OF SWEDISH DEATH CLEANING Artist Margareta Magnusson encourages late-in-life decluttering, a practice less morbid than it sounds and an opportunity to reflect on life before it ends. UNSCALED Gone are the days of buying factories and building massive staffs. Now, venture capitalist Hemant Taneja says, companies thrive by “renting” the technologies they need. THE COUNTERREVOLUTION The U.S. government, says Columbia University political theorist Bernard E. Harcourt, has come to treat ordinary Americans like insurgents—even though the public hasn’t revolted.…

Athlete I will compete in another World Cup, and I dream of winning it. But the happiness that the World Cup represents for the Brazilians wouldn’t be enough. I dream that in 2018, Brazilians will be able to elect governors committed to education, health care and the future of our children. Only then, winning inside and outside the pitch, will we have a reason to celebrate. Neymar, a Brazilian soccer star, was transferred to Paris Saint-Germain in August for $263 million, a global record. The World Cup final will be held in July…

THE SECOND HALF OF 2017 SAW A stunning number of men in Hollywood (among other industries) fall from their powerful perches as a result of allegations of sexual assault or misconduct. What started with the downfall of Harvey Weinstein became perhaps the most seismic shift the entertainment industry has ever undergone. The foremost consideration, of course, is the survivors who have come forward and the pain and suffering they’ve endured. But another consequence is the extraordinary volume of projects once slated for release in 2018 whose fates have shifted, or are now in limbo. Perhaps never is the degree to which alleged abusers amassed power more clear than when considering the number of projects, and collaborators, their actions have now harmed. The list of canceled works includes productions halted before…

Wry Tony winner Nathan Lane goes dark as the vindictive, closeted power broker Roy Cohn in the upcoming Broadway revival of Angels in America, the defining epic of the AIDS crisis. It opens March 25 and also stars Andrew Garfield. Did you see Angels in America in its first run? I saw it on Broadway. I knew a little about Roy Cohn, and I just got swept up in [playwright] Tony Kushner’s language. I hadn’t seen anything like that before. The combination of the emotions of the personal relationships and people dealing with AIDS and also the political stuff. It was thrilling, and it was incredibly funny as well. But it’s not a part that was on my radar. Putting the play on at this moment, with Cohn acolyte Donald…

The refugee crisis is manageable, not insoluble. Here is the deal: a new bargain giving refugees the chance of employment, in return for host countries getting long-term macroeconomic support. A reform of the aid system to prioritize cash distribution to refugees, bringing power to them and benefit to the communities in which they live. A major increase in investment in education of children, which should be a lifeline, not a luxury. And a resettlement system for the most vulnerable refugees, to give them a chance to start a new life in a new country. By virtue of geography, Europe is on the front line of this crisis. Because of its range of diplomatic, humanitarian and political tools, it has the chance to fashion a comprehensive response. The refugee crisis is…

THE TEAM “I’ll be connected with these women and children for years,” says Baker, pictured center in left-hand photo with Trianni, left, and Addario. “I want to know what kind of girl Rahaf grows up to be, where Heln will live and what’s in store for Faraj.”…

COMFORT BREAK A Delta flight heading to New York City from Seattle diverted hundreds of miles on Dec. 2 to make an emergency bathroom stop in Billings, Mont., when the plane’s facilities stopped working. CHEATING SPOUSE In November, a Qatar Airways flight to Bali stopped in India when a woman reportedly became aggressive with her husband after she discovered from his cell phone that he was having an affair. DOLLY PARTON In 2013, an American Airlines flight from L.A. to New York City diverted to Kansas City, Mo.’s airport due to a “disruptive” woman who would not stop singing Parton’s classic ballad “I Will Always Love You.”…

BITCOIN PRICES ARE shattering records on a near daily basis: the digital currency soared above $18,000 in December, more than 23 times its price a year earlier. The spike prompted U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Jay Clayton to say, “We are hearing the familiar refrain, ‘This time is different.’” Less than a decade ago, the concept of a secure virtual currency was limited to the geekiest corners of the Internet. Today it is gaining traction among individuals and institutions alike. Major derivatives exchanges have begun offering Bitcoin futures. The Facebook-famous Winklevoss twins are now believed to be Bitcoin billionaires, riding a wave of intense interest that has inflated the value of many digital currencies. Critics say it will eventually plummet—a bubble of epic proportions. Whether digital currency proves to…

THE HOLIDAY SEASON is supposed to be the most festive and fun time of the year, but all those plans and expectations of joy can turn tougher and more stressful than they sound. This is especially true for those of us who struggle with mental illness. The holidays break your routine. Sometimes you’re forced to spend time with family you rarely see and don’t always get along with. Or maybe you’re alone when everyone else is with family. Or you’re at work and can’t be with those you love. Or you are off from work, with more time to think troubling thoughts. Or you are thrust into party situations that tempt your demons. When you have a routine, it’s easier to manage whatever mental struggles you may face, and when…

