Table of contents for March 29, 2021 in TIME Magazine

“SHE WAS JUST WALKING HOME.” THOSE five words trended widely on social media and appeared on many tributes at a vigil for Sarah Everard, 33, a marketing executive who disappeared from a London street on March 3. A week later, Everard’s body was found in woodlands in nearby Kent, and on March 12, an officer with London’s Metropolitan Police was charged with Everard’s kidnapping and murder. WOMEN’S SAFETY Everard’s disappearance prompted an outpouring from women in Britain sharing their own experiences of harassment on social media and assault. Everard’s body was discovered on the same day that a new survey by U.N. Women U.K. revealed that more than 70% of women of all ages in the country said they had experienced sexual harassment in a public space. Some 95%…

THERE ARE STORIES THAT WE TELL. AND THERE ARE stories that we keep, until we can’t. Keli Burns, 36, is a college administrator and married suburban Chicago mom. Online she posts about her son’s bowling skills and, for her daughter, reminders about Girl Scout cookie season. When Burns mentions her father, she describes herself as a daddy’s girl until he passed away suddenly when she was 18. What she thought she’d never share is that in 2002, a Minneapolis police officer compressed her father’s neck until he died, less than two miles from where a different police officer pressed George Floyd into the pavement nearly 20 years later. The medical examiner ruled her father’s death a homicide. There was no trial. “I’ve been contemplating if I was going to post…

In a move welcomed by many of the bloc’s beleaguered travel destinations, E.U. leadership is considering a digital health pass that would allow E.U. citizens who have received a COVID-19 vaccine to travel for work or tourism. (Some airlines are already requiring proof of COVID vaccination or recovery for international flights; certain cruise lines are demanding similar documentation.) Israel, which as of March 17 had fully vaccinated 49% of its population, has already implemented a program that allows vaccinated people access to gyms, concerts and hotels; Denmark has also announced plans for a digital health passport. Typically, vaccine passports involve an app that generates a QR code that users can show officials to prove their status—just like scanning a digital boarding pass. While some E.U. nations are hoping to…

Bubbles, bubbles everywhere. So say an increasing number of Wall Street professionals, who see the lofty prices of everything from equities to Bitcoin, new homes to the soaring value of newly public companies, as clear signs that the financial system is again on the verge of a major reset similar to what happened in 2000 and 2008. But is it true? The fact that stocks have run up in aggregate 80% since they dived in the first weeks of the pandemic in March 2020 or that Bitcoin has gone up nearly tenfold or that Tesla has soared almost eight times over to become bigger than the next nine global automakers combined by market cap certainly should force everyone to ask the bubble question, as should the nearly $20 trillion that…

It was a year ago that the COVID-19 pandemic seized control of our lives. While essential workers remained on the job, the rest of America, confined to quarters, tried to come to terms with a life on pause. Working, learning and passing the time almost entirely from home meant changes in habits, health, relationships and plans for the future. Numbers don’t tell the whole story, of course, but these at least describe the contours of the lives we lived. —EMILY BARONE CATEGORIES With reporting by Patrick Lucas Austin, Judy Berman, Melissa Chan, Jamie Ducharme, Alejandro de la Garza, Tara Law, Belinda Luscombe and Katie Reilly SOURCES, IN ORDER OF GRAPHIC: PUZZLE WAREHOUSE; NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS; SHELTER ANIMALS COUNT; EYESAFE/NIELSEN; HOME DEPOT; HOUZZ; BOWLING GREEN STATE UNIVERSITY; MCKINSEY & COMPANY;…

JUST A FEW MONTHS AGO, JAZMINE Boykins was posting her artwork online for free. The 20-year-old digital artist’s dreamy animations of Black life were drawing plenty of likes, comments and shares, but not much income, aside from money she made selling swag with her designs between classes at North Carolina A&T State University. But Boykins has recently been selling the same pieces for thousands of dollars each, thanks to an emerging technology upending the rules of digital ownership: NFTs, or non-fungible tokens. NFTs—digital tokens tied to assets that can be bought, sold and traded—are enabling artists like Boykins to profit from their work more easily than ever. “At first, I didn’t know if it was trustworthy or legit,” says Boykins, who goes by the online handle “BLACKSNEAKERS” and who has…

