The Conversation

The Dune films remind us of just how beautiful, mysterious, expansive and changeable sand dunes can be. For centuries these wonderful landforms have filled humans with awe – and in some cases fear and foreboding – because of the apparent remoteness and risks associated with the deserts they are synonymous with.

The most important guest voice on Beyoncé’s’s album is the one least likely to be familiar to Beyoncé’s listeners: Linda Martell, the first commercially successful Black female country music artist. Two tracks on “Cowboy Carter,” “Spaghettii” and “The Linda Martell Show,” include spoken word commentary from Martell. By giving Martell a platform, Beyoncé simultaneously gives credit to her predecessor while staking her own place in the country music tradition.

Trump lashes out when politicians and journalists bring us closer to truth. Stewart criticizes them for keeping us in the dark. To Stewart, the solutions to America’s political spectacle are political accountability and increased transparency. To Trump, the solution is far simpler: He alone can fix it.

A Home Depot store violated labor law when it disciplined Antonio Morales, the National Labor Relations Board ruled. Morales, a Home Depot employee in the Minneapolis area, had drawn the letters BLM on a work apron and refused to remove them. The Home Depot decision establishes an important precedent for workers who express broad concerns about systemic racism.

Finland steadily ranks as the happiest country in the world. In March 2024 the country was, for the seventh year in a row, ranked as the happiness champion. The ranking is based on one simple question, using a ladder metaphor, that is asked to people across nearly every country in the world. But it may not be an objective question.

Students in rural America still lack access to high-speed internet at home despite governmental efforts during the pandemic to fill the void. This lack of access negatively affects their academic achievement and overall well-being. The situation has been getting worse as the urgency of the pandemic has receded.

Amazon, SpaceX, Starbucks and Trader Joe’s have all responded to allegations that they have violated labor laws with the same bold argument. The National Labor Relations Board, they assert in several ongoing legal proceedings, is unconstitutional.

A Trump victory would raise fears of a new level of decline into fascist authoritarianism. However, a second Trump presidency would not necessarily implement a foreign policy any more destructive than what is normal for the U.S., as it has been under Biden.

This attack was not, as Biden pointed out in his remarks on April 2, a “stand-alone incident.” More than 180 other aid workers have been killed since the start of the Israeli invasion in October 2023, according to the United Nations. Most of them were Palestinians working with the United Nations.

People who work in the federal government care deeply about their work, aiding the public and pursuing the stability and integrity of government. Most of them are devoted civil servants. Across hundreds of interviews and surveys of people who have made their careers in government, what stands out most is their commitment to civic duty without regard to partisan politics.

Undersea cables, also known as submarine communications cables, are fiber-optic cables laid on the ocean floor and used to transmit data between continents. These cables are the backbone of the global internet, carrying the bulk of international communications, including email, webpages and video calls. More than 95% of all the data that moves around the world goes through these undersea cables.

Immigration is the main driver of population growth in the U.S., which is important for filling jobs and boosting tax revenues. After dipping because of pandemic-era restrictions in 2020-22, immigration to the U.S. started growing again, adding 1.1 million new residents in 2023.

The intentional destruction of homes is referred to as “domicide” by scholars and the UN, and can constitute genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. It has been used in armed conflicts in Ukraine, Syria, Myanmar and now in Gaza, where Israel has destroyed more than 60 per cent of homes. The bombings of Gazan homes have also killed tens of thousands of Palestinians.

March 30 marks the first anniversary of the release of the Mass Casualty Commission’s final report into the April 2020 mass shooting in Nova Scotia that left 22 people dead. It was the most thorough study of a mass shooting in Canadian history. The non-partisan commission’s 130 recommendations included several focused on gun laws and needed gun control, several of which were implemented.

Attempts to define what a ceasefire is and what it entails will ultimately reveal a “lack of fit” with international law. This is because they are notoriously difficult to negotiate and enforce. This “lack of fit” has perhaps been most obvious in the UN Security Council’s deliberations over a ceasefire in Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.

The collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge on March 26, 2024, has put a spotlight on the Port of Baltimore, one of the busiest harbors in the U.S., which paused shipping and immediately halted all vessel traffic in and out. The overall economic toll will be high as billions of dollars of goods are rerouted amid the prospect of supply chains being snarled for months. It will also mean a loss of tax revenue for the city and state.

Who has the legal right to challenge decisions by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration? And should the moral umbrage of a group of anti-abortion rights doctors shift policy across the country, limiting women’s ability to get the widely used abortion drug mifepristone? These are a few of the central questions that the Supreme Court fielded on March 26 during the oral arguments in FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine.

Based on our analysis, we think it may be better that young people engage with Holocaust sites in their own way, rather than not engaging at all. We also suggest that some commenters may be just as guilty as the selfie-takers, using their comments to show themselves in a positive light. Paradoxically, this is precisely what they are shaming the selfie-takers for doing: centering themselves, using the Holocaust as a prop.

When Nixon told British journalist David Frost in 1977 that “when the president does it … that means that it is not illegal,” Nixon hastened to add a crucial caveat that he was talking about war powers and national security, and specifically emphasized that he did not “mean to suggest the president is above the law.” Trump says he is.

The most charitable interpretation of Kate Middleton’s doctoring of a family image is that she was trying to remove distracting or unflattering elements. But the artefacts could also point to multiple images being blended together. This could either be to try to show the best version of each person (for example, with a smiling face and open eyes), or for another purpose.

