Table of contents for October 14, 2019 in TIME Magazine

WHAT YOU SAID ABOUT … ‘I WOULD LIKE YOU TO DO US A FAVOR …’ The Oct. 7 cover stories on the impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump sparked debate among readers. Molly Ball’s feature on the inquiry led Chase Webb of Portland, Ore., to disagree with those who argue it’s a “mistake” to go down this road: “It is never wrong to pursue truth and justice.” Doug Schiff in Tokyo said Edel Rodriguez’s cover illustration of Trump painting himself into a corner was “absolutely brilliant.” But Twitter users like @jdpowell72 weren’t convinced most Americans would agree with columnist David French that the inquiry is necessary, and @trivialtony—who didn’t see Trump’s exchange with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as a quid pro quo—said Americans should show what they think by…

AMERICAN MALL BEHEMOTH FOREVER 21 achieved massive success in the 2000s by selling inexpensive variations on the latest styles, and now its decline is a window into a different kind of trend. The chain, founded in 1984 by a couple who had immigrated to the U.S. from South Korea, declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Sept. 29. Forever 21 has said that it will terminate operations in 40 countries and close up to 350 stores worldwide, and that up to 178 of its 549 U.S. outlets will be liquidated. OUT OF STYLE Industry analysts see the store closings as a sign of shifting tastes on both sides of Forever 21’s business model. Some consumers have become less inclined toward the cheap, disposable clothing for which the retailer is known, turning…

FACE-OFF During the 2014 Texas GOP primary for Senate, former Representative Steve Stockman’s team pasted rival Senator John Cornyn’s face onto a photo of Florida’s then governor Charlie Crist smiling with President Obama. WINDOW DRESSING In 2015, India’s state information agency shared a doctored photo of Prime Minister Narendra Modi surveying flood damage in Chennai (formerly Madras) from a plane, crudely pasting a closeup of a neighborhood over the window. SHOE SHAME Staff for Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison wanted to remove his scruffy sneakers from an official family portrait in January 2019. Social-media users were quick to point out they had given him two left feet.…

LIANNE KRAEMER HAD BEEN LIVING WITH METASTATIC breast cancer for more than a year when I met her in December 2017 at the Henry B. González Convention Center in San Antonio. Throughout the week, more than 7,000 doctors, scientists and pharmaceutical-company representatives would descend on the city for the country’s most important breast-cancer conference. Inside the main exhibition hall, it seemed that every major pharmaceutical company was putting on its best come-hither show. A pair of young, lithe dancers whipped flowing fabric through the air at a booth for the drug Faslodex, a new injectable from AstraZeneca used to treat women with estrogen-fueled advanced breast cancer. Novartis had free cupcakes. Tesaro, a company developing new drugs for BRCA-linked breast cancer, had Nutella-branded ice cream cones. Espresso was available at Eli…

There are many business-leadership books; what does The Ride of a Lifetime offer that’s new? Because I’m in the business of storytelling, and I had some good stories to tell, I thought I could write a book of stories that could convey advice to young people in a less dry, less businesslike way. You write that your hardest day was when an alligator killed 2-year-old Lane Graves at a Disney park while you were opening a new park in Shanghai. What lesson did you learn from that? That even though you’re in a business that is essentially manufacturing fun, it doesn’t mean that every day is going to be a happy day. You also write that you took your father, who struggled with mental health and financial issues, to dinner,…

Major floods devastate India Unusually late monsoon rains caused devastating floods in northern India, leading to the deaths of at least 100 people, officials said on Sept. 30. The monsoon—the most severe since 1994—left large areas underwater, forcing people to use lifeboats to escape their homes. Trump Admin cuts refugee quota President Trump on Sept. 26 limited the number of refugees who will be allowed to settle in the U.S. in the coming year to 18,000, down from 30,000 last year, prompting condemnation from human-rights advocates. The Obama Administration allowed up to 110,000 refugees to resettle in the U.S. in 2017. Morocco judgment sparks outrage A Moroccan judge on Sept. 30 sentenced journalist Hajar Raissouni and her fiancé to a year in prison, after they were found guilty of…

DIED Jessye Norman Opera goddess WHEN I WAS A STUDENT AT THE NEW ENGLAND CONSERVATORY, Jessye Norman gave a recital in Boston, and afterward I stood in line with all the other admirers to tell her how much she had impacted me. I said to her, “Ms. Norman, what could I possibly say to you that you haven’t already heard a thousand times?” And she said, “My dear, I’m sure you can think of something.” Onstage, Norman—who died on Sept. 30 at 74—portrayed a lot of mythological characters and Greek goddesses, and for me, coming up in the early ’80s, she really was an absolute goddess. She was a tremendous source of pride for a young African-American singer. When we look through the lens of classical music, we don’t…

