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With only 4k miles, this 1982 Mercedes-Benz 300SD will outlive us all – Autoblog

Posted on March 26, 2020 by Danzig

At a time when we are suddenly confronted with our own mortality, the notion of immortality holds tremendous sway. That's why this 1982 Mercedes-Benz 300SD, for sale right now on Bring a Trailer is even more compelling than usual. This Benz has covered just 4,000 miles and offers the promise, if not of immortality, then at least of a very, very long life ahead of it.

These diesel-powered W126-generation S-class Benz sedans are famous for their longevity, but most of them have already lived a full life in the 30-plus years since they were built. Not this example. With its ultra-low mileage and preserved condition, it's as if this Benz were only a few months old.

The '82 300SD is powered by a Mercedes's OM617 inline-six-cylinder turbodiesel, displacing 3.0 liters. Its 119 horsepower and 170 lb-ft of torque are dispensed to the rear wheels via a four-speed automatic transmission, and promise slow-but-steady progress. Outside, the car wears a period-perfect hue of Cypress Green. Inside, there's acres of Palomino leather. Adding to the big Benz sedan's comfort for the long haul are factory air conditioning (with a compressor that is said to have been replaced), power windows, power seats, and a power sunroof. Settle in and enjoy the ride.

The Nike Adidas Puma Olympic Battle Will Have to Wait – Barron’s

Posted on March 26, 2020 by Danzig

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...And Puma takes the gold in a time of 9.81 seconds, ahead of Nike in a thrilling race here in Rio.

Billions of people around the world watched Usain Bolt sprint to victory in the Olympic 100 meter final in Brazil on Aug. 14, 2016. Bolt, wearing the iconic Puma-made Jamaican running gear, outpaced Nike-wearing American sprinter Justin Gatlin on his way to athletic immortality.

That same summer, 600 million people watched as Cristiano Ronaldos Nike boots helped Portugal win soccers European Championship, beating a French team lit up by Paul Pogba and his Adidas footwear in the final.

Both the Tokyo Olympics and Euro 2020 have been postponed until the summer of 2021, and sports major brands are set to miss out on millions this year. The Olympics Games have become a battleground for the industry decorated swimmer Michael Phelps, who was sponsored by Under Armour, caused a splash four years ago by wearing Nike on the podium.

Puma, Adidas and Nike have long battled to kit out the worlds best sporting stars and teams at major sporting events, offering bumper sponsorship deals.

Those deals come good at the sporting calendars global events, and they dont come bigger than the Olympic Games. But with global sport on hold, the impact may not be that bad for the sector.

Read: Olympics postponement will make just a dent in Japans GDP. It could have been worse if the games had gone ahead

Earlier this month, Adidas Chief Executive Kasper Rrsted said 2020 would be an exciting year for the company, and said the brand would take center stage at the two major sport events of the year the UEFA Euro 2020 and Tokyo Olympics. It has even provided the match balls for Euro 2020.

The German sportswear giant said the financial impact of the postponements would be between 50 million and 70 million, describing the impact as fairly limited. Bryan Garnier analysts agreed the impact would be limited. Showing its competitive edge, Adidas said that while it would miss out on brand exposure it was the same for all brands.

Puma hasnt publicly quantified the impact but Chief Executive Bjrn Gulden said the Olympics typically spikes interest in sports and drives sales.

Nike Chief Executive John Donahoe was relatively upbeat about the Olympics postponement and said it would not hinder the companys innovation pipeline or product launches.

While global sport has been put on hold, Nikes third-quarter results on Tuesday hinted that the demand for sportswear may hold firm, despite the deepening coronavirus crisis. Adidas and Puma have signaled a significant financial hit at the beginning of 2020, as stores across Asia have been closed, but Nikes performance provided some positivity.

Nikes sales in Greater China fell 4% in the quarter, ending Feb. 29, having been up by double digits in the first two months of the quarter. At the peak, 75% of Nike stores in China were closed in February but now 80% are open. Digital sales climbed 30% in the country in the quarter. RBC analyst Piral Dadhania said the results suggest that sporting goods has perhaps been less affected than other sectors from the Covid-19 shutdown, with consumers focusing on health and well-being while at home. Nike, Adidas and Puma stocks all soared on Wednesday.

Looking ahead. Europe and the U.S. will be tough for Nike, as well as Adidas and Puma, in the coming weeks but the signs of an Asian recovery, and increased interest in sportswear for those stuck at home, bodes well. Crucially, major sporting events have been delayed but not canceled sport will return, and when it does its absence will have made the heart grow fonder.

As Donahoe said on Tuesday: We look forward to when organized sport will be back and running and when they are, well be there.

Alex Salmond: from the brink of independence to a court room – FRANCE 24

Posted on March 26, 2020 by Danzig

Issued on: 23/03/2020 - 18:10Modified: 23/03/2020 - 18:07

London (AFP)

Alex Salmond came within a whisker of immortality among supporters of independence, when he took Scotland to the brink of a breakaway from Britain.

But six years on from the landmark referendum, he found himself battling to save his personal reputation after being charged with a string of sex offences, including attempted rape.

The feisty ex-politician was the face of Scottish nationalism for more than 20 years, taking it from a fringe issue into a mainstream phenomenon that almost broke up the United Kingdom.

He quit frontline politics in 2014, immediately after the campaign he spearheaded lost the independence referendum by 55 percent to 45 percent.

"Obviously I wouldn't have made the decision if there had been a 'Yes' vote," he said at the time.

Scottish independence though has become a permanent issue in British politics and his successor, Nicola Sturgeon, took up the cause with gusto, as Brexit breathed fresh life into his dream.

"For me as leader, my time is nearly over. But for Scotland, the campaign continues and the dream shall never die," he said at the time.

The rhetoric was typical of Salmond, who fired up crowds throughout his political career with his promise to "break the shackles" of the 313-year-old union with England.

He was set to go down in the history books as the politician who returned the energy to British politics -- and helped create a new type of United Kingdom, gaining paise from arch rivals.

The then UK prime minister David Cameron called him a politician "of huge talent and passion" who "has been an effective first minister and always fights his corner."

But the court case saw even his closest allies move to distance themselves from the jocular former first minister, including his protegee, Sturgeon.

- Made in Scotland -

Alexander Eliott Anderson Salmond was born on December 31, 1954 in Linlithgow, near Edinburgh, and graduated in economics and medieval history from the prestigious St Andrews University.

He worked as an economist with the Royal Bank of Scotland before entering the British parliament but found his calling when in 1990 he took over leadership of the Scottish National Party.

Four years before Tony Blair would do something similar to create "New Labour", Salmond steered the SNP towards the political centre and prepared to do battle.

David Torrance, author of "Salmond: Against the Odds", said both Salmond and Blair were more pragmatic than dogmatic. Their slogan could be: "Whatever works".

In the first elections for the devolved Scottish parliament in Edinburgh in 1999 -- created under Blair's leadership -- the SNP lost out to Labour and Salmond quit as leader.

He said his decision was "forever" but he was re-elected in 2004 saying: "I changed my mind."

He was rewarded with power, being elected first minister of a minority SNP government in 2007, and then in 2011 won an absolute majority -- and the promise of a referendum.

- Politician of a generation -

Salmond's charisma was hugely effective on the campaign trail but disguised what aides called an "explosive temper" and a talent for the scathing political put-down.

His supporters praise his unflagging determination and his political know-how, while his opponents brand him arrogant and misogynistic with a penchant for populism.

Many on both sides agree that he was one of the most talented politicians of his generation.

Sociable in public, Salmond has been discreet about his private life. His wife Moira is 17 years older and is only rarely seen by his side. The couple have no children.

His passions are horse racing, good wine and Indian curry, along with football and that Scottish invention -- golf.

Salmond also likes a singalong.

His favourite tune is "Scots Wha Hae" -- an ode by poet Robert Burns to an epic victory against the English at the Battle of Bannockburn 700 years ago.

2020 AFP

Alex Salmond: from the brink of independence to a court room - FRANCE 24

How Altered Carbon: Resleeved Connects to Season 2 | Screen Rant – Screen Rant

Posted on March 26, 2020 by Danzig

Altered Carbon: Resleeved may be set hundreds of years before the events of Altered Carbon season 2, but thanks to the power of immortality the two are connected by a returning character. Tanaseda Hideki, the yakuza leader whom Takeshi Kovacs turned to for help in Altered Carbon season 2, also appears in Altered Carbon: Resleeved. Not only that, we get to see how the strong relationship between the two characters began.

Based on the books by Richard Morgan, Altered Carbon is set in a future where humans have discovered a way to digitize their minds and store them on disks called cortical stacks, which are inserted at the top of a spine. If a person's body is killed, their stack can be recovered and put into a new "sleeve," creating the potential for immortality. Altered Carbon: Resleeved is an anime feature spin-off of the live-action series, which follows Takeshi Kovacs in his early years as a mercenary for hire, who himself is on the run from the authorities.

Related:Every Returning Character In Altered Carbon: Resleeved

In Altered Carbon season 2, Takeshi reluctantly returns to his home planet, Harlan's World, and seeks out his most powerful contact there: Tanaseda Hideki. The head of the Tanaseda yakuza clan has a long history with Takeshi (seriously - they first met more than 280 years ago). When they meet again, Hideki explains to his great-grandson that Takeshi carried out a job for him after the fall of Stronghold, and that after Takeshi was caught and tortured by the Protectorate "in every way they knew how," he still never gave Hideki up. Significantly, Hideki once recited his family's death poem to Takeshi, making him perhaps the only person outside of the Tanaseda clan to know the poem.

