Merkel Becomes Fourth Woman Since 1927 to be Named Person of the Year

The year that TIME first chose a woman to fill the Man of the Year slot, the woman in question was so controversial that the legendary feminist Carrie Chapman Catt stopped issuing her own annual “Women of the Year” list in order to avoid having to include her. That anecdote was all the more reason for TIME’s editors to give the title for 1936 to the woman in question: Wallis Warfield Simpson, the divorcée for whom King Edward VIII had given up the British throne.

Queen Elizabeth II was the next individual woman to be given the title, and the third came precisely a half-century after the first, when Corazon Aquino, President of the Philippines, was named Woman of the Year for 1986. Today, a fourth woman, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, joins that elite club. (Over the years, a number of other women have been given the title as part of a group.)

In some ways, Aquino (who died in 2009) and Merkel could not be more different. Merkel trained as a physical chemist before making a slow and steady rise through the political ranks, relying on her stolid reputation to see her through a decade in the Chancellor’s office. Aquino, who was married to a Senator and critic of Ferdinand Marcos, put “housewife” as her occupation on the forms she needed to complete to file her candidacy for president. She had no political experience before her victory.

The pair do share one very particular element of leadership. Aquino was known as the “Mother of the Nation” during her rise to power. Merkel, meanwhile, has taken on a very similar moniker. “The Chancellor has acquired several nicknames: ‘Merkiavelli’ and ‘the Black Widow,’ for her ability to sidle up unnoticed before delivering a deadly bite,” TIME noted when she was running for a third term in 2013. “To her supporters, she’s Angie. But everyone in Germany knows her as ‘Mutti,’ mommy.”

Even as Aquino ruled her nation, she was seen through her roles as wife and mother. She was the widow of a popular politician, and would later be the mother of a president, but she did not appear to crave power of her own.

In Merkel’s case, however, there is little retro or stereotypically maternal about her Mutti-ness—and not just because she has no children of her own, and a husband who stays away from the political press. There’s a certain tongue-in-cheek quality to the nickname, but it’s not mocking. After all, her own party has used it to her advantage. Her influence is due to her actions and not her sex. Merkel has managed to isolate the most powerful elements of the maternal—protection, reliability, care, attention, knowledge—and leave behind worn stereotypes of old.

Emanuel apologizes for Chicago police problems, promises reform

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel apologized for the 2014 shooting of a black teenager Wednesday during a special City Council meeting that he called to discuss a police abuse scandal at the center of the biggest crisis of his administration, and promised “complete and total” reform to restore trust in the police.

But his emotional speech didn't stop hundreds of people from taking part in a midday protest downtown, chanting "16 shots and a cover-up" in reference to the release of a video showing white Officer Jason Van Dyke shooting 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, who appeared in the video to be walking away when struck. Van Dyke is charged with first-degree murder.

In an emotional speech with his voice occasionally breaking, Emanuel addressed three main themes — justice, culture and community — and criticized the police department for being quick to shoot. He also said that the department's “supervision and leadership,” as well as the oversight agencies “failed.”

“I take responsibility for what happened because it happened on my watch. And if we're going to fix it I want you to understand it's my responsibility with you,” Emanuel said.

"But if we're also going to begin the healing process, the first step in that journey is my step … and I'm sorry," he said, promising “complete and total reform.”'

The midday protest on Wednesday was one of at least four different groups that had planned to converge downtown. At noon, protesters overflowed an intersection in front of City Hall, then marched through the financial district and blocked a major intersection for a short time. Officers guarded the doors to the Chicago Board of Trade as demonstrators approached.

Before protesters weaved through downtown, retired schoolteacher Audrey Davis held a sign that read, "Mayor Emanuel is morally corrupt!"

Calling his speech "politically expedient," the 74-year-old said, "I don't want to hear anything from him except, 'I tender my resignation.'"

Davis, who is black, said she fears for her 25-year-old grandson when he comes home from college. "Each time he comes home, my heart is in my throat in case he meets up with a racist cop," Davis said. "We shouldn't have to live like this."

