Innholdsfortegnelse for December 20, 2024 i Newsweek

VLADIMIR PUTIN’S STINT IN the KGB before becoming president ensured he knew the value of keeping a low profile. Yet as the war he started against Ukraine pits him against the West, he seems happy for agents to come out of the shadows. On August 1, the Russian leader held flowers on the tarmac at Moscow’s Vnukovo International Airport as he welcomed Artem Dultsev and Anna Dultseva, who had posed as an Argentine couple in Slovenia. They were convicted of spying and were part of a multi-country prisoner swap which included U.S. marine Paul Whelan, journalist Evan Gershkovich and Russian assassin Vadim Krasikov. The fact that Putin had bouquets rather than rebukes for the Russian agents showed that even with their cover blown, those used to working under the radar…

Syrian Kurds fleeing Aleppo arrive on the western outskirts of raqqa, Syria, on December 2. The refugees evacuated the ancient city when rebels, led by the Islamist militia Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a U.S.- and U.N.-designated terror group, took control of the city from bashar al-Assad's government. Some analysts have attributed the success and timing of the rebel offensive to distractions by Iran and russia, Assad’s strongest supporters. Since the civil war began in 2011, civilians have paid a heavy price; an estimated 500,000 people have been killed and some 6.8 million have left the country, according to the Associated Press. ▸ DELIL SOULEIMAN/AFP…

IN APRIL, GOOGLE CEO SUNDAR PICHAI CONCLUDED a company blog post with a section titled “Mission First” and called on Google employees, a population of around 180,000 spread across the globe, to “work, collaborate, discuss, and even disagree.” At the time, around 30 employees had just been fired for protesting the tech giant’s contracts with Israel and its military. “This is a business, and not a place to act in a way that disrupts coworkers or makes them feel unsafe,” Pichai wrote in the post. “When we come to work, our goal is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. That supersedes everything else, and I expect us to act with a focus that reflects that.” A few days later, CNN reported that the count…

JUDE LAW HAS CEMENTED HIM-self as a versatile character actor in his latest film, The Order, which saw him immerse himself so much in his role that he hunted co-star Nicholas Hoult off-camera. The true-crime drama, which premiered to a nearly 10-minute standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival, is based on the book The Silent Brotherhood by Kevin Flynn and Gary Gerhardt. It chronicles the chilling story of a neo-Nazi militia’s rise in early 1980s America and the FBI’s desperate efforts to stop them. Law plays Terry Husk, a damaged FBI agent doggedly investigating a string of violent bank robberies and armored car heists in the Pacific Northwest. Convinced that these crimes are the work of domestic terrorists funding a violent uprising, Husk and his team plunge into the…

AS THE MIDDLE EAST PREPARES FOR THE RETURN of Donald Trump to the White House, Saudi Arabia is looking to strike a deal with Washington reflective of its ascending geopolitical status and the vast changes in the region over the past four years. Trump’s election win in November came as Washington and Riyadh remained locked in negotiations toward a grand deal that would include U.S. security assurances for Saudi Arabia and closer cooperation in various fields, such as nuclear development. At the same time, President Joe Biden’s administration has also sought to establish diplomatic ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia in the vein of the Abraham Accords—a series of agreements that Trump oversaw with four Arab nations in 2020. If the president-elect seeks to expand his own legacy of normalizing…

IN THE FACE OF ISSUES LIKE CLIMATE CHANGE and wage inequality, consumers care about the impact of the businesses they interact with and companies are responding. Today, most global companies disclose some Environmental, Social and Governance information—in fact, more than 90 percent of S&P 500 companies published ESG reports in 2022, according to McKinsey. ¶ With this, Newsweek and Statista are once again partnering to recognize America’s Most Responsible Companies 2025. In its sixth year, this list acknowledges 600 U.S.-based companies for their commitment to making a positive global impact. ¶ Selected from the 2,000 largest publicly traded companies headquartered in the U.S., each winner received scores based on the three pillars of ESG—environmental, social and corporate governance concerns. These three scores were combined to assess the company’s overall corporate…