In Altered Carbon: Resleeved, we get to see the first meeting between the two characters. Takeshi is carrying out a mission for Hideki, investigating his brother's death within the Mizumoto clan on Latimer, in exchange for Hideki using his influence on Harlan's World to wipe Takeshi's record there. Hideki suspects foul play within the Mizumoto clan that's somehow connected to their upcoming sacrificial ceremony, in which power is handed over to a new leader. By the end of Altered Carbon: Resleeved, Hideki discovers the terrible truth about what happened to his brother - thanks to Takeshi.

The end of Altered Carbon: Resleeved reveals Hideki's more conniving side, as he tells Takeshi that he hasn't even begun to make moves on wiping his records on Harlan's World. First, he wants Takeshi to carry out another mission for him. If viewer interest in Altered Carbon continues, Netflix may well produce more anime spin-offs as a follow-up to Resleeved, and perhaps even reveal the circumstances that led Hideki to recite his family's death poem for Takeshi.

More:When Altered Carbon: Resleeved Is Set In The Timeline

Star Wars Fans Will Forgive The Rise Of Skywalker Quicker Than The Prequels

Hannah has been with Screen Rant since the heady days of 2013, starting out as a humble news writer and eventually clawing her way up the ladder through a series of Machiavellian schemes and betrayals. She's now a features writer and editor, covering the hottest topics in the world of nerddom from her home base in Oxford, UK.Hannah enjoys weird horror movies, weirder sci-fi movies, and also the movie adaptation of Need for Speed - the greatest video game movie of all time. She has lived and studied in New York and Toronto, but ultimately returned home so that she could get a decent cup of tea. Her hobbies include drawing, video games, long walks in the countryside, and wasting far too much time on Twitter.Speaking of which, you can follow Hannah online at @HSW3K

Neutralize COVID-19 hysteria with faith and kindness toward neighbors – Washington Times

Posted on March 26, 2020 by Danzig

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Ray Comfort, in his bookSpurgeon Gold: Pure and Refined, describes Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the 19th-century preacher who ministered in the streets of London during the cholera pandemic of 1854. Spurgeons words, says Mr. Comfort, were pure and refined. They were rhetorical and theological gold. Spurgeon, had the ability to take the hammer of eloquence and nail a particular truth, to pull back the veil of the eternal and give us a fleeting glance.

Mr. Comfort continues. Gold holds its market value. Heavens everlasting streets are paved with it Gold is not meant to sit on the shelf of a rich man. If it does, then it becomes worthless. Its real value will be seen in its being spent on the cause of the Kingdom.In other words, the gold of truth earns its value only through the spoken word and the active life of men of virtue and valor. The gold of integrity must be spent. It cannot be hoarded. It only earns its value if it is invested.

As COVID-19 hysteria sweeps across our nation, the tens of millions of us who still claim to be followers of Christ might do well to consider, not only these words from Ray Comfort, but also the words and actions of Charles Spurgeon of some 150 years past.

They are so good.

They are so faithful.

They are so pertinent and so prophetic.

They are gold.

One can almost hear Spurgeon bellowing from the podiums of New York City and Washington, D.C., as he did from his pulpit in Essex England Christians take heart! Be not afraid! Your Savior and your God, is with you! Be steadfast and immovable! Be strong and courageous! Be not afraid! Always abound in the work of the Lord!

If you listen carefully, this man, known as the Prince of Preachers, a man with a golden tongue and a refined soul, is shouting Never let a crisis go to waste. Run toward the storm, not away from it. Embrace this calamity. Have courage! This is your time. This is your destiny. This is your opportunity. Shine with the light of salvation and the love of your Redeemer. Be the Church, for Jesus, himself, has told you the gates of hell will not prevail against you! Put your trust in God, not in yourselves, and not in government. Believe in His sovereignty. Walk in His grace. March with confidence in your King!

But enough of the dross of my speculation. Hear the exact words of Spurgeon:

At first, I gave myself up with youthful ardor to the visitation of the sick, and was sent for from all corners of the district by persons of all ranks and religions; but, soon, I became weary in body and sick at heart. My friends seemed falling one by one, and I felt or fancied that I was sickening like those around me. A little more work and weeping would have laid me low among the rest; I felt that my burden was heavier than I could bear, and I was ready to sink under it.

I was returning mournfully home from a funeral, when, as God would have it, my curiosity led me to read a paper which was wafered up in a shoemakers window on the Great Dover Road. It did not look like a trade announcement, nor was it, for it bore, in good bold handwriting, these words: Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the Most High, thy habitation; there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.

The effect upon my heart was immediate. Faith appropriated the passage as her own. I felt secure, refreshed, girt with immortality. I went on with my visitation of the dying, in a calm and peaceful spirit; I felt no fear of evil, and I suffered no harm.

The Providence which moved the tradesman to place those verses in his window, I gratefully acknowledge; and in the remembrance of its marvelous power, I adore the Lord my God.

Let me repeat Faith appropriated. I felt secure, refreshed, girt with immortality. I went on in a calm and peaceful spirit; I felt no fear of evil, and I suffered no harm!

This is gold. Pure gold. Refined gold.

Whether it be a bad market or a bad disease, lovers of Christ should be the first to show the world that our security is not in hand sanitizers but in our Savior.

Dont let this crisis go to waste! shouts Spurgeon.

Show the world what love, joy and peace, truly look like.

Show your neighbor, your city and your nation that even though we walk through dark valleys, fear has lost its victory and death has lost its sting.

Everett Piper, former president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University, is a columnist for The Washington Times and author of Not A Day Care: The Devastating Consequences of Abandoning Truth (Regnery 2017).

Today’s Gospel in Art – The Annunciation of the Lord – Independent Catholic News

Posted on March 26, 2020 by Danzig

The Annunciation with St Emidius, by Carlo Crivelli - 1486 National Gallery, London

Gospel of 25th March 2020 - Luke 1:26-38

The angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph, of the House of David; and the virgin's name was Mary. He went in and said to her, 'Rejoice, so highly favoured! The Lord is with you.' She was deeply disturbed by these words and asked herself what this greeting could mean, but the angel said to her, 'Mary, do not be afraid; you have won God's favour. Listen! You are to conceive and bear a son, and you must name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David; he will rule over the House of Jacob for ever and his reign will have no end.'

Mary said to the angel, 'But how can this come about, since I am a virgin?' 'The Holy Spirit will come upon you' the angel answered 'and the power of the Most High will cover you with its shadow. And so the child will be holy and will be called Son of God. Know this too: your kinswoman Elizabeth has, in her old age, herself conceived a son, and she whom people called barren is now in her sixth month, for nothing is impossible to God.' 'I am the handmaid of the Lord,' said Mary 'let what you have said be done to me.' And the angel left her.

Reflection on the Painting

In the summer of 1995 I moved to London, where I have lived ever since. One of the very first paintings I saw was this magnificent canvas by Carlo Crivelli, at the National Gallery. The burst of colours (and this photograph doesn't entirely do justice to the picture), the detail and symbolism of the composition moved me. Still when I see this painting now, it reminds me of the start of that new chapter in life. Like an old friend reminding you of good times, art has the power to remind us of past times.

We see the ray of light from the Holy Spirit descending upon Mary. The closed passage into the depth at the left and the flask holding pure water in Mary's bedroom refer to Our Lady's virginity. The two other figures in the foreground are the angel Gabriel and Saint Emidius, carrying a model of Ascoli Piceno, a town in Marche, Italy, of which he is the patron saint. It is not unusual to see a local saint effectively intervening and being depicted as part of a biblical event. The apple in the foreground represents the forbidden fruit from the Garden of Eden, and therefore serves as a symbol of sin. The cucumber, balanced on the edge of the painting towards the viewer, symbolises the reversal of sin: resurrection and redemption. The peacock is associated with immortality, because it was believed that its flesh never decayed.

A man on a bridge is reading a message handed to him by another man, delivered by the carrier pigeon in the cage beside them, a clever analogy of the message of the Annunciation itself. Around them the town goes on, oblivious to the events depicted. Only a small, innocent, pure child peering round the corner seems to be interested in what is happening. A whole world goes on its way, apparently oblivious to the new Christian chapter in history which has begun in this very scene. Only Mary is complete in her way of being ready, humble and available to respond to the Lord

Today's story - https://christianart.today/reading.php?id=369

Christian Art Today - https://christianart.today/

Tags: Christian Art Today, Patrick van der Vorst, Carlo Crivelli

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Today's Gospel in Art - The Annunciation of the Lord - Independent Catholic News

The Vampire Diaries: The 10 Most Hated Storylines | ScreenRant – Screen Rant

Posted on March 26, 2020 by Danzig

Watching The Vampire Diarieswas often like a mad rush because so much happened in each episode. The momentum kept the fans watching for eight seasons, even after the central character, Elena was gone or "asleep." We were pulled in by the main characters' arcs and friendships. Additionally, the storylines were dramatic and interesting, pulling us in, making us want more.

RELATED: The Vampire Diaries Universe Top 10 Love Triangles

However, not every storyline was stellar; some became dull, or problematic, or even too dramatic. Which are the most hated storylines?

Damon finds out that his and Stefan's mother has been banished and imprisoned in a Gemini-coven prison world. He wants to bring her back, but she won't come without the heretics, witches-turned-vampire. When the group works to bring her friends back as well, Mother Salvatore appears to prefer the heretics to her sons, further rubbing the salt into both Stefan and Damon's wounds.