The McDonald video footage — ordered to be released by a judge last month and made public hours after Van Dyke was charged — set off a chain of events that captured the attention of the country. Days of protests and marches followed, including one on the busiest shopping day of the year that partially shut down the city's most famous shopping district, Michigan Avenue.

A few days later, Emanuel announced that he had demanded and received the resignation of Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, created a new task force for police accountability and expanded the use of body cameras.

But the anger did not subside, and every day there seemed to be another issue, including the release of hundreds of pages of documents that show police had described in their reports a far more threatening McDonald than the teen shown to the city and the world on video.

The situation became so volatile that Emanuel was forced to do something he rarely does: backtrack. After initially saying that a federal probe of the department would be "misguided" because the U.S. Attorney's office was already examining the McDonald shooting, Emanuel later said he welcomed such an investigation.

On Monday, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced a Justice Department civil rights investigation to determine if there are patterns of racial disparity in the police department's use of force.

Emanuel then said the city would stop fighting the release of a second video that showed a police officer shooting a man in the back. That video was released Monday during a presentation in which Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez said she would not charge the officer.

Later that night, the city released yet another video showing an inmate being dragged out of his cell by his handcuffed wrists. While a police review board previously found the officers' actions justified, Emanuel said he did not see how the treatment of the man — who later died following a reaction to an antipsychotics drug — could “possibly be acceptable” and said he did not consider the investigation closed. 

Sydney police arrest teenager and man over 'terror plans'

They have been charged with "conspiracy to conduct an act in preparation for a terrorist act", Federal Police said.

The arrests are linked to a plot outlined in material seized last year as part of Operation Appleby.

That operation, in September 2014, was sparked by intelligence reports that Islamist extremists were planning random killings in Australia.

Then-Prime Minister Tony Abbott said at the time a senior Australian Islamic State militant had called for "demonstration killings", reportedly including a public beheading.

At least 800 heavily armed officers arrested 16 people as part of Operation Appleby in September 2014, in what was Australia's biggest ever anti-terror operation.

Police said the arrests on Thursday were not linked to a new plot, but to documents seized during those raids that talked about a plan to target government and police buildings.

Three other people already in jail for other offences will also face new charges, they said. 

"As a result of putting all of that information together, working through those documents, putting physical and electronic surveillance together, we were able to build a case of conspiracy for five people involved in the preparation of these documents," said Deputy Commissioner of National Security Michael Phelan.

New South Wales Police said the teenager who was arrested had clearly been radicalised.

"It is disturbing that we continue to deal with teenaged children in this environment," said Deputy Commissioner Catherine Burn.

"To be putting a 15-year-old before the courts on very serious charges that carry a maximum penalty of life imprisonment demonstrates the difficulties law enforcement face."

Police said a total of 11 people had now been charged under Operation Appleby.

Things That Determine How Long You’ll Live

Researchers have developed a new lifestyle score that determines your risk for death, based on your bad habits.

A bit morbid perhaps, but lifestyle behaviors are responsible for a wide-range of preventable diseases from cancer to heart disease. Now, Australian researchers argue growing evidence suggests some other previously unconsidered risk factors like sitting for a long periods of time should be included when estimating a person’s mortality risk. By pulling six risk factors together into one index, the researchers argue they provide clinically relevant information about a person’s health, and what combination of red flags are especially concerning.

In the new study published in the journal PLOS Medicine,researchers looked a group of 231,048 Australian adults age 45 and up who were followed for six years.

The researchers then scored the participants on six behavior measures: smoking, alcohol use, dietary behavior, physical inactivity, sedentary behavior, and sleep. 

When added together, they found that the people who had higher scores in these combined measures had a higher risk of death.

The researchers used the measurement “person-years lost,” which is the number of years lost due to a person in the study dying before the study ended. Based on their findings, the researchers calculated that if none of the men and women had any of the risk factors, a third of the person-years lost from death would have been avoided.

