COVER STORY This issue: Into the Breach. How Ursula von der Leyen is leading the E.U. through yet another crisis. This winter, as the E.U.’s Top Official worked around the clock in Brussels, she hoped for something unusual: that it would all be for nothing. It had been just over two years since Ursula von der Leyen became President of the European Commission, and with Russian troops massed along Ukraine’s borders, her job was to coordinate with E.U. member states on potential sanctions against Russia. “We were working day and night,” she says “but we hoped we’d never, ever use it.”…To understand the world we live in, read TIME.
As global leaders gather in person for the first time in more than two years at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, solutions to crises are percolating: Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger extols partnerships for prosperity, Sadhguru bids attention to distress signals from the earth beneath our feet, and Rachel Kyte has a warning on cooling a warming world. We are standing at the precipice of the digital age. The lightning-fast pace of the tech evolution we are experiencing today will seem slow in the not-so-distant future as technology continues to change how we interact. Semiconductors are the brains accelerating this digital revolution. These tiny chips power education, business, health care, and more…
Bitcoin took a brutal fall in May, with the value of each unit dipping below $30,000 for the first time since July 2021. The world’s largest cryptocurrency is now worth less than half of what it was last autumn. Other cryptocurrencies, like Ether and BNB, have seen similar falls. Some experts are now warning of a “crypto winter,” in which the sector’s astonishing growth is replaced by an extended period of contraction. The current crypto slide is being caused by a combination of short-term and long-term inputs. To start off, Bitcoin rises and falls with the rest of the financial market. While crypto evangelists have long hoped that its independent nature would make it resistant to inflation and crises, the past few years have proved this false…
