Jerusalem Embassy Celebration and Riots. Brexit Dawdling. Mastering Hugin.

Cross section of Marram grass. Panorama of 20 image stacks.

Today, to rapturous applause, the US inaugurated it's embassy in Jerusalem. Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump and a slew of US congressmen were there. Meanwhile, the six week protest in Gaza and the West Bank culminated in mass protests where 58 Palestinian protesters were killed by Israeli gunfire and possible a further 2500+ wounded by the fence to Israel and amongst the roiling black clouds of smoke billowing from burning tyres. On the one hand, the US states that it was simply acknowledging  a basic fact, that Jerusalem is Israel's capital. On the other hand, of the 83 countries with embassies in Israel invited to attend, 50 did not, including the UK and most of Europe. With the controversial Evangelical Pastor Robert Jeffress giving the US prayers at the event, you might wonder if this is all a cunning plan to fulfill the prophesy believed by many american evangelicals, that when all the Jews return to Israel, it will be the precursor to Armageddon. Suddenly withdrawing from the Iran Deal makes sense.

Brexit has also been engaging the media with two meetings taking  place. The first was by Theresa May, who invited all her MPs to give an even handed presentation on the two options on Brexit currently the cause of the stalemate in the UK cabinet. Meanwhile Former Deputy PM Nick Clegg, David Miliband and Nicky Morgan launched an cross party campaign on the Brexit Bill, arguing against a hard Brexit. Michel Barnier, EU Brexit negotiator stated that “More work is needed to prepare for the UK’s orderly withdrawal... Allow me to repeat myself: we are not there yet,”. This was a reference to the current Brexit negotiation schedule. Progress in June is an important step towards a final Brexit deal in October, to allow enough time for the EU ratification process before the Brexit day next March.

Spent most of the day running panorama assembly of microscope images taken and stacked last week. I've finally found out how to use the opensource software Hugin to assemble panoramas with exposure correction. this minimises exposure gradients across images and can cope with vignetted images. I was able to run the construction of panoramas in the background whilst catching up with PC work during the day. Gradually accumulating work for the July Cambridge Open Studios. Jane also coming up with some lovely miniatures in mixed media.