Violence on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, and strikes in Syria and the West Bank, sent shock waves through the Middle East.
A senior Hamas official says “nothing is left” of the munition that hit the Ahli Arab hospital in Gaza City last week, killing hundreds. Israel says the explosion was caused by a misfired Palestinian rocket.
Anthony Pratt, one of Australia’s wealthiest men, made his way into Donald Trump’s inner circle with money and flattery. What he heard there has become of interest to federal prosecutors.
Quantum technology could compromise our encryption systems. Can America replace them before it’s too late?
Also notable is Sedlec Ossuary, a chapel adorned with human skeletons. On the site of a former Cistercian monastery is the Gothic and baroque Cathedral of the Assumption. The Czech Museum of Silver recalls the city’s silver-mining history with a replica medieval mine.
Recorded on: 21 September 2023
October 22, 2023 – From Zürich, Monocle’s editorial director Tyler Brûlé, Fabienne Kinzelmann, Juliet Linley and Florian Egli discuss the weekend’s hottest topics. Plus: check-ins with our friends and correspondents in Palma, Helsinki and Paris.
But the 20-truck shipment of food, water and medical supplies is only a fraction of what is needed to head off a catastrophe, officials say.
U.S. officials learned that the Israeli defense minister and other military officials supported a pre-emptive strike on Hezbollah. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been cautious.
Hamas released two American hostages on Friday, but concern is rising about the hundreds still held in Gaza, especially the injured and ill.
A shift that allows booster groups to employ student-athletes has upended the economics of college football and other sports while giving many donors a tax break.
0:15 AI can predict your risk of Parkinson’s – RETFound was trained using 1.6 million retinal images which gave it a picture of a healthy retina. Then its creators added images of eyes from people with certain conditions. Our eyes are a window to our health. They’re the only place where doctors can directly observe capillaries, our smallest blood vessels, enabling detection of cardiovascular illnesses such as hypertension. Eyes are also linked to the central nervous system, giving an insight into neural tissue, too. The RETFound tool was best at picking up eye diseases such as diabetic retinopathy. On Parkinson’s, stroke and heart disease, it performed not quite as well but still beat other AI models.
2:08 These are the most detailed heat maps of our planet – They use imagery from a satellite called HotSat-1 which can detect heat and cold at a resolution of 3.5 metres. The satellite can precisely map the fronts of forest fires, detect and monitor heat islands in cities and measure the thermal efficiency of buildings. This information can drive more effective decision-making.
3:51 AI designed this robot in 26 seconds – Researchers from Northwestern University gave an AI a simple prompt. ‘Design a robot that can walk across a flat surface’. By the 9th iteration, the AI had successfully met its brief. The robot could walk half its own body length per second. The entire iteration process took just 26 seconds and it ran on a laptop.
6:26 Norway completed it’s largest rewilding project – It’s centred around Sveagruva, a 100-year-old mining town on the Arctic island of Svalbard. Norway decided to close the town and its mining operations in 2017 and return the area to its natural state, restoring biodiversity and the local ecosystem.
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Here is the itinerary:
3 p.m. Wander through woodlands to a world-class museum
Start your weekend at the Burrell Collection, a glass-roofed art museum that rises out of a meadow in the city’s southern Pollok Country Park like a vast, gleaming greenhouse. The 9,000-piece collection was donated to the city at the close of World War II by William Burrell, a Glasgow shipping merchant, and opened in this specially commissioned building in 1983. The free-entry museum reopened in 2022 after a six-year refurbishment of its red sandstone, glass and wood interiors. Though it is busy, the Burrell offers a peaceful immersion in an unmistakably personal collection, drifting from Degas and Rembrandt to tabernacles, tulip-motif textiles and ancient Chinese roof tiles. The tapestries are especially wonderful, including the palatially sized “Wagner Garden Carpet” made by master weavers in 17th-century Iran.
10 a.m. Grab a brekkie roll, then discover a Glaswegian jungle
If it’s not raining, take advantage of clear skies with a botanic stroll in Glasgow’s affluent West End. Grab breakfast at Papercup, a small and friendly cafe that has original period details, like egg-and-dart molding and an ornate ceiling rose. Try the brekkie roll with a sausage patty (£5), or eggs on toast with a side of vegan haggis (£8.50). From the cafe, wander to the Glasgow Botanic Gardens, either directly, along Great Western Road, or take the more meandering Kelvin Walkway down by the River Kelvin, crossing the blue, steel Botanic Gardens Footbridge to emerge into the scented gardens on the other bank. Enter the domed Kibble Palace, a spectacular glasshouse in which to explore a jungle of orchids, begonias and ferns, among other leafy treasures.
12 p.m. Browse Scandi home goods and woolly Scottish knitwear
Glaswegians have an appetite for sustainable shopping and for secondhand goods of all stripes. Hoos, next to the Botanic Gardens, stocks chic Scandi home goods, while the Glasgow Vintage Co., farther along Great Western Road from Papercup, has a thoughtful selection of second-hand Scottish knitwear alongside show-stopping coats and dresses from the 1970s. Up the hill on Otago Street, above Perch & Rest Coffee, Kelvin Apothecary sells a nice range of gifts including handmade Scottish soaps and wooden laundry and cleaning tools. In the cobbled Otago Lane is the chaotic Voltaire and Rousseau secondhand bookshop, with teetering, vertical book piles. Unlike many Glasgow shops, this store isn’t the most dog-friendly, because of the resident cat, BB, who supervises from his perch at the till.
According to the records of the temple, the temple was opened in 1047 by Yoshiaki Shonin and enshrines the “Yakushinyourai,” the Buddha who can cure all illness. The name of the temple is said to come from “Joruri,” the realm where the Buddha lives.
The main hall of Joruri-ji is particularly long with nine Amida Buddhas enshrined inside. During the Heian period about 30 such nine-body Amida temples were built around Kyoto, but Joruri-ji is the only temple that still exists. Both the main hall and nine-body Amida Buddha are designated as national treasures.
*The Nine Amida Buddhas sitting statues are being repaired two at a time over a five-year period from July 2018.
Monocle on Saturday, October 21, 2023: Charles Hecker and Georgina Godwin discuss the Rafah border crossing opening in Egypt, turmoil in the US House of Representatives, the UK’s by-election results and hibernation season in Japan.
Plus: Monocle’s Isabella Jewell explores the Horniman Museum’s new exhibition on the history of tea, followed by a tasting of some unusual brews.
Israel, Egypt, the United Nations and others are still working out the details of delivering food, water and medicine, as Israel prepares a possible ground invasion.
The conflict in the Middle East has given President Biden a path to approving Ukraine aid that otherwise might have remained stalled.
The Israeli bombardment of Gaza, in retaliation for a deadly Hamas attack on southern Israel, brought a new outpouring of support in the Arab world for the Palestinian quest for a state.
House Republicans will meet again on Monday in an effort to find a new speaker from among a flurry of new candidates.
Boomers Daily 