Table of contents for February 12, 2024 in TIME Magazine

At the annual World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, TIME hosted environmentalist Jane Goodall (above left), who with TIME CEO Jessica Sibley discussed the need for urgent climate action at a dinner sponsored by Sompo and Deloitte. At right, a scene from a TIME100 Talks roundtable presented by Verizon on expanding mobile broadband connectivity and global digital opportunities. Apply now Applications are open for the 2024 edition of the TIME100 Most Influential Companies list. TIME editors and reporters will make selections, evaluating companies based on factors such as uniqueness, newsworthiness, and impact. Deadline to apply is March 8. Find submission guidelines at time.com/100-companies On the covers Photograph by Djeneba Aduayom for TIME Photograph by Rebecca Kiger for TIME SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT In The Brief (Jan. 22) we…

By now, many people have had COVID-19 not just once, but two, three, or even more times, making it much less scary and more common than it was three years ago. Often, repeat infections aren’t as severe as they were the first time, leading to a sense of complacency about getting COVID-19 again and again. But reinfections aren’t harmless, according to the latest studies. “There is some early evidence show[ing] that if you had COVID-19, there can be all sorts of problems after getting infected” and reinfected, says Dr. Robert Murphy, professor of medicine and executive director of the Havey Institute for Global Health at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine. “We are just at the beginning of learning about them.” Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, clinical epidemiologist at Washington University in St.…

Emma Lembke joined Instagram when she was 12. The last of her friend group to sign up, she had sensed the appeal of the app in the gazes of friends; people who used to look at her now looked at their phones. “I thought to myself, There has to be something incredibly magnetic and magical and connective that pulls people into these apps,” recalls Lembke, who’s now 21 and founder of a nonprofit dedicated to helping kids use social media in a healthier way. She soon began spending five or six hours a day mindlessly scrolling—and says her mental health and well-being deteriorated. Lembke recalls quantifying her worth by tracking likes, comments, and followers, and taking down posts that didn’t perform well enough. “It felt as though I was honestly…

Of course, there wasn’t a plunger. There’s never a plunger when you need one. But there’s always an audience: in this case, three women sitting on the other side of the thin bathroom door waiting for their turn to use a toilet that was now horribly, hopelessly clogged. I sweat over the lid trying to devise a solution, but could barely hear myself think over the chorus to Leonard Cohen’s “Closing Time,” which played a relentless loop in my head, as it would every day of this retreat, at a perfect-acoustics, full-volume blare. I was three days into a 10-day silent meditation retreat, and absolutely at the end of my rope. “Sorry to break the noble silence,” I finally told my fellow meditators. “But that toilet is clogged.” It…

In 1995, when the NCAA suspended UCLA linebacker Donnie Edwards for accepting $150 worth of groceries—in violation of rules prohibiting college athletes from receiving extra benefits—Ramogi Huma, a backup for the Bruins, felt incensed. “To see him treated like that, while they’re selling his jersey in the student store, it was wrong on all kinds of levels,” Huma says. The incident inspired Huma to launch the National College Players Association (NCPA) in 2001, when the concept of giving college athletes more than a scholarship faced resistance. While Huma, 46, has fought for all college athletes, he’s attuned to the racial dynamics. In 2020, he and Ithaca College professor Ellen J. Staurowsky published a report titled “How the NCAA’s Empire Robs the Predominantly Black Athletes of Billions in Generational Wealth.” It…

The racial gap in homeownership in the U.S. is wider now than it was back when it was legal to refuse to sell a house to a family because they were Black. The difference is that in the ’60s, it was people who were turning minority families away; now it’s systems. “Our credit-scoring systems, our risk-based pricing systems, our automated underwriting systems, and many of the systems that we use in the housing and financial-services space are inequitable,” says Lisa Rice, 61, president and CEO of the National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA). “The inequality is automated. So you have to be disruptive.” The legal changes since the ’60s would make a difference, says Rice, if the antidiscrimination laws were enforced. But enforcement agencies are underfunded, so the NFHA, a consortium…

