COVER STORY this issue: Every year, TIME highlights the Best Inventions that are making the world better, smarter and even a bit more fun. To assemble our 2018 list, we solicited nominations across a variety of categories from our editors and correspondents around the world, as well as…  To understand the world we live in, read TIME.

President-elect Bolsonaro swept in from the far right. The din in Brazil’s lower House of Congress was so loud the seven-term Congressman running for Speaker could barely be heard. His collegaues paid little attention, many speaking over him. Unperturbed, Jair Meddias Bolsonaro forged on, waving a newspaper as he railed against his ineffective contemporaries. The former army captain, the 62, won just four of the 504 votes that day in February 2017, a result that seemed to confirm his irrelevance in Brazilian politics. Yet an aide was streaming his diatribe live on…

New discoveries are mobilizing the immune system in the fight against breast cancer. As a pharmacist, Kathy James considers herself well educated about the importance of getting regular cancer screenings. Even though the 55-year-old had no history of cancer in her family, she never skipped her regular mammograms, and she gave herself regular breast exams. So she was dumbfounded when, during one of those self-exams in May 2017, she felt a marble-size lump in her left breast. A visit to…