Table of contents for May 10, 2021 in TIME Magazine

WHAT YOU SAID ABOUT… CLIMATE IS EVERYTHING The April 26/May 3 issue, which argued that tackling the global climate crisis requires a new mindset, lit a fire under many TIME readers. Former 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Tom Steyer wrote on Twitter that the issue “shows the recognition that the climate crisis deserves,” while @akazkucha tweeted that he got “chills” watching a video of the artist Red Hong Yi setting aflame her matchstick map of the world (pictured above on the cover) to demonstrate our interconnectedness. But Leif Johnson of Swannanoa, N.C., argued that cultural divisions must also be noted and that solutions can come only when we “start to see beyond nationality, religion, gender, race, ethnicity, target audience or any other culturally imagined sense of self.” ‘This is the…

IN WHAT MANY VIEW AS A LONG-OVERDUE step in reckoning with history, President Joe Biden declared on April 24 that the mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman forces during World War I constituted genocide. “We do this not to cast blame but to ensure that what happened is never repeated,” Biden said in a statement on Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, marking the first time the U.S. has formally deemed the killings genocide. At least 30 other countries, including France and Canada, have also formally recognized the genocide. Other U.S. allies, such as the U.K. and Israel, have not. ATROCITIES During WW I, the Germany-aligned Ottoman Empire accused Armenians of treachery after suffering a heavy defeat at the hands of Russian forces. One and a half million Armenians were later…

Which companies are shaping our future? That’s the question at the heart of our first ever TIME100 Most Influential Companies, a new list—and an expansion of our iconic TIME100 franchise—that highlights businesses making an extraordinary impact around the world. To assemble it, TIME solicited nominations across sectors including health care, entertainment, transportation, technology and more, from our global network of editors and correspondents as well as from industry experts. Then, we evaluated each one on key factors, including relevance, impact, innovation, leadership, ambition and success. The result is a diverse array of 100 institutions, from the tech startup engineering a smarter way to recycle to the cryptocurrency firm reimagining the future of money to the pharma titans creating the vaccines of tomorrow (and today). Together, these businesses—and the leaders who…

THERE ARE A FEW WORDS, UZO ADUBA points out, that we tend to whisper. Therapy is one of them. Saying it out loud is more than part of the job for the actor, who’s preparing for the May 23 premiere of her latest show: a new installment of HBO’s 2008–2010 hit drama In Treatment, in which she stars as the psychologist to a rotating cast of patients. The show is billed as a fourth season of the original, which starred Gabriel Byrne as the therapist and won two Emmys and a Golden Globe. Aduba says her role as Dr. Brooke Taylor is her most personal yet—the only character she’s played so far that has followed her home at night. “This was closer to the bone,” she says. Like her…

Rights group accuses Israel of apartheid Human Rights Watch published a report April 27 accusing Israeli officials of committing “crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution,” on the basis of its treatment of Palestinians. Israeli officials have fiercely rejected the international rights watchdog’s claims. Bolsonaro faces COVID-19 inquiry Brazil’s Congress launched an inquiry April 27 into the government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. One likely focus is President Jair Bolsonaro, who has criticized lockdowns, masks and vaccinations. Nearly 400,000 Brazilians have died during the pandemic. California to vote on recalling gov A Republican-led petition to recall Democratic California governor Gavin Newsom has received 1.6 million signatures, officials confirmed on April 26—enough to trigger a special election, expected to take place in the fall. Reality-TV star Caitlyn Jenner is among…

DIED Michael Collins Made giant leaps for mankind MICHAEL COLLINS BECAME FAMOUS FOR THE SIMPLE act of not walking on the moon. Collins, who died of cancer on April 28 at 90, is best remembered as Apollo 11’s command-module pilot—in some ways the unluckiest man on the luckiest mission of all time. It was Apollo 11 that, in the summer of 1969, stuck the first crewed lunar landing, taking Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin down to the surface, while Collins remained in orbit 60 miles above. Not just an extraordinary pilot and astronaut—he went to space once before Apollo 11, aboard the 1966 Gemini 10 flight, when he became the first person to walk in space twice—Collins was also a reflective, poetic man. “A withered, sun-seared peach pit,” was how…

The coronavirus has been nothing less than a calamity. But more than a year into the pandemic, it is distressingly clear that although the virus affects everyone, we are not all in this together. Instead, the disease highlights and worsens existing fault lines in American society, especially economic inequality. The Biden Administration recognizes the problem. The American Rescue Plan (ARP) Act, signed into law in March, is the most economically progressive legislation in a generation. But for all that it does to fight poverty, the ARP will do distressingly little to reduce inequality. The statute works almost entirely through public spending. But the economic inequality that separates the rich from the rest has become so great that spending alone can’t repair it or even reverse inequality’s increase over the…