Interestingly, short sleep duration had less of an effect on mortality risk than sleeping for a long time. Why that’s the case remains unknown, but the study authors write that it’s possible that long sleep duration indicates underlying disease, fatigue or depression. On its own, sitting for a long time had a small effect on all-cause mortality, but the researchers found that the combination of long bouts of sitting and a lack of exercise had a stronger effect. “This might indicate that prolonged sitting tends to be particularly harmful among those who are physically inactive,” the authors write.

“To me, both [sedentary behavior and sleep] are very important,” says study author Ding Ding, a senior research fellow at The University of Sydney. “Both are closely linked to our overall lifestyle, are likely to interact with other lifestyle behaviors, and together they represent the majority of our daily life.”

The good news is that by understanding how these different behaviors impact our ability to have a long life, we can make modifications for better health.

Turkish-Russian war of words

Turkey’s downing of a Russian jet last month near the Turkish-Syrian border has led to a widening war of words between the erstwhile friendly countries, and added yet another dangerous wrinkle to the unresolved Syrian civil war. While the incident was the ostensible tipping point for the sudden downturn in Ankara-Moscow relations, the bond had already reached a breaking point over the divergent courses pursued in a Syrian conflict that has so-far stymied diplomatic solutions.

In his annual State of the Nation speech on Dec. 3, Russian President Vladimir Putin said he still could not understand why Turkey had shot down the Russian Su-24 bomber, killing two servicemen aboard.

“We could have solved all questions, issues, contradictions … in a wholly different way,” Putin said. “Moreover, we were willing to cooperate with Turkey on the most sensitive issues and were ready to accommodate it more than its own allies would. Only Allah knows why they did it. And Allah apparently wanted to punish Turkey’s ruling claque by taking away its reason and consciousness.”

But Putin’s strident language aside, what he called Turkey’s “stab in the back” was no accident.

The relationship between him and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had already grown dangerously strained. Erdogan was said to have complained that Putin did not given him enough time during a short visit to Moscow last September, and left him in the dark about Russia’s imminent airstrikes in Syria. Most important, however, is that Russia’s military intervention in Syria undercut Ankara’s policies and threatened its interests in a region that Erdogan and his associates regard as Turkey’s “near abroad.” The rest is mere icing on the cake.

With its campaign of airstrikes launched in September, Russia bolstered Syrian President’s Bashar al-Assad’s military in the face of a possible defeat, which Erdogan was looking forward to but which, in Putin’s view, would have likely handed Damascus to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant(ISIL). The appearance of Russian warplanes over Syria also immediately dashed hopes in Ankara of a no-fly zone, which Turkey believes would have neutralized Assad’s air power. By backing Syrian Kurds, who demand territorial autonomy along the Turkish border, Moscow also nixed Ankara's plans of a buffer zone. Finally, just before the shoot-down last month, Russia’s bombing of oil caravans headed from Syria to Turkey cut lucrative cross-border trade, which Moscow claimed benefited ISIL, despite Ankara’s vociferous denials.

Russia did not respond to the downing of its plane and the death of its two servicemen with a military strike against Turkey. However, its reaction has been severe. Essentially, Putin has written off Erdogan as a partner, after a generally productive relationship with him over the past decade. To Putin, Erdogan has committed an act of treachery, a capital crime in the Russian president’s book. Given Putin’s role in Russia and Erdogan’s position in Turkey, this means a political rupture between the two countries, which is unlikely to heal as long as the two leaders are in power.

Russia’s material response has come in the form of sanctions, which undermine a thriving commercial relationship. Some trade will survive, but Turkey has likely ceased to be a favorite holiday destination for Russian tourists — numbering 3 million a year, bringing in some $5 billion in revenue. Though Russia will not turn off its Blue Stream gas pipeline, upon which Turkey is reliant, the fallout has delivered a coup de grace to Gazprom’s controversial Turkish Stream project designed to bring gas through to Southern Europe. Rosatom’s nuclear power plant project in Turkey is also now in doubt.

