turismoroma (March 24, 2023) – The Garden of Ninfa (Giardino di Ninfa), built on the ruins of the medieval town of Ninfa in the Pontine Marshes (Agro Pontino), has been classified by the New York Times as one of the most beautiful and romantic gardens in the world. Declared a Natural Monument by the Lazio Region, the garden, given the delicate environmental balance, may only be visited on certain days of the year.
Monthly Archives: March 2023
News: Netanyahu Visits UK, Macron Firm On Pension Reform, Honduras-China
March 24, 2023: Benjamin Netanyahu’s UK visit. Plus: Emmanuel Macron digs in his heels as pension-reform rallies erupt across France, Honduras switches ties from Taiwan to China and the latest business news.
Front Page: The New York Times – March 24, 2023
Lawmakers Blast TikTok’s C.E.O. for App’s Ties to China, Escalating Tensions
Lawmakers grilled Shou Chew, TikTok’s chief executive, over the app’s ties to its Chinese parent company and its effects on children, as Chinese officials said they opposed a sale of the platform.
Netanyahu Digs In on Court Overhaul, in the Face of Mass Protests
Amid a national crisis over a planned judicial overhaul, Israel’s Parliament approved a bill making it much harder to remove a prime minister from office.
As Dreams of Peace Wither, Nightmares Flourish in Ukraine’s Sleep
A survey asked hundreds of wartime Ukrainians what they dreamed about. Many replied: the war.
How Manhattan Hotels Became Refuges for Thousands of Migrants
The city has spent millions to convert upscale hotels, humble motels and even office buildings into housing for an influx of migrants.
Culture/Society: Monocle Magazine – April 2023
Monocle Magazine (April 2023 issue) – What’s in store for retail? Monocle’s Retail Survey checks out the global benchmarks in shopping, while our spring Style Directory rounds up the labels, designers and products on the radar of the sharpest dressers.

EDITOR’S LETTER – Bricks-and-mortar retail, from tiny independent shops to giant malls, can shape and inspire the community around it. Andrew Tuck finds Monocle’s Retail Survey reflecting what we’ve always believed: that in-person experiences are the most valuable. There’s plenty more too.
Research Preview: Science Magazine – March 24, 2023

Science Magazine – March 24, 2023 issue: This color-enhanced scanning electron microscopy image shows Ti2CCl2 MXenes grown by chemical vapor deposition. The two-dimensional layers of this material grew perpendicular to the substrate and then folded into microspherical structures. Ion intercalation between two-dimensional MXene sheets has potential for energy storage and other applications.
A new pandemic origin report is stirring controversy. Here are key takeaways

Virology database cuts off—and then reinstates—scientists who found and analyzed data collected 3 years ago by team in China
Earth at higher risk of big asteroid strike, satellite data suggest

“It would be in the range of serious crap happening.”
At a basic level, humanity’s survival odds come down to one thing: the chances of a giant space rock slamming into the planet and sending us the way of the dinosaurs. One way to calibrate that hazard is to look at the size of Earth’s recent large impact craters.
Previews: The Economist Magazine – March 25, 2023
The Economist – March 25, 2023 issue:
The world according to Xi
Even if China’s transactional diplomacy brings some gains, it contains real perils

A lesser man than Xi Jinping might have found it uncomfortable. Meeting Vladimir Putin in Moscow this week, China’s leader spoke of “peaceful co-existence and win-win co-operation”, while supping with somebody facing an international arrest warrant for war crimes. But Mr Xi is untroubled by trivial inconsistencies. He believes in the inexorable decline of the American-led world order, with its professed concern for rules and human rights. He aims to twist it into a more transactional system of deals between great powers. Do not underestimate the perils of this vision—or its appeal around the world.
Central banks face an excruciating trade-off
They have to choose between financial instability and high inflation. It wasn’t meant to be that way

The job of central bankers is to keep banks stable and inflation low. Today they face an enormous battle on both fronts. The inflation monster is still untamed, and the financial system looks precarious.
The trouble with Emmanuel Macron’s pension victory
The way a wise policy was forced through will have political costs

Any French president who asks his fellow citizens to retire later does so at his peril. When Jacques Chirac tried in 1995, crippling strikes made him shelve the project; 18 months later voters sacked his government. Piles of rubbish were left to rot on the streets, as they are today on the boulevards of Paris. Bin collectors have joined strikes against the decision by the current president, Emmanuel Macron, to raise the minimum pension age from 62 to 64. So it was with some relief that on March 20th his minority government narrowly survived two no-confidence votes, opening the way for his reform to enter the statute books.
Views: How Black Market Oil Fuels Terrorism (2023)
National Geographic (March 23, 2023) – Join Mariana van Zeller as she examines the role that oil plays in the operations of some of the world’s most powerful terrorist organizations.
Catch all-new episodes of #TraffickedWithMarianavanZeller, Wednesdays at 9/8c on National Geographic.
Exhibition Views: Manet/ Degas, Musée d’Orsay Paris
Musée d’Orsay (March 23, 2023) – Édouard Manet (1832-1883) and Edgar Degas (1834-1917) were both key players in the new painting of the 1860s-80s. This exhibition, which brings together the two painters in the light of their contrasts, forces us to take a new look at their real complicity.

It shows what was heterogeneous and conflicting in pictorial modernity, and reveals the value of Degas’s collection, where Manet took a greater place after his death.
A comparison of artists as crucial as Manet and Degas should not be limited to identifying the similarities in their respective bodies of work.

Admittedly, there is no lack of analogies among these key players in the new painting of the 1860s-80s when it comes to the subjects they imposed (from horse races to café scenes, from prostitution to the tub), the genres they reinvented, the realism they opened to other formal and narrative potentialities, the market and the collectors they managed to tame, and the places (cafés, theaters) and circles, whether comprised of family (Berthe Morisot) or friends, where they crossed paths.
Manet / Degas
From March 28 to July 23, 2023
Special Report: Insert Coin – The Rise Of Video Gaming
The Economist – Special Reports (March 25, 2023)
Ready, player four billion: the rise of video games

As video games move from teenage distraction to universal pastime they are following the path of other mass media, says Tom Wainwright
Battles over streaming break out for video games

Streaming subscriptions have revolutionised music and television. What will they do to games?
Travel: A Walking Tour Of Larache, North Morocco
Uploaded on March 22, 2023: Larache, Arabic Al-ʿArāʾīsh, Atlantic port city, northern Morocco, at the mouth of the Loukkos (Lucus) River. The ruins of ancient Lixus, successively a Phoenician, Carthaginian, and Roman settlement, are 2 miles (3 km) northeast on the river’s north bank. Larache was under Spanish rule from 1610 to 1689 and from 1912 to 1956.
The old walled city rises in terraces to two forts that dominate it on the north and south. The ancient Kebibat fortress (now a hospital) rises out of the sea; the fort of La Cigogne (c. 1700) was built by the Spaniards. The modern quarter stretches from the port across the coastal plateau, with gardens and orchards bordering the river. Larache is a busy agricultural and fishing centre, exporting produce, timber, and wool.
Filmed and edited by: Tawada