The heretics could have been interesting characters, but other than Valerie, the rest weren't given much screen time or allowed for much character development. We had Mary Louise and Nora, two heretic lovers who were never able to express their love in the world that they came from. So much more could have been done with their storyline. Additionally, all the heretics seemed to be devoted to Mother Salvatore, as if she were their mother. This loyalty was never really fully explored.

The Silas storyline was extremely dramatic. We learned where the doppelgangers started from--Silas and Amara. We also learned that Qetsiyah had cursed them, especially Amara who had to suffer supernatural beings walking through her in order to get to the other side.

Due to this role, Amara was desperate for a cure to her immortality. All of this could have been very interesting, and part of it was. However, the majority of this storyline became too melodramatic and diverted from the more interesting drama of our core group.

Stefan knew Valerie before either was a vampire. She was his first girlfriend prior to his all encompassing love for Katherine. We find out that Valerie still has a torch for Stefan, and that she had been pregnant with Stefan's child, losing it in a miscarriage. Knowing this complicated Stefan's feelings.

RELATED: The Vampire Diaries 10 Most Shameless Things Stefan Ever Did

Meanwhile, he had been assuring a jealous Caroline that she had nothing to fear about his past with Valerie. In the end, Stefan leaves Caroline (partly to save her), but he abandons her in that he doesn't even stay in touch. During this time, he is attached to Valerie. She is her girlfriend. He may have stayed with her due to their history, but it was clear that these two didn't have much of a future.

Once Stefan left and Caroline had the twins, she couldn't leave the twins. As much as she assured herself and others that she wasn't technically their mother, she felt attached to them. They had been magically transferred to her womb when their biological mother (Jo) was murdered, and Caroline carried them, giving birth to them. She couldn't help but love them, wanting to be in their lives. When she tried to convince herself that she loved Alaric, their father, it didn't ring true. It was more of a marriage of convenience and mutual respect, than that of love.

However, Alaric did seem to feel true romance for Caroline. This felt a little strange, especially since he had been a teacherat her school when Caroline was a high school student, and her best friend, Elena, was his first wive's daughter. This relationship had the yuck factor all over it.

This is another storyline that could have been more interesting. After all Jeremy inherited his powers as a vampire hunter, and his sister's friends are vampires--Elena became one, too. We do have moments when Damon is teaching him how to use his powers, which are light and fun. However, over all the brotherhood of the hunters proves dull.

RELATED: 10 Shows with Vampires If You Miss The Vampire Diaries

They were supposed to be presented as terrifying, even to the original vampires. It was hard to see Jeremy as anything other than Elena's sometimes annoying little brother. We would have loved to see Jeremy struggle more with his power and what it meant to him.

Rayna was a more interesting hunter than Jeremy. Built from the powers of multiple shamans, Rayna had an immortal focus on killing those she marked. Once she had marked you, you had very little luck of surviving. True, they tried to make Rayna more interesting by focusing on her history and her inability to change her hunting ways. Rayna even gave her powers to Bonnie, leaving Bonnie to sacrifice once again and with a thirst to kill her friends.

The problem with the Rayna storyline is that it got drawn out for so long and prevented our favorite characters from sharing the same space.

Of all the quick and nonsensical deaths, Tyler's is one of the worst. He ties with Vicki's. However, at this time, we finally got to know Tyler, see him grow, and see his connection to his friends. Elena had sent him off, telling him to get the future he deserved. Damon, wanting everyone to give up on him since he is under the influence of the Siren, kills Tyler.

Damon thinks that this is the one act that can't be forgiven by his brother and friends. Of course, his act doesn't work, and they all are Team Damon. Still, this quick killing of Tyler seemed a poor send-off to a beloved character--purposeless.

Alaric was transformed by Esther, the original witch and Klaus's mother, into an enhanced vampire. He is no ordinary vampire though, Esther gave him the power of an original vampire and enhanced that power even more. Alaric resurrected as a shadow of himself, now hating any vampires and any friends of vampires.

RELATED: The Vampire Diaries 10 Hidden Details about Mystic Falls You Didn't Notice

On one hand, it was interesting to see good-guy Alaric turn evil. However, he wasn't an evil part of himself, but rather a completely different character.

Bonnie becomes an extremely strong witch in her ability to adapt and grow. However, her friends both count on her and take advantage of her. She is made to sacrifice a lot for her friends: her family, her love, her powers, and even her life. She constantly lives or dies for others. Finally, in the last couple seasons, she seemed to be living her life, having her own narrative.

Still, this character deserved better than to be the one who constantly sacrificed for others. Her role shouldn't just be the friend. After all, she is the recipient of a long legacy of witch powers, a Bennett witch. More should have been done with that.

Finally, many fans had what they wanted--Damon and Elena as a couple. For seasons, Elena fought against her feelings for Damon. And for seasons, Damon had been trying to convince Elena to be with him instead of his brother, Stefan. It caused friction and tension between the two brothers, and it created an epic love triangle. After Elena becomes a vampire, she realizes that she loves Damon, choosing him over Stefan. Fans should all cheer, right?

Wrong. Since Damon made Elena a vampire, she became sired to him. Whatever Damon told her, she followed. This cheapens their relationship, and partially makes it seem that it's not an equal one, that Damon has power over Elena. She changes for him. Not a good sign to the beginnings of a relationship. Luckily, their relationship was able to change and develop. However, this wasn't a good way to start. Thus, their passionate session made fans cringe rather than feel happy for them.

NEXT: The Vampire Diaries The 7 Doppelgangers, Ranked

Next10 Best Val Kilmer Movies Ever, Ranked (According To IMDb)

Heather Frankland is a writer, teacher, and public health advocate. She has had creative work published in literary journals and online websites. She enjoys analyzing her favorite shows and movies and is happy to exercise that talent at Screen Rant, previously exercised in long conversations over beer with friends.

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The Vampire Diaries: The 10 Most Hated Storylines | ScreenRant - Screen Rant

Doctor Who: The Top 10 Tenth Doctor Episodes, Ranked According to IMDb – Screen Rant

Posted on March 26, 2020 by Danzig

For three seasons of Doctor Who, David Tennant's Tenth Doctor won Whovian hearts with his distinctive wit and depth as the most tortured Time Lord in the universe. This combination of humor and narrative complexity has made Ten one of the most beloved Doctors to date, and indeed, some of the most memorableWho storylines were conceived in this era.

RELATED:Doctor Who: 10 Most Shameless Things The Tenth Doctor Ever Did

Showrunner Russell T. Davies, along with writers like Davies's future successor Steven Moffat, helped create a world of intricate (sometimesquiteintricate) and mindblowing plots. Here are the top ten Tenth Doctor episodes, ranked according toIMDb:

The Doctor is not always a fan of his own longevity, but it's no surprise when mortal beings jump at the chance for immortality. In this first installment of a two-part story arc, the Doctor and his companion Martha (Freema Agyeman) insert themselves into an early-twentieth-century community to evade the Family of Blood, which wants to obtain the Doctor's Time Lord life span.

RELATED: Doctor Who: 5 Reasons Martha Was A Better Companion Than Clara (& Vice Versa)

To prevent this, the Doctor becomes human and assumes the identity of a teacher named John Smith. Martha is perhaps the real hero in this story, as the Doctor essentially orders her to "invent a life story for me, find me a setting, and integrate me." Stuck with a Time Lord who doesn't know who he is and has no power? Pretty tough luck for a companion.

This one-off episode from season four follows the Tenth Doctor as he attempts to discover the source of terror on a shuttle traversing the planet Midnight. Written by Russell T. Davies, the episode is an instance of the oft-used format inDoctor Who: isolation in an enclosed space, with a group of strangers that the Doctor must persuade into following his lead. In this case, the strangers run into some slight trouble with, well, getting possessed.

As the crew members lose their calm, the Doctor doesn't always maintain his, either. "If we're going to get out of this, then you need me," Tennant's angry Ten exclaims at one point. Considering how irrational they all become, who can blame the Doctor for getting a little unhinged?Fun fact: guest-star Colin Morgan began playing the title character in BBC One'sMerlinsame year "Midnight" debuted.

In this penultimate episode of season four, the Tenth Doctor andDonna (Catherine Tate) are joined by a litany of pastcompanions in their quest to save the planet and over a dozen others that have gone missing.

RELATED:The Sarah Jane Adventures: 10 Worst Episodes Of The Doctor Who Spin Off

"The Stolen Earth" is actually a crossover episode between Whoand its two majestic spin-offs,TorchwoodandThe Sarah Jane Adventures. As such, it boastsa tremendous cast that sees Rose (Billie Piper), Captain Jack (John Barrowman), Sarah Jane (Elisabeth Sladen), and Martha (Freema Agyeman) assisting the Doctor once more. In this episode and its second part, "Journey's End," the Doctor battles the Daleks, who are perhaps his most iconic enemy in the Whoniverse.

In defense of the Family of Blood, who wouldn't want to live as long as a Time Lord? Unsurprisingly, the Doctor reigns victorious over the Family in this follow-up to "Human Nature," but not without some striking emotional revelations. "Family of Blood" features a heartbreaking speech from Martha when she says of the Doctor, "He's just everything to me, and he doesn't even look at me, but I don't care, because I love him to bits."

Considering all that Martha does to help the Doctor (especially when he doesn't even remember who he is), the moment is particularly devastating.