RETIRED LIEUT. GENERAL MICHAEL FLYNN’S enormous fall from grace is an object lesson in the allure of money, fame and power. His story is perhaps not quite a Greek tragedy, but rather a kind of 21st century parable with morals for us all. Throughout my time in uniform with Mike, he was a determined, hard-edged and highly effective intelligence officer—the best ever to serve on my team personally, which he did in Afghanistan while I was the Supreme Allied Commander at NATO and the strategic commander for that mission. Both retired General Stanley McChrystal—then his immediate boss—and I would often comment on how lucky we were to have then Major General Mike Flynn on our team in combat from 2009 to 2010. How did he end up a convicted criminal,…

THE WAY THINGS HAVE BEEN GOING IN ALABAMA, SOME Democrats thought they might never taste victory again. So when Doug Jones took the stage at a Birmingham hotel after his special-election win on Dec. 12, it was hard to blame him for being briefly overcome. “Oh, my,” the state’s new Senator began, as moist-eyed, joyous supporters hung on to his words. “Folks, I got to tell you, I think that I have been waiting all my life, and now I just don’t know what the hell to say.” As the crowd basked in the jubilation, the DJ queued up “Sweet Home Alabama,” the anthem of Southern defiance. Young and old, black and white, men and women, the Democrats sang along—“Ooh, ooh, ooh”—as if to say, This is our state now.…

1. Having gained the ability to read faces—a feature introduced in Apple’s most recent launch—the iPhone X starts to feel sad once it sees how it has disappointed everyone. 2. Mars and Earth will be the closest they’ve been in years on July 31—until, when talking about looking for water elsewhere, Earth takes exception to being called “thirsty.” 3. The Brexit negotiations conclude, but the portmanteaus live on; people call it Brexciting, which is Brexcruciating. 4. Once calorie counts become mandatory on many more restaurant menus in the U.S., dieters opt to just eat the menus instead; they claim the ink “adds zest.” 5. After spraying a mist of sun-reflecting chemicals into the sky to see if the process helps stop global warming—an idea researchers are hoping to test in…

IMMIGRATION With the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program set to end in the spring, nearly 800,000 young undocumented immigrants could be eligible for deportation—and those who missed President Trump’s fall renewal deadline will lose protection even sooner. Democrats and some Republicans want to find a solution before the end of the year, but lawmakers are running out of time to strike a deal. MERGERS Expect another year of high-profile corporate couplings. Experts say the U.S. economy is more consolidated than at any other point since the Gilded Age. As the backlash builds, politicians may try to crack down on what some see as an uncompetitive atmosphere. SOCIAL SECURITY Social Security beneficiaries will see the highest costof- living adjustment in six years. Plus, they’ll get a raise in…

‘It is a crackdown. It is reform. It is a game changer. It is all of them together.’—JAMAL KHASHOGGI, a leading Saudi columnist CALL HIM THE FORTUNATE SON. IN THE space of a year, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has become the most powerful Saudi ruler in decades. His rise marks the unraveling of royal traditions and a new level of uncertainty in a region already threatened by crises. Since its founding in 1932, the kingdom had been led by a monarchy that was conservative in outlook and cautious in politics, and refrained from military adventures abroad. Those days are gone. When King Salman took the throne in 2015, he appointed his untested son Mohammed to the positions of Defense Minister and deputy crown prince. Then, this past June, the…

Philosopher Happiness, for me, has the shape of a daily life with many parts. What I look forward to in the coming year is that multifaceted dailiness, with work and writing, exchanges with my colleagues and students, exercise, singing and, above all, time with the people I love. I look forward to my colleagues’ new work, my friends’ good health and happiness, my students’ new ideas, my daughter’s work as an animal-rights lawyer. How great to feel that life goes on unbroken. Nussbaum is a philosopher who teaches in the Law School and Philosophy Department at the University of Chicago. Her new book, The Monarchy of Fear, is due in July.…

CANCER IMMUMOTHERAPY A pioneering gene therapy was recently approved in the U.S. for the treatment of certain types of blood cancer in children and adults. The new therapy, called CAR T, signals a change in how cancer can be treated: CAR T engineers a person’s own immune cells to recognize cancer cells and target and destroy them. Doctors are already calling it a paradigm shift in cancer care. NEW ORGAN TRANSPLANTS At Penn Medicine in Philadelphia, scientists are implanting people in need of new hearts and kidneys with hepatitis C–infected organs, thanks to new drugs that clear the infection. In a trial at Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas, women without uteruses are receiving transplants of the organ from donors. One woman gave birth this year. NEXT-GENERATION GENE EDITING Scientists…

The bubbling seltzer business shows no sign of going flat. The parent company of one popular brand, LaCroix, is on track for over $1.5 billion in sales in 2018, thanks in part to flavors like pamplemousse and peach pear. Seltzer’s popularity comes as Americans seek healthier soda alternatives, according to NPD Group’s Darren Seifer. (A 12-oz. can of Coca- Cola has 39 grams of sugar; a can of LaCroix has none.) Seltzer has long been valued for its health benefits; people have soaked in carbonated water to relieve ailments for centuries.…

