Essay: After 9/11, Searching For American Optimism

Tracking screen time is like counting calories: It is partially accurate but misleading. The World Health Organization and the American Academy of Pediatrics provide time-based guidelines for screens in young children: For babies and toddlers, keep the screens to Facetime family and friends. For younger kids, 1 to 2 hours, and from ages 6 to 12, keep it to roughly 2 hours. For those who are not raising children, the guidelines seem straightforward.

Hong Kong, the Chinese enclave that’s still struggling to revive its tourism economy post-pandemic and in the wake of a Beijing-influenced crackdown on civil liberties, has taken a new approach to wooing visitors: curbing its residents’ reputation for rudeness. Earlier this week, the city government launched a new campaign to promote politeness.

The filmmakers behind Netflix’s latest documentary—How to Rob a Bank— do not want viewers to take its title literally. Although the film, out June 5, features accounts from real bank robbers who explain how they got people to hand over cash, directors Seth Porges and Stephen Robert Morse hope nobody gets ideas after watching it.

Despite the countless documentaries, movies, TV shows, and books on World War II, 63% of American millennials and Gen Z do not know that 6 million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, according to a 2020 state-by-state survey conducted by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany. The survey found that 48% could not name a concentration camp or ghetto. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Netflix hopes to change that with Hitler and the Nazis: Evil on Trial, an ambitious new World War II documentary out Wednesday that’s geared towards younger audiences.

BEIRUT — A gunman was captured by Lebanese soldiers after attempting to attack the U. S. Embassy near Beirut on Wednesday, the military said. The attack took place as tensions continued to simmer in the tiny Mediterranean country, where months of fighting between Hezbollah militants and Israeli troops has displaced thousands along the border, following years of political deadlock and economic hardship. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Read More: Militant Group Hezbollah Is on the Sidelines of the Israel-Hamas War.

NEW YORK — Student editors at the Columbia Law Review say they were pressured by the journal’s board of directors to halt publication of an academic article written by a Palestinian human rights lawyer that accuses Israel of committing genocide in Gaza and upholding an apartheid regime. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] When the editors refused the request and published the piece Monday morning, the board—made up of faculty and alumni from Columbia University’s law school—shut down the law review’s website entirely.