Newsweek 10/19/2018

1990 The cover, honoring the Doonesbury comic strip’s 20th anniversary, was the first interview Garry Trudeau had given in 17 years. In it, the “premier satirist of his time” explained his work as “propelled by a sense of moral indignation, which you hope doesn’t slip into malice when you’re executing.” Notably, he was lampooning Donald Trump as early as the 1980s, resulting in the recent anthology Yuge! 30 Years of Doonesbury on Trump. 1955 A special report examined “the swift rise of American psychiatry and its progress in treating an increasingly tense nation.” (They should see us now!) Thanks to the pioneering neurologist Sigmund Freud, who had died 16 years earlier, “it is no longer considered odd, or evidence of moral weakness, to go to a psychiatrist.” 1981 The assassination in Egypt of Nobel Peace…

The Sabuk Nusantara on October 3, five days after the ferry was hurled onto the land after the one-two punch of a magnitude 7.5 earthquake and a tsunami struck the island of Sulawesi. No passengers were on board the 208-foot vessel—docked before a scheduled trip to its new owners—and all crew survived. The ferry “was like a basketball being bounced,” said second-in-command Jona Johanes, who was turning on the TV in his cabin when the quake hit. A few days later, the death toll was approaching 2,000, with an estimated 5,000 still missing and at least 70,000 homeless.…

“Just because Mom was in prison doesn’t mean you can’t do your homework.” » IT WAS JUST BEFORE 6 A.M. WHEN POLICE officers raided Daniil Markin’s apartment in Barnaul, a small Russian city some 2,000 miles from Moscow. Markin, a film student who was 18 at the time of the July 2017 raid, had no idea why police had burst into his home. The officers, he says, were in no hurry to explain. Instead, they removed his computers, smartphone and other electronic devices, then drove him to the local branch of the Center for Combating Extremism, a police department within Russia’s powerful Interior Ministry. Officers from the so-called Center E then informed Markin that he was being charged with hate speech against Christians over a handful of images that he had either…

“When you talk about mandatory minimum sentencing, you rarely see the people left behind.” CYNTHIA SHANK WAS SURE IT WAS a mistake. It was February 2008, and a judge had just sentenced the 35-year-old to 15 years in prison. As he read the judgment, she could hear two of her three young daughters—one of them 4, the other 2—playing outside the courtroom in Grand Rapids, Michigan. “This is a mistake. Something’s going to change,” she remembers thinking. “I’m not going to be in here for long.” Within months of Shank’s incarceration in a federal prison in Illinois, the realities of mandatory minimum sentencing were painfully clear. Nine years later, she would still be behind bars for a nonviolent drug crime. In 2002, her boyfriend, Alex Humphry, was murdered. When the police searched their…

Historically famous as the trading hub of the Middle East, in 1932 the smallest country in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region became known as the first in the Arabian Gulf to discover oil. More recently, the modern and cosmopolitan archipelago has coped with increasing competition from other GCC states by enhancing its industrial capabilities, keeping pace with global changes and developments, and vigorously taking advantage of market opportunities. This decisive attitude is attributed to Bahrain’s Prime Minister Prince Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa and has led to a sustained chain of efforts and sacrifices being made to achieve planned targets and explore future horizons. “Our comprehensive approach is based on pursuing a development strategy that is aimed at diversifying income sources and building an economy capable of competing globally,” explains…

Bahrain is seeing a substantial increase in visits to its islands for business or leisure, states Shaikh Khaled bin Humood Al Khalifa, CEO of the Bahrain Tourism and Exhibitions Authority (BTEA): “Tourist numbers grew from 9.7 million in 2015 to 11.4 million in 2017, a 17.5 percent increase. Over the same time, average length of stay went up 24.8 percent to 2.8 nights.” Also since 2015, “Tourism has doubled its contribution to almost seven percent of our gross domestic product,” says Minister of Industry, Commerce and Tourism Zayed R. Alzayani. His ministry’s goal is to make Bahrain more business-friendly and, for tourism, this has included redrafting laws relating to the sector and creating the independent institution BTEA. “In the past, various organizations promoted Bahrain,” explains Al Khalifa; “Now, everything is under…