Monocle on Sunday, March 31, 2024: Emma Nelson, Charles Hecker and Yossi Mekelberg on the weekend’s biggest talking points.
We also speak to Monocle’s editorial director, Tyler Brûlé, in Zürich and get the latest on Turkey’s local elections with Monocle’s Istanbul correspondent, Hannah Lucinda Smith.
The Globalist (March 28, 2024): As farmers protest across Europe, we get the latest on a possible grain deal between Poland and Ukraine.
Then: protesters take to the streets in Hungary over a corruption case and the latest threats to Slovakia’s public broadcaster. Plus: design news and why Italians talk with their hands.
Artificial intelligence holds huge promise in health care. But it also faces massive barriers
Better diagnoses. Personalised support for patients. Faster drug discovery. Greater efficiency. Artificial intelligence (ai) is generating excitement and hyperbole everywhere, but in the field of health care it has the potential to be transformational. In Europe analysts predict that deploying ai could save hundreds of thousands of lives each year; in America, they say, it could also save money, shaving $200bn-360bn from overall annual medical spending, now $4.5trn a year (or 17% of gdp). From smart stethoscopes and robot surgeons to the analysis of large data sets or the ability to chat to a medical ai with a human face, opportunities abound.
After the energy crisis, Europe faces surging Chinese imports and the threat of Trump tariffs
Ukraine must prepare
Melting ice sheets do more than raise sea levels
The Globalist (March 27, 2024): We discuss Emmanuel Macron’s three-day state visit to Brazil,
Monocle’s US editor, Christopher Lord, reports from Oakland as Robert F Kennedy Jr announces his presidential running mate and we join Monocle’s Asia editor, James Chambers, from The Chiefs conference in Hong Kong. Plus: Karl Lagerfeld’s last Paris residence sells for double the starting price.
The Globalist (March 26, 2024): We discuss tensions between Emmanuel Macron and Olaf Scholz, and what they mean for Ukraine. Plus, plans for a significant upgrade to the security alliance between the US and Japan, Boeing’s management reshuffle and technology news.
‘Editor’s Picks’ Podcast (March 25, 2024): A selection of three essential articles read aloud from the latest issue of The Economist. This week, as the death toll climbs in Israel’s war on Gaza, we argue that the country looks deeply vulnerable. Plus, we consider Britain as an unexpected beacon of immigration. And finally, as Elon Musk’s Starship reaches space, we examine SpaceX’s approach to rocket development.
The civil-rights attorney has created a museum, a memorial, and, now, a sculpture park, indicting the city of Montgomery—a former capital of the domestic slave trade and the cradle of the Confederacy.
The National Monument to Freedom, in Montgomery, Alabama, is a giant book, standing forty-three feet high and a hundred and fifty feet wide. The book is propped wide open, and engraved on its surface are the names of more than a hundred and twenty thousand Black people, documented in the 1870 census, who were emancipated after the Civil War. On the spine of the book is a credo written for the dead:
Your children love you.
The country you built must honor you.
We acknowledge the tragedy of your enslavement.
We commit to advancing freedom in your name.
What if building on the water could be safer and sturdier than building on flood-prone land?
By Kyle Chayka
In a corner of the Rijksmuseum hangs a seventeenth-century cityscape by the Dutch Golden Age painter Gerrit Berckheyde, “View of the Golden Bend in the Herengracht,” which depicts the construction of Baroque mansions along one of Amsterdam’s main canals. Handsome double-wide brick buildings line the Herengracht’s banks, their corniced façades reflected on the water’s surface. Interspersed among the new homes are spaces, like gaps in a young child’s smile, where vacant lots have yet to be developed.
The Globalist (March 25, 2024): The crisis in Haiti continues to spiral as political parties edge closer to forming a security council. Will a new government halt the Caribbean nation’s nosedive?
Also, fugitive separatist Carles Puigdemont plans to run in Catalan elections, the latest trade and economy news and a special interview with ambassador Mark Green.
Monocle on Sunday, March 24, 2024: Emma Nelson, Nina dos Santos and David Bodanis on the weekend’s biggest talking points.
We also speak to Monocle’s editorial France and North Africa correspondent, Mary Fitzgerald, and our Vienna correspondent, Alexei Korolyov, for the latest on the Slovakia elections.
THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE (March 22, 2024):
When it’s a quick trip from the schlocky pleasures of Cancún to the remote cities of the Maya, is something lost along the way?
El Tren Maya, which links five states in southern Mexico, is one of the country’s most-debated infrastructure projects. Carved through the Yucatán Peninsula at great expense, the 966-mile loop pits the megaproject ambitions of Mexico’s departing president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, against the will of environmentalists and Indigenous leaders seeking to preserve a pristine environment of jaguars, ancient ruins and sacred underwater caves.
Why had immigrants, seekers and pilgrims been drawn for centuries to the treacherous shores of Mona Island? I set off to find out.
By Carina del Valle Schorske
Every year, I spend a month or two in Puerto Rico, where my mother’s family is from. Often I go in winter, with the other snowbirds, finding solace among palm trees. But I’m not a tourist, not really. I track the developers that privatize the shoreline; I follow the environmental reports that give our beaches a failing grade. I’m disenchanted with the Island of Enchantment, suspicious of an image that obscures the unglamorous conditions of daily life: frequent blackouts, meager public services, a rental market ravaged by Airbnb. Maybe that’s why I turned away from the sunshine and started to explore caves with my friends Ramón and Javier, seeking out wonders not yet packaged for the visitor economy. I’ve been learning to love stalactites and squeaking bats, black snakes and cloistered waterfalls — even, slowly, the darkness itself.
Boomers Daily 