Table of contents for April 18, 2016 in TIME Magazine

YOUNG MEN AND PORN "Thank you for presenting the evidence that Internet porn has damaged the most important sex organ: the brain," wrote family therapist Timothy Teague of Waterford, Va., about Belinda Luscombe's April 11 cover story, which explored the effects of Internet porn on the sex drives of young men. Another marriage and family therapist, Charles Baum of Santa Cruz, Calif., echoed that point: Though "social conservatives" rail against "abortion, homosexuality [and] gay marriage," he wrote, "I can attest that online porn and gambling cause much more harm to individuals, couples and families." "A war zone, indeed," added Katie Deolloz of Luscombe's description of the fraught topic. "Will be sharing with my teen son." However, Heather Colletto of Grand Rapids, Mich., saw a certain irony in the story's focus:…

On April 1, Saudi Arabia's Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman revealed in a Bloomberg interview how he would float part of the kingdom's state oil company, Aramco, to create the world's largest sovereign wealth fund, in a bid to reform an economy built largely on oil exports. "The objective," he said, "is to diversify income." Will it work? INVESTORS WANTED Aramco plans to begin selling off a small percentage of shares as early as 2017, with the anticipated revenues turning its Public Investment Fund into a $2 trillion superfund big enough to buy the world's four largest firms--Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft and Berkshire Hathaway--with money to spare. DETAILS MISSING Aramco's IPO won't include the kingdom's strategic oil reserves, and it's unclear precisely what assets investors will be putting their money…

ANNOUNCED By the U.S. Department of Labor, a significant new rule requiring financial advisers to act in their clients' best interests. • By Alaska Airlines, that it will acquire Virgin America, in a deal worth about $4 billion, following a bidding war with JetBlue. WON A record-setting fourth consecutive NCAA women's basketball championship, by the University of Connecticut, in an 82-51 victory over Syracuse. REJECTED By the U.S. Supreme Court, a challenge to the one-person, one-vote standard of states' drawing legislative districts based on total population rather than just eligible voters. DIED Joseph Medicine Crow, 102, Native American historian, World War II veteran and 2009 Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient, known as the last living war chief of Montana's Crow Tribe. • Ronnie Corbett, 85, comedian and co-star of the…

Virtual reality is still an unfamiliar experience for most. That could change this year as headsets--like the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive (below)--designed to bring immersive VR to the mainstream go on sale. Though all VR devices require strapping a box outfitted with a screen to your face, each takes a slightly different approach to convincing you that you're elsewhere. The Oculus Rift, for instance, focuses on sitting or standing experiences that let users look around them in any direction. The device achieves this with a camera sensor that sits on your desk and tracks the headset's position. The Rift can convincingly re-create experiences such as being on a tall building or being trapped in close quarters with a Tyrannosaurus rex. For the moment, navigating these new worlds entails a…

On the Friday before the Wisconsin primary, the Milwaukee County Republican Party had a dinner at the local American Serb Hall. It was a tough crowd for John Kasich, a self-described Croatian who didn't appear to be trying very hard. The party stalwarts, acting on instructions from their beloved Governor Scott Walker, gave a hearty welcome to Ted Cruz, who met the challenge easily. But the weirdest part of the evening was Sarah Palin, who spoke as Donald Trump's surrogate. She was nearly incomprehensible. And before long, people were actually rolling their eyes and giggling. "Someone get a gong," a gentleman sitting next to me implored. She seemed lost as she talked about a neoisolationist foreign policy, "not just nation-building schemes," she said, noticing the unrest in the audience. "It's…

How did you relate to Thomas? While our political views are very different, we have so much in common: African-American families in the South for five generations coming up through slavery and impoverishment, putting an emphasis on education. And it's really a personal story: a man at the pinnacle of his career, and an incident from his past, whether perceived or real, comes back to haunt him. I just put myself in that position--what a person goes through when their integrity is challenged. Did you reach out to him? Through back channels. I haven't been able to get a response. I'm sure it's difficult for him to revisit. I just want to meet the man and talk about what we have in common more than politics. How do you think…