TRANSPLANTED A rhino with a future Hope for a species on the brink The two loneliest rhinos in the world are the female known as Najin and her daughter, known as Fatu. They live in the Ol Pejeta wildlife conservancy in Kenya and are the world’s last remaining northern white rhinos. But Najin and Fatu may soon have company. As the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin announced on Jan. 24, a team of researchers led by BioRescue, an international consortium of scientists and conservationists, has for the first time succeeded in transplanting a rhinoceros embryo fertilized in the lab into the womb of an adult female. If the methods the researchers used bear out, the northern white rhino could have a second chance at life.…

In the aftermath of the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, Israel declared an ever expanding list of war aims, ranging from the return of all hostages to the creation of a buffer zone separating Israel from Gaza’s population. Yet no Israeli leader has explained how the military campaign, even as it has destroyed much of the Strip, could possibly achieve its objectives. That’s because it can’t—and they know it. This very situation has existed in almost every Israeli war since 1948 because the country’s problems are political in nature, not something military force alone can solve. This reality means that instead of Operation Swords of Iron ending upon completion of Israeli objectives, it will end—as other Israeli wars have—when leading nations (often the U.S.) determine that its military has gone…

Photographer Rebecca Kiger spent a year documenting its uncertain aftermath. Trains built East Palestine. Through the 19th and 20th centuries, the Ohio town grew up around the freight-rail tracks that carried goods, fuel, and chemicals between the industrial centers of the Midwest. But when that industrial system declined, East Palestine’s community didn’t fall apart. Young people stayed, had children, and sent them to local schools. New residents moved in and started small businesses. It wasn’t paradise, but it was quiet and safe, the type of place where you knew your neighbors. For many of the population of 4,700, it was enough to fulfill the town motto: “The place you want to be.” Then, on a cold February night a year ago, 38 train cars derailed and burst into flames.…

In 2021, about 161,000 of the 6 million companies that employ people in the U.S. were owned by African Americans. That’s better than the previous year, but to Erin Horne McKinney, the number’s still too small. “Research shows that entrepreneurship is really the way we will close the wealth gap in this country,” she says. The challenges Black entrepreneurs face are legion, and they start with investment; a recent Goldman Sachs study found that loan applications from Black business owners get rejected at three times the rate of those by white business owners. To try to close the gap, Horne McKinney, 48, is heading up a new center for Black entrepreneurship at Howard University, her alma mater, that will be networked across four Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) to…

In 2017, Dedrick Asante-Muhammad and a team of researchers released a study with a staggering title and stunning conclusion, “The Road to Zero Wealth: How the Racial Wealth Divide Is Hollowing Out America’s Middle Class.” Should the U.S. continue its trajectory, it concluded, median Black household wealth would reach $0 by 2053. The same would happen to the median Latino household by 2073. Meanwhile, as the U.S. became a so-called minority-majority country, the median white household wealth would climb. “Oftentimes the frame is ‘Oh, we’re not where we want to be, but we’re getting there,’” says Asante-Muhammad, 50, vice president of racial economic equity, research, and workforce development at the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, a nonprofit network trying to solve America’s wealth, income, and opportunity divides. “And for 20…

What is it that makes relationships between queer men and glamorous women so intimate—and so volatile? Consider Jennifer Coolidge’s tragic White Lotus character, Tanya, who wandered off with a crew of fortune hunters she memorably described as “high-end gays.” Or Andy Cohen playing ringmaster to a universe of pugnacious Real Housewives. Half a century ago, the Andy Cohen of the Upper East Side was Truman Capote, and the women whose world he insinuated himself into were A-list socialites. For two decades, the author of In Cold Blood and Breakfast at Tiffany’s heard their confessions and dried their tears. Then, in 1975, he published a story in Esquire that exposed their deepest humiliations. FX’s Feud: Capote vs. the Swans, the long-awaited second season of a Ryan Murphy anthology that began with…