A LOT HAS CHANGED IN COUNTRY MUSIC IN THE decade since the Pistol Annies, a country supergroup consisting of Miranda Lambert, Ashley Monroe and Angaleena Presley, released their first album in 2011. Bro-country swept the airwaves, followed by country gentlemen; traditionalists brought back fiddles and lap steel guitars; innovators fused the genre with pop, R&B, EDM and rap. But one thing hasn’t changed: women are still barely played on country radio. In 2015, radio consultant Keith Hill called women the “tomatoes” sprinkled into the male “lettuce” of country radio’s salad. A 2020 study showed that 1 in 10 songs on Billboard’s 2019 Year-End Airplay Chart was by a woman. While the Pistol Annies have put out three stellar albums, none of their songs has climbed higher than No. 40…

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN WAS HUDDLING WITH aides in the Oval Office in late April, preparing for a Zoom tour of Proterra, an electric bus and battery plant in Greenville, S.C. The company does the kind of eco-friendly manufacturing that Biden hopes will balloon if Congress passes his $2 trillion infrastructure proposal, which includes nearly $80 billion in federal investment in these types of clean-energy jobs. Biden was blunt about the larger goal. “This is how we show people that the government has a role to play,” he said before getting on the call. That vision of government has been at the heart of Biden’s first 100 days in office. He has pumped nearly $1.9 trillion into the economy, more than any other President at this point in a first…

WITH FEWER THAN 100 DAYS TO GO BEFORE the Tokyo Olympics begin on July 23, the torch relay is crisscrossing Japan. But far from building excitement for the 2020 Games, the flame is sparking anxiety about holding an international event amid the pandemic. Torch runners are being heckled by protesters who want the Olympics canceled. It doesn’t help, of course, that Japan is in the middle of a fourth COVID-19 wave. Tokyo, Kyoto and two other regions declared states of emergency on April 23 as daily cases surged above 4,500 nationwide. Fears are compounded by a vaccination rate of less than 2% across Japan’s population, which is the world’s oldest, with 28% of Japanese ages 65 or older. Despite foreign fans being banned, and testing requirements in place for…

Activists and organizers who have dedicated their lives to fighting for criminal-justice reform knew just how rare a thing they were witnessing on April 20, when former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was found guilty on all three charges in the killing of George Floyd. From 2013 to 2020, according to the Mapping Police Violence project, fewer than 2% of police killings resulted in criminal charges filed against the officer involved; convictions were even more unusual. And so, alongside the shock and relief felt by many, there was comfort to be found in the guilty verdict—even if only for that moment. Now, with the conclusion of the trial set to serve as a foundational moment for their movement, activists are looking ahead to what could—and, in their eyes, should—come next.…

GENERAL MOTORS Engineering a greener future By Eben Shapiro For more than a year, from her wood-paneled home office, Mary Barra has been leading General Motors on a quest that, if successful, will be one of the most consequential reinventions in corporate history. GM is playing serious catchup in the electric-vehicle game, and success is far from certain for the legacy carmaker that sold fewer than 21,000 EVs in the U.S. last year. Market leader Tesla accounted for an astonishing 79% of all U.S. EV registrations in 2020, according to Automotive News. (GM’s Bolt was the only non-Tesla model in the top five slots.) GM is also facing stepped-up competition from Volkswagen, which is making its own feverish push into EVs. Barra claims that GM has all the pieces in…

NBA Growing a global game By Sean Gregory In late March, Adam Silver, commissioner of the NBA, entered a corner conference room overlooking New York City for his first face-to-face interview with a journalist since the pandemic began. After taking over as commissioner in 2014, Silver has presided over an unprecedented expansion of pro basketball’s business: annual revenue nearly doubled from the 2013–2014 to the 2018–2019 seasons, to north of $9 billion. Before the pandemic, the league projected it would hit the $10 billion mark in 2020. Instead, revenue dropped some 10% during the pandemic-stricken season. Silver received praise for overseeing the completion of the NBA’s shortened 2020 season in the Orlando “bubble,” showing that businesses with strict testing and safety protocols can operate in the pandemic. He’s had a…

The Court of Arbitration for Sport upheld a World Athletics ruling prohibiting female athletes with differences of sex development (DSD) from running in races from 400 m to the mile without medical intervention to reduce natural testosterone levels. Switzerland’s supreme court dismissed your appeal. What’s your level of hope that this new appeal, to the European Court of Human Rights, will work? I’m a believer. I do not doubt my instincts. This is all about going in there and showing these people that if you are a leader, you need to act in the best interest of the athletes. You must not go out there and try to discriminate or categorize people. At the end of the day, when we enter into an event, you say, I see a woman. You…