COVER STORY this issue: When the wind blows, Krystal Bullen’s home can vanish in an instant. It sits on 4,000 acres of  dust outside Pilligia, a New South Wales town nearly 300 miles northwest of Sydney, and a good gust will engulf her homestead in a brown haze. “I’ve kind of given up on cleaning,” says Bullen,36, laughing at the dust that coated her windows when TIME visited in December. Among the more pressing matters: a debt of nearly half a million dollars, an injured husband and a farm to manage alone…To understand the world we live in, read TIME.

A nation searches for a way out of catastrophe. Two men claim to be the President of Venezuela, which has the largest oil reserves on the planet and so little food that in a single year the average citizen lost 24 lb. One, Nicolás Maduro, secured a second term in a 2018 election widely regarded as a sham. The other, Juan Guaidó, took an oath of office on Jan. 23, in a maneuver that was equal parts…

When Tom Shicowich’s Toe started feeling numb, in 2010, he brushed it off as a temporary ache. At the time, he didn’t have health insurance, so he put off going to the doctor. The toe became infected, and he got so sick that he stayed in bed for two days with what he assumed was the flu. When he finally saw a doctor, the physician immediately sent Shicowich to the emergency room.  Several days later, surgeons amputated his toe, and…