Newsweek 2/5/2016

Lima, Peru—A health worker fumigates El Angel cemetery on January 20 to guard against dengue, chikungunya and Zika viruses. Brazil and 20 other countries in the Caribbean and Latin America have documented cases of Zika, a mosquito-borne virus that can delay brain development and also, since no treatment is available, be deadly. Brazil’s health ministry says nearly 4,000 babies have been born with abnormally small heads since October, and it suspects this is linked to the Zika virus. The U.S. is urging pregnant women to avoid travel to areas with the virus, and several countries recommended delaying pregnancy.…

Flint, Michigan—A health care worker draws blood to test for lead poisoning on January 23. A federal state of emergency has been declared due to high levels of lead in the water in Flint, and residents have been forced to drink, bathe and cook with bottled water for months. The city changed its tap water source from Detroit’s system to the Flint River in April 2014 in an effort to save $19 million over eight years. Complaints about the water began about a month after the change, but officials took no action until October 2015.…

London—Marina Litvinenko, the widow of former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko, reads a statement about her husband’s death outside Britain’s High Court of Justice on January 21. He died in 2006 after being poisoned with a polonium isotope; a British inquiry, published on January 21, indicated that the “operation to kill Mr. Litvinenko was probably approved” by high-ranking Russian security officials, including President Vladimir Putin. Dmitry Peskov, a Kremlin spokesman, told reporters the inquiry’s findings “are capable of further poisoning the atmosphere of our bilateral ties.”…

Winterset, Iowa—Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at the John Wayne Birthplace Museum on January 19, the same day he picked up the endorsement of former Alaska Governor and former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. On the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders enjoyed a surge in the polls over Hillary Clinton, whom he recently criticized for accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in speaking fees from financial juggernaut Goldman Sachs. Apparently concerned by the prospect of a race between Trump and Sanders, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg reportedly was considering jumping in as a third-party candidate.…

TED CRUZ’ onstage appearance with Sean Hannity was going well. It was February 2015, and Cruz, like all the other GOP hopefuls, was at the Conservative Political Action Conference near Washington, D.C., answering questions from the Fox News talking head designed to make Cruz look good. Hannity was playing a little word game. “I’m going to ask you about three people, first words that come to your mind,” Hannity said. After getting quick responses for Bill and Hillary Clinton, Hannity tossed out, “Barack Hussein Obama.” Cruz took a few seconds, then said, “Lawless imperator.” Lawless was no surprise. President Obama’s executive orders render some Republicans and Cruz in particular apoplectic. It’s the other word—imperator—that puzzled. Imperator is a Latin word, and not one of the handful, like et, cetera, ad and hoc, that…

THE BEST WEAPONS IN THE FIGHT AGAINST HIV/AIDS, THE BISHOP SAYS, ARE “VIRTUE AND CHASTITY.” “I MAY BE small, but I am strong,” says Anya Alimova, a 29-year-old with dyed green hair, as she picks up a heavy backpack bulging with syringes, condoms, HIV tests and other related items. It’s a snowy winter’s evening in east Moscow, and Alimova and her co-worker, Lena Plotnikova, will spend the next few hours distributing these potentially lifesaving supplies to some of the Russian capital’s tens of thousands of drug users. Both women work at the Andrei Rylkov Foundation for Health and Social Justice, a small, nongovernmental outreach organization that has around a dozen staff members. Russia is in the grip of an HIV epidemic, with new infections soaring among intravenous drug users, but this tiny…