I DIDN’T “GO” TO WORK ON THE morning of March 17, meaning I didn’t get up, brush my teeth and place myself at my desk in the living room. I stayed in bed, made a cave out of the covers and watched the text messages roll in. “Thinking of you.” “Sending love.” “No need to respond.” It had been a strange and terrible night. I had watched an uplifting talk by a writer and friend, a survivor of sexual assault and a proud Asian-American activist. I’d added a few entries to the list she’d recently encouraged me to make, gathering moments when my biracial Asian identity has been used to make me feel different or small. Just a few days before, we’d laughed about my first item: At the…

BRADLEY FREEMAN JR. WAS DOING SOME CHRISTMAS SHOPPING at Target when he got the email. Glancing down at his phone, all he could see was a preview: “Hey Brad, thanks for taking the time to audition for us…” He immediately assumed he had been rejected. Then he read the rest. “I had to read it over, like, seven different times to make sure that I actually got the part,” he says. “I say yes, and then I realized I didn’t actually type anything so I had to send a second email and say yes and then texted—I was like, ‘Just making sure you know that I accepted this part.’” The part—the one that had him “hyperventilating in the middle of Target”—is the puppeteer for Wesley Walker, a new Black Muppet…

‘In authoritarian states, the Olympics has more often been a tool of propaganda than a lever of reform.’MITT ROMNEY, U.S. Senator, in a March 15 New York Times op-ed calling for the U.S. to enact an “economic and diplomatic boycott” of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, while still sending athletes to compete ‘The whole family is saddened to learn the full extent of how challenging the last few years have been for Harry and Meghan.’BUCKINGHAM PALACE, in a statement issued on behalf of Queen Elizabeth II on March 9 in response to the couple’s interview with Oprah Winfrey ‘EVERY DAY HAS BEEN MARCH THE 13TH SINCE IT HAPPENED.’TAMIKA PALMER, Breonna Taylor’s mother, in an interview with the Cut published on March 12 to mark the first anniversary of her…

CONFIRMED Deb Haaland Lawmaker of the land BORN IN WINSLOW, ARIZ., IN 1960, a time when there were still Native Americans who couldn’t vote in the U.S., former U.S. Representative Deb Haaland of New Mexico was confirmed by the Senate on March 15 as the country’s first Native American Cabinet Secretary. A member of the Laguna Pueblo, Haaland will serve as President Biden’s Secretary of the Interior, overseeing an agency responsible for public lands, waterways, wildlife and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, among other responsibilities. There is a long history of Native women acting as advocates for their lands. After the Gold Rush in the mid–19th century, Paiute activist Sarah Winnemucca traveled nationwide to promote the importance of protecting tribal rights and to raise awareness about violence in the American…

IT’S THE LAST THING PUBLIC-HEALTH officials want to see during a pandemic: more than two months after scientists from pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca and Oxford University released their COVID-19 vaccine, a growing number of countries are pausing its use. The stoppage comes after a small number of reports of blood clots, some of them fatal, among those who have received the two-dose shot. It’s not clear yet whether the blood clots are related to the shot, but leaders in countries like France, Germany and Indonesia aren’t taking any chances. “What we’re seeing is a domino effect,” says Dr. Anna Durbin, professor of international health at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “Nobody wants to be the country that didn’t stop [vaccinating] and then find out that the side effects…

AFTER COVID-19 FELLED LAST YEAR’S MARCH MADNESS, THE National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) men’s basketball tournament is unfolding amid a pandemic that has killed more than 535,000 Americans. As many college teams have struggled to contain the coronavirus all season, commercialism and economic injustice loom large. Players will continue to suit up in service of an event that is worth north of $800 million, annually, to the NCAA. Despite the lucrative nature of the tournament—which features millionaire coaches screaming on the sidelines—and the health risk borne by the players who fuel the event, the athletes who hit the bracket-busting buzzer beaters still won’t see their commensurate share of March Madness’s riches. On March 11, Michigan State University even announced that its men’s basketball team would now be known throughout…

