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13 October, 2023

The Israeli military has said the 1.1 million people living in northern Gaza should relocate to the south of the Palestinian territory within 24 hours, for “their own safety and protection”. In an unprecedented move, Israel has also published a photograph showing the mutilated corpse of a baby murdered by Hamas. “We need each and every one of you to know,” reads the caption. “This happened.” Prisons in England and Wales are set to run out of space “within days”, says The Times. Ministers are drawing up emergency measures to deal with the crisis, including telling judges to temporarily stop jailing criminals for offences that would ordinarily warrant sentences of under a year. The Royal Mint has revealed the eight new designs for British coins. The first official coinage of King Charles III’s reign (below) celebrates British flora and fauna including a hazel dormouse, a red squirrel, and an oak tree leaf.

MBZ (left) and MBS in 2018. Bandar Algaloud/Anadolu Agency/Getty

The Arab princes reshaping the Middle East

For the first time in the history of the Israeli-Arab conflict, says Dominic Green in The Spectator, the leaders whose opinions matter most won’t be Middle East outsiders like the presidents of America or Russia. They will be two Arab princes: Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia and Mohammed bin Zayed of the UAE, “the double act known as MBS and MBZ”. And with the prospect of a nuclear Iran dominating the region with its Shia allies, these two Sunni autocrats are “aligning themselves with Israel”. The Trump-era Abraham Accords opened relations between the UAE and the Jewish state; MBS told Fox News last month that the Saudis get closer to doing the same “every day”.

Hamas’s appalling attacks on Israel were meant to derail this process. But by using Tehran’s funds and weaponry, they merely reinforced the need to counter the Iranian threat by moving closer to Israel. MBS and MBZ don’t want to get bogged down in old conflicts – their priority is future-proofing their states by using the last decades of the oil age to switch their economies to tech, renewables and leisure. Their tone this week is telling. MBZ’s foreign minister condemned Hamas in language that until recently would have been “unthinkable”. MBS made fewer demands of Jerusalem than the US State Department, which initially called for a ceasefire even as Israeli special forces were still fighting Hamas terrorists in Israeli towns. Arab governments have tired of the Palestinians’ “veto over regional progress”. In the eyes of these powerbrokers, justifying murder in the name of God and blaming the Jews for everything has finally backfired.

The finalists in this year’s Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards include snaps of a kangaroo appearing to strum an air guitar in Australia; two birds having what looks like an argument in Poland; a pair of dancing grizzly bears in Alaska; a swamp turtle balancing a dragonfly on its nose in Israel; and a monkey reclining in a Balinese temple. See the rest here.

We’re used to hearing about the dangers of artificial intelligence, says Myra Anubi on the BBC’s People Fixing the World podcast, but we don’t often hear about its positive uses. So here are three. Ecologists think AI could give humans a much deeper understanding of how animals communicate – researchers in Tel Aviv are already using it to decode the “language” of bats. In Nigeria, scientists have used the technology to work out how best to encourage new mums to vaccinate their children, pushing inoculation rates from about 40% to 75%. And in the US, where just 5% of household plastic waste gets recycled, companies are developing AI-powered robots to improve the sorting process.

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Vintage porn magazines are being sold for massive mark-ups on Etsy, with titles that originally cost £1.95 now going for £25, and a Men Only collection on sale for £225. Clearly the bottomless pit of online porn has “sparked a nostalgia for retro analogue erotica”, says Carol Midgley in The Times. As one happy seller put it: “I’ve been sitting on a goldmine and didn’t know it.”

Immigrants walking in the Rio Grande. John Moore/Getty

How can America stop the “human tsunami”?

The Biden administration’s decision to build 20 more miles of Donald Trump’s border wall has “both sides of the political aisle howling”, says Mary O’Grady in The Wall Street Journal. Biden himself admits he doesn’t think it will work, but his Homeland Security Secretary argues that the Rio Grande Valley in Texas is so vulnerable to “unlawful entry” that there’s an “acute and immediate need to construct physical barriers”. So that’s what they’re doing. It reminds me of Winston Churchill’s observation that “Americans will always do the right thing, after having exhausted all the alternatives”. Extending Trump’s wall is merely the latest bad alternative.

What is the “right thing” to do, then? It’s to embark on a grand US-led growth programme for South and Central America. Open markets, sound money, the rule of law, light tax and regulation – all this was once “standard US advice for the neighbours”. Today, both Democrats and Republicans are protectionists. That’s bad enough, but under Biden, US foreign policy has also fallen under the spell of the far left: “LGBT initiatives, income equality, labour activism and the end of fossil fuels” are all top priorities. “Profit is a dirty word.” Having abdicated free-market leadership, America is now faced with a choice between “pulling up the drawbridge” or accepting the “human tsunami crashing on US shores”. Both options are nightmares. Economic freedom and development are the “only humane solutions to the poverty driving these huddled masses”.

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This clip is from a montage of the bizarre ways ships are launched, which has racked up more than 360,000 views on X (formerly Twitter). As one user says: “Seems like there should be a better way.” See the others here.

Most people are familiar with a few of the nicknames used to call out bingo numbers, many of which are either rhymes or relate to the shape of the digits: “knock at the door” (number four), “two fat ladies” (88), and so on. But even more enjoyable are the random ones. They include “the Lord is my Shepherd” for 23, because that’s the start of Psalm 23; “Heinz varieties” (57); and “Ghandi’s breakfast” for 80, because he ate nothing – or eight nothing. See the full list here.

It’s a portable wind turbine that folds down to the size of a water bottle and can be set up anywhere for a quick hit of electricity. Made by Canadian start up Aurea Technologies, the 1.4kg Shine Turbine is intended for use in emergencies and on camping trips. It can generate enough juice to charge about three phones every hour, and is “more efficient than any comparable solar panels, thermoelectric stoves or water turbines”, says Dezeen. That’s because of wind’s “cubic relationship with power”, apparently – as wind speeds double, power output increases eight times.

“The easiest kind of relationship for me is with 10,000 people. The hardest is with one.”

Joan Baez

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