Newsweek December 25, 2015

Beijing—Selfie sticks and smartphones pierce the smoggy air in Tiananmen Square at a flag-raising ceremony on December 9, after the city issued a “red alert” for air pollution. The first such alert in Beijing coincided with a conference in Paris where Chinese delegates and those from almost 200 other countries were hammering out a landmark climate accord that commits all countries to cutting carbon emissions and holding average global warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) or less above preindustrial temperatures.…

Homs, Syria—Syrian rebel fighters peer out of a bus window on December 9 as they evacuate Waer, the last opposition-held district in the central city of Homs, under a truce with the Syrian government. Homs Governor Talal Barazi said around 400 women and children and 300 rebel fighters were allowed to leave the country’s third-largest city under the deal, which is backed by the United Nations. Homs is considered the birthplace of the revolution against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and turning it over to government troops was a blow to the rebels, who vowed to continue their struggle.…

Mississauga, Ontario—Canada’s new prime minister, Justin Trudeau, greets the first planeload of Syrian refugees as they arrive from Beirut at Toronto Pearson International Airport on December 11. Canada has pledged to take up to 25,000 refugees by the end of February, and businesses, families, small towns and big cities have all volunteered clothing, shelter and money to help the refugees settle in. The warm greeting was in marked contrast to the United States, which has seen anti-Muslim rhetoric reach new heights on the GOP campaign trail.…

ON DECEMBER 10, Volkswagen Chairman Hans-Dieter Pötsch made a public admission: A group of the company’s engineers decided to cheat on emissions tests in 2005 because they couldn’t find a technical solution within the company’s “time frame and budget” to build diesel engines that would meet U.S. emissions standards. When the engineers did find a solution, he said, they chose to keep on cheating, rather than employ it. “We are not talking about a one-off mistake, but a whole chain of mistakes that was not interrupted at any point along the timeline,” he said, announcing the preliminary results of an internal investigation at Volkswagen into the crisis at a press conference at the company’s headquarters in Wolfsburg, Germany. Volkswagen admitted this past autumn to installing illegal cheat software into the…

Visitors to Applebee’s, home of the Salsa Verde Pulled Pork Nachos, and many other dining establishments in New York City will now notice not just one salt shaker on the table but several more dotting their menus. The city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene now requires chain restaurants with 15 or more locations nationally to add warning labels—the icon is a white salt shaker against a black triangle—to denote dishes that contain 2,300 milligrams or more of sodium. They also need to post a statement that explains the icon and warns that “high sodium intake can increase blood pressure and risk of heart disease and stroke.” The 2,300-mg threshold corresponds to the amount of sodium in one teaspoon of salt and to the maximum daily limit recommended in the Dietary Guidelines…

FOR SEVERAL years, the White House has watched with mounting frustration as Turkey—supposedly an American ally in the war against the Islamic State militant group (ISIS)—has left a crucial portion of its southern border thinly guarded. Behind closed doors, U.S. officials have urged President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to do something to stop foreign fighters who fly into Istanbul, then slip across the border into Syria to replenish the ranks of the jihadi group. They also want Erdogan to block the trucks loaded with ammunition and explosives that rumble across the border and to crack down on Turkish middlemen taking part in the oil-smuggling trade, which nets the self-declared caliphate roughly $1.5 million a day. All to no avail. But in the wake of last month’s ISIS attacks in Paris, in which…