Table of contents for July 25, 2025 in Newsweek

2007 “When his own father died of cardiac arrest…[and] Becker saw him, he was already dead, but something seemed preserved,” Newsweek said. “This is the belief motivating people who pay to have their bodies frozen in liquid nitrogen after deaths, in the hope that they can someday be thawed and restored to life. The Alcor Foundation, in Scottsdale, Arizona, has signed up about 825 prospective patients, and has preserved 76 of them.” Nearly two decades later, with the prospect of resuscitating bodies no closer, Alcor boasts 248 preserved patients and 1,442 prospective members for cryonics. 1967 Marijuana “is entering the bloodstream of U.S. middle-class life,” Newsweek wrote. “The current demand is not just to be able to smoke pot, but to smoke pot legally.” That view has been widely adopted…

CHOOSING WHERE TO SHOP MAY SEEM LIKE A SIMPLE decision. However, in today’s crowded retail landscape, it’s harder than ever to avoid picking a store that falls short on service, selection or value. In 2024, U.S. retail sales reached approximately $7.26 trillion, representing a nearly 3 percent increase from 2023. As consumers continue to spend, the challenge becomes choosing wisely among the many retailers vying for their dollars. To help shoppers identify the most outstanding retailers in the United States, Newsweek has partnered with Statista to present America’s Best Retailers 2025. The ranking utilized results of an independent survey of participants who have either made purchases, used services or gathered information about products or services in the past three years. The survey was conducted on retailers from 43 categories, providing…

INDIAN EXTERNAL AFFAIRS Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar says a new world order is emerging—one that’s less defined by rigid alliances and more driven by national self-interest. And he believes his country is ready for it. “The change in America’s stance is very fundamental to the world order,” Jaishankar told Newsweek during a recent visit to its New York office, where he spoke with President and CEO Dev Pragad and Editor-in-Chief Jennifer H. Cunningham. “I would say, you are seeing the emergence of a post-alliance thinking. It’s not that the alliances are going to go away tomorrow, but the alliances are not going to be the fulcrum around which world politics revolves. “You have the rise of China. You have the rise of India. You have Russia.… So yes, I think we…

ONE OF OLIVIA TIEDEMANN’S MOST MEMORABLE meals was a simple dish of spaghetti with tomato sauce. Her grandfather, Frank Marotta, made it at his cabin at Hunter Mountain in upstate New York for her and her brother, Sam, when she was 7. “It’s kind of an odd memory,” the private chef turned social media star explains over a video call from her home in Austin, Texas. “I remember that day very vividly. He made it. And it was so funny watching him cook spaghetti in comparison to my mom, who’s, like, a great cook. He’s kind of just slopping it around and, like, slopped it on a paper plate. I think he actually made us get it ourselves too and then clean it up after as well.” “The weird part…

AS A WRITER AND A FAN OF THE ORIGINAL I Know What You Did Last Summer, Sam Lansky knew he wanted to do right by everyone who loved the original before co-writing (with Jennifer Kaytin Robinson) the script for the new reboot of the franchise. “I hope fans will have a really good time, because you will recognize things and be like, ‘Oh sh**, I see what they did there,’ in a way that will feel really fun.” One of the things fans will recognize is the return of some of the original stars. “Both Jennifer [Love Hewitt] and Freddie [Prinze Jr.] really, really cared about who these people would be all these years later, and how to bring that to the screen with so much integrity and authenticity and…

AN UNCERTAIN CEASEFIRE WAS just taking hold between Iran and Israel. The map of the Middle East still bore a blaze of red travel warnings. But Dubai’s tourist promotion chief was as upbeat as ever about the prospects of attracting millions more visitors—and potential residents—to a city that has emerged from being a stable travel and investment hub in a turbulent region to become an increasing destination for travelers in its own right. “We know that some markets will be impacted by the news that travels to them and the headlines that they might see if they’re not very familiar with the region,” Issam Abdulrahim Kazim, CEO of Dubai Corporation for Tourism and Commerce Marketing, told Newsweek. “So what we do is we’re constantly looking at the globe.” “At any…

IT’S SOMETIMES HARD TO BELIEVE THAT the turn of the millennium was a quarter of a century ago. In many ways, life felt vastly different back then—the internet was still in its relative infancy, phones were used to make calls, and X was just a letter in the alphabet. It was an age before smartphones and social media, the war on terror hadn’t begun, and global economies were yet to be impacted by the financial crash. Those days feel worlds away and yet Y2K has made a resounding comeback among younger generations. Whether it’s fashion, movies, TV or music, many people from Generation Z (those born between 1997 and 2012) are returning to that era and making it au courant once again. New installments of films like Happy Gilmore, Jurassic…

KISS BASSIST GENE SIMMONS IS A MAN OF MANY TALENTS...AND OPINIONS. “I can’t wait for the hate mail. Really, pardon my French, I don’t give a f***,” he tells Newsweek. And that’s all part of the persona he’s created through business ventures, films, TV, books and, of course, music. An immigrant to the U.S., he modeled his off-stage persona after TV newscasters—“the best dressed, the most respected people. I wanted to be that. I didn’t want to talk or come off like the person next door. I dress like your boss.” About work, he says, “almost everybody goes to work for one thing: to make money. The idea that you have to love your job is lunacy.” And that take-it-or-leave-it attitude extends to his family. “First and foremost is to…