The intangible losses to the Russian-Turkish relationship include a radical shift in Russian public opinion vis-à-vis Ankara. Since the early 1990s, Turkey has developed a largely positive image among Russians as a hospitable and friendly country. Past conflicts, including a dozen wars, were more vividly remembered by the Turks, many of whom remained suspicious of the northern neighbor, than by the Russians, who were now ready to embrace them. This has changed, with some of the dusted-off images of the Ottomans revived in the Russian public mind.

Thus, the Russo-Turkish conflict is for the long haul. It has not killed a fragile Vienna process on Syria, but nonetheless has complicated the resurgent diplomatic push to end the Syrian conflict nearly five years after it started. With Russian planes operating in Syria close to the Turkish border, and the Russian S-400 air defense system deployed in Latakia, the danger of new incidents and new casualties, laden with even more serious consequences, remains high. Moscow has already hinted that it would regard the closure of the Turkish Straits by Ankara as an act of war.

A range of issues — including disputes over the claims of ethnic minorities and festering political conflicts in the other’s backyard — are now increasingly finding their way back onto the Russian-Turkish agenda. Russia’s informal but close alignment with Iran, Iraq, and Syria raises obstacles for Turkey’s regional ambitions. From fruit exports to budget tourism, Egypt is seeking to replace Turkey as Russia’s privileged partner. For its part, Turkey enjoys a close relationship with Azerbaijan, has ties with Turkic-speaking states of Central Asia, and can make common cause with Russia’s arch-enemy Ukraine.

The vast common neighborhood of the two former empires, which even a year ago looked a promising area for their interest-based cooperation, is turning into an area of contention. And as Syria’s conflict remains unresolved, the gulf between the two countries seems only to be widening.

Harrison Ford Strikes Back at Donald Trump

Harrison Ford is striking back at Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who the "Star Wars" actor accused of not being able to tell fact from fiction. 

Trump recently told the New York Timeslast week that he enjoyed movies with heroic presidents — specifically 1997's "Air Force One," in which Ford plays a commander in chief who fights off a group of Russian terrorists who hijack the presidential plane.

"My favorite was Harrison Ford on the plane," Trump said. "He stood up for America." Ford addressed Trump's comment Wednesday during an Australia press tour for "Star Wars: The Force Awakens."

"It's a movie, Donald, it was a movie," Ford growled into the camera. "It's not like this in real life, but how would you know."

Netanyahu responds to Trump, says Israel 'respects all religions'

e minister on Wednesday rejected Donald Trump's recent statements about Muslims, saying Israel "respects all religions" as he faced calls to call off an upcoming visit by the Republican front-runner.

Benjamin Netanyahu issued his statement late Wednesday, hours after it was announced that Trump will be visiting Israel at the end of the month.

"The state of Israel respects all religions and strictly guarantees the rights of all its citizens," the statement said. "At the same time, Israel is fighting against militant Islam that targets Muslims, Christians and Jews alike and threatens the entire world."

Netanyahu said the meeting with Trump, set for Dec. 28, was scheduled two weeks ago. He said he meets all presidential candidates who visit the country, and the meeting does not represent an endorsement of Trump.

Trump sparked widespread outrage this week after he proposed temporarily banning all Muslims from entering the United States in the wake of a mass shooting by a husband-and-wife pair of Islamic militants that killed 14 people in San Bernardino, California.

Members of Israel's opposition condemned the visit.

Israel Radio reported that Arab parliamentarian Issawi Frej of the dovish Meretz party has asked the interior minister not to let Trump in the country.

"Imagine that a country or a candidate would say entrance to Jews is forbidden, the whole world would stand up in protest, saying this is a racist anti-Semite. A racist like this has no place here among us," Frej told the station.

Earlier Wednesday, nearly 40 lawmakers, or one-third of the Israeli parliament, signed a petition urging Netanyahu to condemn Trump's "racist" comments and asking him for him to cancel the meeting unless Trump retracts them.

Nearly one-fifth of Israel's population is Muslim.