Israel

Israel’s long-time prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was ousted this week by a coalition of politicians including some of his former allies. Among that groups is new Prime Minister Naftali Bennet. Why did he turn on Netanyahu? And why did he do it by aligning with some of his greatest political opponents? University of Utah law professor Amos Guiora, who lives part of the year in Israel, has been active in protests against Netanyahu. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

British poet Ruth Padel’s life is entwined with the music of Beethoven. Her great-grandfather was a concert pianist who studied with a friend of Beethoven’s. Her parents met through music, and Padel grew up playing Beethoven’s chamber music on the viola—which Beethoven also played as a child. Now Padel has woven all that personal history with Beethoven’s own life into a book of poetry called “Beethoven Variations: Poems on a Life.”

Egyptian soccer player Mohamed Salah is a devout Muslim and kneels in prayer after he scores. His popularity has corresponded with a decline in anti-Muslim incidents in his city where he plays professional soccer and on social media. Why? Political scientist Salma Mousa studies social cohesion and co-published a study on the “Mo Salah” effect. Mousa is a post-doctoral fellow at Stanford and will join Yale’s faculty in the fall. (Clive Mason/Pool via AP)

It may be surprising to hear, but geometry has been everywhere during the pandemic. From social distancing six feet apart to angling face masks to the COVID curve we were all obsessed with flattening. Jordan Ellenberg shows the geometry in our everyday world in the New York Times bestselling book “Shape: The Hidden Geometry of Information, Biology, Strategy, Democracy, and Everything Else.” Ellenberg is a math professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The nuances in any language can get lost in translation. But when the language is a life-saving warning about evacuating for a hurricane or preparing for a tornado, there’s no room for details to get lost, yet they do. University of Florida emergency management researcher Amer Abukhalaf highlights the danger for non-English-speaking immigrants when emergency warnings are broadcast only in English.