Flagship

AI nose can prevent food poisoning

An artificial intelligence-powered electronic nose can detect the bacteria that cause food poisoning. Detecting deadly foodborne pathogens such as E. coli and salmonella can take days: Samples must be sent for the lab for testing. But the bacteria have distinctive “volatile organic compounds” (VOC), which humans detect as smells. Israeli scientists developed a system which can cheaply identify those VOCs within less than an hour, which they hope will transform the fight against food poisoning. It’s a particularly busy time for food poisoning: Millions of Thanksgiving dinners are being turned into leftovers. Experts at Texas A&M university warned that leftovers should not be left unrefrigerated for more than two hours and, if not frozen, should be eaten or discarded by Monday.

Kidjo brings the Albert Hall to its feet

Angélique Kidjo played the Royal Albert Hall, kicking off a world tour celebrating her 40-year career. The Benin-born singer “brought the house to its feet,” the Financial Times reported, looking “every inch the diva” in a gold-sequinned gown and African head wrap. Kidjo, an activist as well as a musician — she is a UNICEF ambassador and creator of the Batonga Foundation for disadvantaged African women and girls — mixed songs with impassioned calls for justice. She dueted with French-Lebanese trumpeter Ibrahim Maalouf in an interpretation of Talking Heads’ Once in a Lifetime: By the encore, “all five tiers of the hall were on their feet, hips swinging, arms in the air.”

Black Mirror to return

Black Mirror is expected to return for a seventh season. The hit dystopian sci-fi show, which started out on the U.K.’s Channel 4 in 2011 before moving to Netflix in a big-money deal, returned after a four-year hiatus this year, garnering record views. Sources told Variety that season 7 would go into production before the new year. As the show has gathered popularity it has gained increasingly high-profile stars — Salma Hayek played herself in the most recent season — and has continued to foretell the future with distressing accuracy: Its creator, Charlie Brooker, said “I worry for a living — it’s generally what I do — and I’m very worried about AI and the use of ChatGPT and things like that.”

Deep-sea pioneer dies

Don Walsh, the first human ever to reach the ocean’s deepest point, died this week at the age of 92. In 1960, Walsh, then 28, was a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy. He had never been deeper than 300 feet, but volunteered for the mission in the Trieste, a “bathyscaphe” or deep-sea submersible, to the Challenger Deep, almost seven miles down in the Pacific Ocean’s Mariana Trench. The pressure at that depth is 7.5 tons per square inch. When Walsh and his crewmate, Swiss oceanographer Jacques Piccard, reached the bottom, the Trieste disturbed the silt and they could see nothing: “It was like looking at a bowl of milk,” Walsh said years later, “so we never got a photograph of the deepest place in the ocean.”

Mononoke attraction opens in Ghibli Park

Studio Ghibli opened a Princess Mononoke attraction in its Aichi theme park. The park opened last autumn, with areas dedicated to Ghibli classics such as My Neighbor Totoro. But it’s expanding its repertoire: The Mononoke exhibit includes “a replica of the Demon Spirit, a watchtower from Emishi Village, and a statue of the giant boar god Lord Okkoto,” according to Time Out. Fans of Hayao Miyazaki’s work will be pleased to know the expansion won’t end there: Plans to make attractions based on Howl’s Moving Castle, Kiki’s Delivery Service, and Earwig and the Witch are underway.

Each week, we’ll tell you what a great independent bookstore suggests you read.

Argo Bookshop in Montreal recommends My Effin’ Life, the long-awaited autobiography from Rush bassist and Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Geddy Lee. The book is a “rich brew of honesty, humor, and loss” that “makes for a uniquely poignant memoir.” Buy it from Argo, or from your local bookstore.

The estimated number of shipwrecks around the coastline of the British Isles. A recent study by the University of Plymouth found that the wrecks, most of which have been lying on the seabed for over a century, are an important refuge for sea life: Fishing trawlers avoid areas with known wrecks, which snag their nets. As a result, wreck sites are not subject to the damage caused by dragged nets. The study, which looked at five 19th- and early 20th-century wrecks off the Berwickshire coast, found 240% as much marine life in the areas around the wrecks as in other areas where trawling is allowed.

Shoppers in the U.S. are projected to have spent close to $1.3 billion on turkeys this week, almost 20% of the sales for the whole of last year. Rising food prices and persistent inflation haven’t dented buyers’ appetite: According to the United States Department of Agriculture, more than 46 million turkeys are eaten during Thanksgiving week, even as prices for a 16-pound bird have risen more than twofold from from 2018. Turkey sales are also a boon for cranberry growers: U.S. diners were expected to consume as much as 80 million pounds of cranberries during the week.

Our weekend roundup of the best Semafor stories you might have missed.

Politics

Donald Trump may be the frontrunner, but Ron DeSantis is still target number one for the 2024 field.

Net Zero

A U.S. banking rule could slow the energy transition. Clean-power developers say the negative impact could be huge.

Tech

What we’ve learned about the robot apocalypse from the OpenAI debacle.

Business

Why a Hollywood mogul invested in a Gulf gas company.

Africa

Liberia’s president-elect Joseph Boakai hopes to kickstart an economy in the doldrums, one of the many challenges he faces.