Newsweek 08/17/2018

2007 Times were good for Mark Zuckerberg that August. He was 23, and, as Newsweek’s Steven Levy reported, Facebook was “the hottest startup in Silicon Valley since [Google founders] Sergey [Brin] and Larry [Page] made us feel lucky.” Zuck was “high tech’s new prince,” having already turned down a $1 billion offer from Yahoo. Fast-forward 11 years, and the embattled founder faces criticism for his company’s role in spreading misinformation. In late July, shares plunged 19 percent—accounting for $119 billion in shareholder wealth. So the cover question remains: “Add Mark as a friend?” 1971 The “revolutionary state of mind known as women’s liberation has produced an unlikely guru,” stated the male writer. All too ironically, he then described Gloria Steinem’s physical attributes, including “blond-streaked hair falling just so above each breast.” Her own…

A back burn is contained on July 31 as the devastating Carr Fire roars toward nearby Douglas City and Lewiston. Since igniting on July 23, Carr has killed six people, burned over 126,000 acres, destroyed more than 1,000 homes and melted boats on Whiskeytown Lake. On August 2, an unprecedented fire tornado (a rotating column of combustion gases) ripped through the area, registering winds of 143 miles per hour—an event Governor Jerry Brown described as “unprecedented.” MARK RALSTON MAHMUD HAMS/AFP/GETTY; LUIS TATO/AFP/GETTY; MARK RALSTON/AFP/GETTY…

“There are no illegal straws, just undocumented utensils.” » P.15 CONGRESS RARELY GETS OUTRAGED OVER AN internecine war in a distant land where American troops are not bleeding and dying. But in a rare exception, lawmakers have become deeply troubled over the Pentagon’s role in Yemen’s civil war—a conflict that has eviscerated the civilian population, provoked a deadly famine and ignited what health officials are calling the worst cholera outbreak in recorded history. For the first time since the war began in 2015, U.S. lawmakers are taking concrete steps to halt or tightly restrict weapons sales to their allies Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates—the leaders behind an Arab coalition fighting Yemen’s rebels, who are seen as proxies for a common enemy, Iran. Much of the damage from the war, independent…

THIS WEEK, THE STATE OF California decided to combat a great evil. Not human feces on the street, which seem to be multiplying at an exponential rate in cities like San Francisco; not used needles, which have begun cropping up in residential neighborhoods in Los Angeles, including my own; not even people purposefully infecting others with HIV, which will no longer be a felony. No, the legislators of California are cracking down on plastic straws. In the past several weeks, San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors announced a possible ordinance preventing restaurants and retailers from handing out straws, stirrers and toothpicks beginning next year. Those outlets would also be prohibited from selling single-use food service products—so say goodbye to your iced coffee container. “This is about changing people’s behavior,” Supervisor Ahsha Safai explained,…

AUGUST 11 AND 12 MARK THE ONE-year anniversary of the “Unite the Right” rally and counterprotests in Charlottesville, Virginia, that ended with the death of Heather Heyer. The 32-year-old paralegal was protesting against the neo-Nazis and white supremacists who descended upon her city in response to the possible removal of a Confederate statue of Robert E. Lee. She was killed when 21-year-old James Alex Fields Jr. drove his car into the crowd. In a CNN interview with Anderson Cooper last August, Heyer’s mother, Susan Bro, memorably addressed Fields (who has since been charged with multiple hate crimes). “This wasn’t a video game, buddy. This was real people. There are consequences to what you did,” she said. “I’m going to be the voice that [Heather] can no longer be. You gave us…

ELON MUSK WANTS TO SAVE THE PLANET, AND IN JULY THAT MEANT A boys’ soccer team trapped in a flooded cave in Thailand. One diver had died on the treacherous route, and as monsoons approached and oxygen dwindled, time was running out. Musk tweeted solutions—perhaps a nylon tube inflated like “a bouncy castle” could “create an air tunnel underwater.” The tech billionaire sent 10 engineers to Thailand; he traveled to the cave himself; he posted video of teams from SpaceX and the Boring Company (two of his businesses) developing a “tiny, kid-size submarine” and delivered the vessel to the scene. But the rescuers, rejecting the invention as impractical, developed a Musk-free plan to save all 12 boys and their coach. British diver Vern Unsworth, who played a key role in the rescue,…