Table of contents for May 23, 2022 in TIME Magazine

AT TIME, OUR EYES ARE ON THE RISING STARS poised to shape the future. We first joined forces with Rolex in 2014 to launch Next Generation Leaders, our series elevating young people from across fields and around the globe who are working to build a better world. This edition includes, for example, beauty entrepreneur Deepica Mutyala, who is creating better cosmetics for people of color and just partnered with Mattel to launch the first ever South Asian CEO Barbie doll; Nigerian Afrobeats star CKay; and Bolor-Erdene Battsengel, the youngest member of Mongolia’s Cabinet, who is revolutionizing public services for the digital age. Our international cover features one of these leaders, Olga Rudenko, the enterprising 33-year-old editor in chief of the Kyiv Independent, a startup that has quickly become the…

ANTIVACCINE SENTIMENTS HAVE BEEN SIMMERING in the U.S. since at least 1998, when the Lancet, a prestigious medical journal, published—and later retracted—a fraudulent paper falsely linking vaccines to autism. They’ve grown stronger in the past two years, thanks to disinformation about the COVID-19 vaccines. Though the development of the shots happened at an accelerated pace, they’ve been rigorously tested and have proved safe and effective. Nevertheless, falsehoods about them—that they contain microchips, that they alter the DNA of recipients—march on. Public-health experts feared that those groundless claims would exacerbate mistrust among people who already doubted vaccines, or serve as a gateway into vaccine skepticism among people who previously had no such concerns. Now it appears those fears might have been well placed. In April, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control…

SENTENCED Tennis star Boris Becker on April 29 to two and a half years in prison for bankruptcy offenses, including hiding assets, by a judge in London. SPLATTERED Russian ambassador to Poland Sergey Andreev, with red paint, by protesters opposed to the war in Ukraine at a WW II cemetery on May 9. AUCTIONED Andy Warhol’s iconic Shot Sage Blue Marilyn for $195 million on May 9, the most for a work by a U.S. artist sold at an auction. UNDER WAY The Paris trial of Yemen’s main airline on May 10 on charges relating to a 2009 plane crash that led to 152 deaths. DIED Indian classical music legend Shiv Kumar Sharma—who elevated the santoor, a dulcimer-like instrument—at the age of 84 on May 10. UPHELD A limit…

CAN CEOS RUN THE WORLD? AND WILL THE world allow them to? That has become a central question of our times, as leaders of Big Business step up to address some of society’s most pressing problems. Consider: A majority of Fortune 500 CEOs, according to Fortune’s latest polling, have now committed to, or are planning to commit to, the U.N. goal of reaching net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 or sooner. Combatting climate change, a complex undertaking once seen as primarily a government challenge, has moved solidly into the C-suite. Most large companies have set clear targets for diversity, and many are engaged in efforts to promote social justice. Training has become a mantra at many of the best companies, not just to upskill existing workers, but also to increase mobility…

Today, as on most weekday mornings, there will be about a dozen women at various points in early pregnancy waiting for their appointments. Some will be there for an aspiration abortion. Others will be waiting to see a nurse for blood work and counseling and to receive large glossy booklets of fetal images that the state requires they have in their possession for at least 48 hours before terminating a pregnancy. The afternoon will be even busier, with as many as 15 patients at a time coming to obtain the first pill of their medication abortions, as even more “first days” arrive for their time with the nurses, the “informed consent” materials, and the start of their 48-hour countdown. Our waiting rooms have swollen with patients in recent months as…

WHEN DEEPICA MUTYALA PARTNERED her beauty brand with Mattel to launch the first ever South Asian CEO Barbie doll—made in Mutyala’s image—she wanted to make sure it was authentic. Growing up in Sugar Land, Texas, she’d had to navigate both colorism within her South Asian community and Western beauty standards outside of it. (She recalls wearing blue contact lenses and highlighting her hair blond when she was younger, in an attempt to fit in.) And so the doll not only pairs a “power red” pantsuit with Indian-style bangles and jhumkas—traditional South Asian earrings—but also has darker skin. “Whatever we can do to make people feel more seen,” says the 32-year-old entrepreneur. That’s something of a mission statement for Mutyala, who went viral with a 2015 YouTube video showing how to…

