Saturday 27th April 2024

A Prominent Free-Speech Group Is Fighting for Its Life

PEN America has now canceled its annual World Voices festival, after calling off its literary-awards ceremony last week. Can it survive?

In 2015, PEN America, the organization devoted to defending free speech, chose to honor the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo at its annual gala. A few months earlier, Islamic extremists had murdered 12 people at the publication’s offices in Paris. The rationale for recognizing the magazine seemed airtight: People had been killed for expressing themselves, and PEN America’s mission is to protect people targeted for what they express. For some writers connected with the organization, however, this reasoning was not so obvious. Six of them boycotted the gala, and 242 signed a letter of protest. In their eyes, Charlie Hebdo’s editorial staff, including those recently killed, embodied a political perspective that was unworthy of plaudits. The magazine frequently mocked Islam (and, in particular, caricatured the Prophet Muhammad), and this was a form of punching down, insulting a population that, as the letter put it, “is already marginalized, embattled, and victimized.”


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The Choice Republicans Face

Too many members of the GOP are refusing to defy partisanship. They’re failing the Alexander Hamilton test.

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The hangman at home | Psyche Films

In his poem The Hangman at Home (1922), the US poet Carl Sandburg ponders the life of the titular hangman, asking a series of questions that juxtapose the violence of his work with his quaint home life. This adaptation from Michelle Kranot and Uri Kranot, a husband-and-wife filmmaking team originally from Israel and now based in Denmark, pairs Sandburg’s words with five animated fragments, each of them unfolding in a single room amid intimate, private moments. In one scene, a man calmly steps through what appears to be his bombed-out home, with the sounds of air raid sirens eventually blaring in the background. In another, a man tends to a bedridden loved one who seems to be near death. Yet another scene mirrors a line from the poem in which one of the hangman’s children asks him to ‘play horse’.

The work rewards the viewer’s patience as it slowly tugs at Sandburg’s words. Over the film’s duration, these scenes, which are at first opaque, coalesce into a commentary on the mysteries humans so often are to one another, and the disparate, sometimes contradictory, roles we play. The experience is at once transfixing and confronting. In some moments, these uncanny animated figures stare directly towards the audience, appearing to be aware of our intrusions into their worlds. The resulting tension seems to acknowledge the strength of the walls between our public and private selves, and the discomfort that arises when these boundaries are broken.

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New Statue Honors Elizabeth II—and Her Beloved Corgis

The seven-foot-tall bronze monument is billed as the “first permanent memorial” to the late queen

It's no secret that Elizabeth II loved her corgis. Wherever she went, the short-legged dogs followed, a sight Princess Diana once described as a "moving carpet."

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Second Patient Receives Gene-Edited Pig Kidney Transplant in Breakthrough Surgery

The woman, 54-year-old Lisa Pisano, also received a mechanical heart pump implant days earlier, making her the first person to undergo both procedures

Lisa Pisano, a 54-year-old woman from New Jersey, has become the second living person to receive a transplant of a gene-edited pig kidney. Doctors also implanted a mechanical heart pump, making Pisano the first person to receive both a heart pump and an organ transplant, according to a statement from NYU Langone Health, where the procedure was performed.

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Spain's 'Excalibur' Sword, a 1,000-Year-Old Weapon Found Buried Upright, Reflects the Region's Rich Islamic History

Discovered in Valencia in 1994, the iron blade was recently dated to the tenth century, when the Umayyad Caliphate controlled the Iberian Peninsula

A sword unearthed in Spain and nicknamed “Excalibur” after King Arthur’s legendary blade is more than 1,000 years old, researchers say. A rare artifact from the Iberian Peninsula’s Islamic period, the weapon illustrates the region’s layered history of subjugation.

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New DNA Analysis Unravels the Marriage Practices of an Ancient Warrior People

New DNA research is shedding light on the lifestyle of a warrior people called the Avars, a mysterious group who ruled much of Central and Eastern Europe around 1,500 years ago.

The Avars, once a nomadic people, migrated from Central Asia to Eastern Europe in the 6th century and conquered significant territories, including parts of present-day Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. At one point, their fearsome empire almost took control of Constantinople.

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Paleontologists Discover Massive Dinosaur Tracks in China, Hinting at One of the Largest Known Raptors

The footprints, left behind by a 16-foot-long creature some 96 million years ago, represent the biggest raptor tracks ever found

The 1993 blockbuster film Jurassic Park transformed the public’s perception of dinosaurs, propelling the velociraptor to the forefront of terror. But while the real-life velociraptor was indeed a cunning, fearsome predator, these creatures were much smaller than the movie portrayed—closer in size to a turkey.

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Endangered Ocelots May Be Expanding Their Range in Texas

DNA testing of an ocelot killed in 2021 raises the possibility that the creatures may be roaming outside their established South Texas territory, which is currently their only stronghold in the country

Ocelots once prowled throughout Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas and Arizona. But because of trapping, poisoning and habitat loss, these wild, spotted cats nearly disappeared over the last couple of centuries. Now, ocelots are federally endangered, with an estimated 100 wild individuals remaining in the United States. Their range has dwindled, too: The tawny-colored creatures—which can be twice the size of a house cat—now inhabit only a small, coastal region at the southern tip of Texas.

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One in Five Milk Samples Has Bird Flu Virus Fragments, Suggesting Cow Infections Are More Widespread Than Thought

The research has not yet found evidence that milk contains infectious virus, and the FDA says the commercial milk supply is safe

One in five samples of grocery store milk tested positive for bird flu virus, according to initial results from a nationally representative survey conducted by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the agency announced Thursday.

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