Table of contents for May 18, 2020 in TIME Magazine

WHAT YOU SAID ABOUT … FINDING HOPE Readers like Kathleen Cremeans of Oceanside, Calif., were “impressed” by the lineup of “powerful” contributors to the April 27–May 4 special issue, “Finding Hope,” which brought together members of the TIME 100 community to share their views on navigating the pandemic. “It was so inspiring to reach inside the minds of so many much admired people across the globe,” wrote Johannes Van Kampen of Ontario. ‘The most informative source of alternative perspectives on the virus.’ALWYN MOSS, Blacksburg, Va. Beatrice Allen of Sun Valley, Ariz., was particularly happy that the piece by Representative Lauren Underwood (D., Ill.) recognized everyday heroes like letter carriers. And Jodi L. Niver, a history teacher in Wellsboro, Pa., said she would ask her students to read Mikhail Gorbachev’s…

WHEN ISIS MILITANTS LED A COORDInated overnight assault that killed 10 Iraqi paramilitary members on May 1, it was the latest attack in a rising tide of violence across Iraq, suggesting the group is mounting a resurgence less than three years after it was routed from Mosul. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. troop drawdown and Iraq’s internal political crisis, experts say ISIS is exploiting security gaps—and shifting its tactics from intimidation and assassination to more sophisticated techniques. GLOBAL REACH ISIS continues to pose a threat far beyond its heartland in Iraq and Syria, where it is waging insurgencies. With the pandemic reducing the capacity of many security forces, ISIS affiliates have conducted operations in Afghanistan, West Africa, Central Africa, Southeast Asia and elsewhere; an attack was thwarted in…

Dermatologists around the world are gathering data on what may be a largely overlooked set of symptoms of COVID-19: skin conditions. COVID-19 is known for its wide array of symptoms, from cough to loss of smell, and its effects on the skin seem equally varied. Dermatologists have observed rashes, hives and blisters—and perhaps most notably, a frostbite-like condition nicknamed “COVID toes.” Well over 100 cases of this affliction—characterized by purple, bruise-like bumps—have been recorded in a COVID-19 symptom registry kept by the American Academy of Dermatology. Dr. Alisa Femia, director of inpatient dermatology at NYU Langone, says she’s seeing COVID toes fairly frequently, often among people with few other symptoms. But despite the name, it’s not clear coronavirus is causing the issue. Many people with the condition haven’t gotten…

When the virus hit, everyone was suddenly in a state of emergency, and everyone knew it. That meant we needed to reassess everyday polite rituals. Among them: email sign-offs. It was clear that some would have to be benched. (“Cheers” might be obnoxiously jaunty.) Less clear was what should take the place of stock phrases that could now read as callously upbeat. It turns out the safest option is also a coping mechanism. Research has shown that wishing others well can actually lower our own anxiety levels, which means that saying something solicitous might make the person to whom we’re writing feel seen and make us feel better. The catch is that sincerity matters, which makes popular but already clichéd options like “Stay safe” and “Take care” and “Be…

MINDY PENDLETON PANICKED WHEN SHE LEARNED HER stepson’s murder would be featured in a true-crime docuseries on Netflix. Her stomach churned in the days leading up to the debut of the show, which Pendleton worried would glorify the killer who had strangled 25-year-old Robert Mast in 2015 as he sat in a car in a Walmart parking lot. “This was my greatest fear,” says Pendleton, 64. She’d helped raise Mast from a toddler, and still has marks on the walls of her Largo, Fla., home measuring his height through the years. The last mark, made when Mast was 18, is 5 ft. 11 in. off the ground. When Netflix asked Mast’s family and friends in February 2019 to participate in the series, I Am a Killer, those closest to him…

As a presidential candidate, what would the core idea of your campaign be? The core idea is liberty and representative government. And what we have right now in Washington is a very broken system. What happens right now too often is a few leaders in Congress negotiate with the White House, and they decide everything for everyone. And this leads to a lot of frustration and a lot of partisanship because when Congress can’t deliberate actual policies, when you have most members of Congress left out of the process, then they start to debate personalities. Is it still possible to advance the things you want to talk about as a third-party candidate? It is possible to do that, and the way I’m going to do that is by getting my…

