Table of contents for January 21, 2019 in TIME Magazine

IN THE NEWS TIME celebrated New Year’s Eve in NYC with editor-in-chief Edward Felsenthal and 2018 Person of the Year designee Maria Ressa (top, third and second from right) starting the official countdown alongside other journalists like NBC’s Lester Holt and CNN’s Alisyn Camerota. On Jan. 5, TIME co-sponsored the CORE: Community Organized Relief Effort gala in L.A., attended by stars like Jamie Foxx. ORIENTATION DAY Go behind the scenes of our Jan. 2 photo shoot with new members of Congress—such as (below) Deb Haaland (D., N.M.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.)—on their first day. Max Rose (D., N.Y.) said it felt like the start of high school, trying to remember names and worrying “that someone doesn’t like you.” Watch: time.com/freshmen bonus TIME politics Subscribe to TIME’s free…

$41.7 billion Global movie box office sales in 2018, an all-time high ‘HE WAS A LITTLE BIT OF A HERMIT. I VERY RARELY SAW HIM OUTSIDE OF HIS SHELL.’ DAVID SISCHO, a wildlife biologist with the Hawaii department of land and natural resources, describing George, a Hawaiian land snail that died on New Year’s Day in a lab in Kailua, Oahu, at age 14; George was the last of his species 612 Weight, in pounds, of a bluefin tuna that went for a record $3.1 million at a fish-market auction in Tokyo on Jan. 5 ‘When activists came marching and banging on the doors, I wanted to be on the other side to let them in.’KAMALA HARRIS, U.S. Senator (D., Calif.), describing why she became a prosecutor in her…

Bolton adds condition to Syria plan U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton said on Jan. 6 that the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria, announced abruptly by President Trump in December, is conditional on Turkey’s pledging not to attack Washington’s Kurdish allies there. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called Bolton’s remarks a “serious mistake.” Saudi woman appeals for asylum Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun, an 18-year-old Saudi woman who flew to Thailand to escape her family in Kuwait, was granted refugee status by the U.N. on Jan. 9. Qunun said she’d renounced Islam—a crime punishable by death in Saudi Arabia. Her asylum case has been referred to Australia. U.S. carbon emissions spiked in 2018 Carbon emissions in the U.S. rose by 3.4% last year, the biggest increase in eight years, according…

REACHED The far side of the moon, by China, on Jan. 3, the country reported. The landing by the Chang’e-4 probe was a first for the moon’s far side. MISSED Supreme Court arguments, for the first time, by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Jan. 7. Her absence came after she underwent surgery for cancer in December. ABDICATED The Malaysian throne, by Sultan Muhammad V, on Jan. 6. He is the first monarch in the country’s history to give up his position. ANNOUNCED The resignation of World Bank president Jim Yong Kim, by the bank on Jan. 7. He will step down in February for a job at a private firm, more than three years before the end of his term. CAUGHT Two American citizens accused of fighting for the…

When American troops leave Lina Khatib, of the think tank Chatham House, argues that U.S. soldiers’ quickly exiting Syria would undermine a Trump promise: to contain Iran’s influence. Khatib writes that the Administration may assume a U.S. withdrawal would weaken Russia and others’ ties with Iran—but would actually “give Iran time and space to consolidate its presence.” Freedom money People living under authoritarian regimes have started to recognize the potential of Bitcoin, writes the Human Rights Foundation’s Alex Gladstein, pointing to groups in China and Venezuela that use the cryptocurrency to avoid tight financial controls. The upside of the moon TIME’s Jeffrey Kluger hopes that China’s putting a lander and rover on the dark side of the moon—a region that until then was untouched—will inspire a new era of…

SLUMPED LOW IN THE BACK SEAT OF AN SUV, the two women switch on their cell phones. They had turned them off to avoid tracking, but the friend taking them to their third safe house in three days says it’s safe to use them en route. It is the first time the women have been able to call home in more than a week—a week in which they have found themselves on the front line of a gender-equality battle raging in the southern Indian state of Kerala. At about 3 a.m. on Jan. 2, 40-year-old law professor Bindu Ammini and 39-year-old government supplies officer Kanakadurga Koylandi (both go by their first name) entered the Lord Ayyappa temple in Sabarimala, Kerala. They became the first women to officially do so…

‘My unborn children are infinitely better off that I never had them.’ BARBARA GORGA, Waldwick, N.J. THE FUTURE OF BABIES Many readers saw themselves in Stephanie Zacharek’s Jan. 14 essay “Why I’m Glad I Didn’t Have Kids,” part of a package on fertility. Patti Clasen of Huntington Beach, Calif., said she and her husband are “grateful every day” they didn’t have kids; one father who did admitted to wishing he hadn’t. “If, instead of all the unsolicited advice, faux concern and nosy questions I fielded in my 30s, I could have read this @szacharek essay, it would have been a real gift,” tweeted Hollywood Reporter editor Rebecca Keegan. And @joeangier tweeted that, though men “don’t get harassed as much” about childlessness, he was sure many still related. But…

THE ONGOING TRADE WAR BETWEEN THE U.S. and China may seem chaotic, with twists and turns to flummox even the most seasoned analysts. But in the year since President Trump announced his first tariffs, his Administration has really pursued only one central strategy: weaken China’s economy in order to force the country to change its trade practices. In some ways, the strategy has worked. China’s economy had already showed signs of slowing before the first tariffs hit, and the face-off with the U.S. has accelerated that trend. Economic growth in China sank in the third quarter of 2018 to its lowest level since 2009, and analysts say that situation could worsen if the trade tensions don’t end. “China is not doing well now,” Trump said on Jan. 4, an…