The inauguration of a vast temple dedicated to Lord Ram, one of Hinduism’s most revered deities, on Jan. 22 has set India on edge once again. The temple in the city of Ayodhya sits where a centuries-old mosque once stood before it was destroyed by a Hindu mob in 1992, setting off sectarian violence that claimed 2,000 lives. What Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi heralded as the beginning of a “new era,” others saw as a Hindu-nationalist spectacle. CEMENTING LEGACIES As a state official Modi vowed, before the mosque was destroyed, not to return to Ayodhya until the temple was built on the site, which Hindus regard as the birthplace of Ram. Its opening marks another milestone in his party’s effort to transform India from a secular democracy to…

One year after a mass shooting left 11 dead and nine injured at Star Ballroom Dance Studio during a Lunar New Year dance party, Monterey Park, Calif., is preparing for its annual festival. But the festivities will carry a different weight this year. The city—typically the first in the region to kick off Lunar New Year—pushed back its annual festival by a week, to Jan. 28, still about two weeks ahead of many New Year celebrations. “We’re trying to be very mindful of the fact that there are going to be residents in this community who were impacted by the shooting last year, who might not have a friend or family member to celebrate with them, and that it also might bring back thoughts of grief,” says Jose Sanchez,…

Many highly vulnerable populations and ecosystems are already facing the devastating impacts of climate change. While COP28 last year provided glimmers of hope that countries can meaningfully respond, it is increasingly clear that the rise in global temperature will exceed the 1.5°C threshold defined in the 2015 Paris Agreement. Already, we are at 1.15°C of heating above the 19th century baseline and will likely pass 1.5°C in the mid-2030s. The window to forestall this event is closing, because of barriers including lack of financing, institutional capacity, and such factors as poverty, consumption, and lack of societal trust. It’s time to prepare to get closer to a 2.0°C warmer world. Several opportunities for meaningful action lie well within our grasp. We must collectively work toward climate-resilient development—simultaneously adapting to climate…

In July 2023, Connecticut deposited $3,200 into an account for a newborn, creating the nation’s first ever baby bond. Over the next 18 to 30 years, the effects of time and compounding interest will give that baby up to $24,000 to pay for college, make a down payment on a home, or do other things that build wealth. Connecticut’s initiative will automatically enroll the estimated 15,000 babies born each year participating in the state’s Medicaid expansion program. That’s a modified version of an idea Darrick Hamilton first described to William “Sandy” Darity, his dissertation adviser, as a newly minted academic about 25 years ago. “We tend to think about wealth as an outcome,” Hamilton says, “but its real value is what it can do for you.” Hamilton, now 53,…

Addressing inequities in health, especially gaps along racial and ethnic lines, isn’t just about tackling obvious factors like diet and exercise. It’s about addressing the context in which people make choices about their health—everything from where they live to whether they have access to transportation to get to a doctor. Leandris Liburd, acting director of the Office of Health Equity at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has been championing this strategy at the agency for over 30 years. “For many years we focused on compelling the individual to take certain actions, such as quitting smoking,” says Liburd. “Now we are understanding that we have to, at the same time, be sensitive to the context in which they live.” To change those patterns involves educating health departments, and forming…

Donald Glover is known as a provocateur, taking aim at pieties around race, celebrity, and pop culture in dark comedies like Atlanta and Swarm. But he also has a romantic side—one that has fueled Atlanta storylines about his character’s bond with his daughter’s mom and music he’s released as Childish Gambino. There’s something endearing about the story’s shagginess Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Glover and co-creator Francesca Sloane’s reimagining of the 2005 action romp that birthed Brangelina, is his first series to foreground that sweeter sensibility. In fact, in tone it resembles Natasha Lyonne’s lighthearted detective dramedy Poker Face more than its high-octane inspiration. In this version, Glover’s John and Pen15 star Maya Erskine’s Jane are strangers united by a mysterious employer in a sham marriage. She’s a smart risk…