Tribes sue Treasury over COVID-19 aid A group of Native American tribes filed a lawsuit on April 30 over the Treasury Department’s failure to distribute $8 billion in COVID-19 relief meant for them. The delay is partly due to a clash over the tribal governments’ claim that Alaska Native corporations shouldn’t be eligible for funds. Microbe stops malaria, scientists say Researchers from Kenya and the U.K. discovered a new microbe that prevents mosquitoes from being infected with malaria, per a study published May 4 in the journal Nature. The scientists said it has “enormous” potential to stop a disease that kills more than 400,000 people a year, mostly children. Mississippi finds massive misspending More than $94 million in federal poverty aid distributed over three years by a Mississippi agency…

MARICELA BETANCOURT, 58, JANITOR SAN JOSE, CALIF. After decades of cleaning houses, Betancourt wanted a job with benefits, so she started working at Tesla. But her health insurance hadn’t kicked in when severe abdominal pain brought her to the ER, and then Tesla sent the janitors home without pay. The hospital bill keeps rising as her family struggles to pay it and other bills. FRITZ FRANCOIS, 41, BELL CAPTAIN MIAMI With no sign of his unemployment or stimulus checks, Francois, who worked at the Betsy Hotel, has been looking into delivery jobs. For now, though, he’s home, trying to teach his 4-year-old son letters and numbers while his wife works as a patient-care associate at a hospital. “Every day when I wake up, I ask God to shield her,” he…

IN NOVEMBER, U.S. MILITARY AND INTELLIGENCE analysts began to suspect something might be wrong in the Chinese city of Wuhan. The CIA heard reports of a pneumonia outbreak. Satellite photos showed activity near hospitals and a drop in street traffic. Apparent medical communications were detected between Wuhan and Beijing. As activity increased, officials wondered if they might be seeing something more serious than pneumonia—something worse, and more contagious. More than five months and 255,000 deaths later, the U.S. intelligence community is still trying to piece together the early spread of COVID-19. Along the way, those efforts have been clouded by inaction, politics, and self-interest from both China and the U.S. Rather than sharing information to minimize the virus’s spread, Beijing and Washington have all too often focused on blaming…

ONCE QUOTIDIAN ASPECTS OF OUR LIVES CAN now feel like high-concept challenges thought up by malicious reality TV show producers. Dating without being able to touch is akin to Love Is Blind. Jockeying for the last few canned goods at the grocery store compares to Supermarket Sweep. And trying to cook over Zoom video chat with Padma Lakshmi feels like a Quickfire Challenge on Top Chef, the Emmy-winning reality show that Lakshmi has hosted for more than a decade. That show is airing a highly anticipated all-star season right now, featuring the best competitors from years past. But rather than promoting the series, Lakshmi is stuck in her house like the rest of us. She’s been filling her time filming popular home-cooking Instagram videos with her daughter. “Television fetishizes…

HOW WILL THE CORONAVIRUS change the world? Nobody knows yet. But we do know where we were before the pandemic hit: inequality had reached historic records worldwide, Australia had burned for months on end, autocrats were suffocating democracy in Hungary and Venezuela, and a wave of protests had swept across six continents—from Beirut to Paris, from Hong Kong to Moscow. And then came COVID-19. The virus laid bare the world’s extraordinary inequalities and injustices. Lists of so-called vital professions were published all over the world, and surprise, positions such as “hedge-fund manager” and “tax specialist for multinationals” were not on them. Suddenly it was crystal clear who did the really important work in health care and education, in public transport, in supermarkets. The general rule seemed to be: the…

I USED TO DIP IN AND OUT OF podcasts during moments of transition—on the subway heading to work, walking to meet a friend for dinner or sitting in the waiting room of my dentist’s office. But none of us are doing any of those things now, and podcasts have seen an overall dip in streaming over the past two months, according to podcast-analytics company Podtrac. And yet I have found more time for podcasts, like the hours I now spend cooking, putting together puzzles or taking long walks. Luckily, I can turn to a handful of wonderful pop-up shows that have risen to the challenges of this particular moment: they provide answers to quarantine-cooking questions, distract rambunctious children and offer tools to cope with social distancing. I’ve been interspersing those…

“ON SUNDAYS, THE BOULANGERIE BELONGED TO Lyon.” This is how Bill Buford describes his new favorite spot in the neighborhood where he moved with his family in 2008. In Dirt, the latest memoir from the former fiction editor of the New Yorker, Buford has relocated to the gastronomic center of France to master cooking the country’s cuisine. Soon he discovers the boulangerie, a local touchstone run by beloved baker Bob, which attracts patrons from all walks of life each weekend. There’s the crowd that strolls in looking for warm nourishment after a night out. Hours later, early risers wait for buttery breakfast treats, cash in hand, in a line winding out the door. These images recall a world that feels far away amid stay-at-home orders: strangers crammed together, their common…