Table of contents for February 26, 2024 in TIME Magazine

TIME and the American Society of Media Photographers are pleased to announce the winners of our Global Photographic Portraiture Competition: “The Human Element.” Over 2,200 images were submitted across five categories, and the winning images were shot by photographers from nine countries including Bangladesh, Poland, and Iran. Here’s a selection of the winning images, on themes that likewise span the world—including climate change, gender identity, loss, and love. See all of the winning entries at time.com/winners On the covers Photograph by Chris Buck for TIME Want to order a copy of TIME? Get the MrBeast cover, our Person of the Year issue, and others at time.com/magazine-shop SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT In “The Closers” (Feb. 12), we mischaracterized TransTech’s partnerships; the organization works with Google.org but not NASA. We also…

Nearly one-third of singles in America have had a consensually nonmonogamous relationship, but many singles are still committed to the concept of traditional sexual monogamy. That’s the word from the survey informing the 2024 Match Singles in America report, but it’s also all over popular culture—in mainstream television shows, books, and media reports where consensual nonmonogamy is having a moment. Anthropologist Helen Fisher, Match’s chief science adviser, calls it an exciting development in consensual nonmonogamy, but is hardly new. “There’s every reason to think that having sex outside of the pair bond has been quite common for millions of years,” Fisher tells TIME. “What’s actually extraordinary is that we bother to pair up at all, and indeed we do.” According to the report, which was released in January and…

Firefighters and volunteers battle a blaze in Nairobi after a liquid petroleum gas truck exploded near a residential neighborhood on Jan. 31. The blast occurred outside an illegal gas-storage depot shortly before midnight, killing three people and injuring at least 280 more, many caught in their beds as the fire quickly spread. Officials at Kenya’s energy regulatory agency said they had rejected multiple applications to build gas storage on the site last year because of the area’s high population density. ▸ For more of our best photography, visit time.com/lightbox Photograph by Thomas Mukoya—Reuters…

Over the decades, North Korea’s leaders have periodically made bombastic threats of military force against South Korea and its foreign backers, particularly the U.S. and Japan. And for the most part, while carefully monitoring North Korean military moves on the ground, by sea, and in the air, leaders in Seoul, Washington, and Tokyo could dismiss these incendiary-sounding warnings as a substitute for action rather than a sign that aggression is imminent. There are reasons why that might be changing—and why we should now pay closer attention to what Kim Jong Un and his generals are up to. There are growing worries North Korea could carry out a surprise attack or launch some other provocation against South Korea over the course of this year, even if it falls short of…

Michael Regan loves a good photo op. The EPA administrator spent much of his first two years in office crisscrossing the country, attracting a phalanx of local reporters wherever he turned up. But instead of welcoming veterans home or cutting the ribbon on bright and shiny bridges, the sites of Regan’s press junkets have included a community plagued by coal ash in Puerto Rico, a Louisiana area in the shadows of petrochemical facilities where residents face high cancer rates, and a West Virginia county with a faulty wastewater-treatment plant. On a blistering summer day in 2022, I watched as he brought the cameras to a trailer home in the back roads of Lowndes County, Alabama, where more than 40% of residents have raw sewage on their properties. On rainy days,…

DIAGNOSED King Charles III A monarch ails When Buckingham Palace announced on Feb. 5 that King Charles III had been diagnosed with an undisclosed type of cancer, it was a reminder—hardly needed so soon after Queen Elizabeth II’s death—that any monarchy rests on the backs of mortal beings. The news led to an outpouring of solidarity as the 75-year-old began treatment at a London clinic. The King’s royal engagements have been postponed, with other members of the family, in their positions as his Counsellors of State, expected to stand in on his behalf; as the next in line to the throne, Prince William will likely play the most prominent role. In announcing the King’s diagnosis but eliding details, the palace sought to “prevent speculation” while promoting public understanding, in…

Forget climate anxiety: many people are in flat-out climate distress. About two-thirds of Americans (65%) report being worried about global warming, according to a January report from the Yale Program for Climate Communication. One in 10 say they’ve recently felt depressed over their concerns for the planet, and a similar percentage describe feeling on edge or like they’re unable to stop worrying about global warming. No wonder more people are seeking care from climate-aware therapists. Some go to therapy to figure out whether they should have kids in the age of rapid climate change. Others are dealing with posttraumatic stress disorder from natural disasters or are burned out from advocacy work. But if the threat is existential, is there value in sorting out how you feel about it? “The…

