Florida & Beyond, and All Opinions

A peculiar desire seems to still haunt some white people: “I wish I knew what it was like to be Black.” This is a presumptive, racially imaginative desire, one that covets not just the rhythm of Black life, but also its blues. Canadian-American journalist Sam Forster is one of those white people.

After Editors of Columbia Law Review, a prominent journal run by students from the prestigious university’s law school, published an article critical of Israel, the board, which includes Columbia Law School faculty members and alumni, had the law review’s website taken down. The board soon relented and allowed the website back online on June 6, including the article in question. But it issued a statement accusing the student editors of failing to properly review the article prior to publication.

French president Emmanuel Macron told French citizens he had “decided to give [them] back the choice of our parliamentary future through the vote”. These words, pronounced in reaction to the historic surge of the far-right National Rally at the European elections, triggered the dissolution of France’s parliament and snap elections on 30 June and 7 July.

Machine learning has pushed the boundaries in several fields, including personalized medicine, self-driving cars and customized advertisements. Research has shown, however, that these systems memorize aspects of the data they were trained with in order to learn patterns, which raises concerns for privacy.

Blue whales are fascinating animals. At 24-30 metres in length (longer than a basketball court) they are the largest creatures on Earth. They are also among the rarest. Estimates suggest that there are only around 5,000 to 15,000 blue whales left in the world.

President Joe Biden condemned the ICC prosecutor’s application for arrest warrants for Israel’s and Hamas leaders as “outrageous” and accused the ICC of drawing false moral equivalence between Hamas and Israel. just a year ago, when the ICC issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and another Russian official for alleged international crimes in the Ukraine war, US officials were full of praise for the court. Biden welcomed the action, calling it “justified.”

Radical doubt or scepticism was famously articulated by the 17th-century French philosopher and mathematician René Descartes in his Meditations on First Philosophy. Realising that many of his previous beliefs were mistaken, Descartes suggested that an all-powerful “evil genius” could be systematically deceiving him about his most basic beliefs – much like how the supposed deep state is apparently deceiving those who believe in QAnon.

The Israeli military is reported to have signed off on a major offensive against Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based militia, prompting fears that the situation could spiral into a full-blown war. The two sides have been exchanging fire since the conflict in Gaza began with the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7. But in recent weeks this has escalated considerably.

Immigrants living in the U.S. without legal status but are married to U.S. citizens, will now have protection from deportation, President Joe Biden announced on June 18, 2024. In order to qualify, they must have arrived 10 or more years ago and be married to a U.S. citizen. Those who meet these criteria will be able to get work permits and can get on the pathway to citizenship while working and living in the U.S. legally.

The U.S. State Department removed Cuba from its list of countries “not fully cooperating” with anti-terrorism efforts in mid-May 2024, but you would be forgiven for not noticing. Taking Cuba off the list is a big deal. This latest move is a potential step toward a rapprochement between Washington and Havana.

Though the current scale of pediatric amputations is unprecedented, the loss of limbs and the dividing of territories have been all-too-common features of the Palestinian experience since the Nakba, or “catastrophe,” of 1948, when 750,000 Palestinians were forced off their land or fled from it. For this reason, amputation has long played an important role in Palestinian literature: Lost limbs represent both physical and metaphorical loss.

The Louisiana bill that cleared the legislature would require officials in public schools, including colleges and universities, to post a specific version of the Ten Commandments. The text is similar to the King James translation of the Bible used in many Protestant churches.

In September 2023, the International Olympic Committee, upholding freedom of religious and cultural expression for all athletes, announced that athletes participating in the 2024 Paris Games can wear a hijab without any restriction. French athletes, however, are bound by France’s strict separation of religion from the state, called laïcité.

This summer, the Democratic National Convention will again be in Chicago. The parallels with previous events in Chicago, such as the Battle of Michigan Avenue in 1968 and the Days of Rage in 1969, are intriguing to consider – especially given the strong divisions in the country now over the Israel-Hamas war. There are also, of course, major differences, including the fact that students in the U.S. do not have a legitimate fear of being drafted – and there are not U.S. troops on the ground in Gaza.

Prominent cases of purported lying continue to dominate the news cycle. Hunter Biden. George Santos. The rapper Offset. There are a number of variables that distinguish these cases. One is the audience: the faceless government, particular donors and millions of online followers, respectively. Another is the medium used to convey the alleged lie: on a bureaucratic form, through intermediaries and via social media.