How often do you get to see the Doctor regenerate into the same incarnation? That's (sort of) what transpires at the start of this season four finale, which constitutes a sufficiently emotional follow-up to "The Stolen Earth." The injured Doctor partially regenerates to get back in tiptop shape, and explains in a hallmark moment of wit, "Used the regeneration energy to heal myself, but as soon as I was done, I didn't need to change. I didn't want to. Why would I? Look at me."

RELATED:Doctor Who: 10 Times The Doctor Broke His Own Rules

This clever event is followed by the successful defeat of the Daleks, but also the tragic end of Donna's time as the Doctor's right-hand woman. In one of the most disturbing companion departures, her memory of the Doctor and all their escapades must be removed. Although season four was Tennant's last as the Doctor, he did not regenerate into Eleven in this episode; instead, a few standalone episodes were released over a year after season four, culminating in the "The End of Time."

Past, present, and future collide in this wacky episode that invokes both space traveland corsets. After discovering a 51st-century spaceship in which he can see an 18th-century French girl through a fireplace, the Doctor must figure out what's so special about her -- and, of course, how to save the day.

The episode is a brilliant combination of the historical period pieces and futuristic space plots thatWhoexecutes so well.

In the perpetually-traumatic finale to season two, the Doctor and Rose Tyler are separated indefinitely by the aftermath of a battle involving the Daleks and Cybermen. When one Cyberman says, "Together, we could upgrade the universe," you know it's going to be a tough battle!

RELATED: Doctor Who: 10 Reasons Why Rose Tyler Was The Best Companion

Although Earth is saved, Rose and the Doctor end up stuck in two different universes. Much more than a wall separates them, but both gravitate toward the physical area in which Rose was pulled into the parallel universe. Tennant delivers an incredible performance, touching the wall with an eerily vacant look in his eye, butBillie Piper's delivery is even more affecting as she sobs uncontrollably in her new world. While Rose and the Doctor's reactions may differ, their trauma is most certainly equal.

The enigma of River Song (Alex Kingston) and the Doctor begins ... and then ends, in a sense ... during the first installment of this two-part story arc, where viewers see the two meet. This is their first encounter from the Doctor's point of view, that is. As Whovians know, "first" is highly relative when dealing with the chaotic nature of relationships onWho, especially the inherently nonchronological saga of the Doctor and River Song.

The episode kicks off when Donna and the Doctor arrive at an unusually empty library, where they encounter the homicidal and shadowy Vashta Nerada. Alex Kingston's debut as River Song is a powerful one, as her sensitive reaction to the Doctor quickly convinces viewers that their relationship is terribly complex -- even if we have not seen any of it.

The follow-up to "Silence in the Library" includes one of the most momentous moments inWhocanon: River Song's death. It's a rare moment that becomes even more traumatizing when you progress through the show, because at this point, viewers had only seen River Song in one other episode. River's subsequent character development, including her relationship with not only Ten but Eleven, and Twelve, is one of the most complex and rivetingWho storylines.

RELATED:Doctor Who: 10 Most Devastating Deaths Of The Modern Series, Ranked

For one, River is later revealed to be the daughter of Amy and Rory Pond, two of Eleventh Doctor's principal companions.OnlyDoctor Whocan kill off a character before you even know her,thendevelop her and make you swoon. Kind of similar to the Doctor's experience, huh?

The persisting critical and audience acclaim for this haunting episode is no surprise, given that it introduced one of the most sinister villains inWhohistory: the Weeping Angels. Written by Steven Moffat and guest-starring Carey Mulligan, the story follows Mulligan's Sally Sparrow as she grapples with the "timey-wimey" effects of the Angels. The Weeping Angels have appeared in severalWhoepisodes since, including a season seven episode that concluded Amy and Rory's time as companions to Eleven.

NEXT: Doctor Who: 5 Best And 5 Worst Eleventh Doctor Episodes

Next10 Things That Happened in Season 1 of Game Of Thrones That You Completely Forgot About

Kat is an English major at The George Washington University in Washington, DC. As a lifelong television and film enthusiast, she's a fan of innovative visuals and morally ambiguous characters (preferably, both at the same time!).

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Doctor Who: The Top 10 Tenth Doctor Episodes, Ranked According to IMDb - Screen Rant

Asylum Rights Denied, Migrants, Refugees Find Greek Island on the Brink – Balkan Insight

Posted on March 26, 2020 by Danzig

The conservative Greek governments decision to suspend asylum rights followed an order at the end of February from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in neighbouring Turkey for coast guards and border police to stand down and wave refugees and migrants through, ripping up a 2016 deal with the European Union to keep them inside Turkeys borders.

Refugees and migrants headed in droves to the Greek-Turkish border, only to find the Greek side closed. Thousands are now stuck in no mans land. Many have been pushed back with tear gas, and, reportedly, bullets.

Talks between the EU, Greece and Turkey have yet to break the deadlock.

Under the EU-Turkey deal signed in 2016, Ankara was promised six billion euros in aid to accommodate the refugees it prevented from reaching European soil.

But Erdogan, under pressure at home over heavy Turkish military losses in Syria, has repeatedly accused Europe of failing to fulfill its financial aid commitments, and threatened to open the border to some 3.6 million Syrian refugees inside Turkey and more migrants from elsewhere.

At the east end of the port of Lesbos, beside a locked gate, visitors came to offer support to those held inside. Among the visitors were migrants and refugees from the Moria camp on Lesbos, Europes largest and most notorious migrant camp where some 20,000 are housed in facilities built for 3,000.

They passed food and clothes over the fence. Others had just come to chat. A Greek policeman smoking nearby glanced over from time to time and told them to move along. Some Afghan children played by the fence, seeing how high they could climb. A young boy came dangerously close to the razor wire running along the top of the fence, before someone spotted him and lifted him down.

Detained in the port, Salem, an 18-year-old Syrian from the northwestern city of Idlib, chatted to her two teenage cousins through the fence. On hearing of Erdogans order, Salem, her mother and her two siblings decided to brave the sea crossing to Lesbos.

I want to see my father in Germany, Salem said. The other side of the fence, her cousins Esma and Isra have already spent six months on Lesbos.

The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, rights bodies and NGOs have condemned the Greek governments suspension of asylum rights. The watchdog Human Rights Watch said the move flagrantly violates international and European law.

Boats pushed back

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Asylum Rights Denied, Migrants, Refugees Find Greek Island on the Brink - Balkan Insight

Failure to fix immigration undermines our ability to mitigate COVID-19 | TheHill – The Hill

Posted on March 26, 2020 by Danzig

As the COVID-19 pandemic sweeps the country and the globe, the Trump administration has enacted a series of travel restrictions with other countries and new measures targeting asylum seekers along the U.S.-Mexico border to combat the crisis.

Although President TrumpDonald John TrumpThe pandemic is bad, we need the capability to measure just how bad Florida governor wants federal disaster area declaration Amash calls stimulus package 'a raw deal' for 'those who need the most help' MORE has claimed that these measures would mitigate the crisis by stopping mass global migration that purportedly spreads COVID-19, they overlook the systemic problems in our health care infrastructure that failed to contain the virus in the country.

Unfortunately, this approach repeats the same mistakes of the administrations asylum policies at the U.S.-Mexico border by focusing on prevention and not the systems capacity to deal with a medical and immigration crisis.

Over the last year, the administration has relied on agreements with other countries to stem the flow of migrants at the southwest border. The "Remain in Mexico" program and the asylum agreement with Guatemala, for example, both allow asylum seekers to be whisked from the border to either wait for a hearing or seek asylum elsewhere. Although these programs led to a decline in arrivals at the Southwest border, the administration did not use that moment to fix the immigration systems problems.

These problems are legion. The immigration court system, which processes asylum cases, continues to be underfunded and understaffed, creating years-long backlogs for these cases. Customs and Border Protections infrastructure continues to lack the capacity to receive and process vulnerable populations like families and children with appropriate medical and humanitarian care.

Finally, the Department of Homeland Security does not have protocols for coordinating processing or managing the transfer of asylum seekers across its agencies or to the Department of Health and Human Services, nor to surge resources at the border to provide humanitarian assistance when needed.

These issues have limited the ability of the system to respond to the health crisis. Migrants in detention facilities face exposure to the virus if an employee contracts the virus and spreads it to their coworkers and detainees. The squalid conditions in the migrant camps on the Mexican side of the U.S.-Mexico border also create similar risks, since many migrants do not have access to facilities to take preventative hygiene measures such as washing their hands. And CBP still has to encounter and process arriving migrants in its facilities with limited ability to provide medical care and screening, putting both migrants and CBP agents at risk.

The administration had not taken any meaningful, bipartisan steps to address these institutional problems before the pandemic, creating a two-front battle for the immigration system. Immigration advocates have called ending the Migrant Protection Protocols and releasing migrants in detention to avoid these medical issues. Without institutional and procedural changes that would allow the asylum and border systems to manage the incoming migrants, however, these steps would merely recreate the 2018 and 2019 border crisis.

First, ending MPP would reinitiate the same crisis because we have not constructed enough new border infrastructure to receive vulnerable populations or boosted resources for asylum adjudications and immigration courts to manage a significantly higher volume of cases.

Ending migrant detention would compound this problem, especially if DHS released asylum seekers in the United States without viable alternatives for their medical care and appropriate conditions of release to ensure future appearance at immigration court.

