Florida & Beyond, and All Opinions

PFAS, the “forever chemicals” that have been raising health concerns across the country, are not just a problem in drinking water. As these chemicals leach out of failing septic systems and landfills and wash off airport runways and farm fields, they can end up in streams that ultimately discharge into ocean ecosystems where fish, dolphins, manatees, sharks and other marine species live.

Jails are locally managed, and the majority of their populations are being detained pretrial while unconvicted. Data on how many people die while incarcerated is notoriously inaccessible and often unreliable. Relatively high turnover rates, we found, were associated with higher death rates overall, as well as due to suicide, drugs and alcohol, and homicide.

Much of the news coverage of the discussions and negotiations aimed at averting a government shutdown on Nov. 17, 2023, relies on pundits and their unnamed sources, on leaks, speculation, wishful thinking and maybe even the reading of tea leaves. It’s not about to get better.

There are currently only about 8,000 active satellites in orbit. But In September 2021, Rwanda announced that it was planning to launch over 300,000 satellites. Three months later, a Canadian company, having previously launched two dozen CubeSats, said it would launch an additional 100,000. Then, a French company did likewise. And SpaceX, which has already launched around 5,000 satellites, now has plans for over 60,000 more. What’s going on?

At least 39 journalists and media workers had been killed in the month since the war began, the deadliest conflict for media workers since the Committee to Protect Journalists began keeping records in 1992. The victims are mostly Palestinian journalists and media workers killed in Israel’s attacks on Gaza, but they include four Israelis, whom Hamas murdered in its initial cross-border raid on October 7, and one Beirut-based videographer killed in south Lebanon.

Three reasons why: Votes amending state constitutions are key to protecting abortion rights. Reframing abortion restrictions does not fool voters. Abortion rights matter up and down the ballot. In sum, abortion increasingly matters to voters. And most voters do not want laws severely restricting abortion and other kinds of reproductive health care.

A lawsuit against the LDS church and Ensign Peak, filed on Oct. 31, is based on the premise that the church has violated its members’ trust by amassing massive investments in stocks, bonds, real estate and agriculture that don’t support charitable activities.

Intersectionality, the social theory, has a complex history and refers to the intertwining of different identities, such as class, gender and age. It is often applied as a way to understand how individuals may experience multiple forms of prejudice simultaneously. The theory assumes that meanings associated with one identity are insufficient to explain the experiences associated with multiple, coexisting identities.

The empirical evidence for the intended benefits of daylight saving time are mixed at best, whereas the costs of the switch to daylight saving time are becoming increasingly evident. The American public has had a love-hate relationship with daylight saving time since it first became law in 1918.

College and university campuses across the U.S. have seen polarization and unrest since the Israel-Hamas war began with the Hamas attack on Israeli civilians on Oct. 7, 2023. Students and faculty have held protests and rallies, argued on social media and signed statements, some of which have increased mistrust and turmoil on campus.

Hamas militants killed approximately 30 Israeli children when they attacked civilians on Oct. 7, 2023, killing more than 1,400 people altogether. At least 20 Israeli children remain hostage in Gaza. Since Oct. 7, Israeli airstrikes have killed more than 2,000 Palestinian children and more than 8,000 people overall, according to the Hamas-run Ministry of Health in Gaza.

Kristallnacht–the Night of Broken Glass–was the logical culmination of Hitler’s malevolent intentions going back many years before 1938. Seeing it that way allows us to view the two different kinds of antisemitism in Hitler’s thinking, one involving emotions and the other involving the law and reason. The latter foreshadowed the mass shooting squads and death camps of the early 1940s.

Former President Donald Trump’s rhetoric has regularly bordered on the incitement of violence. Lately, however, it has become even more violent. Yet both the press and the public have largely just shrugged their shoulders. This rhetoric may seem like crazy bluster. But put in its historical context, what Trump is doing is echoing views that are part of a long tradition of outright fascist thought. For fascists have always seen the use of violence as a virtue, not a vice.

Many Jews are still grieving, shocked and traumatized by what happened on Oct. 7. But other people, in the U.S. and around the world, have already moved on from Oct. 7, and they are much more concerned about the war that Israel is now waging against Hamas and the devastating impact it is having on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

The conflict will likely resemble heavy urban fighting similar to other battles over the past 20 years elsewhere in the Middle East against Iraqi militants and the Islamic State group – and very different from the more limited engagements Israel has attempted in Gaza up until now.

The authors’ projections suggest that the average cost of generating electricity through solar energy will decrease substantially, by 60% from 2020 to 2050, even when factoring in the growing demand for energy storage. Should these forecasts prove accurate, solar energy combined with storage is expected to become the cheapest option for generating electricity in nearly all regions worldwide by 2030.