ON SEPT. 26, GERMANY’S year of political change will culminate with the election of a new Chancellor, an event that will close the remarkable 16-year tenure of Angela Merkel. For Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the election year is off to a rough start. Early March saw the first two of six regional elections in 2021. CDU candidates won less than one-quarter of the vote in the wealthy southwestern state of Baden-Württemberg and less than one-third in neighboring Rhineland-Palatinate. The results were the worst since the end of World War II for the party in each state. That outcome might well upend the race for Germany’s next leader. Later this spring, 1,001 party delegates will vote on whether Armin Laschet, Merkel’s chosen successor, or Markus Söder, head of its smaller…

MY HUSBAND HAD BEEN IN THE HOSPITAL, CRITICALLY ILL, for weeks when I broke down in tears one day during a workout. Concerned gym buddies consoled me, and someone said, “You’ve got to stay positive!” “Do I, though?” I wanted to ask. I was urged to stay positive a lot during the years I was a caregiver for my husband Brad, through two kinds of lymphoma and a stem-cell transplant that nearly killed him. The advice was always well meant, and I always forced a smile, but inside resentment flared. I left mad, even though I’d gone to the gym to keep up with my self-care, following that other advice often given to caregivers: you have to take care of yourself. I bristled at that too; self-care added more…

FOR YEARS, ROOSEVELT RODRIGUEZ and his dog Chanel had a routine. The Houston heating technician would get home from work, swing open his front door and greet his French bulldog, who’d spin and dance in excitement as he repeated her name over and over again. Then, Rodriguez would quickly change out of his work clothes while Chanel sat by the open front door, waiting for him to come outside with her. But on Feb. 22, when Rodriguez stepped out of his house to walk the 25-lb. dog with the cream-colored face, his yard was empty. Puzzlement turned to panic when an elderly neighbor waved him down and uttered five words: “Someone just snatched your dog.” “It hit me hard,” says Rodriguez, 30. “I didn’t want to believe it.” It’s…

WHEN YOU’RE TRYING TO SELL A SCRIPT, THE NAME Sherlock Holmes evidently helps. Benedict Cumberbatch, Robert Downey Jr., Ian McKellen and Jonny Lee Miller have all played versions of the character in the past decade, and last year’s Netflix hit Enola Holmes cast Millie Bobby Brown as his little sister. It makes sense: in this era of reboots, sequels and spin-offs, intellectual-property arms races and content overload, Arthur Conan Doyle’s fin de siècle PI isn’t just the most famous detective in English literature—he’s also mostly in the public domain. The Irregulars, another Netflix release, is the least reverent recent expansion of the brand. Set in a coal-smudged Victorian London that owes more to Dickens than to Doyle, the series follows a crew of teenage orphans hired by a startlingly mean…

LEADING MEN Steven Yeun is the first Asian American nominated for Best Actor, for his role in Minari; British actor Riz Ahmed is the first Muslim to appear in the category, for his role in Sound of Metal, as well as the first person of Pakistani descent to be nominated in an acting category. HISTORIC NODS Judas and the Black Messiah is the first film with an all-Black producing team nominated for Best Picture, and the Best Supporting Actor nominations for its stars Daniel Kaluuya and LaKeith Stanfield mark the first time two male Black actors are nominated for the same film. LEADING WOMEN The Best Director nominations for Nomadland’s Chloé Zhao and Promising Young Woman’s Emerald Fennell represent the first time two women have appeared in the category at…

JOSE TEJEDA, A FORMER U.S. CUSTOMS AND Border Protection employee from Rio Grande City, Texas, faced a dilemma in November. He thought things had gone O.K. during Donald Trump’s presidency. He didn’t think Trump was fair on immigration, but thought he was good on the economy. Neither party had tried hard to win his vote, but he received a letter from Trump, in Spanish and in English, to accompany his stimulus check. “That was a point for Trump,” recalls Tejeda, who ultimately cast his ballot for Trump after voting for Hillary Clinton in 2016. Trump performed significantly better than expected in 2020 with South Texas’ Latino voters like Tejeda. Zapata County, a patchwork of cattle ranches covered in prickly pear cactus that is nearly 95% Latino or Hispanic, went for…

