Table of contents for April 18, 2025 in Newsweek

EVERYONE WANTS TO LIVE A LONG, happy and productive life. If you’re working class in America, that’s tough to do. In February, I asked Americans to share their stories about how financial stress is affecting their lives. The response was overwhelming, heartbreaking and infuriating. Working people are dying years before they should. Stress kills. Put simply: being poor or working class in America is a death sentence. Patrick from Missouri wrote: “Living paycheck to paycheck while supporting a family stresses me out. We are always just one financial emergency from being homeless.” Taryn from Alabama shared that she pays $400 for her children’s asthma medication. On top of struggling to pay for groceries and basic utilities, she worries about astronomical medical bills every time her daughters go to the hospital.…

CAREY MULLIGAN KNEW SHE WANTED TO BE PART of The Ballad of Wallis Island from the moment she read the script. “I just loved it and thought it was so moving, funny, beautiful—it made me cry,” she told Newsweek. “It’s really rare to read unbelievable writing, and I don’t know if there’s many films that really do that. So I wanted to be part of this group putting something lovely into the world that’s just gorgeous.” Written by Tom Basden and Tim Key, The Ballad of Wallis Island expands on their 2007 short film The One and Only Herb McGwyer Plays Wallis Island. It centers on folk musician turned pop artist Herb McGwyer (Basden), who is booked to perform on a remote island only to find that the millionaire (Key)…

Dozens of colorful balloons, constructed mostly from recycled paper and bearing traditional batik designs, float above Kembaran Field during the annual hot-air balloon festival in the town of Wonosobo on April 2. The 75-year-old festival celebrates Eid al-Fitr, the Islamic holiday that marks the end of Ramadan. Participants heeded a maximum flying height of 60 meters (197 feet) to limit interference with commercial flights, securing their homemade balloons to the ground with ropes.…

FOR MOST OF THE YEAR, SOUTH Africa’s SANAE IV research station is one of the most isolated places on Earth: cut off from the rest of the world in the Antarctic for up to 10 months at a time and battered by some of the planet’s harshest weather. Life at the base is tough—and, at times, terrifying. In late February, crew members sent a desperate SOS message from the station, which sits on a cliff edge 105 miles inland from the ice shelf. They alleged that one of the nine-member team had assaulted and sexually harassed colleagues, made death threats and left them fearing for their lives. But help is far away. The base lies some 2,500 miles south of Cape Town and a treacherous emergency medical evacuation to the…

WITH FEWER PEOPLE CHOOSING THE TRADITIONAL route of tying the knot and starting a family, it’s no secret that the number of marriages and births is declining around the world. As a result, the fertility rate in the U.S. alone is at a historic low of 1.7 births per woman—lower than the 2.1 births needed to maintain a stable population. Many countries are trying to tackle this by incentivizing couples to have children, but it seems the problem runs deeper—there’s been a dramatic uptick in people refraining from relationships altogether and choosing to remain single instead. In 2023, the number of single-person households in the U.S. peaked at 38.1 million, a record high at the time. Additionally, data from Pew Research Center revealed that 42 percent of adults were unpartnered…

ON OCTOBER 6, 2023, AN ISSUE OF NEWSWEEK magazine hit newsstands proclaiming, “The Palestinian Dream Is Dying—and It’s a Nightmare for Israel.” The following day would be the deadliest in Israel’s history, sparking a war in which more Palestinians are estimated to have been killed than in all previous conflicts combined. But the dream of an independent Palestine had begun to fade long before then. Israel’s territorial expansion, the decline of the Palestinian National Authority, or PA, and the growing influence of Hamas have eroded the feasibility of a two-state resolution, creating an untenable status quo that shattered with the Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023. Now, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government considering territorial annexation and mass expulsions while two rival Palestinian governments teeter on the verge of…

THE FIRST FEW MONTHS OF DONALD Trump’s second presidency and changes in the federal and cultural landscape have had a dramatic effect on corporate diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, but for many companies those policies appear to remain an integral part of a sound talent strategy. A recent survey of corporate leaders, including general counsel, HR and diversity officers, by employment law firm Littler found that 49 percent of C-suite leaders were not considering new or further rollbacks of DEI programs, despite the Trump administration’s moves to end such initiatives. Littler found that only 8 percent are seriously considering changes, and in 2024 three-quarters of the businesses surveyed maintained (46 percent) or increased (30 percent) DEI commitments and activity. Of the leaders continuing their efforts, around three-quarters said that employee…