Time Magazine International Edition

RE “THE RACE TO SAVE THE World” [Jan. 18/Jan. 25]: A heartfelt thank you for your splendid article by Walter Isaacson explaining the remarkable scientific discoveries behind the new COVID-19 vaccines. Although I did have some prior snippets of knowle

THE PAST FEW YEARS HAVE NOT BEEN AN EASY time to be God’s lobbyist. A lot of folks claiming to represent the Almighty have been jostling for space in the corridors of Washington, with a lot of conflicting agendas. Their methods often seem mutually ex

ON JAN. 20, 2020, SCIENTISTS AT THE CENTERS for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed the first case of COVID-19 in the U.S. At the time, we had no hint of the devastation to come—more than 24 million infected; 400,000 dead; and schools, bus

Distance a Russian woman swam under the frozen surface of Lake Baikal in a single breath on Jan. 7, believed to be a world record for under-ice swimming Australian authorities ruled on Jan. 15 that “Joe the pigeon,” originally thought to have flown o

DONALD TRUMP HAS left Joe Biden with plenty of knots for the new President to untie. For foreign policy, the most important of these is the increasingly complicated and contentious relationship with China, and of all the subjects on which Washington

For decades, American CEOs studiously avoided wading into controversial issues of the day. There was no possible upside, only risk. But the apolitical CEO is one of the many norms shattered by President Donald Trump. The 45th President has made it ac

‘WHAT ARE YOU AFRAID OF?’ JAIME HERRERA BEUTLER, A REPUBLICAN CONGRESSWOMAN FROM WASHINGTON STATE, DEMANDED OF HER COLLEAGUES as they considered the second impeachment of Donald Trump. “I’m not afraid of losing my job,” Herrera Beutler said. “But I a

WHEN FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEvelt was sworn in as President on March 4, 1933, a quarter of Americans were unemployed and multitudes were living in shantytowns. By the end of his first 100 days in office, he had pushed 15 bills through Congress, revamped

RECENTLY, I ZOOMED INTO A WASHINGTON-BASED VIRTUAL LEADERSHIP PROGRAM THAT opened on a series of TIME covers from the past two decades. The covers (see inset) focused on the risk of pandemics from SARS, in 2003, to a 2017 story warning about a virus

In December 2019, astronauts aboard the ISS prepared the first-ever baked goods in space. Their batch of chocolate-chip cookies reportedly smelled great but couldn’t be eaten pending safety tests back on earth. To help astronauts stay well fed on lon

IT’S LUNCHTIME IN SHANGHAI’S LEAFY FORmer French Concession, and every table is crammed at David Yeung’s new café and grocery, Green Common. Office workers and shoppers huddled against the January chill are wolfing down plates of katsu curry, noodles

IT’S OFFICIAL: OUR BRAINS ARE FRIED. WE TIPTOED tentatively out of 2020 and into 2021, with fragile seedling hopes that the new year would bring some light, only to be plunged almost immediately into political chaos and violence. Plus, the pandemic c

TWO DECADES AGO, people around the world rang in the new millennium with a growing sense of optimism. The threat posed by the Cold War was fading slowly in the rearview mirror. Leading thinkers like Francis Fukuyama touted the benefits of globalizati

THE TRUMP ERA ENDED IN 2021 WITH A violent mob storming the seat of American democracy. Among the many factors behind the riot—from white supremacy to President Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric—experts largely agree that the flourishing of misinformatio

THE KREMLIN’S FIERCEST CRITIC, ALEXEI Navalny, flew straight into the clutches of Russian President Vladimir Putin on Jan. 17 when he returned to Moscow from Germany, where he had been recovering from an assassination attempt he blames on Russia’s Fe

WHAT DID YOU STREAM, IN the early months of the pandemic, to feel normal for an hour? Did you mainline Tiger King, as Nielsen says 34 million viewers did in its first 10 days on Netflix? Or did you return to an old favorite—something from NBC’s class

The pervasive narrative that COVID-19 has been a disaster of feminism, when that description clearly refers only to its effect on professional women, reflects a myopic view of gender rights. Since the early 20th century, the white-feminist ideology h

JUST BEFORE NOON ON JAN. 20, JOSEPH ROBINETTE BIDEN JR. PUT HIS HAND ON A BIBLE AND VOWED TO UPHOLD THE CONSTITUTION AS THE 46TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. It was a first step toward restoring a semblance of normalcy to a shaken democracy. His p

On a frigid morning in January, Trudy Ronnel settled into her favorite sofa chair at the Westminster Place senior-living community in Evanston, Ill., pulled down the neckline on her red blouse and braced herself for a shot she’d anticipated for almos

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN AND VICE President Kamala Harris take office at a time when the stakes are historically high for America’s democracy, requiring them to balance holding themselves accountable to their pledge to move America forward with holding Tr

A question that must be asked in these trying times: How are you feeling? I feel fine. Slightly bored, but fine. You once said that the bout with vertigo and nausea you had in the summer of 1968 was not an inappropriate response to that period. What’

LIKE OUR PANDEMIC RESPONSE, THE U.S. CAPITOL RIOT IS the latest cataclysm to be blamed on a failure of imagination. Who could imagine a virus that crashes the entire global operating system, or an attack that narrowly fails to decapitate the U.S. gov

I CAME TO FOCUS ON CLIMATE CHANGE indirectly—through the problem of energy poverty. In the early 2000s, I learned that about a billion people didn’t have reliable access to electricity and that half of them lived in sub-Saharan Africa. (The picture h

MARYANNE LARREA, A YOUNG DEVOTEE OF Donald Trump, felt the sting of tear gas for the first time in her life on Jan. 6, when she marched among the crowd that Trump incited to storm the Capitol. A gun-rights activist and hard-line conservative Christia

ONE EVENING IN DECEMBER, AFTER A LONG day working from home, Jennifer Drouin, 30, headed out to buy groceries in central Amsterdam. Once inside, she noticed new price tags. The label by the zucchini said they cost a little more than normal: 6¢ extra

UNDERRATED MOVIES TO WATCH WITH THE WHOLE FAMILY AN ICONIC MEXICAN GAME GETS A MODERN REINVENTION THE FUNNIEST AUDIOBOOKS READ BY THEIR AUTHORS ■

IN MID-MARCH, AS THE COVID-19 pandemic swept through the U.S., Rafael Gonzales Jr. watched the news, and all he could do was call the virus by a Spanish swear word: cabrona, the bitch. But the worldwide crisis also sparked his creativity, giving birt

High roller, political donor SHELDON ADELSON HAD LITTLE USE FOR REGRET. A SELF-MADE man whose net worth topped $33 billion at the time of his death on Jan. 11 at 87, he had a largesse and ruthlessness that gave the casino mogul a near unrivaled influ