Table of contents for February 28 - March 7, 2025 in Newsweek

1966 “Essentially a defensive force, the Chinese land army has not significantly shifted its strategic deployment for nearly a decade,” Newsweek said of the force’s focus toward its neighbors along its almost 14,000-mile-long border. The Chinese military still says its national defense policy is “defensive in nature,” in response to a December report from the United States Department of Defense on Chinese military power detailing the nation’s capability to become a “world-class military.” The report highlighted the country’s significant naval strength and stockpile of nuclear warheads. 1973 “The high cost of eating was Topic A across the country last week,” wrote Newsweek as inflation surged during the Nixon administration. With bird flu killing millions of egg-laying hens, the average price of eggs has surged 53 percent in the 12 months…

AS A SIX-TIME NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR, CHELSEA HANDLER knows the secret to a successful book is to stay true to herself. “All of my books are representative of where I am in my life at that time.” And “right now, where I am in my life is my feet are so firmly planted in the ground you cannot knock me over.” The comedian just released her seventh book, I’ll Have What She’s Having. “The point is to highlight how incredible your life can be when you don’t subscribe to doing what everyone tells you makes you valuable.” Between the book, her podcast Dear Chelsea and her stand-up—she has a new Netflix comedy Chelsea Handler: The Feeling and a Las Vegas residency, Chelsea at The Chelsea)—it’s clear Handler has…

Q _ What most surprised you while researching this book? A _ During the pandemic, scientists sparred over how COVID spread. Some researchers said it was airborne, but public health authorities like the World Health Organization flatly said it wasn’t. It took two years for the WHO to publicly turn around. This seemed very strange to me at the time as a journalist. I was very surprised to discover just how much of our basic understanding of airborne transmission had been worked out almost a century ago. Unfortunately, those lessons got forgotten, along with the pioneers who learned them. Should we be concerned about any specific airborne viruses now? Some familiar diseases out there are mainly or solely airborne. Tuberculosis is one. Measles is highly airborne as well. For other…

WHEN ECUADORIAN PRESIDENT DANIEL Noboa attended Donald Trump’s inauguration in January, the symbolism was not lost on many inside his country. With Ecuador set to hold national elections soon after, it was a calculated move—a final push from a politician whose rapid ascent is disrupting not only his nation, but could also reverberate across the region. Noboa’s blend of populist bravado, aggressive security policies and alignment with brash Trumpian politics has positioned him, at 37, as a formidable figure in Latin America’s shifting landscape. A political scion from a banana dynasty, he capitalized on the fear and frustration of Ecuadorians to win office in a snap election in 2023, and is now the favorite to win again as the incumbent. Newsweek reached out to the Ecuadorian presidency and Ecuador’s U.S.…

RESEARCHERS FROM ACROSS the United States believe they have developed a breakthrough weight-loss drug treatment: two new peptide compounds that could rival popular drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy, but without some of the debilitating side effects. Dr. Robert Doyle, a medicinal chemist and professor at Syracuse University in New York, has been working on the compounds—GEP44 and KCEM1—for several years along with his collaborators, Dr. Matthew Hayes, vice chair for basic and translational neuroscience research at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, and Dr. Christian Roth, an endocrinologist at Seattle Children’s Research Institute. Recently, they’ve introduced the compounds at conferences for the American Chemical Society and The Obesity Society. These compounds take a different approach to weight loss than existing medications, which can cause nausea, vomiting and gastric…

WHILE IT SEEMED LIKE EVERYONE ON SOCIAL media was binge-watching Suits during the pandemic, there was one person who was intentionally not watching the long-running series that ended in 2019: Stephen Amell. “I didn’t know much about the resurgence of the show on Netflix. And I had mostly kept it that way.” That freed up Amell creatively to take on the role of Ted Black in Suits LA, a spinoff of the original. “I just felt like I had a good feel for it, but I also felt like it was a high-profile job and I was lucky to be in the room.” The new series focuses on entertainment lawyers in Los Angeles. “There’s a long, rich history of legal dramas being successful on television. And for good reason, because…