For a comedian who comes on like gangbusters, Melissa McCarthy has had a rocky time finding the right vehicle for her unfiltered raucousness and zingy timing. Last year's Spy came closest: McCarthy's co-stars--Rose Byrne, Jude Law and Jason Statham--helped tease out unexpected grace notes from her audacity in overdrive. But The Boss, directed by her husband Ben Falcone, who also helmed Tammy, isn't boss at all. McCarthy plays brassy, big-business tycoon Michelle Darnell, who, after serving time in prison for insider trading, moves in with her former assistant (Kristen Bell) and her young daughter (Ella Anderson). The plot involves setting girls up in the brownie-selling biz to earn money for college. Crude gags mingle with squishy, underdeveloped messages about family and belonging and empowerment. And while self-abasement is part of…

When tragedy happens, some people wallow. Others make plans. Ten-year-old Raymie Clarke falls in the latter category, so after her father runs off with a dental hygienist, she plots a solution: win the 1975 Little Miss Central Florida Tire contest, get her picture in the paper and bring him back. To do all that, she must learn how to twirl a baton. Kate DiCamillo has made a career of inventing young characters whose soulfulness rivals that of the adults in their lives, from her iconic first novel for young readers, Because of Winn-Dixie (2000), to the Newbery-winning Flora & Ulysses (2013). Raymie Nightingale too reminds adults about the profound depth of childhood feelings. As with Katherine Paterson's Bridge to Terabithia or Wilson Rawls' Where the Red Fern Grows, some readers…

Chinese President Xi Jinping takes a zero-tolerance approach to bad press. Maybe he believes that the complexity and historic stakes involved in his sweeping economic-reform plan demand the assertion of absolute moral authority. Or maybe he's just very sensitive. Either way, the Panama Papers, which detail allegations that senior Chinese leaders, including a member of Xi's family, have engaged in offshore deals worth millions, were bound to provoke fury in Beijing. Xi has never welcomed criticism. In 2012, a Bloomberg story on his family's wealth and business connections led to China's denying all visa requests from Bloomberg, just as it would do to the New York Times after a story on the wealth of those close to ex-Premier Wen Jiabao. Every news group outside China must weigh the risk that…

I met Zaha Hadid when she was just starting out. She was always one of the guys, undaunted by all the challenges women face in the architecture field, and very confident. I was part of a group that helped Zaha get one of her first commissions, the Vitra Fire Station in Germany. She did an extraordinary job with it--everybody was impressed, and she took off. She created a language that's unique to her. I suppose it will be copied, but never the way she did it. The kind of architecture Zaha did was not sought after a lot, and then she made it sought after. She created the niche. The last building of Zaha's that really knocked my socks off was her Aquatics Centre for the 2012 London Olympics, which…

Hannah Chapman is used to dealing with nerves. A competitive tennis player, the 17-year-old faced some of the toughest opponents in Maine on her way to winning a state title. But the weekend before her early-decision application was due on Nov. 1, her on-court calm was nowhere to be found. Hannah had wanted to go to Elon, a liberal-arts college in North Carolina, since the 10th grade. As the deadline approached, however, she couldn't help but feel inadequate. Elon sifts through some 10,000 applications every year, and Hannah worried that nothing made hers stand out from the rest. Then she noticed that applicants could create a profile on a social-media platform called ZeeMee, which lets them use videos and images to show a side of themselves that might not come…

We pay more for carrots when they're stripped and hacked into oblong nuggets than when they're fresh from the ground. But while most Americans view preparing produce as a tedious chore--and a barrier to cooking veggie-heavy meals--chef Cara Mangini, who comes from a family of meat butchers, sees it as a pleasure. In her new book The Vegetable Butcher, Mangini shares the knife skills needed to break down a whole garden of vegetables efficiently enough for a weeknight dinner. "Once you get the hang of these techniques, you don't have to worry about the time it's going to take," Mangini says. "If we want to push vegetables closer to the center of our plate, it's important we make preparing them second nature." --MANDY OAKLANDER [This article consists of 15 illustrations.…