And while Alternatives to Detention programs could mitigate some of these problems, the inability to deploy such measures on a large scale overnight would mean that more migrants would be released into the United States without any oversight by authorities. Without an end-to-end overhaul of our immigration system, these proposed measures would not help with addressing the current pandemic or ensuring that the asylum system operates fairly and efficiently.

A smart response would recognize the need to fix the long-term problems with the immigration system while taking short-term measures to address the public health crisis. In the case of MPP, the United States and Mexico must immediately work with the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, the Red Cross, and UNICEF to set up proper refugee camps on the Mexican side of the U.S.-Mexico border that provides migrants with facilities to meet their health needs.

ICE should immediately surge health care resources to detention facilities and consider release for those who have underlying health conditions that would make them more susceptible to the coronavirus, with necessary monitoring and check-ins.

While these short-term measures would not resolve the problem tomorrow, they would address the immediate challenges while buying time for the government to solve the structural problems in the system. Given the stakes, the administration and Congress cannot delay in fixing these problems to strengthen the immigration system and its ability to help contain the pandemic.

Cristobal Ramn is a senior policy analyst at the Bipartisan Policy Center.

Failure to fix immigration undermines our ability to mitigate COVID-19 | TheHill - The Hill

EU solidarity in the time of coronavirus – Open Democracy

Posted on March 26, 2020 by Danzig

By now you all understood that European solidarity does not exist, Serbias president, Aleksandar Vui, told the nation during a press conference to declare a state of emergency on Sunday evening. It was a fairy tale on paper, he added, and the only country that can help us is China. It was a moment of grand political theatre, delivered with Vuis trademark pauses and profundity, in front of a TV audience eager to learn whether their sons and daughters would be going to school or kindergarten the very next day. Yet it was a moment that captured a sentiment that even Serbias most progressive voices have come to harbour deepening and increasingly fundamental disillusionment with the EU and the European perspective. It is, moreover, a disillusionment that is felt across the Western Balkans.

The timeline for membership of the Union a dream shared by the so-called Western Balkans Six has been stretched to such an extent that it has begun to fray. The start of accession talks with North Macedonia and Albania were vetoed by France last autumn, despite the former having changed its name after an historic compromise with Greece. Kosovo still awaits visa liberalisation, even though the Commission determined that it had fulfilled all the stipulated conditions (of which there were plenty). Bosnia and Herzegovinas internal upheavals threaten its own functionality, let alone its prospects of membership. Only Montenegro and Serbia have made some small but tangible progress; often to the chagrin of the others, especially the progress of the latter.

Without either absolving governments for their failures to implement EU conditioned reforms (and their subsequent attempts to distract attention), or romanticising their stated commitments to do so amidst almost constant electioneering, the recalcitrance of certain member states towards admitting new members has hindered progress on numerous fronts.

It is not just the waning of the European perspective, though well-documented, that is driving disillusionment. The regions healthcare systems including those of EU members such as Croatia and Bulgaria have been decimated (especially outside the main urban centres) by the outflow of highly-trained medical personal (doctors, nurses, surgeons, anaesthetists), enticed by opportunities and renumeration in western Europe. Though one cannot begrudge these individuals the professional and life chances they so deserve, nor can the chronic mismanagement and underfunding of these systems be overlooked, it is nonetheless a loss of labour that is both hard to stem and exacting to replace (especially in the absence of sizeable immigration). Demand for such human capital from Europes ageing population is inexhaustible, and many feel these countries should be entitled to direct compensation for their investments. During public health traumas like the Coronavirus, such deficiencies become even more pronounced. There are already too few doctors and nurses, let alone when those on the front-line inevitably fall ill. They will face unimaginable stresses and strains, the result of which will be preventable deaths.

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EU solidarity in the time of coronavirus - Open Democracy

Club Med takes on the Frugals in EU ‘corona bond’ bailout battle – Reuters

Posted on March 26, 2020 by Danzig

BRUSSELS/FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Leaders of nine EU countries urged the bloc on Wednesday to issue a common debt instrument to cushion their economies from the shock of the coronavirus crisis, challenging Germany and others adamantly opposed to pooling risk across the continent.

FILE PHOTO: European Union flags fly near the European Commission headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, October 4, 2019. REUTERS/Yves Herman

European Union finance ministers broadly agreed the previous day on an idea that governments grappling for funds might apply for a credit line worth some 2% of their GDP from a joint bailout fund called the European Stabilisation Mechanism (ESM).

But there was no agreement on joint debt issuance across the 19 member states that share the euro single currency - long a goal for the Club Med group of mostly southern member states, most prominently Italy, and just as much a red line for a group of wealthier northern countries known as the Frugals.

That left it to the leaders, who will meet in a videoconference summit on Thursday, to thrash out the issue.

Germany was one of the founders of the euro zone, in which the European Central Bank sets monetary policy for all the 19 countries that share the EUs single currency, the euro.

But the ECB, to its regret, has no power over budgets.

ECB chief Christine Lagarde asked the ministers at their meeting on Tuesday to give serious consideration to a joint issue of corona bonds as a one-off, four officials said.

One official said her proposal had run into opposition from Germany, the Netherlands and other northern European countries, but also a lot of support beyond Club Med. Germany and others could block the proposal at Thursdays meeting.

Sources said the German position, as it was in the 2010-2012 euro zone sovereign debt crisis, is that taking part in a mutual bond issue or corona bond is still a step too far, and would be resisted by its parliament and constitutional court.

There is also public opposition to putting German taxpayers money on the line to help countries seen as more spendthrift than Germany, which, alone among euro zone members, runs a balanced budget.

The push-back from northern countries - which sources said included the Netherlands, Finland and Austria - in the face of Europes most serious crisis since World War Two highlights a lack of solidarity that has been undermining the EUs principle of shared values ever since the debt crisis and the migrant crisis of 2015.

Some member states were initially reluctant to share medical equipment with Italy, which has suffered the deadliest outbreak, and several countries have reintroduced border controls - recalling the migrant crisis - inside what is normally the open-frontier Schengen Zone.

In a joint letter ahead of Thursdays virtual summit, nine countries, led by economic heavyweights France, Italy and Spain, called for a common debt instrument issued by a European institution to raise funds on the market.

By givingaclear message thatwearefacingthis unique shockall together, we would strengthen the EU and the Economic and Monetary Union and ... provide the strongest message to our citizens about European determined cooperation and resolve to provide an effective and united response, they said.

The letter was also signed by the leaders of Portugal, Ireland, Luxembourg, Slovenia, Belgium and Greece.

Officials say the need for a decision on a bailout plan has been reduced by the ECBs announcement of a coronavirus emergency bond-buying program worth 750 billion euros.

Still, the ECB has long sought a euro zone-wide safe asset, arguing that a Euro Bond would be key to crisis-proofing a currency bloc that came close to collapse in the debt crisis only a few years ago.

A German government spokesman, responding to the letter, said it was normal for leaders to put forward proposals ahead of EU summits, but in the end the matter would be decided by all member states. No comment was immediately available from the Netherlands or Austria.

Such an instrument would give Brussels a fiscal lever that could be moved quickly and in tandem with the ECB, which has for years complained that budget policy is out of sync with monetary policy, hindering its economic stimulus efforts.

It would also let commercial banks cut holdings of their home countrys debt, breaking the so-called doom loop between banks and their host country in which any regional debt crisis can quickly morph into a banking crisis as well.

Additional reporting by Balazs Koranyi in Frankfurt, Andrey Khalip in Madrid, Gabriela Baczynska in Brussels and Andreas Rinke in Berlin; Writing by John Chalmers; Editing by Kevin Liffey

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Club Med takes on the Frugals in EU 'corona bond' bailout battle - Reuters

The hostile environment is being kept in place even amid the coronavirus crisis – LabourList

Posted on March 26, 2020 by Danzig

An elderly woman with lung cancer was told she would have to fly home to Ukraine in order to receive treatment, it has been reported. This would be quite a feat given there are currently no flights going into the country. Confronted with this news, Home Office administrators suggested that she drive instead. This absurd case highlights the intractable and insensitive culture behind day-to-day Home Office bureaucracy, which recently came in for serious criticism with the long-awaited publication of the Windrush Lessons Learned review.

In another sign that the Home Office is intending to carry out business as usual, it hasnt updated its coronavirus immigration advice for the best part of a month. Its determination to maintain the hostile environment, even in these unprecedented times, will surprise nobody who has been closely tracking developments in immigration policy over the past few months.

The pandemic has thrown the UKs hostile environment into the spotlight once again. As the Home Office continues to fly in the face of common sense and humanity, migrants are being left to fend off the impending Covid-19 crisis on their own. As food banks are driven into closure by dwindling volunteer numbers and supermarket shortages, it is undocumented migrants who will be worst affected. There are too many migrants currently on the brink of destitution without recourse to public funds.

The situation in healthcare is equally dire. While the government has confirmed that migrants can get tested for Covid-19 on the NHS at no charge, it has failed to publicise this fact. Equally, if they test negative for coronavirus and require other treatment, they could still incur charges.

Any policy that deters people from seeking medical treatment under the current circumstances is not only inhumane it can also exacerbate the spread of the virus. Pausing the immigration healthcare surcharge to ensure everyone comes forward would make a world of sense not least because the security apparatus surrounding it is so expensive.

Prisons were quickly identified as one area where coronavirus could spread like wildfire without special provisions. It took a while longer for the government to accept the danger posed to people in immigration detention centres, and even longer to publicly acknowledge it. The Home Office has maintained the pretence that it will carry on with deportations as usual but the fact that it cannot do so means it shouldnt be keeping them prisoner in the first place.

