Table of contents for October 19, 2020 in TIME Magazine

The 2020 edition of Next Generation Leaders offers ‘a bright window into the future.’NAINA BAJEKAL, deputy international editor “THE STORY IS TRUMP,” THE PRESIDENT REMARKED IN passing during a TIME interview with him in the Oval Office last year. And never more so than this week, when the biggest story in the world by far was the health of Donald Trump. His is the most serious health crisis a U.S. President has faced in nearly 40 years. As our senior health correspondent Alice Park wrote recently, the news was “a reminder of two stark truths that we’ve known since the first days that the novel coronavirus reached the United States: that the virus respects no boundaries, and that older people are at higher risk.” As the virus swept through…

SINCE BECOMING PRIME MINISTER IN 2017, Jacinda Ardern has enjoyed stardom outside of New Zealand. But her reception back home had been more ambivalent. Then COVID-19 hit, and Ardern helped lead one of the most successful pandemic responses in the world. Now she is seeking re-election on Oct. 17 in a campaign that’s showing how some political normality can endure in an abnormal time. IN AGREEMENT Ardern’s opponent is Judith Collins, a veteran politician nicknamed Crusher Collins for proposing to destroy the confiscated cars of illegal street racers. Despite Collins’ sharp criticism of Ardern, they largely agree on the biggest issue of the day: COVID-19. Ardern’s move to “go hard, go early” against the virus means the country of 5 million has had fewer than 2,000 cases and 25…

ONE OF THE FASTEST WAYS TO BE DENIED A security clearance, intelligence officials will tell you, is to carry a load of debt. And then there’s President Donald Trump. A recent New York Times report alleges that Trump has $421 million of debt, most of it coming due over the next four years. For a sitting President, such financial exposure is more than embarrassing, former intelligence officials and ethics lawyers say. “These are legitimate counterintelligence security concerns. I would be shocked if agencies of the United States government were not doing what they could to monitor the President’s connection to foreign governments” to ensure U.S. interests aren’t compromised, says Mark Zaid, a D.C. attorney specializing in national security, who represents federal whistle-blowers. ‘Personal financial pressure could adversely affect U.S.…

BLOOD TESTS CAN TELL US A LOT ABOUT WHAT’S GOING ON in our bodies—from whether we’re eating too much sugar to whether we’re harboring any infectious diseases. Now scientists are also combing the blood to learn more about cancer, with the hope of using that information to figure out the best treatments for their patients. Called liquid biopsies, these tests pick up genetic material shed by cancer tumors into the blood, which lets doctors avoid the invasive procedures they traditionally use to extract samples directly from tumors. A biopsy, whether from the tissues or the blood, can provide genetic clues about the mutations that are driving the tumors and can direct doctors to the best drugs for treating them. A liquid biopsy is especially advantageous for sampling hard-to-reach tumors…

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AS COVID-19 BEGAN TO RAVAGE NORTH AMERICA, Canadian boxer Kim Clavel’s first main-event fight, scheduled for March 21 in Montreal, was canceled. Clavel had taken a leave from nursing to focus full-time on her fighting career. A huge opportunity had slipped away. She felt destroyed. What next? She soon found out. Canada desperately needed nurses to care for elderly patients fighting COVID-19. On March 21, instead of entering the ring, she began work in a Montreal nursing home. “Same night,” Clavel says. “Different fight.” An undefeated light-flyweight champion, Clavel, 30, worked 16-hour shifts at times during the peak of the pandemic, treating as many as 30 patients at once in Montreal. Many of them were suffering and confused about why they couldn’t see their loved ones. She ended shifts in…

In 2018, thousands of young women sat on the streets of Buenos Aires, watching on big screens as Argentina’s Congress debated a bill to end tight restrictions on abortion. Many, including young activist Ofelia Fernández, were unimpressed. “We all thought, If this is the level of skill in these chambers, then no one can tell us we can’t occupy those places ourselves,” she recalls. Two years on, Fernández, 20, is Latin America’s youngest lawmaker, according to regional media. Elected in October 2019 to the city legislature in Buenos Aires, she’s spent most of her first year working out of her mom’s living room because of COVID-19, but has also been using her platform to push a progressive, youth-centric agenda in the city. “I didn’t want to be responsible for…

