Author: TheConversation

By Liz Sharples, Senior Teaching Fellow (Tourism), University of Portsmouth As Europe commemorates the 80th anniversary of D-Day on June 6, visitors have traveled in large numbers to pay their respects at the Normandy beach landing sites. The event in 2024 takes place in a very different world than the 75th anniversary five years before. Donald Trump is facing numerous criminal charges from rigging the 2016 election to become president to the January 6, 2021 coup and insurrection to stay in office after he lost the 2020 election to President Joe Biden. Trump’s benefactor, the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin,...

By Frank A. Blazich Jr., Curator of Military History, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution Between the villages of Vierville-sur-Mer and Sainte-Honorine-des-Pertes in Normandy, France, is a 5-mile stretch of beach that was once called Côte d’Or, or “golden coast.” Since June 6, 1944, however, this beach has borne a different name: Omaha. Eighty years ago, on a day now known as D-Day, thousands of Allied soldiers crossed the choppy waters of the English Channel by air and sea to land on beaches and coastal areas of Normandy, France, to destroy the Nazi invaders and defeat Hitler’s regime....

By Christopher K. Tong, Associate Professor of Asian Studies, University of Maryland, Baltimore County Every year ahead of the June 4 commemoration of the Tiananmen Square massacre, the Chinese government tightens online censorship to suppress domestic discussion of the event. Critics, dissidents and international groups anticipate an uptick in cyber activity ranging from emails with malicious links to network attacks in the days and weeks leading up to the anniversary. Much of this cyber activity by Beijing is done covertly. But a recent restructuring of China’s cyberforce and a document leak exposing the activities of Chinese tech firm i-Soon...

By Diane Winston, Professor and Knight Center Chair in Media & Religion, USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism In August 1982, Ronald Reagan’s father-in-law was dying. Nancy Reagan’s beloved dad, Loyal Davis, was an atheist. That was a troubling fact to the 40th president. So Reagan penned a private, handwritten note in which he recounted how the prayers of colleagues and friends had cured him of a painful stomach ulcer. Giving hope for what lay beyond, Reagan entreated the older man, “We’ve been promised this is only a part of life and that a greater life, a greater...

By Johanna Richlin, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University of Maine It can be hard to imagine sometimes why a mother would reject safe and potentially lifesaving vaccines for her child. Popular writing on vaccine skepticism often denigrates white and middle-class mothers who reject some or all recommended vaccines as hysterical, misinformed, zealous or ignorant. Mainstream media and medical providers increasingly dismiss vaccine refusal as a hallmark of American fringe ideology, far-right radicalization or anti-intellectualism. But vaccine skepticism, and the broader medical mistrust and far-reaching anxieties it reflects, is not just a fringe position. Pediatric vaccination rates had already fallen...

By Name Here, Academic title and school goes in this space in italic By September 2020, just six months after COVID-19 triggered shutdowns across the U.S., it was clear that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, had mutated from its original form. The question quickly arose whether existing rapid antigen tests could detect newly emerging variants. Using clinical samples obtained from diagnostic labs throughout the U.S. from 2020 to 2023, the National Institutes of Health, through its Variant Task Force, analyzed the effectiveness of more than 100 rapid antigen test kits on over 300 variants. The vast majority of...