The government has now removed some of the most at-risk people from detention centres, but keeping people in such a risky situation seems entirely disproportionate when you remember that their main crime was not being born in this country. We also know that most people who are detained are let out after less than a month, which as one prison inspector noted in 2015 raises questions about the validity of their detention in the first place.

There are even some voices from the Conservative benches that are now recognising problems in our current immigration system as a result of coronavirus. Tory backbencher Steve Double pointed out how workers who were maligned as low-skilled just last month are actually pretty crucial to the smooth running of our country, and called on Home Secretary Priti Patel to think again.

As I pointed out recently in my critique of the points-based immigration system, all work is skilled work when its done well. Coronavirus is reminding everyone that there is no such thing as low-skilled work only low-paid work. As the rich flee the worst-hit areas in London, its the migrant workforce that is keeping the city on its feet.

Why is the Home Office so determined to carry on with business as usual when its clearly dangerous and impractical? It seems obvious to me that the real reason they are so scared about giving ground is that it will show up the monumental pointlessness, waste and tragedy of the current system.

The crisis so far has taught us two important things: that infections do not recognise national borders, and that public health is precisely that public. Its in the interests of all of us to ensure that everyone else has the means to stay healthy during the crisis.

Leaving people without the means to meet their basic needs isnt just a human tragedy during a global pandemic its also a serious public health issue. As activists rally together and sense some cracks in the current immigration infrastructure, it is more important than ever that Labour stands up to oppose the hostile environment.

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The hostile environment is being kept in place even amid the coronavirus crisis - LabourList

Political Symptoms of a Pandemic: What’s next for the EU? – New Europe

Posted on March 26, 2020 by Danzig

Truth be told, I spend a good part of my day following social media even more so during these past few days of self-isolation in my Brussels apartment.

If I were to identify one prevailing theme among all the memes doing the rounds of Instagram, that would be we all make fun of all those grabbing every last toilet paper roll and pack of linguini from the supermarket rack. But what happens when national Governments across the EU start behaving this way?

Somewhere between European capitals on intensified lockdown and an unavoidable Coronavirus-led recession, the pandemic brings another reality: the return of internal borders and the comeback of the Nation-State.

National Governments stepping up to their financial and organizational strengths, as people are physically distancing themselves to fight the pandemic, is understandable, it makes sense and, if kept within the boundaries of this extraordinary crisis, it is as it should be.

However, there is also an emotional aspect to this development, for which the political ground was already set before this crisis: Rightwing parties and movements loud anti-migrant and anti-refugee voices, calling for walls and the protection of traditional identities, have recently been matched by a left-leaning environmental movement promoting localization and calling for the cut down of air travel.

Politicians across the spectrum understand that people think in stories and when facing a crisis, people often stop believing in those stories. But when you no longer have a story, you cant explain whats happening.

We observed this in the aftermath of the recent financial and migration crisis. In the years between 2008, the beginning of the financial crisis that turned into a political crisis, and 2019 a very large segment of the citizens stopped believing in the story. They felt like they had lost their constants, their traditional points of reference.

Our economies were global, but our politics had remained local.

And their reaction was the one wed have if we had lost our way in a large city; going back to the point where we started, the point where we felt more secure and start over.

The old 20th-century political model of left versus right became largely irrelevant, and the real divide became that of truth versus post-truth and moderates versus extremists.

Now lets come back to the crisis we are currently facing. It has demonstrated the fragility of our global supply chains, be it medical equipment or autarky of food supply and has reinforced emotions of protectionism.

The irony is that most economists would agree its exactly this situation of fighting a global pandemic that should call for a more streamlined form of European governance, with Governments acting together under the coordination of a strong Leadership.

Lets take as an example public health, where, according to the Lisbon Treaty, the European Union only has what in EU jargon we call a shared competence (Art. 168 TFEU). National Governments define and deliver their national health services, while the EU machinery manages a limited budget of less than 100 million Euros per year. The EU doesnt legally have the competence or the budget to act and manage a streamlined European response to the pandemic, yet many were quick to criticize Brussels for not showing leadership in managing the current crisis.

On the other hand, lets look at the EUs response in a field where it does have competence, the monetary union. The European Central Bank was fast to unleash 750 billion Euros in a temporary bond-buying programme to alleviate the impact of the pandemic. Isnt this Leadership?

And lets finally look at the response of Governments imposing restrictions on exports of medical supplies, a position politically understandable, but unreasonable and counter-productive in the case of a global pandemic. Is this really Leadership?

While the coronavirus crisis has temporarily brought our borders back, we should really look at it as an opportunity to strengthen our Union.

Our economies and supply chains will remain global, so lets give the EU the competences and the funds to play an effective role next time around.

Often, I describe the EU as an archaic typewriter in a digital era; It needs to change, it needs to modernize its structures, and it needs to upgrade its role and leadership. But its up to national Governments to provide it with the necessary funds and competencies in order to turn it into a powerful smartphone.

So, truth be told: we are all in this together. Lets begin, citizens and national Governments, by no longer grabbing every last toilet paper roll and pack of linguini from the supermarket rack.

Political Symptoms of a Pandemic: What's next for the EU? - New Europe

Wage subsidy is also for migrant workers who have lost their jobs, say leaders – Stuff.co.nz

Posted on March 26, 2020 by Danzig

Migrant workers who have lost their jobs amid the COVID-19 crisis should contact their employers to obtain government wage subsidies,say political leaders.

With people being made redundant, jobs on hold, and the announcement of several business crisis package for New Zealand, those on work visas say they have not seen dedicated support for their group.

While one in fourmigrant arrivals were on a work visa in 2019,the number of migrant arrivals on work visas increased by 3100 (10 per cent) to 33,400 compared with the previous year.

RADIO TARANA

Labour list MP Priyanca Radhakrishnan talks to Radio Tarana's Vandhna Bhan about migrant workers who have lost jobs during this coronavirus crisis.

There are more migrants arriving every year with the number having doubled between 2010 and 2019.

There'sa significant numberIndians who are currently here on a work visa, but have now lost their jobs amid the COVID-19 crisis, a Radio Tarana survey has found.

READ MORE:* Govt subsidy 'providing support for people who are already out of work'*Live: Coronavirus lockdown updates*Editorial: Welcome to the pandemic police state*Police commissioner pleads with public to play by supermarket rules - people will die*Top cop Mike Bush to lead new taskforce, says police will enforce new rules*Poll shows Kiwis back harsh measures but are extremely worried about virus

DOMINICO ZAPATA/STUFF

National Party leader Simon Bridges.

They work mostly in the hospitality industry and came to New Zealand under the skilled migrant workers shortage list.

Labour MP Priyanca Radhakrishnan advisesthose workers need to speak with their employers for them to apply for a wage subsidy for their workers.

"In terms of migrant workers, that is something the Immigration Minister is aware of and working on so all I can say at this moment is watch this space," Radhakrishnansaid.

Braden Fastier

Labour list MP Priyanca Radhakrishnan.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, at a recent press conference,also pointed to the employer through the wage subsidy plan.

"We're giving greater flexibility to our benefit system," Ardern said.

"We acknowledge this is a time people are experiencing job loss. Our goal is to try keep people connected to their employer through the wage subsidy.

"If that's not happening we have the backup of our welfare system."

National Party leader Simon Bridges, in an interview on Tarana's Sunday@5 programme, said he hoped the issue would be resolved soon.

"There's a real problem here, we're going to have all these sorts of issues," Bridges said.

"We need to work through them urgently and make sure we're not just leaving people languishing there with no money, no support, literally in dire straits.

"We want our Kiwi Indians to stay in New Zealand, to contribute," Bridges said.

"We will get through COVID-19 and we know what a great contribution the Indian community has made so we have got to find ways to support through it in these types of situations where maybe it's not the right visa, maybe it's not the right residency, but we want to keep you here because of the contribution you make."

National MP Dr Paramjeet Parmarsaid the country needed to do all it could to hold on to these workers.

"If people decide to go back home to their countries in this time of crisis because they're not getting any financial support here, then it'll be very hard to bring those workers back when the economy regains and we need those migrant workers in our workforce."

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Wage subsidy is also for migrant workers who have lost their jobs, say leaders - Stuff.co.nz

The Thirty Meter Telescope: How a volcano in Hawaii became a battleground for astronomy – Space.com

Posted on March 26, 2020 by Danzig

MAUNAKEA, Hawaii The sun pointed to a little before noon when a chorus of conch shells and bamboo flutes trumpeted into the sharp mountainside breezes. The noise marked the start of a religious ceremony and a demonstration against construction of a massive telescope on what some consider sacred land. The participants saluted east, toward the distant ocean; then south, toward the volcanic shell of a past eruption; then west; then north, toward the summit where a dozen telescopes loomed far out of sight.

Many of the people taking part in that ceremony, halfway up the mountain of Maunakea at the heart of Hawaii's Big Island, were native Hawaiians who call themselves kia'i (pronounced kee AH ee), or protectors. By that, they mean protectors of the mountain itself, from the construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) at its summit, where the facility would join venerable observatories like the twin Keck domes and NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility.

I visited the kia'i encampment on the last day of 2019 and the 172nd day of the continuing vigil against construction. Nearby was an octagonal road sign edited to read "Kia'i STOP TMT." Less than two weeks before, with the mountain's harsh winter looming, law enforcement had left the spot. The retreat marked an acknowledgement of a stalemate that began nearly a decade ago and stretches from the ocean to the stars, but is expected to shift once again as spring returns.

