Table of contents for August 22, 2022 in TIME Magazine

The journeys of these eight women are varied. All are stories of resilience OVER THE COURSE OF “THE LONGEST WAR”—A NAME WE WERE already using back in 2009—TIME published more than a dozen covers about Afghanistan and the Taliban. Perhaps the best known was in 2010 and featured a shocking and disturbing portrait of Bibi Aisha, a then 18-year-old whose husband—a Taliban fighter—had cut off her nose and ears after she tried to escape their forced marriage. The story that ran with that cover, written by senior correspondent Aryn Baker, explored what might happen to Afghan women if the U.S. were to pull out of Afghanistan. Today of course that is no longer a hypothetical. To mark one year since Kabul fell to the Taliban—a year in which women…

IN JULY, A PAIR OF SENATORS GATHERED reporters in the U.S. Capitol to deliver a message to President Joe Biden: it’s time to declare a climate emergency. It was, to be sure, something of a Hail Mary. The prospects of major climate legislation had dimmed, and the two Democrats were desperate, worried it could be years before Congress tackled climate change in a meaningful way. “Am I concerned that it will be a decade before we have a climate majority?” said Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon, alongside Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island. “I am damn concerned.” Less than three weeks later, Democratic Senators walked off the Senate floor in celebration after passing the Inflation Reduction Act, the most significant climate legislation in U.S. history. Once the House of Representatives…

DIED Olivia Newton-John A silky star AMONG THE SUNNIEST pleasures of top-40 radio in the 1970s and ’80s were the songs of Olivia Newton-John, who died on Aug. 8 at age 73 following a decades-long battle with breast cancer. Her silky, flaxen voice—in pillowy ballads like “Have You Never Been Mellow” and subtly foxy seductions like “A Little More Love”—always brought with it a rush of joy and warmth. Her films were ambrosial too. In the 1978 Grease, Newton-John’s good-girl Sandy embodied both the wistfulness and the sunburnt bliss of summer’s last days. Her 1980 film Xanadu, in which she played a singing, dancing, roller-skating goddess, wasn’t a hit. But to watch it today is to revel in Newton-John’s rainbow radiance, and to see how a performer can be…

LAS VEGAS—Senator Catherine Cortez Masto stood by the kitchen doors of a Latino-owned restaurant about five miles east of the neon-soaked Las Vegas Strip. The Senator strode in, seemingly knowing most of the crowd, who called her “Catherine” to her face and “La Senadora” to everyone else. “Latinos, it’s what we do. We open businesses,” said Nevada’s first female Senator, the only Latina ever elected to the Senate. “We’re part of the community. We’re entrepreneurs.” The whole pitch on Latino solidarity took less than two minutes, but it was better than anything she could have scripted in an ad. After all, as the signs taped to the support columns pointed out, the woman who took the time to visit with them that day was “Una de las Nuestras.” One…

This story was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center and in collaboration with Rukhshana Media, an Afghan women’s media organization When the Taliban walked into the capital of Afghanistan on Aug. 15, 2021, America’s longest war came to an end. The vacuum left by the exit of U.S. troops forced tens of thousands of Afghans to flee. Some were evacuated by Western nations. Others escaped on foot. For many Afghan women, the Taliban takeover spelled the end of the freedoms they had enjoyed for two decades. One year on, thousands of women are scattered across the world. For this project, a global team of female journalists and photographers spent time with eight individuals who are building new lives, from the beaches of Florida to the suburbs of Dublin. Starting…

It’s been more than 30 years since you started writing The Sandman. What was it like to revisit? It felt like we were doing something that was literally impossible. I’d spent 30 years waiting for somebody to make a bad Sandman film. And just hoping that if I was really lucky, maybe it wouldn’t be bad. Was there anything that, upon rereading, you were excited to update? Mostly going through the old comics reminded us the extent to which Sandman had been rather ahead of its time. Back when nobody commented on the fact that it was filled with gay characters, trans characters, and Black characters. We actually had gone and made something that felt pretty much of its time. In one of the Sandman series’ later episodes, there’s a…

FANS OF WNBA STAR Brittney Griner—who has been detained in Russia since February for carrying cannabis oil—hailed Sean Gregory’s Aug. 8/Aug. 15 cover story on the league champion and two-time Olympic gold medalist for spotlighting the efforts to bring her home. A judge in Moscow sentenced her on Aug. 4 to nine years in jail. “The best part of this profile is that it is a much-needed reminder for many that #BrittneyGriner is a human being,” tweeted Kimberly St. Julian-Varnon, a history Ph.D. student at the University of Pennsylvania. Ukrainian designer Irina Kostyshina replied that Russia’s detention of Griner “is an example of a person held hostage by a state clearly signalling ‘we are doing this just because we can.’” Tammie Cooper of Winter Springs, Fla., said it’s worth…

Inflation hits white families less hard Inflation is causing serious financial problems for the majority of Native American, Black, and Latino households, according to a national poll released Aug. 8 from NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and Harvard. Nearly 70% of Native families and nearly 60% of Black and Latino respondents said rising prices have led to trouble paying bills, compared with 38% of white families. Calif. accuses Tesla of false advertising The California department of motor vehicles has accused Tesla of falsely claiming in advertisements that its driver-assist technology made vehicles fully autonomous. Regulators say the names of the features, Autopilot and Full Self-Driving, are themselves misleading. Emmett Till accuser not indicted A Mississippi grand jury declined to indict Carolyn Bryant Donham, the white woman whose accusations…