How had religions supposedly dedicated to propagating the word of a compassionate and loving God become so intricately involved in slavery’s “appalling evil”? The answer is rooted in a grotesque misuse of the very words of the Bible. Of the many ways that Christians have invoked the Bible to justify their actions, none has exceeded in cruelty and willful ignorance their appropriation of the “Curse of Ham” to justify slavery.

In many cases those attempting to make the crossing are small-business owners who saw irreparable damage to their primary or sole source of income due to China’s “zero COVID” policies. The migrants are women, men and, in some cases, children accompanying parents from all over China. The dramatic uptick is the result of a confluence of factors that range from a slowing Chinese economy and tightening political control by President Xi Jinping.

Research confirms that individuals who supported Trump display much higher levels of sexism than those who favored Haley. In her challenge to Trump for the Republican presidential nomination, Haley, like female candidates across the partisan divide, contended with the familiar foe of sexism in the electorate.

School violence and disruptions are serious problems that can harm students. Unfortunately, schools and educators have increasingly viewed student misbehavior as a problem to be dealt with through suspensions and policing. While a National Guard presence may address misbehavior temporarily, their presence could similarly result in students experiencing punitive or exclusionary responses to behavior.

The Festival of St. Patrick began in the 17th century as a religious and cultural commemoration of the bishop who brought Christianity to Ireland. In Ireland, there’s still an important religious and cultural component to the holiday, even as it has simply become an excuse to wear green and heavily drink in the rest of the world.

When people talk about the “Anthropocene,” they typically picture the vast impact human societies are having on the planet, from rapid declines in biodiversity to increases in Earth’s temperature by burning fossil fuels. Such massive planetary changes did not begin all at once at any single place or time.

The recent Odysseus landing stands out for two reasons. For starters, this is the first time a US-built spacecraft has landed – not crashed – on the Moon for over 50 years. Secondly, and far more significantly, this is the first time a private company has pulled off a successful delivery of cargo to the Moon’s surface.

Ramadan – the Islamic month of fasting – began at sunset on March 10 and the first day of fasting was Monday. Amaarah DeCuir, who researches Muslim student experiences, offers insights into how public schools can move toward greater recognition of the sacred Islamic month.

“Oppenheimer”‘s narrative has long informed how Hollywood and the U.S. media have addressed nuclear weapons. It paints the bombs’ creation as a morally fraught but necessary project. There is something that strikes me as so inward-looking to this narrative – it is so focused on the stress over losing an arms race, on fears of making a mistake, on anxiety over what would happen if bombs were to one day be dropped on the U.S. – that it drowns out what actually did happen after the bombs were detonated.

Whether God exists or not is one of the most important philosophical questions there is. And the tradition of trying to establish God’s existence involving evidence is a long one, with a golden age during the 17th and 18th centuries – the early modern period.

When candidates are from the same party, voters cannot rely on their partisanship to make a choice. Instead, they must sift through candidates within one party and learn about them. Since media have more leeway to focus on some people over others in this context, they help choose which candidates voters hear about in the first place.

A September 2023 Monmouth University poll showed no more than 40% of Americans said they were “enthusiastic” for either Biden or Trump to run again. That same month, the Pew Research Center found that 65% of Americans were exhausted with the current state of American politics. In February 2024, The New York Times said Democrats in particular were burned out by the seemingly endless avalanche of political crises.

The response of the Ford Motor Company as workers marched for better pay and skull-cracking cops went after them shot holes in the myth that Ford cared about his workers. More than 30,000 people showed up for the dead marchers’ funerals. The violent reactions of Ford security and Dearborn police during the march were widely condemned.

Self-immolation, the act of setting oneself on fire, can be seen as an extreme form of a modern repertoire of protest that is both common and familiar, not just in the U.S. but in many parts of the globe. While such acts may generate attention, this kind of agency is often costly, requiring the protesters involved to make considerable personal investments of time, money, comfort, privacy, dignity and even life. Yet, despite the costs, the outcomes of spectacular agency are frequently uncertain.

Teaming up with Canadian rapper Tom MacDonald, Shapiro released “Facts” in January 2024. Given today’s bitter partisan divide and extremist culture wars, it comes as no surprise that Shapiro’s track quickly found a devoted following. But his racist, anti-rap rap lyrics ultimately repeat the same tired charges right-wing politicians have used against hip-hop since its birth over 50 years ago.

Those who had mild and resolved Covid showed cognitive decline equivalent to a three-point loss of IQ. In comparison, those with unresolved persistent symptoms, such as people with persistent shortness of breath or fatigue, had a six-point loss in IQ. Those who had been admitted to the intensive care unit for Covid had a nine-point loss in IQ. Reinfection with the virus contributed an additional two-point loss in IQ, as compared with no reinfection.

The United States is on track to have one of the worst measles years since 2019, when Americans experienced the largest measles outbreak in 30 years. As of mid-February 2024, at least 15 states have reported measles cases and multiple ongoing, uncontained outbreaks. While this measles crisis unfolds, U.S. measles vaccination rates are at the lowest levels in 10 years. Prominent figures like the Florida surgeon general are responding to local outbreaks in ways that run counter to science and public health recommendations.

Historically, Latinx Christian leaders have been at the forefront of immigrant rights in the U.S.. For example, Mexican-American Catholic leaders of the Jim Crow era such as Alonso Perales and Cleofas Calleros applied Catholic social teaching, such as the inherent equality of all human beings, to civil rights struggles.

Employees are generally unhappy at work. The number of those who feel angry and disconnected with their organization’s mission is climbing. A mindfulness technique called “nishkama karma” – acting without desire – described in an ancient but popular Indian text called the “Bhagavad Gita,” may prove useful for navigating the contemporary world of work.