Americans have long been known for our industry and ambition, but until recently, we also recognized the value of rest. The Puritans had a famously strict work ethic, but they also took their Sundays very seriously. In 1842, Henry David Thoreau observed, “The really efficient laborer will be found not to crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure”; a decade later he wrote, “A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man’s life as in a book.” Post–Civil War captains of industry didn’t rise and grind, according to business journalist Bertie Charles Forbes: “No man goes in more whole-heartedly for sport and other forms of recreation than” industrialist Coleman du Pont, while Teddy Roosevelt “boisterously…

It’s 9:30 on a freezing Monday night in January and there’s a line stretching down the block outside of Manhattan’s Book Club Bar. The occasion: a midnight release party for fantasy author Sarah J. Maas’ House of Flame and Shadow, the third entry in her Crescent City series. The twist—there’s always a twist where Maas is concerned—is that Maas is on her way to surprise the throng of almost exclusively female fans willing to wait in the cold to get their hands on her book the minute it becomes available. When she enters through the front door, fans are so busy sipping on themed drinks and prepping for trivia that she goes unnoticed. There are a few stunned gasps. Then the cheering begins. “I feel like this will go…

Tens of thousands of farmers have taken to the streets across Europe in recent weeks to protest the combined effect of poor economic conditions created by falling incomes, high costs, ongoing disruption from the war in Ukraine, and competition from cheap imports. Their discontent is further fueled by the European Union’s recent announcement of more-stringent environmental policies affecting agriculture, which they say will make things worse. On Feb. 1, farmers from Germany, France, Belgium, Italy, and Greece descended on Brussels, where they blocked roads, lit fires, and threw eggs at the European Parliament to demand that E.U. leaders do more to help. ROOTS OF THE PROBLEM The E.U.’s proposed green policies are intended to curb the farming sector’s greenhouse-gas emissions—which currently account for 11% of Europe’s total emissions—by revamping…

A decade ago, someone knocking on your door to sell you solar panels would have been selling you solar panels. These days, they are probably selling you a financial product—likely a lease or a loan. Mary Ann Jones, 83, didn’t realize this until she received a call last year from GoodLeap, a financial-technology company, saying she owed $52,564.28 for a solar-panel loan that expires when she’s 106, and costs more than she originally paid for her house. In 2022, she says, a door-to-door salesman from the company Solgen Construction showed up at her house on the outskirts of Fresno, Calif., pushing what he claimed was a government program affiliated with her utility to get her free solar panels. At one point, he had her touch his tablet device, she…

The U.S. is creeping toward war in the Middle East. A drone attack on a U.S. base in Jordan on Jan. 29 killed three American troops and injured 34 others. A militia supported by Iran claimed responsibility. In retaliation, President Joe Biden ordered 85 strikes in Iraq and Syria and promised more to come, a dangerous escalation that could spiral out of control. Are Americans ready for war? Not at all. Pro-Israel sentiments aside, the U.S. public and its leaders are deeply divided today about Middle East policy. War will not only lead to recession and drain U.S. resources to the benefit of China, but rifts at home could also do harm to U.S. foreign policy for years to come. It’s time, then, for Biden to de-escalate tension and push…

Early on the morning of June 1, 2022, Alex Karp, the CEO of the data-analytics firm Palantir Technologies, crossed the border between Poland and Ukraine on foot, with five colleagues in tow. A pair of beaten-up Toyota Land Cruisers awaited on the other side. Chauffeured by armed guards, they sped down empty highways toward Kyiv, past bombed-out buildings, bridges damaged by artillery, the remnants of burned trucks. They arrived in the capital before the wartime curfew. The next day, Karp was escorted into the fortified bunker of the presidential palace, becoming the first leader of a major Western company to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky since Russia’s invasion three months earlier. Over a round of espressos, Karp told Zelensky that he was ready to open an office in…

“The idea is that he will be strapped to this,” says Kyle Bennett, pointing to a contraption that looks alarmingly like the bed in a lethal-injection chamber. “And we have a glass case that’s gonna go over the top and we have 1,000 spiders that are about the size of my palm that are going to cover him, and I’m personally testing this tomorrow …” He stops and looks around, but the producer has lost his audience. Jimmy Donaldson, the 25-year-old video wizard better known around the globe as MrBeast, has quietly left the room. “Classic,” says Bennett. Donaldson is supposed to be showing a reporter and a film crew of one around the set for the next in his series of wildly popular videos of improbable stunts. In this…