A Buddhist monk prays at a beach in Iwaki, Japan, for victims of the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami on the 10th anniversary of the disaster. The magnitude 9.0 earthquake, one of the strongest on record, caused a tsunami that slammed into Japan’s northeastern coast. Waves more than 30 ft. high destroyed entire towns and caused nuclear-reactor meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant. Nearly 20,000 people died in the disaster, and more than 40,000 are still unable to return home because of high radiation levels around the nuclear facility. For more of our best photography, visit time.com/lightbox…

WHEN MY HUSBAND AND I FIRST MOVED TO NORTH CAROLINA, we were invited to join an interracial couples’ group at our church. We were surprised, declined and then privately rolled our eyes at how we’d been misread. Although I am Black and my husband isn’t, we didn’t see ourselves as interracial. We are both Latinx and identify as people of color. In our families, our lineages are complex, questions of how our people identify are sticky, and answers shift with time and context. I know siblings who identify as different races, although they share the same parents. My own parents were both Latinx and Caribbean, but only my father identified as Black. While my mother had Black ancestors, to say she was Black wasn’t quite true to either how she…

IT WAS HEARTBREAKING AND HORRIFYING—BUT TO MANY, IT WASN’T A SURPRISE. The news that eight people, six of them Asian-American women, were killed at businesses in the Atlanta area on March 16 came after a year of intense anti-Asian racism in the U.S. On the platforms where news arrives first, and quickly attaches to feelings, emotions were already raw. “This mass shooter was targeting Asian women and their businesses. This isn’t an isolated incident. There have been 500+ hate crimes targeted at Asian people this year alone,” social media specialist Mark Kim wrote on Twitter. “This Atlanta tragedy lies at an intersection of race, gender, class and the legacy of America’s history of colonization and violence in Asia,” journalist Elise Hu said on the site. “I don’t have the words.…

FOR THE FIRST FEW MILES, THE EMPTYING OF VENEZUELA IS A VISIBLE THING. Crossing the border from their benighted native land, refugees trudge uphill into the next country, Colombia, carrying what they have. “There are certain roads where you can see them,” says Fabiola Ferrero, who has spent years photographing what Colombians call los caminantes, “the walkers.” A motorist might pass hundreds on the highway to Pamplona, a city on the Colombian side of the border. “And then they disperse to the rest of the country,” Ferrero says, of an exodus so steady and absent geopolitical drama it has largely escaped the rest of the world’s attention. Yet 5.5 million people have poured out of Venezuela since 2015, almost as many as the 6.6 million people who have fled Syria…

A year into the pandemic, readers know more than ever: the act of picking up a book can be transformative. When lockdown orders swept the U.S. beginning in March 2020, many turned to books to help escape—or confront—the unknown. Some readers favored light distraction, while others flocked to narratives that tackled pandemics head-on. Virtual book clubs kept readers connected, and rallying cries to support independent bookstores echoed around the Internet. While we were confined to our homes, books kept us going and allowed us to discover new worlds without going anywhere. To reflect on a year of reading in isolation, TIME asked nine fan-favorite authors to share the books that have brightened their days, provoked them or simply helped carry them through. CHARLES YU The National Book Award–winning author of…

IN THE YOUTUBE DOCUMENTARY DEMI LOVATO: DANCING WITH THE DEVIL, the 28-year-old singer and actor speaks openly about her battles with eating disorders and drug addiction, focusing most acutely on the 2018 overdose that nearly killed her. But the most revelatory words in the film belong to a selection of her fans, young women with makeup so precise and polished they look as if they’re suspended in a world smoothed out by an Instagram filter. One nearly runs out of breath as the words tumble out: “I love what she does for young girls, and her music—it just saved my life.” Another beams, “I don’t think she really understands how much of an impact she has on her fans.” That kind of idolatry would weigh heavily on anyone’s shoulders,…