What is the legacy of the hearing? A conversation which had been private became public, and you see the legacy of that now with college women protesting sexual harassment and assault. But the hearing also influenced how employers would react to sexual harassment, how universities would react to sexual harassment. Unfortunately, the Senate, instead of reflecting the best practices that had been developed at that point, lapsed into combativeness. How did you feel when Justice Thomas called the hearing a "high-tech lynching"? It was very painful, personally, because what I felt was being said was that his experience as an African-American man mattered more to the race than my experience as an African-American woman. On an intellectual level, I felt as though it dismissed all African-American women and our racial…

Dairy is heavy on fat, which is why doctors have steered us toward its skim or low-fat versions. But there's fresh evidence that full-fat milk, cheese and yogurt can be better for you than low-fat. LOWERS DIABETES A new study found full-fat dairy products reduced the risk of diabetes by 46% compared with skim, possibly because whole dairy can help people eat less or improve blood-sugar control. REDUCES WEIGHT When people switch to skim to avoid fat and calories, they tend to replace those calories with carbohydrates, which are more likely to be stored as fat and can contribute to weight gain. CUTS HEART RISK Some studies show people who eat skim or low-fat dairy may have higher rates of heart disease than people opting for full-fat varieties, possibly because…

In 1969, when his song "Okie from Muskogee" made Merle Haggard a household name, he was only about a decade out of San Quentin State Prison. It was there that Haggard, who died April 6 on his 79th birthday, decided to end his career of ever-less-petty crime, a move that set him on a path to become one of the boldest voices in country music. But he never lost the connection with his youth, nor the remarkable empathy that was perhaps its consequence. Brought up in a converted train car near Bakersfield, Calif., he knew hard times. He also knew how to turn his keen observations into what he called, in a 1974 TIME cover story, "journalism put to music." His catalog reached far beyond the antihippie backlash he spoke…

The first version of the Gettysburg Cyclorama was created in 1883 by a French artist named Paul Dominique Philippoteaux. It was an enormous circular painting, depicting the Battle of Gettysburg at the moment of Pickett's Charge, that wrapped around the viewer completely: you stood inside it. It was 22 ft. high and had a circumference of 279 ft. The effect was enhanced by actual earthworks and broken trees and fences set up in front of it, in the foreground, which also hid the bottom edge of the canvas. Audiences were enthralled. Veterans of the battle wept. It may have been the most immersive media experience of its day. "I never before had an idea that the eye could be so deceived by paint and canvas," said General John Gibbon, who…

If Herman Melville were writing his famous last novel, The Confidence-Man, today, there's little doubt who his model for the titular rapscallion would be: Donald Trump. One of the great powers of the confidence man is his ability to embed nuggets of truth in a welter of lies. His victims have no idea where factuality ends and fiction begins. That's the power of the con. I fear that is what's now happening to the portion of the American public drawn to Trump's populist campaign. Take, for instance, his interview with the Washington Post, published April 2. It was rich with fiction, most notably Trump's promise to eliminate the $19 trillion federal debt in eight years. Pundits and policy experts alike rightly pointed out that this is pure fantasy. But there…

First they killed her husband. Then the soldiers killed her two sons, ages 5 and 7. When the uniformed men yanked her daughter from her hands next, Mary didn't think it could get any worse. Mary and her family were members of the Nuer tribe in South Sudan, caught up in a vicious power struggle between the new nation's President, Salva Kiir, a member of the Dinka tribe, and his Vice President, Riek Machar, a Nuer. Their war, fought largely along ethnic lines, has turned the northern part of the country into a wasteland. At least 50,000 people have been killed, according to the U.N., 2.8 million are at risk of famine, and an additional 2.3 million have fled their homes, recounting tales of civilian slaughter, gratuitous torture and even…

LOVE IT Adele took a selfie with a look-alike fan during a concert in Birmingham, England. Google Maps and Yelp released My Burrito Finder, an app that pinpoints the closest place that will satisfy your burrito craving. The Ben & Jerry's founders handed out free samples of a Bernie Sanders--inspired ice cream flavor in New York City. Katy Perry joined Dolly Parton to sing a medley of "9 to 5" and "Jolene" at the Academy of Country Music Awards. Twitter struck a $10 million deal to stream 10 NFL games (for free) later this year. Kylo and Rey have both surged in popularity as baby names since the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Time's weekly take on what popped in culture LEAVE IT Rhode Island yanked its latest…