“DEAR MR. DISNEY”— That’s how a 10-year-old girl named Catherine began her letter to the most powerful man in movies during the bitter, final months of 1963. She had experienced that year’s traumas like most children do, through the anxious whispers of adults, with despair moving a few feet above her head. She wanted to tell Mr. Disney about a book that had given her hope, one she thought could do the same for a nation of kids who felt the world around them darkening. If only he would put its story on film. But she never sent the letter, setting it aside in a moment of resignation. Three years later, when Walt Disney died of lung cancer, she was inconsolable. Not only was the maestro of the Mouse House…

GUS KENWORTHY WAS SUPPOSED TO BE HAPPY. THE AMERICAN freestyle skier had just won a silver medal at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, and now he was being interviewed by NBC the day after—Valentine’s Day, of all days—and asked to name his Valentine’s crush. This sort of make-cute gag shouldn’t send an athlete who earns his living doing twisting flips down mountains into a stomach-churning panic. But Kenworthy didn’t know what to say. His boyfriend? Real celebrity crushes like Zac Efron or Jake Gyllenhaal? None seemed like the best way to come out to the world. Kenworthy settled on Miley Cyrus, which didn’t help. The NBC Olympics Twitter account broadcast his “crush” to the world. The pop star gushed on social media about a photo of Kenworthy holding…

MOST TEENAGERS WOULD TRADE THEIR smartphones for the opportunity Yara Shahidi is getting: a trial run at her first few months of college. The actor who plays Zoey, the eldest daughter of the Johnson family on the ABC sitcom black-ish, will star in a spin-off, grown-ish, about a group of students at a fictional California college. The show launches on Jan. 3 on Freeform before Shahidi heads off to Harvard in real life next fall. black-ish has struck a balance between a nuanced treatment of issues like race and class and the tonal levity required of a traditional family comedy. On grown-ish, Zoey will navigate a whole new set of questions for a different generation: Does hooking up mean kissing or sex? Which pronouns do her friends prefer—him? Her? Them?…

TARAJI P. HENSON Proud Mary (Jan. 12) Best known as Empire’s scene-stealing matriarch Cookie, the Oscar-nominated actor goes full-on action hero in Proud Mary. Henson will give James Bond a run for his money as a ruthless assassin whose life is turned upside down when a planned hit for the Boston Mob goes wrong. NATALIE PORTMAN Annihilation (Feb. 23) Finally, a sci-fi movie starring female scientists. In this film, adapted from Jeff Vander Meer’s novel, a biologist (Portman) searches for her missing husband (Oscar Isaac) in an environmental disaster zone. A group of experts including Tessa Thompson (Thor: Ragnarok) and Gina Rodriguez (Jane the Virgin) aid her in her quest. ALICIA VIKANDER Tomb Raider (March 16) Despite being one of the gaming world’s most enduring protagonists, Lara Croft—and unfortunately, her…

5 YEARS since the Boston Marathon bombing, in which two explosions near the finish line left three dead and more than 260 injured. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev— whose accomplice brother was killed during the ensuing manhunt— was found guilty of the bombing two years later and sentenced to death. (April 15) 10 YEARS since President George W. Bush signed legislation authorizing a $700 billion package to bail out Wall Street, five days after the Dow Jones industrial average dropped a record 777.68 points in a single day. (Oct. 3) 15 YEARS since the National Do Not Call Registry debuted to provide Americans with a new way to avoid telemarketing calls. It racked up more than 10 million sign-ups in its first four days. (June 27) 20 YEARS since the last episode of…

My name is Bana, and I am a refugee. Like millions of other children, I had to run away from my country, and I lost many things—including my home. Do you know our crimes? Just that we were born in Syria. The war has been going on almost all my life. Children who should go to school are in refugee camps, or they are dying. There is not enough food or medicine, and bombs fall all of the time. That is why I went on Twitter last year, so that I could tell people what was happening. Everyone in Aleppo, my city, lost someone to the war. I lost my best friend to a bomb. What was her crime? This is what Syrians are running away from, this is why…

1. North Korean missiles will appear capable of reaching: A. Beyond Earth’s atmosphere, and re-entering B. Antarctica, oddly enough C. A critical mass to launch new peace-treaty talks D. Mars, while carrying at least one passenger 2. Tiger Woods will see his first majors win in half a decade: A. At the Masters B. At the U.S. Open C. At the Open Championship D. On Nintendo Switch 3. The best of the 80— 80!— movies Netflix plans to release in 2018 will be: A. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, written and directed by the Coen brothers B. How It Ends, starring Forest Whitaker C. Eggplant Emoji, starring Ben Stiller D. The ones you can skip E. C, because of D 4. The fatal flaw of the Democrats’ plans to…