(Outside events have already prompted a shift in the situation. In response to the spread of the novel coronavirus that is causing the serious respiratory disease COVID-19, the kia'i have asked visitors to stay away from their previously welcoming encampment, according to a statement released on March 14.)

For the kia'i, the 160-foot-tall TMT (49 meters) would be one telescope too many at a site they see as stolen, sacred, delicate and consistently mismanaged. "It's too big, too massive, and it's in the wrong place," E. Kalani Flores, a professor of Hawaiian studies at Hawaii Community College and one of the lead plaintiffs in court cases surrounding the construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope, told Space.com. "There's a certain tipping point and the TMT would exceed that tipping point."

That's why a subset of native Hawaiians have said no to TMT, in words and actions, for years. Some are calling the current situation an existential crisis for astronomy and for Hawaii. It's certainly a crisis of communication for astronomers who support the project. And while some of the tension reflects Hawaii's history of colonization and oppression, some of the main sticking points display remarkable irony given the telescope's priorities.

Related: Controversy over giant telescope roils astronomy conference in HawaiiMore: Thirty Meter Telescope: Hawaii's giant space eye in pictures

The saga of the TMT began in 2003, when a nonprofit partnership formed between two universities in California and counterparts in Japan, China, India and Canada. Now called TMT International Observatory, the group set out to design a telescope with such a massive observing mirror that it would change science forever. Its findings could tackle some of astronomy's signature existential questions, Gordon Squires, TMT's vice president for external relations and an astronomer by profession, told Space.com: Are we alone? How did the universe wake up? What is dark matter?

Squires said he believes that the process of answering those questions, and the answers themselves, could change humanity forever; that's why he became an astronomer in the first place. "If the world saw the universe the way I do, or the way we do, the world would be a fundamentally different place," he said. "I still believe that."

In 2009, the TMT set its sights on the summit of Maunakea; since then, it has worked to negotiate access and construction with the state, which owns the land, and the University of Hawaii, which manages the astronomy precinct.

It has not gone smoothly.

Flores and other native Hawaiians have filed multiple court cases over the permits required for construction. When the TMT tried to break ground in 2014, the kia'i interrupted the ceremony. Tensions came to a head in July 2019, when the TMT announced it was ready to try building again and the kia'i mobilized, blocking construction trucks from the road that climbs to the summit. They settled in with tents and Porta-Potties, a kitchen and a makeshift university offering lessons in native history and culture.

(By then, the TMT had spent $500 million in 2014 dollars worldwide on the project; current estimates suggest it will total about $2.4 billion in today's dollars, although that number will change based on where and when construction finally begins, a TMT representative said.)

Related: The biggest telescopes on Earth

Each morning, the kia'i greet the sun; three times a day, they conduct a ceremony called the 'aha, or the protocol, a series of chants and dances representing their beliefs about the mountain and lasting an hour or longer. It's that protocol the kia'i began by greeting the cardinal directions, barefoot and clad in street clothes. Early in the ceremony, they called on their ancestors. "Grant us insight, grant us power," one chant reads in a translation posted to the kia'i's website.

For centuries, kia'i told me, those ancestors have come to the mountain and, more frequently, worshipped it from afar. The tenuous atmosphere at the summit, 13,000 feet (4,000 meters) above sea level, leaves little oxygen to feed a human brain. For native Hawaiians, that shortage is a sign that the summit is the realm of deities and that humans should visit only for specific purposes.

That's why Noelani Goodyear-Kaopua, a native Hawaiian and a political scientist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, has only ever been to the summit once, 10 years ago. Ever since, she has remembered what breathing the thin atmosphere felt like, she told Space.com. "The line between living and dead, or here and the next realm or the realm of the ancestors or however you want to think about that, was much more porous because you are so much out of the realm of where humans are normally supposed to be."

But devotion at a distance has complicated matters for the Hawaiians who wish to see the mountain protected: Because a key piece of their religious practice lies in leaving the summit alone, they've struggled to convince authorities that the land is important to them or that they should have a say in what happens to it.

That said, the kia'i can point to a ring of hundreds of shrines about 1,000 feet below the summit, which they say mark the edge of the most sacred zone. These shrines are nothing dramatic, Flores said: standing stones a foot or two tall, reaching the height of a kneecap, some toppled by time. But TMT construction would run right through that ring, he said, and that shouldn't be acceptable.

(Squires contends that TMT selected its location in consultation with native Hawaiians to avoid areas of concern. "It's on a site that has no historically significant or cultural practice areas on it," he said, citing the nearest cultural site as being a mile away.)

Related: World's largest reflecting telescopes explained (infographic)

In a controversy that is often framed as a conflict between science and religion, despite native Hawaiians pointing to their long history of studying the stars, the shrines point to the first key irony underlying the TMT controversy. Many of the standing stones mark points on the horizon where particularly meaningful stars rose, set or reached their zenith, according to Flores.

"There's hundreds of shrines around, and some of these shrines are interconnected together and then they build a star grid," Flores said. "What you see in the heavens is what you see on Earth."

Hawaii's rich tradition of skywatching is hardly the extent of Maunakea's sacredness, however. Down the slope, as the noontime ceremony continues, the kia'i sing of the creation of what they call Mauna a Wakea, from the union of Wakea the Skyfather and Papa the Earthmother. Native Hawaiians tie their own origin story to that of the mountain.

"We have always revered Maunakea as our sacred mauna," Noe Noe Wong-Wilson, a leader of the kia'i, told Space.com. "In fact, it is part of our cosmology, the very beginning of Earth from which man descends, so for us it's a very spiritual matter."

That's the second irony of the controversy surrounding the TMT, which is tailored to elucidate astronomy's own vision of cosmology.

"Astronomers oftentimes think that an interest in the universe and our origins in the universe is what unites all cultures," Sara Kahanamoku, a native Hawaiian and a doctoral student in marine ecology at the University of California, Berkeley, told Space.com. "But [they] maybe don't realize that some cultures don't necessarily need to explore the universe to know where we come from."

Kahanamoku is the lead author of one of a collection of native-led white papers exploring the ways astronomy in Hawaii affects non-astronomers. The group submitted the papers as public comments to the government's decadal survey of astrophysics, which sets scientific priorities for the field. She and her co-authors offer a collection of recommendations for dealing with situations like the TMT, including establishing a system paralleling the institutional review boards that oversee research done on humans.

"We really believe that good science also means that you also need to be good to the people that you're working among," Kahanamoku said.

Related: Hawaii night sky revealed in stunning new video

Of course, some Hawaiian residents and native Hawaiians alike support the TMT, seeing the telescopes atop Maunakea as modern successors to the islanders' pre-contact expertise at navigating by the stars, as a vital segment of the local economy, and as a pathway to educational and employment opportunities for their children.

(A TMT representative said that it's too early to estimate how much would be spent in Hawaii if the project goes through, but that once the facility is observing, the organization expects to spend about $50 million each year on operations and employ 140 people.)

Tyler Trent, a doctoral student in astronomy at the University of Arizona, is one of those native Hawaiians, although he said he wrestled with the decision. "Whether I'm for it or against it, if that gets built, people are going to be hurt by it," he told Space.com.

Trent concluded that TMT and its counterparts deserve a place on the sacred summit. "I don't see them as like another shopping center or another hotel," he said. "These are special things that are illuminating secrets of the universe." He worries that continuing opposition to the TMT is painting his culture as backward and anti-science, despite the loud objections of kia'i that they are no such thing, and he's disappointed that some astronomers unaffiliated with the project have started speaking out against construction on Maunakea.

"Maybe astronomers taking too neutral of a stance or even supporting the kia'i because that's what they believe being respectful to native Hawaiian culture is I'm starting to think that maybe that's not the right way to go about it," he said. "I think at the end of the day, it's people from the outside picking which native Hawaiian culture they want to support or they want to agree with. I think that if outsiders want to pick one, I truly think that they should support the side that is trying to integrate the two, that is trying to build bridges between the two."

Trent added that he thought he would feel the same way if the site were on his own island, Oahu, which holds Honolulu. But it can't be. For scientists hoping to build the TMT, the summit of Maunakea is simply the best possible site. They want a Northern Hemisphere location to better facilitate partnerships with telescopes in the south, including the equally massive Giant Magellan Telescope already under construction in Chile.

Then, it's a matter of atmospheres. It's here that Maunakea really shines, although you wouldn't know that halfway to the summit, where the kia'i camp amid gusts of wind and transitory bursts of showers and sun.

It's a different story at the summit itself, which picky astronomers consider among the best places on Earth for ground-based astronomy. That's in part because of, ironically, one of the same reasons native Hawaiians consider the peak sacred: the barely-there oxygen. Like so many telescopes around the world, TMT has gravitated to a mountaintop site that would carry its optical equipment through some of the lower layers of Earth's atmosphere, which can blur telescope images.

Even the summit's view, however, leaves astronomers dissatisfied. That's why TMT would be armed with an adaptive optics system, which measures and automatically subtracts blurriness caused by the atmosphere. TMT's version would be equipped with lasers that create artificial stars for the system to judge, which lets astronomers observe fainter objects.

