Newsweek 10/28/2016

JORDAN CAME OUT TO HIS MOTHER A SECOND TIME (FIRST AS A LESBIAN, NOW AS TRANSGENDER). WHEN TAI JORDAN was a child, he would visit the local swimming pool and puzzle over why boys were allowed to splash about without their shirts on, while he was forced to wear a bathing suit that covered most of his body. And when he daydreamed about his wedding day in the faraway future, Jordan didn’t envision himself walking down the aisle in a poufy white gown, as his family hoped he would do one day. Jordan wanted to be the groom, waiting at the very end of that aisle for his bride. “I’ve never really identified with the body I was born in,” says Jordan, an 18-year-old student at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington.…

“WHEN AMERICA needs us, they call,” the woman tells me. “But will they forget what we have done when we need them?” SOME ARGUE THAT AN INDEPENDENT KURDISTAN WOULD THROW THE REGION INTO GREATER TURMOIL. Khota Kider is a commander of a female Kurdish brigade, and her question resonates here in Iraqi Kurdistan, on the front lines in the war against the Islamic State group (ISIS). A stateless people of roughly 25 million, Kurds live in oil-rich parts of Iraq, Turkey, Iran and Syria. They’re known for their skill on the battlefield, and they’ve long felt that other countries—especially the U.S.—use them as proxies, then abandon them when they’re no longer needed. Iraqi Kurds are expected to play a crucial role in the battle of Mosul, which began October 17 and is being led…

THE MESSAGE from the head of ISIS’s war committee to his besieged comrades is clear: Stay and fight to the death—or we’ll kill you. “Inform all our besieged brothers that we will never accept withdrawal…. We will kill all who withdraw or encourage withdrawal and work for it. And we order you, Abu Yahya, to kill all who withdraw,” the unnamed leader writes in a letter apparently sent on August 8 from the headquarters of the Islamic State militant group in the Syrian city of Raqqa to its fighters in the then-besieged Syrian city of Manbij. The three-page handwritten letter is addressed to Abu Yahya al-Shami, who was the top ISIS commander in Manbij. Three experts who examined the letter at our request believe it to be genuine, but Newsweek cannot…

“THE INSECT IS 20 TIMES MORE ABUNDANT IN MANY PARTS OF BRAZIL THAN A. AEGYPTI.” FLORIDA MIGHT soon be losing its exclusive status as the hideaway for Zika-infected mosquitoes in the United States. Laboratory tests show that a cold-tolerant mosquito known as Culex quinquefasciatus can be infected with the Zika virus. If confirmed in the field, this would be a troubling development, suggesting the virus could spread far north of Florida and the Caribbean. Culex mosquitoes are not targeted for control; the fight against Zika has focused on Aedes aeg pti, an invasive mosquito found throughout tropical and subtropical regions worldwide that is primarily blamed for the virus’s outbreak in Brazil and its spread through parts of south Florida. At the International Congress of Entomology in late September in Orlando, Constância Ayres of…

IN 1833, a little more than a quarter-century before publishing On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin sat down in Port Desire, southern Argentina, and drew a flower. Just one flower, a not very good specimen of Gavilea patagonica, the foot-high orchid of temperate grassland that’s a favorite fodder of guanacos, the local cousins of llamas. First, with a heavy pencil line, he blocked out the labellum, the flower’s procreational business end; next, with a lighter touch, he sketched the six streaky floral segments that surrounded it. It couldn’t have taken him more than a few minutes. Then he attached the flower to his sketch, signed his name and stored it, ready to send back to England. More than 180 years later, his sketch is about to be published for the…

WHILE MOST Americans are riveted by a tumultuous presidential campaign, archaeologists and experts in ancient writing have been focused on some newly discovered bits of ancient history: 70 alleged fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The origin of the fragments, some of which are being sold in batches for tens of millions of dollars, is unclear. Even the private collectors who have bought them are uncertain of their provenance. American Steve Green, the evangelical Christian heir to the Hobby Lobby craft chain fortune and the force behind the Museum of the Bible, has spent millions on the new finds. One fragment sold to the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary refers to the biblical prohibition against homosexuality in the Book of Leviticus. Authorities suspect many of these sensational finds are expertly crafted fakes.…