IN 2022, POP CULTURE IS DOING the most. Consider some of the most memorable images to come out of the entertainment industry recently: Mr. Big campily keeling over on his Peloton in And Just Like That … Nicole Kidman baring an impossible 3 ft. of midriff on the cover of Vanity Fair. The sight of dopey, meme-based game show Is It Cake? claiming the No. 1 slot on Netflix. Everything is suddenly bigger, brighter, louder, raunchier. Designers are hawking hot-pink suits, belt-length skirts, and logo-plastered handbags. After a boom in scripted programming, trashy reality TV is surging. The most salient new sound in recent years is hyperpop, a dizzyingly hooky, wildly referential microgenre that has been described as “ebullient electro-maximalism.” We have entered an era of exuberant, even apocalyptic, bad…

HOW ZELENSKY LEADS Simon Shuster’s May 9/May 16 cover story from inside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s compound drew praise on Twitter, including from journalists. Former TIME editor Walter Isaacson called the cover story “brilliant,” showing both Zelensky’s “humor and anger” and “why he’s an inspiring leader.” Neri Zilber described it as “the best piece/profile yet written about Zelensky at war.” Harry Lambert said the piece is “historic writing,” while Shaun Walker called it “fascinating and beautifully written.” Linguist Paula Chertok described the story as “bone-chilling.” Readers argued that Zelensky is a shoo-in for Person of the Year. “TIME better come through with Man of the Year for him. There’s no meaningful competition,” declared Los Angeles–based attorney Rebecca O’Malley. Donna Frose, a history teacher in Hanoi, replied, “I am thinking…

FERDINAND “BONGBONG” MARCOS JR., son of the Philippines’ late dictator, is set to become the country’s next President. The almost 31 million votes tallied for the 64-year-old Marcos by May 10 was more than double those for his closest rival, with only 3% of the vote uncounted. BLOODY LEGACY Marcos’ father Ferdinand Marcos Sr. ruled the Southeast Asian nation of 110 million for 21 years before being ousted in 1986. The elder Marcos tore up presidential term limits; imposed nine years of martial law; and brutally quashed political dissent, jailing and killing thousands of his opponents. He and his wife Imelda embezzled as much as up to $10 billion from state coffers. A citizen uprising drove the family into exile in Hawaii, where the elder Marcos died in 1989. REHABILITATION…

PARENTS ACROSS THE U.S. ARE SCOURING the internet and crossing state lines to get their hands on baby formula, as a national shortage has major retailers putting limits on the amount customers can buy. The crisis has worsened over the past few weeks, with 40% of popular formula brands sold out in late April, according to an analysis by Datasembly. More than half of formula products were completely sold out in several states, including Texas—and images shared online showed empty formula aisles across the country. Some eBay listings for infant formula were priced almost double normal retail costs. Specialty formulas for babies with allergies or special medical needs were even harder to find. There’s no one reason for the shortage—showing that even the most essential items can fall through the…

JUST BEFORE THE country-music boom of the 1990s and the rise of that era’s inescapable male “hat acts,” there were Naomi and Wynonna Judd, the mother-daughter duo who performed as the Judds. Their songs covered the usual country subjects of heartache and longing. But the very texture of their combined voices—Naomi’s silky harmonies weaving a luminous net around Wynonna’s bold, muscular vocals—also spoke of family bonds, of how a legacy of song can pass from one generation to the next. Naomi, who died on April 30 at age 76, leaves behind not just her two daughters, Wynonna and actor Ashley Judd, but also a history of what it means to struggle with life’s complexities. She was a gifted artist and a show-business success, but she also knew what it was…

THE GENRE WE ASSIGN TO A LIFE STORY DEPENDS a lot on how it ends. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s life has already completed several dramatic arcs. First, the hero’s journey: a child born into poverty moves to the big city, rises to lead a labor union, and then becomes the most popular President in the history of modern Brazil. Then the tragedy: a celebrated statesman is fingered in a staggering corruption scheme, sent to prison, and forced to watch from the sidelines while rivals dismantle his legacy. The endings don’t seem to stick, though. In April 2021, Brazil’s Supreme Court annulled the corruption convictions that had excluded Lula—as he’s universally known—from politics in 2018, saying a biased judge on his case had compromised his right to a fair trial.…