“I’VE BEEN PREPARING MY WHOLE LIFE TO TALK ABOUT RACE.” THE QUESTIONS THAT ZIWE FUMUDOH SPENT the summer lobbing at guests on her Instagram Live show are the kind that usually go unasked: “How many Black friends do you have? Did your family own slaves? What does white privilege mean to you?” But, while those topics may make some of her guests uncomfortable, they’ve also made her IG Live show, which launched this spring, one of the pandemic’s most viral diversions. The weekly broadcast, inspired by Baited, the riotous YouTube series she created in 2017, consists of Fumudoh asking an eclectic mix of fellow comedians, friends and public figures unflinchingly honest and, at times, outrageous questions about race. “While it’s ingrained in every fabric of our nation, it is something…

American Utopia is an album, a show, an HBO film and a book. Some of the songs are new, but some are classics. Is utopia something that you’ve been thinking about your whole career? There seem to be various times in one’s life where you can focus on certain things, and those become things that you’re really interested in. And this seemed to be one of those moments; I could pull from a lot of my work in the past, but I could also look to the future and deal with more civic engagement. The country was kind of at one another’s throats, so it seemed to be a moment when that seemed important to do. You start the show talking about the brains of children. The book also has…

Crowds storm parliament in Bishkek Protesters in the capital of Kyrgyzstan seized control of the Central Asian nation’s parliament building on Oct. 6, after elections they said were rigged in favor of President Sooronbai Jeenbekov, a close ally of Russia. From hiding, Jeenbekov described the action as a coup. Officials say the vote will be rerun. Census extension affirmed Following Trump Administration attempts to end the 2020 Census early, a federal judge issued an order on Oct. 1 stipulating that the Census Bureau must keep counting until the end of October. Days before, a tweet from the bureau implied it would stop on Oct. 5, despite a previous order to keep going. Exxon planned to increase emissions ExxonMobil’s prepandemic business strategy was set to increase the oil company’s annual…

TO HEAR U.S. SUPREME COURT NOMINEE AMY CONEY Barrett tell it, she is the late Justice Antonin Scalia’s intellectual heir. “His judicial philosophy is mine too,” Barrett said at her nomination ceremony at the White House on Sept. 26. In important ways, that’s true. Barrett, who clerked for Scalia, practices both originalism, which interprets the Constitution according to what adherents claim was the framers’ intent, and textualism, which interprets laws based on the meaning of the words rather than the aims of the legislators. But there is a significant difference between the two: style. While Scalia could be brutal in his opinions, castigating ideological opponents, Barrett is diplomatic. Her friends, former students and colleagues describe her as confident in her legal analyses, willing to debate and unfailingly polite. Of the…

I WOKE UP ON OCT. 2, MY MOTHER’S FIRST BIRTHDAY since she died of COVID-19 in May, to the news that the President of the United States had tested positive. Unbelievable. And yet totally believable. The man who made fun of his opponent for wearing masks, who downplayed the risks of the virus to the American public, who said it would just go away “like a miracle,” now had contracted the virus himself. And the whole world found out on my mom’s birthday. I knew, as my mother’s birthday weekend approached, that it would be painful. I could not have predicted how much anger would mix with my sadness. But with each new revelation, I became increasingly furious. The President, it now seems, not only did not follow protocol…

Mohamed Dhaouafi was training to be an engineer in Tunisia when a story about a fellow student’s 12-year-old cousin put him on a path toward prosthetics. The girl had been born without arms, but her parents couldn’t afford to buy her artificial replacements. Of some 30 million to 40 million amputees in developing countries around the world, Dhaouafi learned, only 5% have access to prostheses. “For someone who’s lost a hand, it’s just miserable,” he says. After he graduated from college, making prosthetic limbs that were both affordable and user-friendly “became my passion, my purpose,” he says. Cure Bionics, the startup Dhaouafi established in November 2018, is now about to launch its 3-D-printed, in-house-engineered prostheses in Tunisia, with distribution in broader Africa and the Middle East to follow. Cure…

