Newsweek 5/13/2016

Aleppo, Syria—A boy cries next to the body of his brother, who died in an airstrike on the rebel-held neighborhood of al-Soukour on April 27. The strike was part of a recent series of attacks by forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad that have killed more than 200 people and shattered a cease-fire. The violence comes just weeks before peace talks between the Syrian government and the opposition are expected to resume in Geneva. The U.S. State Department denounced the attacks and called on Russia to pressure Assad to have his forces stand down.…

Minsk, Belarus—Children affected by the meltdown at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant attend a physiotherapy session on April 25. Thirty years after the 1986 disaster, many babies born in Chernobyl’s neighboring regions have birth defects and develop rare forms of cancer. A new concrete shield is scheduled to be installed this year over a reactor at the plant. The operation to dismantle Chernobyl’s radioactive core is one of the world’s largest engineering projects and could take another 30 years.…

IN THEIR TECHNO-THRILLER Ghost Fleet, authors Peter Singer and August Cole describe a cataclysmic world war that begins with a Chinese sneak attack against the U.S. in space. First, soldiers at China’s Cyber Command Headquarters in Shanghai hack into the Pentagon’s network of GPS satellites and scramble their signals. The cyberattack sows chaos among U.S. forces, which can no longer navigate accurately, track targets or hit them with precision munitions. Then, from a space station orbiting 200 miles above Earth, Chinese astronauts train a laser gun on three dozen U.S. satellites the military relies upon for virtually all of its communications and critical surveillance. By the time the Chinese are done, America’s technological edge on this new, 21st-century battlefield has been reduced to the predigital levels of World War II. Such scenarios…

Have you heard Beyoncé’s new album? It’s the biggest thing on Tidal. What about Drake’s Views? Don’t look for it on Spotify—it was dropped as an Apple Music exclusive. A generation ago, you could find all of the biggest pop albums at a record store. In the streaming era, exclusivity rules the day, and Tidal—Jay Z’s embattled subscription-based service—is setting the trend. The streaming company has positioned itself as a playground for 2016’s most elite pop and hip-hop releases. In February, when Kanye West unveiled his long-awaited The Life of Pablo, he put it on Tidal. On February 15, he made a characteristically extreme proclamation. “My album will never never never be on Apple,” the rapper tweeted. “And it will never be for sale.… You can only get it on Tidal.” But…

“IN REPLY TO THE ACCUSATION THAT THERE ARE NO NEW FACES IN POLITICS: PUTIN HAS HAD PLASTIC SURGERY.” RUSSIAN PRESIDENT Vladimir Putin’s annual “direct line” conversation with the nation was still going strong when the joking began on social media. “Question: ‘Everyone has had to make cuts to their household budgets recently. What have you cut spending on?’ Putin: ‘On you lot,’” wrote one Twitter user, in a parody of the president’s apparent lack of empathy with millions of ordinary Russians who are suffering as a result of the country’s tanking economy. Others posted doctored photographs of a young woman from the Siberian city of Omsk, who called into April’s televised presidential Q&A session to quiz Putin on why the roads in her hometown were in such a pitiful condition. “She’s having…

“EVERY FUR FARM PRISONER DESERVES A JAIL BREAK.” NICOLE KISSANE and Joseph Buddenberg spray-painted killer in red on the front of Furs by Graf in San Diego, glued the locks and sprayed smelly butyric acid into the store. The animal rights activists then walked to the home of the store’s elderly owners, where they spray-painted animal murderer in red on an old RV and poured muriatic acid on the driveway to stain the concrete. About a week after the vandalism in July 2013, a website called DirectAction.info posted an anonymous dispatch. “In the early morning hours of July 16, 2013, anarchists in San Diego took action on behalf of the millions of fur-bearing animals who are trapped, enslaved and killed to sustain the global fur industry.... These actions were taken to vocalize…