Newsweek 6/12/2020

1959 Newsweek reported on the latest U.S. achievements and setbacks in the space race: on May 28, two monkeys—Able and Baker—were launched into space and returned to Earth healthy and unharmed. These were the first U.S. animals to survive an extra-terrestrial journey. Scientists were still unsure if living creatures could survive long periods of weightlessness. Therefore, NASA launched black mice aboard the Discoverer 3 satellite several days later. They were supposed to orbit Earth for four days, but a technical malfunction caused the rockets to steer the satellite into the Pacific Ocean. 1966 Newsweek posed a challenging question: What do educated women want? After talking to students at elite colleges such as Vassar and Radcliffe, the magazine determined that while many young women wanted to marry, it was also true that “the career…

During the second phase of the Coronavirus National Lockdown in Italy, a crowd protesting Floyd’s death gathered in front of the U.S. consulate in Milan last Thursday. The protesters held signs that read “Black Lives Matter” and Justice for George Floyd.” They also wore face masks, as pictured here, with the words “I can’t breathe,” the words spoken by Floyd after a Minneapolis police officer placed his knee on Floyd’s neck, which led to Floyd’s death. Protesters also gathered in front of the U.S. Embassy in Rome.…

AS WARM WEATHER SIGNALS A START TO SUMMER, Americans are yearning for a return to normal. Restrictions are falling by the wayside throughout the country. Maine’s governor is allowing sleep-away camps to open. New York City is considering opening beaches. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis lifted prohibitions on all youth activities. “At the end of the day,” he said, “we trust parents to be able to make decisions.” The United States and the rest of the world are entering a new, uncertain phase of the COVID-19 outbreak. Severe social-distancing measures have broken the initial wave, with cases flattening and heading downward in hard-hit places like New York, Italy and the U.K. What comes next is the trickier task of loosening up on restrictions enough to save people’s livelihoods and sanity while keeping…

President Donald Trump with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office. Israeli Sovereignty Is the Key to Lasting Peace By Caroline Glick IN THE COMING MONTHS, ISRAEL IS expected to apply its civilian law and administration to the 30 percent of Judea and Samaria (or the “West Bank”) that President Donald Trump’s recently unveiled peace plan anticipates remaining with Israel after a final peace agreement. One might expect that Israel’s plan would be hailed for advancing peace and the equal rights of Israelis and Palestinians alike. But the more common response of many so-called experts has been to distort the facts and preemptively condemn Israel. Across platforms, “experts” fret over what they call “Israeli annexation.” As I explained in my 2014 book The Israeli Solution: A One State Plan for Peace in the…

THE MISINFORMATION MONITOR is a monthly roundup of trending stories about the creation, dissemination and monetization of false and misleading news, based on exclusive data from NewsGuard, which applies basic journalistic criteria to provide news consumers warnings about misinformation by rating the reliability of news and information sites ELECTION UPDATE: AMERICAN POLITICAL groups invest in deceptively-named websites to make their arguments seem more legitimate The Free Telegraph and the American Ledger: One of these purported news organizations is run by a Democratic super PAC and one is run by the Republican Governors Association (RGA). Judging by their names, it would be impossible to guess which is which. At FreeTelegraph.com, readers find stories criticizing Democrats and praising Republican governors on everything from their handling of the coronavirus pandemic to their stances against China. The…

IN LATE APRIL, AS COVID-19 PANICKED the nation and all but paralyzed his campaign, Joseph Robinette Biden Jr., huddled—virtually, of course—with his team of economic advisers. Being stuck running for the presidency from the basement of his home in Wilmington, Delaware, had given the former vice president a lot of time to think, he told them, and he wanted bigger ideas. Go forth, he urged his financial brain trust, and bring back the boldest, most ambitious proposals they’d ever dreamed of to reshape the U.S. economy, with an eye toward making it more fair for all Americans and less easily unhinged by a future crisis like the coronavirus pandemic. Should he unseat Donald Trump in November’s election, the challenge before him would be at least on par with what Franklin Delano…