Chukwuka Ekweani ran away from his small-town home in the north of Nigeria at age 19 to chase his music dreams in Lagos. Sitting alone on the flight south with his parents’ disapproving words ringing in his ears, Ekweani fretted about his choice: “I was thinking, Did I just make the biggest mistake of my life?” he recalls. His gamble has paid off, and then some: now known as CKay, the singer-songwriter-producer is already one of the most successful African recording artists ever, on a global scale. That’s largely because of the success of his 2019 song “Love Nwantiti,” which broke out at the start of the pandemic and has taken several victory laps around the world, thanks to viral dances and remixes. The irrepressible song has garnered almost 2…

GISELLE, KARINA, NINGNING, AND WINTER should be tired. They just arrived in California after a long-haul flight from Seoul, after all. But the four stars of the K-pop girl group aespa have an important job to do—and they know the stakes. For one of the first times in their short career, they are performing for a live audience. And not just on any stage: the much hyped Coachella. Having launched in the thick of the pandemic in November 2020, aespa has only existed in a world in crisis. But there’s something that sets them apart: aespa also exists as four virtual avatars, each carefully crafted to match their human counterpart, in a fantastical metaverse, Now, they’re ready to prove they’re more than just what fans have seen on screens. Quiet…

In 2020, when Bolor-Erdene Battsengel would walk into work in Ulan Bator’s national parliament building, security guards would stop her to ask if she was a personal assistant or a janitor. She was neither—she was the youngest member of the Mongolian government’s Cabinet, appointed to help lead the nation’s digital transformation. The experience underscored just how difficult it is for young women in leadership. “You have to work extra hard to be accepted for who you are,” says Battsengel, 29, who now serves as state secretary for the Ministry of Digital Development. Hard work is what took Battsengel from a rural town on the Mongolian steppe to the center of government. At 14, she graduated from high school; she finished college at 18, and went on to the University of…

“THAT’S TOTALLY THE GUY!” SLOANE CROSLEY YELPS, coming to an abrupt halt. She gestures at a gray-haired man exiting a graffiti-adorned brick building. For the past 20 minutes, we’ve been booking it through Manhattan’s Chinatown, past bustling produce stands and purse vendors, to find this former synagogue tucked away on a quiet stretch of Rivington Street—a source of inspiration for the author as she wrote her novel, Cult Classic, coming June 7. On our way here, Crosley, who speaks like she walks, a mile a minute, explained that it wasn’t just the old temple that captured her attention, but also its culturally rich, if rapidly gentrifying, neighborhood. “There’s something hidden about it,” she says. “There’s still so many lives and cultures going on on the Lower East Side and in…

$803,650 The amount raised from an online auction of items owned by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, including a silver tea set; profits went to the Washington National Opera ‘I believe we bear a moral responsibility to do what we can to address the persistent corrosive effects of those historical practices.’ Lawrence Bacow, Harvard president, in a letter to the school’s community, addressing an April 26 report issued by the university that revealed its historical links to slavery ‘HE LOOKED GREAT IN THE HOUSE WHILE I HAD HIM.’ Laura Young, a Texas art collector, to the AP on May 6 after a statue she bought for $34.99 at Goodwill was identified as a 2,000-year-old bust of a Roman general, and missing from a German museum since World War…

Al Jazeera journalist fatally shot Veteran Palestinian American correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh was fatally shot in the head by Israeli forces while reporting, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry and Al Jazeera. The network alleged “a blatant murder.” Israeli officials suggested the fire was Palestinian. New boss takes power in Hong Kong Former Hong Kong police official John Lee, who helped lead the crackdown on 2019 pro-democracy protests, was elected May 8 as the territory’s Chief Executive. In a statement, Foreign Ministers of the G-7 nations raised concerns about the election process and the “steady erosion of political and civil rights and Hong Kong’s autonomy.” Unrest continues in Sri Lanka After weeks-long protests in response to an economic crisis turned violent, on May 10 the Defense Ministry ordered troops…

