Norman Notes For May 5

Israel’s military has begun moving civilians out of Rafah, a possible prelude to a long-expected attack on the Gazan city. The Israel Defense Forces “will act with extreme force against terrorist organizations in your areas of residence,” a spokesman said on X on Monday morning. He urged residents of eastern Rafah to go north to an “expanded humanitarian area” near Khan Younis, another city in Gaza. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] The move comes after cease-fire talks between Hamas and Israel in Cairo over the weekend seemingly stalled, the main sticking point being the Iran-backed militant group’s insistence that any truce is permanent.

Philippine journalist Maria Ressa, a 2021 Nobel Peace Prize recipient who has been recognized as one of TIME’s 2018 Persons of the Year as well as one of the most influential women of the century for her fight for press freedoms and against misinformation, was selected in March to deliver the principal address at Harvard University’s commencement on May 23.

Video footage of a student making racist gestures, seemingly imitating a monkey, toward a Black woman who was part of a scheduled pro-Palestinian protest at the University of Mississippi, colloquially known as Ole Miss, went viral last week, and on Sunday a fraternity announced that it had removed one member from its chapter at the school over the incident. The Phi Delta Theta General Headquarters said in a statement that it was aware of the widely shared Ole Miss video and that “the racist actions in the video were those of an individual and are antithetical to the values of Phi Delta Theta and the Mississippi Alpha chapter.

Jack Dorsey has left the board of social networking service Bluesky, which he helped fund and popularize a year ago in the wake of regret over the sale of Twitter to Elon Musk. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] The Twitter co-founder took to the Musk-owned platform, now rebranded X, to tout his new philanthropic grants to open internet protocols, which he described as “freedom technology.” He also added X to that class of tech, elaborating only to say that corporations can build upon open protocols too. Dorsey whittled down the list of people he follows on X to just three: Musk, Edward Snowden and Stella Assange, wife of the imprisoned WikiLeaks publisher.

Family seeks help after 10-year-old Southern California boy diagnosed with rare brain cancer KTLA Los Angeles

'Timing is not good' for H5N1 pandemic - flu scientist RNZShould We Be Worried About Bird Flu? The New YorkerThere's no question H5N1 bird flu has 'pandemic potential.' How likely is that worst-case scenario? CBC News