Newsweek 12/07/2018

1992 Scary times for baby boomers! “Not since the Selective Service Board sent ‘greetings’ to 18-year-old men during the Vietnam War has a birthday salutation been so dreaded by so many,” Newsweek observed. The “generation that refused to grow up” was growing middle-aged—with some resistance. “I wear clothes my mother never would have when she was this age,” said one 49-year-old. Boomer icons who’d recently turned 50 included Paul McCartney. And look at him now: He’s 76 and still spritely. 1936 Josef Stalin wasn’t likened to Santa Claus because he was generous; it was because after proclaiming “heretofore unknown civil liberties,” he had “thousands of simple workers sending him letters about their achievements.” Unmentioned in the article: That year’s Great Purge, resulting in the execution of at least 600,000 people. 1978 “A mass suicide with…

Supporters of presidential candidate Martin Fayulu celebrate as they wait for him to speak at the launch of his campaign on November 21. Election season comes after two years of setbacks, broken promises and delays. President Joseph Kabila, who has ruled since his father’s assassination in 2001, remained in power after his second term ended in 2016 and had resisted efforts to force him to step down. Voters are now set to go to the polls on December 23 in what will be the first democratic transfer of power for a nation gripped by armed conflict and an Ebola outbreak.…

A Central American migrant rests under a bridge near the El Chaparral port of entry at the U.S.-Mexico border on November 23. The first members of the caravan began arriving in mid-November and, as of press time, numbered about 7,400 in the cities of Tijuana and Mexicali. The processing of asylum claims by U.S. authorities has gone slowly, and on November 25 a small group of migrants clashed with Customs and Border Protection officers, who fired tear gas at the crowd and temporarily closed the border.…

A female riot police officer comes face to face with women’s rights activists as they try to march to Taksim Square on November 25. Hundreds had gathered to mark the U.N. International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. Activists said the government—which has restricted public demonstrations for years—was more concerned with protests than stopping male violence in a country where reportedly 337 women were killed by domestic abuse in the past year. FRANCOIS GUILLOT/AFP/GETTY; PEDRO PARDO/AFP/GETTY; BULENT KILIC/AFP/GETTY BULENT KILIC…

THE CUPBOARDS OF JO ELGARF’S LONDON home are bursting with provisions. Dried foods, tinned meat, coffee, powdered milk, even detergent. “Anything that has a long shelf life,” she says. The hoarding began a few months ago as British negotiators struggled to settle on the terms of the country’s impending divorce from the European Union. Tabloids blared the prospect of a “no-deal Brexit,” and doomsday scenarios quickly followed: gridlocked border crossings, strangled supply lines, grounded flights. The pound, analysts predicted, would likely tumble while food and medicine stocks thinned and Brits faced a host of new immigration restrictions. Elgarf, a 42-year-old mother of two, found herself stockpiling nonperishable goods and imported products. And she’s far from alone. Elgarf moderates a Facebook group called 48% Preppers—a reference to the proportion of voters who opted…

HANNS SCHARFF WAS ALREADY a legend when Allied forces captured him at the end of World War II. A businessman conscripted into the Nazi war machine in 1939 and assigned to interrogate captured Allied pilots, Scharff quickly earned a reputation in the Luftwaffe for his uncanny ability to elicit valuable intelligence from his subjects—without laying a hand on them. “He could get a confession of infidelity from a nun,” one of his former prisoners later quipped. Like Wernher von Braun, the Nazi rocket scientist who got a second chance with the Pentagon’s ballistic missile program, Scharff had expertise that was recognized after the war’s end by the U.S. Air Force, which in 1948 invited him to lecture on his techniques and adopted many of his methods for its interrogation school…