Newsweek November 27, 2015

Paris—Emergency workers aid victims of an attack at the Bataclan theater, one of six sites where coordinated shootings and suicide bombings killed at least 129 people in the French capital on November 13. The Islamic State militant group (ISIS) claimed responsibility for the attacks, which also wounded around 350 people. ISIS said it struck France for its role in the coalition that is fighting it in Syria and vowed that the attacks were just “the first of the storm.” In response, French President François Hollande said his country was now “at war” with ISIS and launched air-strikes against Raqqa, Syria, the group’s self-proclaimed capital.…

Sinjar, Iraq—Peshmerga forces advance toward ISIS militants on November 11, hours before retaking this northwestern town with the help of U.S.-led coalition airstrikes. After two days of intense fighting, ISIS withdrew, allowing peshmerga forces to retake Sinjar unopposed. In August 2014, the town was the site of one of the worst massacres perpetrated by ISIS, in which thousands of Yazidis were killed. Thousands more women and children from the sect were abducted and forced into sexual slavery by the militant group.…

Beirut—A Lebanese soldier fires into the air on November 12 to disperse people gathered around a man on the ground they accused of being linked to two suicide bombings in a residential neighborhood, which killed 43 people. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack, which also wounded more than 200. The neighborhood was targeted, ISIS said, because it wanted to strike deep in the heart of Hezbollah’s home base. A Shiite militant group allied with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Hezbollah has been on the front lines of the fight against ISIS in Syria.…

New Haven, Connecticut—A student walks by a college bulletin board addressing race relations and diversity at Yale University on November 12. More than 1,000 students, professors and staff gathered to discuss the treatment of minority students as colleges across the U.S. saw a wave of demonstrations over allegations of ingrained racism and ongoing mistreatment of students. At Yale, tensions came to a head over the issue of racially insensitive Halloween costumes. At the University of Missouri, the school’s president resigned after a protest in support of one student’s hunger strike against racial mistreatment and a lack of response from the school.…

SEPTEMBER 11. Madrid. 7/7. Mumbai. And now Paris. On Friday the 13th. Just the dates and the locations. They are the grim shorthand markers of a war whose end has never been visible; a war that will now intensify; a war that has become central to our times and may still be central for our sons and daughters. The world was shocked by the latest attack on civilians, killing (as this is written) at least 129, with hundreds more wounded, all for the crime of being out on a Friday night in the West’s most glorious city. Just eight attackers—inspired and apparently organized by the so-called Islamic State (ISIS), the radical Islamist group spawned by Al-Qaeda in Iraq—fanned out and struck. Two, wearing suicide vests, blew themselves up, killing one, outside a…

Sadness sells. Just ask Adele, whose moody single “Hello”—her return after a three-year seclusion—has topped the charts in more than two dozen countries. “Hello from the other side,” the British soul singer wails, and while the lyric seems to address an estranged lover, it could also work as a taunt to Adele’s competitors in the music industry: “Hello” is a record-setter. The song dropped in late October and soon became the first track to reach a million digital sales in one week. In fact, it smashed a record held by rapper Flo Rida, whose single “Right Round” hit 636,000 downloads in February 2009. With first-week sales of 1,112,000, “Hello” nearly doubled that benchmark. Adele’s accomplishment illustrates how the metrics for pop chart success have changed—and are still changing—in the digital age. Records…