Newsweek 2/14/2020

1966 Following an “unprecedented peace offensive [which] had drawn only ridicule from Hanoi,” President Lyndon Johnson announced that “United States aircraft have resumed action in North Vietnam,” followed in his next breath, reported Newsweek, by the annnouncement of a new effort to bring the Communists to the bargaining table through the U.N. That week brought a flurry of activity, at the end of which “one disturbing question remained: had there been any real progress?” Official U.S. involvement stretched on for another seven years until the Paris Peace Accords in January 1973. 1953 Having lost “none of its magic” since Maude Adams’ first 1905 stage performance, three years in the making and at a record-breaking $4 million cost, Disney’s Peter Pan “unhampered by the limitations of an earthbound stage or screen, is truly airborne…

A LOT HAS BEEN SAID SINCE KOBE BRYANT, his daughter Gianna and seven others died in a helicopter crash in Calabasas, California, on January 26. The legendary 18-time All-Star basketball player was a version of the Bryant the world knew well, of course. We also knew about his Oscar, his interest in creating children’s books and his other work from his company, Granity Studios, a multimedia company focused on new ways to tell stories revolving around sports. We didn’t know as much about how he took the same passions he brought to the game of basketball and applied them in his new life as an entrepreneur and CEO. Lucky for us, in a podcast episode that aired last September, Newsweek contributor Jordan Harbinger sat down with him and talked all about…

I AM A CAPITALIST BECAUSE I remember socialism. I was converted to capitalism by a few years at the University of Chicago and a few decades working internationally and seeing socialism up close and personal. Until recently, I was confident that we need not worry about trying that experiment again because socialism had been tested and had failed. It looks like I was wrong. Socialism is on the rise. Don’t blame Bernie and Elizabeth. Blame ourselves. Here’s why. The version of capitalism we have implemented is a flawed one. Capitalism is based on the idea that enlightened self-interest and free markets produce the best possible allocation of resources and opportunities. When socialist economies began to fail in the late ‘70s, capitalists figured that if less socialist regulation was good, none at all…

THE U.S. IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS Enforcement (ICE) agency bought more than 1,200 tickets, some possibly at discounted rates, on scheduled commercial flights by United Airlines, American Airlines and Delta Airlines to deport people to Central America in just over a year, data obtained by Newsweek reveals. The airlines supplemented ICE’s chartered deportation flights, most of those via charter operators Swift Air and World Atlantic Airlines. Newsweek got the information via a Freedom of Information Act request. The data from ICE shows commercial airlines were used for deportations to Central America in at least 1,386 cases between January 1, 2019 and January 16, 2020. Of those flights, 1,288 were on United, American and Delta, withUnitedusedfor677, American for 345 and Delta for 266. The ICE data indicates the number of flights involved, but…

“My goal for the next decade isn't to be liked but to be understood.”—FACEBOOK CEO MARK ZUCKERBERG“THE EPIDEMIC IS A DEMON, AND WE CANNOT LET THIS DEMON HIDE.”—CHINESE PRESIDENT XI JINPING“So it’s a big opportunity for the Palestinians, and you know, they have a perfect track record of blowing every opportunity they’ve had in their past.”—JARED KUSHNER“Black music has never been respected by the Grammys to the point that it should be.”—SEAN "DIDDY" COMBS“THERE AREN’T ENOUGH WORDS TO DESCRIBE OUR PAIN RIGHT NOW.”—Vanessa Bryant“Well that’s it, it’s all over, it’s finished!”—BRITISH POLITICIAN NIGEL FARAGE ON BREXIT“TIMES CHANGE. TRADITIONS EVOLVE. IT’S WAY OVERDUE FOR LONG-SUFFERING #PUNXSUTAWNEYPHIL TO BE RETIRED.”—People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals president Ingrid Newkirk…

IN 2011, a novel virus,MEV-1, emerged from China and quickly spread throughout the world, killing 2.5 million people in the U.S. and 26 million worldwide. That outbreak wasn’t actually real—it was the plot of the film Contagion, providing a Hollywood-style glimpse into the panic that surrounds a global pandemic. At the moment, we’re in the midst of a very real outbreak spreading throughout the world from China. The real outbreak and the fictional one are related in one important way: a virus made the “jump” into an unprepared world. This new outbreak is both frightening and familiar. Looking back over many decades, recent viral outbreaks fit a pattern that is now well-recognized. It goes like this: A virus that lives in animals makes the jump to humans. Perhaps it happens in a…