THE LAST TIME WE SAW JESSE Pinkman, in the series finale of Breaking Bad, he’d just escaped a massacre. After refusing to put a mortally wounded Walter White (Bryan Cranston) out of his misery—an act that would’ve added one more sin to the long list he’d committed under the influence of the meth kingpin who used to be his high school science teacher—Jesse (Aaron Paul) drove the nearest El Camino straight through a chain-link fence, hit the road and never looked back. His symbolic shackles broken, he laughed and sobbed, his grizzled face filling the frame. By then, he was a traumatized, nearly feral mess. But he was free. Unlike Walt’s inevitable death, Jesse’s ending was morally ambiguous: manipulated by a man who’d come to represent evil incarnate but…

MORE THAN 10 YEARS HAVE PASSED since Elizabeth Strout introduced the world to retired teacher Olive Kitteridge, a character who is at once frank, frightening and full of wisdom, often in a single breath. Now, Strout brings her beloved protagonist back in Olive, Again, a follow-up to her Pulitzer Prize–winning 2008 novel-in-stories. The new book is a nostalgic return to Crosby, Maine, where Olive continues to poke around in the lives of her fellow townspeople. Growing older can be tough, but growing old is much harder The 13 interlinked stories in Olive, Again embrace both new and familiar characters navigating the struggles that arise in everyday life. Olive finagles her way into each chapter with her distinct, outsize presence—whether she’s a central player in the action (as when she unexpectedly…

A LONG STANDING OVATION GREETED U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson as he appeared onstage in Manchester on the final day of the annual Conservative Party conference on Oct. 2. It was his first speech to his party membership as Prime Minister, and he brought the gusto his right-wing base has come to expect, pledging to deliver Brexit, reinvigorate the national economy and fire the leader of the opposition into orbit. But despite the adulation of loyal supporters here, Johnson’s future looks less certain than ever. He not only looks increasingly unable to make good on his promise to deliver Brexit by the Oct. 31 deadline, but also is in danger of losing political standing ahead of a seemingly inevitable early election because of two emerging scandals about his personal…

ON SEPT. 30, AFTER CALIFORNIA GOVERNOR Gavin Newsom signed into law SB 206—a bill that allows the state’s college athletes to profit from their names, images and likenesses and to sign endorsement deals despite NCAA rules forbidding them—state lawmakers across America followed California’s lead. The Democratic leader of Florida’s house filed a bill mimicking California’s first-of-its-kind law, which goes into effect in 2023. So did a legislator in Illinois. Not even five hours after the California news broke, two Pennsylvania house members, Dan Miller and Ed Gainey, circulated a “Fair Pay to Play Act” of their own. “The future is starting in California,” Miller says. “It’s time to roll.” So far, the NCAA is refusing to embrace this sea change. The organization argues that a patchwork of state laws…

THE U.S.-CHINA trade war is inflicting the most damage to the global economy, but it’s the trade spat between Japan and South Korea that signals the larger troubles ahead for the world. South Korea’s Supreme Court ruled in late 2018 that a number of Japanese companies must compensate a group of South Koreans (or their descendants) who were forced to work for them during Japan’s occupation of the Korean Peninsula from 1910 to 1945. Japan argues that all such claims were settled by a 1965 treaty between the two sides. South Korea’s Supreme Court disagrees, and President Moon Jae-in’s administration insists that it has no authority to tell the country’s independent judiciary to reverse the ruling. Frustrated with the proceedings and determined to put pressure on Moon’s government to…

IRAN’S PRESIDENT ARRIVED IN NEW York City in September and left, as usual, without meeting the American one. Both Hassan Rouhani and Donald Trump professed an appetite for sitting down and talking over the ever more treacherous rift between their nations. But as Rouhani has pointed out in private, Iran’s top elected official “has no authority in foreign policy.” That authority—and nearly every other strand of power in the Islamic Republic—resides with the elderly cleric who remained 6,000 miles away, in the country he has not left for decades. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 80 years of age, disabled by a saboteur’s bomb blast and lit by a righteous certainty, holds the title of Supreme Leader of Iran. But he has quietly emerged as the most powerful person in the Middle…

How has your relationship with Jesse Pinkman changed over the years? In the first couple seasons, I tried to stay within that skin. But [co-star] Bryan [Cranston] taught me that it’s O.K. to wash the makeup off at the end of the day and just be yourself. It was a bit of a struggle for all of us—it was an emotional toll. Playing Jesse was like revisiting an old friend. Did you yourself ever fantasize about what happened to Jesse? People ask me that almost on a daily basis. My response is: “I have no idea. He’s probably on the run and in hiding. His fingerprints were all over that murder scene.” But I fantasized that he was just living in the woods somewhere, working with his hands again, creating…