Newsweek October 30-November 06, 2015

Right now—at this very moment—there are over 7 billion humans crawling on the Earth. That’s a lot of mouths to feed. To sustain them all, we’ve taken 40 percent of the planet’s total landmass and turned it into cornfields and almond orchards, cattle ranches and orange groves, all to churn out the cereals, produce and meat that feed humanity. Unfortunately, that’s left us in a bit of a bind. The world population is expected to grow to 9.6 billion by 2050, and according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), if we want to avoid mass malnutrition, we’re going to have to up our food production by 70 percent by 2050. The problem is most of the land we can work for food is already being cultivated.…

In this city built on lucky streaks and last chances, Donald Trump is gone but not forgotten. He remains a totemic presence high above the Atlantic City boardwalk even though he no longer owns the hotels bearing his name, having lost the last one six years ago. Between the onion domes of the Taj Mahal hotel, the word Trump is still visible, even to ships at sea. Inside the Taj, one of three casinos he once owned, shoppers can still browse the Trump Exchange store, which sells all Donald Style, from branded apparel to a dinner table set with gold charger plates and crystal glassware. A black-and-white blowup of the Donald, circa 1980, with windblown hair and firmer jaw, holds pride of place behind the cash register, beneath a bit of…

Almost 20 years ago, a Jewish extremist named Yigal Amir fired two hollow-point bullets into the back of Yitzhak Rabin as he left a peace rally in Tel Aviv, leaving him fatally wounded. Political assassinations don’t always alter the future of a country, but the murder of the Israeli prime minister delivered exactly what his assassin had prayed for: a fatal blow to a fragile peace process, which many hoped might end a century of communal warfare between Jews and Palestinians. Since Rabin’s death, the two peoples—living as neighbors and enemies on a land they both claim—have been caught in a seemingly endless cycle of deepening hatred, failed negotiations and growing violence. The most troubling legacy of Rabin’s assassination is how easily animosity can burst into bloodletting. The latest paroxysm occurred…

“Assad is a heartless killer!” rages Ruslan, a middle-aged worshipper at Moscow’s biggest mosque, just days after Russia’s dramatic entry into Syria’s civil war in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. “It’s a disgrace that the Kremlin is supporting his bloody regime,” he adds, as an unseasonal snowstorm obscures the mosque’s golden domes. Another man arriving for evening prayers, a bearded 20-something named Arslan, thinks the opposite. “Russia is doing the right thing in backing the Syrian authorities against ISIS and other terrorists,” he says, adding that he has heard “nothing at all” about human rights abuses committed by Syrian government forces. It’s hard to say what most of Russia’s estimated 20 million Muslims—around 14 percent of the country’s population—think about President Vladimir Putin’s decision to take military action against Islamic…

Later this year, world leaders will come together for the United Nations to discuss how to save the planet from catastrophic climate change. New research out of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute gives them another metric to see exactly how much is at stake. A paper published in October predicts that the surface melting of ice shelves in Antarctica will double by 2050—whether or not emissions change. But by 2100, our climate policy decisions will be the difference between the Antarctic ice shelves disappearing into the sea or not. Ice shelves are massive, floating plateaus of frozen seawater that jut out from the continent and function as blockades, holding back the giant continental ice sheets. In their absence, the glaciers on the continent would accelerate their march into the sea. According…

Kyaw Wanna Soe, a 40-something newspaper distributor in downtown Yangon, Myanmar, was twitching anxiously. While speaking, he wiped his brow and shifted in his chair. It was summer in Yangon, and that unholy union of heat and moisture was reaching a suffocating climax. It was unclear whether his obvious discomfort was a result of the soaring temperatures or provoked by contemplation of his country’s immediate future. Asked what ambitions he harbored for Myanmar’s upcoming general elections, he meekly responded, “I just hope they happen without any problems. “There are a lot of tensions right now,” he continued, pointing to front-page images of protesting students. “So if something goes wrong…” His voice trailed off while he surveyed the maze of newspapers littering his shop floor. “I’m worried for my business.” While many are optimistic…