Newsweek 04/20/2018

THEY GET LONELY. THEY MISS THEIR FRIENDS and family. So, despite the danger of exposing themselves to retribution, Russian defectors hiding abroad make phone calls or send emails to relatives in the motherland. And when they do, the Kremlin is listening. “It’s easy to find us,” one defector in the U.S. tells Newsweek, “if they are really determined.” While phone calls and emails open channels for Russian eavesdroppers to locate defectors, relatives visiting from back home make it even easier. Agents can track them to a defector’s doorstep. Some American security sources say there has been an uptick in Russian activity in the U.S. in recent years; suspected agents have been spotted cruising the neighborhoods of defectors protected by CIA security teams. The FBI and CIA have been “bringing people out of…

IN THE WAKE OF DONALD Trump’s election, a troubling word re-emerged in the American political lexicon: fascism. The left says the president mimics strongmen by attacking the media and targeting immigrants. The right claims liberals suppress dissenting views on everything from climate change to gender politics. But is this really fascism? Few are in a better position to judge than former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Born in Czechoslovakia, she fled fascist regimes twice, first during the Nazi occupation of her home country in 1939 and then after a Communist coup a decade later. In her new book, Fascism: A Warning, Albright says she sees a revival of creeping nationalism and authoritarianism at home and abroad. Albright does not consider Trump a fascist, but she says his behavior is paving the…

SINCE WORLD WAR IT, ISRAEL HAS USED ASSASSINATIONS and targeted killings on more people than any other country in the Western world. In many cases, its leaders have determined that in killing a designated target—and protecting its national security—it is moral and legal to endanger the lives of innocent civilians. Harming such people, they believe, is a necessary evil. Israel’s reliance on assassination as a military tool did not happen by chance. It stems from the roots of the Zionist movement, from the trauma of the Holocaust and from the sense among Israelis that the country is perpetually in danger of annihilation. And that no one would come to its aid. Because Israel is such a small country, because the Arab states have long talked of and attempted to destroy it, and…

THE BELCHING SMOKESTACKS OF PTOLEMAIDA’S coal-fired energy plant are a sign of opportunity for Greeks who lost their jobs after the country’s financial meltdown in 2007. For many others, however, they’re a symbol of the European Union’s hypocrisy. In April 2017, the EU approved new regulations aimed at cutting toxic emissions from burning dirty fuels, such as coal. “Air pollution is the prime environmental cause of premature death in the European Union,” Enrico Brivio, a spokesman for the European Commission, told Reuters. Yet five months earlier, as part of its continuing austerity measures, the bloc provided Greece with 1.75 billion euros ($1.85 billion) to build two new coal plants. Per The Guardian, they would emit more than 7 million tons of carbon dioxide a year. A major backer: Germany, the EU’s…

Since 1978, sunscreen in America has been regulated as an over-the-counter nonprescription drug, unlike in the European Union, where it’s considered a cosmetic. WEAR SUNSCREEN, ALWAYS. NOT JUST AT THE beach but at all times, even in winter. When it comes to skin care, that Michael Pollan–esque adage is one that we can all agree on: Regular use slows signs of aging and prevents exposure to the harmful ultraviolet A and ultraviolet B rays that cause skin cancer. But for many Americans, sunscreen remains a fraught subject. Products that use zinc oxide, the most effective barrier between the skin and cancer-triggering UV light, usually leave the skin with that chalky white cast sometimes called “lifeguard face.” And products that avoid zinc oxide by using alcohol-based chemicals that the skin more readily absorbs…

AS A BIOLOGY PROFESSOR AT Yale, Valerie Horsley has commanded the attention of students in lecture halls. But on April 22, 2017, she stood in front of a far larger crowd—3,000 people—as one of the organizers of the New Haven March for Science. “It might have been the quietest march I’ve ever been to,” she says. “I don’t know if scientists just aren’t used to screaming on the streets.” Even if scientists weren’t making noise last Earth Day, they will be in towns and state capitals across the country come November. Horsley is among more than 50 candidates running in state and local races endorsed by the science-oriented political action committee 314 Action Fund. In the past year, the organization has raised $2 million, according to filings with the Federal Election…