BEFORE DUBAI TRANSFORMED INTO A GLITTERY GLOBAL hub with an international culinary scene, there were limited—albeit much loved—dining options that represented the city’s mix of influences. Sisters Arva and Farida Ahmed have fond memories of going for Friday-night dinner with their parents to one of the city’s Lebanese shawarma joints, chai cafeterias run by Indians from the Malabar Coast, kebab joints, or the rare steakhouse. “Everybody who grew up here knew only those five restaurants,” says Arva. Clustered on either side of Dubai Creek, a saltwater stream that slices through the heart of the city, these restaurants represent Old Dubai—the four neighborhoods that predate the skyscrapers that now define the skyline. Over the past 20 years, Dubai has experienced a burst of development, and with it, a world-class dining scene.…

THE STAFF OF THE KYIV INDEPENDENT KNEW WAR WAS coming. They had spent long days in February reporting on an invasion that high-level sources had told them was imminent. Editor in chief Olga Rudenko and the other senior editors had consulted with the outlet’s two dozen or so staff members to make sure each had an evacuation plan and had withdrawn cash so they could keep operating if the banks closed. They had handed over passwords and instructions to contacts in North America on how to keep their website online in case their internet was knocked out. And yet as Russian President Vladimir Putin declared a “special military operation” in the early hours of Feb. 24, none of them could quite believe what was happening. “We thought they would try…

Bilal Baig wants to take a pause. In April, they won top honors at the Canadian Screen Awards for Sort Of, a CBC/HBO Max dramedy they co-created and star in about a nonbinary Torontonian of Pakistani descent who is struggling to fuse the fragments of their life. The next day, they were back to work on Season 2. “Sometimes I do wonder: maybe we’re not making enough space to take in these really cool moments of celebration,” Baig says. Needing to make time for introspection is a recurring theme in Sort Of—a show that is ruminative where others might be strident, and subtle where others might hit viewers over the head. Baig, who at 27 has already broken boundaries in the representation of queer, trans-feminine, Muslim identity on TV, started…

AFTER STARRING IN THE SECOND season of Bridgerton—the lush period drama that has become Netflix’s most watched English-language series ever—the actor Jonathan Bailey could have done anything. He chose something that he knew would be a challenge. “Cock!” Bailey says brightly, over lunch on a sunny London afternoon. A woman at a nearby table looks up, possibly scandalized. That’s the name of the play, written by Mike Bartlett, that Bailey, 34, headlines now on the West End, in a sparse, spiky production directed by two-time Tony winner Marianne Elliott. He stars as John, a man in a long-term gay relationship who sleeps with a woman, causing a messy love triangle. It’s a talky play, but Bailey gives a muscular performance, embodying John’s inner turmoil as someone who’s so addicted to…

A RHODES SCHOLARSHIP TO THE University of Oxford can open doors to elite worlds—to a life spent in boardrooms and at gilded galas. Bill Clinton, for example, famously smoked (though “didn’t inhale”) marijuana there before becoming President. Pete Buttigieg served as his cohort’s whiskey purveyor before serving as a Cabinet Secretary. But Jaz Brisack was so unenthusiastic about her Rhodes acceptance that she almost didn’t go. At the time, she was a University of Mississippi student volunteering on union picket lines. Going to a fancy school to learn about organizing, rather than doing it, lacked appeal. “I wanted to be in the movement,” says the 24-year-old. So she raced through her studies, where she uncovered an early-1900s labor rallying cry: “Get on the job and organize.” That became not just…

The stories in this collection were written over more than a decade. What was it like revisiting them? It’s always helpful when time defamiliarizes you from your own work. The short story taught me how to be a writer—it was the most efficient way to get better. Looking back at them, I can see what I was experimenting with and the little breakthroughs in each one. You feature several characters that are either famous or adjacent to fame. What draws you to that experience? Celebrity gossip is our substitution for when we lived in smaller communities—we knew more people in common and had gossip we could all take part in. Writing about Hollywood tropes or riffing on existing stories allows you to start with a pre-established familiarity for the reader.…

You reveal a lot of uncomfortable secrets about yourself and your family in Rothaniel. How are you feeling? I feel pretty sturdy, and I feel very adult. In the special, I am honest about things I thought I’d never say out loud. I’ve started feeling more responsibility, which is not a word I would have ever used to describe any of my work. But I definitely started feeling it after coming out. An idea you explore in Rothaniel is “things that exist but don’t exist; things hiding in plain sight.” Do you think that phenomenon is unique to America? It happens a lot. I feel like Rothaniel probably played well in London because it’s such a polite society. But here, I think about homelessness sometimes: how we’re on sidewalks, you…