JUST AS STUDENTS RETURNED TO SCHOOL from their winter vacations, teachers in Los Angeles were ready to leave. Working in the second largest school district in the U.S., they were prepared to go on strike after failed negotiations in their quest for smaller class sizes, higher pay and increased funding for school counselors and nurses. The Los Angeles dispute can be seen as a sign that the issues behind last year’s wave of walkouts—education cuts and low teacher pay, among them—aren’t resolved. But the story of teacher strikes in the U.S. goes back much further than that. Some historians have seen recent events as a resurgence of teacher activism that has roots in the 1960s and ’70s. In the first half of the 20th century, the American Federation of…

AS THE CO-FOUNDER AND CEO OF SOUTHWEST AIRLINES, HERB Kelleher—who died at 87 on Jan. 3—was my competitor, but he was also a nice guy. Since neither of us could see any point in being unpleasant, we developed a friendship during several years of growth for both Southwest and American Airlines. In fact, we used to do gags back and forth. At one point Herb painted one of his airplanes like a whale and called it Shamu. I called him up and said, ‘What are you gonna serve on this plane, whale-sh-t mousse?’ A couple of days later, the phone rang in my office and the receptionist told me that somebody from Southwest came by and left me something. It was a pie pan of chocolate pudding with a…

ON A WET DECEMBER MORNING IN A SOUTH FLORIDA weight room, the 21-year-old who stunned Serena Williams at the U.S. Open is hard at work preparing to show that the biggest moment of her life was more than a fluke. As an arrow flashes on an iPad in front of her, Naomi Osaka darts in the direction it signals, pauses, then pivots when it sends her the other way, without missing a step. Her coach, Sascha Bajin, joins the drill but leaps the wrong way and almost lands on Osaka’s ankle. Bajin feigns horror, prompting fellow pro tour player Monica Puig to suggest Osaka give her coach a hug. “She gives hugs like no other,” Bajin says, his sarcasm thicker than midsummer heat. “I only hug people I like,”…

AFTER SIX YEARS OF MARWAND’S LIVing in America, his homecoming to Afghanistan is not off to a great start. Nearly as soon as the 12-year-old boy returns with his family to their relatives’ compound in the rural province of Logar, the venerable yet vicious guard dog, Budabash, bites off the tip of Marwand’s index finger. “For the next few weeks,” Marwand tells us, “I called a jihad against Budabash. Until, of course, about 31 days later, when he got free.” With his young relatives Gul, Zia and Dawood in tow, Marwand sets off into the countryside to try to recover the dog before nightfall. The opening of Jamil Jan Kochai’s debut novel 99 Nights in Logar may feel like the beginning of a comfortably familiar story: a ragtag group…

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A ROLL-UP TV A huge TV is great for movie night but can be an eyesore the rest of the time. LG’s 65-in. Signature OLED TV R fixes that with an innovative trick: the 3-mm-thick screen rolls into the TV’s base when not in use. SMART WEIGHTS Almost everyone cheats a little when working out. Exercisers can keep themselves honest (and get better results) with JAXJOX’s KettlebellConnect, a kettlebell with motion sensors to track lifts and lunges. A FUTURE TOILET Kohler’s Numi 2.0 Intelligent Toilet packs everything expected of a high-end toilet, like a heated seat, and adds speakers and Amazon Alexa—so users can check the weather or the news while, well, you know.…

WHEN WE TALK ABOUT survivors of sexual violence, there’s a picture people tend to paint. They don’t think about young women like Cyntoia Brown, who was pulled into sex work as a child and, at 16, found herself in a position where she took the life of somebody else to save her own. Now 30, she has spent nearly half her life in prison. It sounds unbelievable that a child who was trafficked would receive essentially a life sentence. But when you see someone like Cyntoia as an adult and a criminal, not as a child and a victim, your orientation to the crime is different. If we’re going to address the issue of sexual violence, people have to understand what we’re dealing with. Talking about Cyntoia Brown opens…

Scrublands begins one year after a young, respected priest has perpetrated a mass shooting against his own congregation in a small Australian town, taking five lives before losing his own. In veteran journalist Chris Hammer’s fiction debut, already a best seller in the author’s native Australia, reporter Martin Scarsden (likewise a seasoned pro) is sent to the sun-scorched outback town of Riversend on assignment. His task is to report on how the backwater is recovering from the horrific event, which made international news. But as he learns that the accepted motive for the killings—the priest was a pedophile soon to be exposed—might not be the truth, he finds himself dangerously entangled with the townspeople and their dark history. Hammer, the author of two nonfiction books on the lands and…

You perform to a room of mostly people of Asian descent in your stand-up special, You Complete Me, Ho. How did that affect the mood? The special actively captures the electricity in the room. To have a predominantly Asian crowd that night, that doesn’t always happen. There was a loose feel to it. I never have a set order, but I knew where to add certain bits or improvise. What I love about stand-up is that you can just roll with it like jazz and see where it takes you. The special has a lot of sincere moments, especially about your wife Tran Ho’s facing breast cancer. Is stand-up in a place where there’s room to get serious? Yes. I wanted to do something very…