HALSEY WANTS TO TALK ABOUT HOW MUCH SHE loves her gynecologist. “She’s the person I see more than anyone,” she jokes. Speaking from home in a striped pajama top, the platinum-selling singer-songwriter, born Ashley Frangipane, is just as unfiltered over Zoom as she is on social media and in her music. It was her 26th birthday the day before we speak, and in the previous 24 hours she’d dropped a music video, for her single “929,” and recorded a conversation with Senator Bernie Sanders on motivating young people to vote in the upcoming U.S. elections. But reproductive health is on her mind as well. “I’m like the Pap-smear fairy!” she says. Once a housing-challenged teen, Halsey is now a megastar with a platform big enough to leverage in support…

IT WAS THE EVE OF THEIR OCT. 2 WEDDING WHEN Brittany Riley and Peter Golembiewski read the news. The Payroll Support Program that Congress passed in March to keep airline workers like them employed during the pandemic had expired. Golembiewski was furloughed, losing his salary and health care. Riley voluntarily accepted a furlough, forgoing a paycheck to keep her health care. As they started to figure out how they could afford rent on their Denver home and food for their three kids, the couple’s anxiety gave way to anger—at Congress, for failing to deliver more economic relief, and at officials like President Donald Trump, for bragging about the nation’s comeback while their industry goes up in flames. “We kept everyone connected and everyone safe, and we tried to do our…

UNLIKELY WITNESS A Michigan woman was convicted of murder in 2017 after her husband was shot five times. His words, Don’t shoot, were reported to have been overheard—and later repeated—by Bud, his pet African gray parrot. LOST AND FOUND In 2008, a lost African gray parrot named Yosuke went missing from his home in the city of Nagareyama, near Tokyo. He helpfully provided veterinarians his full address and sang songs to the hospital staff who cared for him. TO THE RESCUE A work-therapy program begun at Serenity Park in Los Angeles in 2005 brings together U.S. veterans and abandoned parrots, and has proved to be healing for both people and pets who struggle with PTSD.…

FOR JAIMIE NAKAE-GRENIER AND JAY GRENIER, Halloween is a major production. The couple’s Austin home often draws crowds that line up around the block, and they have a YouTube channel, Wicked Makers, that shows how to make Halloween props. This year, however, their normally interactive decorations will be designed to be seen from afar. And kids in the neighborhood will get treats via a “candy slide,” a structure that uses a 6-ft. PVC pipe to deliver candy without contact (their video explaining how to build one has netted nearly 300,000 views). The Greniers are one of many families rethinking Halloween traditions this year. Some cities are canceling parades and events, while others are instituting health and safety regulations. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) considers door-to-door trick-or-treating…

“THE REAL AFRICA HAS NOT BEEN SHOWN. FOR A long time, the world has only seen videos of little kids and their ribs, asking for donations,” Burna Boy says with a bitter laugh. The Nigerian superstar sits in a London studio, sporting a crisp marbled button-down and immaculately coiffed dreadlocks while serenely holding a cup of Hennessy and Coke, presenting a very different image indeed. No one person can represent an entire continent. But sometimes it seems as though Burna Boy is expected to. At the 2020 Grammys, the Beninese legend Angélique Kidjo dedicated her trophy for Best World Music to her fellow nominee, saying he was “changing the way our continent is perceived.” And Burna Boy, born Damini Ogulu, isn’t shying away from the responsibility. Since his career…

MANASI JOSHI NEVER SET OUT TO BECOME AN INTERNATIONAL athlete. And she certainly didn’t plan to become an advocate for the rights of millions of disabled people in her native India. But in 2011, a road crash cost Joshi her left leg, pulling her from her path as a software engineer in Mumbai and launching her on a more meaningful journey as an athlete and activist. “Sports helped me break stereotypes,” Joshi, 31, says. “I now want to use that experience to be an enabler for others.” After Joshi learned to walk again, she turned to her favorite childhood sport, badminton, hoping it would help her body regain its balance. It did much more than that: “It taught me to do my best with whatever I have.” Two years later,…