HISTORY REMEMBERS OCT. 4, 1957, a lot better than it remembers Jan. 4, 1958—although in recent weeks, the second date is coming to loom larger than the first. Oct. 4, 1957, was the day the Soviet Union launched Sputnik—the world’s first satellite—an achievement that heralded the start of the space age. RUSS SATELLITE CIRCLING EARTH, shouted the Los Angeles Times in a banner headline. REDS FIRE ‘MOON’ INTO SKY, yelped the Chicago Daily Tribune. There was no such hyperventilating, however, three months later to the day, when the little 184 lb., beach-ball-size satellite, having slowly lost altitude over the months because of atmospheric drag, fell from the sky, burning up like a small meteor in the fiery heat of re-entry. With that, the world’s first satellite became the world’s first…

I’M NOT HERE TO MAKE FRIENDS. I’M HERE TO win.” So goes the ultimate reality-TV cliché, one popularized by the first season of Survivor, which got viewers hooked on competitions between “real people” cashing in the 15 minutes of fame that are the birthright of all Americans. Two decades later, the declaration has proved true of the genre itself. Critics, social scientists, and even fans keep unearthing revelations about reality TV’s crass manipulations and toxic tropes. Yet the genre has conquered the culture and claimed its prize: our attention. Reality TV has radically altered the landscapes of celebrity, politics, and power. Its stars have penetrated every corner of the entertainment industry, from Harry Styles and Cardi B on the pop charts to Laverne Cox and Emma Stone in Hollywood. Without…

THE AUG. 4 ARREST ON FEDERAL CHARGES of four Louisville, Ky., police officers involved in the raid that killed Breonna Taylor was understood by her family and supporters as the beginning of justice they thought had been denied. Officers raided Taylor’s home using a no-knock warrant in March 2020 and killed her after her boyfriend, believing they were intruders, fired toward them. “I’ve waited 874 days for today,” said Tamika Palmer, Taylor’s mother. ‘FALSIFIED’ WARRANT A federal grand jury in Louisville charged that officers lied both before and after the raid, falsifying an affidavit to get the warrant. “Breonna Taylor should be alive today,” U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said in announcing charges that former detective Joshua Jaynes and Sergeant Kyle Meany had willfully violated Taylor’s civil rights “under…

CANDACE PARKER WAS ALREADY ENJOYING A monumental run in her life last year. One of the greatest women’s basketball players of all time won her second WNBA championship, capping a storybook return home: the Illinois-raised athlete had signed with the Chicago Sky before the previous season and delivered the franchise its first ever WNBA title. Her media work, providing commentary on TNT’s highly popular and influential NBA program, was receiving rave reviews. Parker was a basketball force. Then, late last year, her journey took another significant turn. On Instagram, she revealed publicly, for the first time, that she had been married for two years to Anna Petrakova, a former Olympic basketball player from Russia who played with Parker on a pro team there. Parker, who was previously married to former…

AN AUG. 7 Egyptian-brokered truce in Gaza between Israel and the militant group Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) appears to be largely holding, pausing another round of violence that began days earlier and has killed dozens of Palestinians and sent rockets flying from Gaza to within three miles of Jerusalem. (However, Israeli forces killed at least three Palestinians in a shoot-out on Aug. 9 during a raid against militants in the occupied West Bank.) Unfortunately, this latest deadly showdown between Israel and PIJ is likely a precursor of more conflict to come. It’s never easy to pinpoint exactly when and why a flare-up in fighting between Israel and Palestinians begins. Before this month’s violence, at least 53 Palestinians were killed from March to July, including Palestinian American Al Jazeera journalist Shireen…

AS A TEACHER IN OAKLAND, CALIF., KAREEM WEAVER helped struggling fourth- and fifth-grade kids learn to read by using a very structured, phonics-based reading curriculum called Open Court. It worked for the students, but not so much for the teachers. “For seven years in a row, Oakland was the fastest-gaining urban district in California for reading,” recalls Weaver. “And we hated it.” The teachers felt like curriculum robots—and pushed back. “This seems dehumanizing, this is colonizing, this is the man telling us what to do,” says Weaver, describing their response to the approach. “So we fought tooth and nail as a teacher group to throw that out.” It was replaced in 2015 by a curriculum that emphasized rich literary experiences. “Those who wanted to fight for social justice, they figured…

CANDID CAMERA SEASON 2 (1949) What began as a radio program called Candid Microphone soon pioneered the winning formula of hidden-camera prank shows. Candid Camera introduced the juxtaposition of a manipulated environment and authentic human reaction that would later be exemplified in Punk’d and international shows like Old Enough. AN AMERICAN FAMILY (1973) Producer Craig Gilbert wasn’t trying to invent reality TV as we know it when, in 1971, he brought cameras into the Santa Barbara home of Bill and Pat Loud and their kids. But what he ended up with was seven months’ worth of footage about one family that, when aired as a 12-part series on PBS, attracted around 10 million viewers and was dubbed the “ultimate soap opera” by TIME. LIFESTYLES OF THE RICH AND FAMOUS…