But such technology doesn't negate astronomers' desire to remain perched at high elevations, TMT project scientist Christophe Dumas told Space.com. For a project as ambitious as TMT, he said, siting is crucial to an instrument's output, despite opposition. The TMT has its eye on a site in the Canary Islands as a back-up location, which would slightly reduce the project's price tag, a representative said. But that site is still a clear second choice for astronomers and would require some adjustments to the facility, he said.

For the kia'i, their opposition is not just about Maunakea, it's about the way astronomy and science in general operates, particularly given that mountaintops are nearly always sacred to someone. One leader of the kia'i emphasized that the solution was not merely for the TMT to move, as some astronomers have begun to call for, but to find a location where people truly welcome it.

That could require a new way of approaching such projects, several native Hawaiians said. In particular, scientists looking to start a new project would be wise to incorporate local communities in discussions long before any opposition begins long before it's even a project, in fact.

'Imiloa Astronomy Center, which operates under the aegis of the University of Hawaii at Hilo and seeks to tell all the various stories of Maunakea, is working to foster these conversations at Maunakea and elsewhere. Such dialogues should begin earlier and without such tense motivation, Ka'iu Kimura, a native Hawaiian and 'Imiloa's director, told Space.com. "Not because there's conflict, but because it's just the right thing to do," she said.

The astronomy precinct at Maunakea and the TMT specifically are far, far past that point. Construction on the first modern telescope at the site began in 1964, and over the intervening decades, plenty of hard feelings have built up.

TMT isn't the first Maunakea project to meet opposition, but supporters and kia'i alike told me that things seem to be different this time. "I think a lot of people are saying, we have stood by long enough," Goodyear-Kaopua said. "The narrative that's been put forward is, well, why can't Hawaiians just share? We have been sharing for a long time, not always at our consent." She wants to see more native Hawaiians involved in making decisions about the summit.

One of the most significant decisions about the summit was made in the fall of 2018, when a state Supreme Court ruling allowed the project to continue. Four justices agreed with the state land management board's argument that astronomy had already changed the summit so much that one more observatory couldn't really make a difference. One dissented, arguing that this so-called degradation principle set a dangerous precedent.

For the kia'i, who see the mountain as a relative as much as a resource, "one more can't hurt" is not an acceptable philosophy. Many of the native Hawaiians I spoke with pointed to the degradation principle to voice their concerns about how decisions are made not just at Maunakea, but around the world. Some referenced climate change, others focused on land use, but many expressed concern about how humans have exploited and continue to exploit the planet.

Related: European scientists are taking a mock moon mission in Hawaii right now

Toward the end of the protocol, the ceremony leader explained that the next dance was a new addition to the daily ceremony. It traced water on its journey throughout the island and the water cycle, they said: from ocean to clouds to rain to waterfalls to ponds to rivers to cultivated fields to estuaries to ocean, with plenty of stops in between.

It's that same connected water that the kia'i mentioned again and again in their concerns about the TMT. It's another irony in the controversy: Among other discoveries, the TMT could help astronomers identify planets with water in their atmospheres, a first step toward finding a habitable world. But the kia'i already know of one very habitable planet with that precious liquid in its atmosphere, and they consider it their responsibility to protect that water and the mountain that anchors it to the Big Island.

(It was while watching this dance that I was struck by how closely the protocol seemed to parallel the kia'i concerns about the telescope; I've structured this story to follow the protocol as a mark of gratitude for the ceremony leader's work to make that connection.)

"Water is a sacred thing for all of humanity," Kealoha Pisciotta, a native Hawaiian who was a technician at two telescopes on Maunakea before deciding she couldn't condone the way the observatories treat the summit, told Space.com. "We use it ceremonially as well; the snow, ice and water from Maunakea is collected for ceremony."

One of Pisciotta's concerns about astronomy at Maunakea has been the observatories' treatment of the water. She said that during her time working on the summit, she saw spills of hazardous substances from bug spray to mercury, and that she has seen evidence of only one existing observatory addressing those issues.

It's one of the most common concerns I heard about TMT as well, that it could contaminate water across the island. The TMT's response is that those concerns are completely unfounded. There's no evidence the observatory could affect the water, the TMT says; the nearest wells are about 12 miles away; the observatory won't rely on mercury, the worst of the chemicals used to clean telescope mirrors; the facility has a system to transport wastewater from science operations and human staff support alike off the mountain.

But still, the kia'i say, they worry about the water. The summit is a particularly sensitive place in the eyes of native Hawaiians because it's where water first touches land. "It's in its purest form, unaltered by humans, unaltered by any other aspects," Flores said of the rain, snow and fog at the summit, which makes interfering with it particularly dire. "You disrupt, disturb, desecrate the water in its highest forms, and [the elders] tell us the water is the basic form of life for all of us on this planet."

And while the kia'i agree that the hydrology models of Hawaii to date show that TMT shouldn't contaminate anything, that isn't a satisfactory response for them. "I think regardless of that, because the models are not clear, there's still a possibility that there could be infiltration because it's very complex," Rosie Alegado, a native Hawaiian and an oceanographer at University of Hawaii at Manoa, told Space.com. "The models that we have are definitely incomplete."

For Stephanie Malin, an environmental sociologist at Colorado State University, that situation is not surprising. Development projects typically rely on technocratic assessment of potential risks, she said, while indigenous groups tend to exercise a precautionary principle that delays development until there is certainty that there are no risks which isn't always possible.

"I don't necessarily think that the two groups are talking the same language, even," Malin told Space.com.

Related: How space exploration can teach us to preserve all life on Earth

Near the end of the noontime ceremony, the gathered kia'i completed a series of dances open to all, regardless of their knowledge of hula. The only requirement, the ceremony leader explained, was that participants dance with the intention of stopping TMT from being constructed on Maunakea. And so the kia'i hold space at the mountain and dance three times a day, to protect the mountain that tells them their place in the universe. Later, they progressed toward the summit, taking one step at a time, dodging the tents around the dance space.

It's not clear what the TMT's steps forward might be. If the TMT decides the Maunakea site is no longer worth the pain, as the kia'i hope, they will take their plans to the Canary Islands. It's unclear how much longer they are willing to wait to begin construction which is scheduled to last 10 years in earnest.

A sharper deadline is also looming over Maunakea: the master lease agreement between the state and the University of Hawaii, which governs every observatory's sublease, will expire in 2033. What negotiations might look like is still unclear, but chances are they won't resemble the process that led to the original agreement decades ago. The master lease worries all the observatories on the summit, but particularly TMT, which dreads reaching first light just in time for site access to fall apart entirely.

Even the most strident opponents of TMT aren't calling for all the telescopes to be removed. They do, however, want the observatories to be better neighbors, more responsive to local concerns and more respectful of the land from which they study the stars.

No one thinks that will be straightforward. For the astronomers affiliated with the TMT project, the conversations of the past decade have already challenged their perceptions of their own values. "We never thought we were the bad people, and some people think authentically that we are," Squires said.

The kia'i I spoke with never phrased their feelings quite like that. Many insisted they aren't trying to stop science: Instead, they're trying to improve it.

"Science that doesn't empower humanity for a better Earth is maybe not the science we need to be doing," Pisciotta, the former telescope technician who once dreamed of studying cosmology and who described her family as traditional star people, said. That's perhaps especially true of astronomy, she added, since astronomers cannot escape the way distance acts as a time machine across the universe.

"Everything in astronomy is looking back in time," she said. "It has to find its modern relevancy. Yes, it's noble, but we can make it more noble together, though."

Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her @meghanbartels. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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The Thirty Meter Telescope: How a volcano in Hawaii became a battleground for astronomy - Space.com

Slooh will livestream astronomy lesson for K-12 students during coronavirus outbreak – Space.com

Posted on March 26, 2020 by Danzig

Slooh astronomers will livestream a free astronomy lesson for K-12 students who are homebound during the coronavirus pandemic.

On Thursday (March 19), Slooh will livestream a free, 1-hour astronomy lesson and live telescope views from around the world. The webcast, which is geared toward K-12 students, will begin at 4:30 p.m. EDT (2030 GMT). You can watch it live on Slooh's YouTube channel, or stream it here on Space.com, courtesy of Slooh.

"Slooh is committed to bringing out the very best in students and all people," Russell Glenn, director of education for Slooh, said in an emailed statement. "We believe that space education is crucial in understanding and gaining perspective on the world around us."

Related: Free space projects for kids (and adults) stuck at home during the coronavirus outbreak

During the webcast, Glenn and Slooh astronomer Paul Cox will walk viewers through one of Slooh's starter quests, called Cosmic Explorer, which introduces students to the Slooh interface and offers a basic lesson on the sun, moon, galaxies, and the birth and death of stars. This livestream will also provide views of objects that are visible in the night sky.

"We want to help people to share in the wonder of space together as a community so that we can recognize our shared humanity," Glenn said. "We will be bringing as much content as possible during this challenging time. We see this great challenge as a great opportunity for students to own their learning and get excited about space."

The webcast will also provide views of space from Slooh's 10 online telescopes, including those situated at the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands, which makes daytime astronomy possible for students in the United States, Slooh officials said in a statement.

In addition to this free astronomy lesson, Slooh offers several paid membership options for students, teachers and parents to learn about space while they are homebound. Slooh community members can control Slooh's telescopes online, schedule missions, and select and work on different educational activities, called quests.

"When their mission is active, they can be observing and capturing images in real time," Glenn said in the email to Space.com. "Additionally, students can observe other missions planned by other members of the Slooh community and capture images of the objects that they are viewing."

Slooh also offers astronomy clubs for educators to engage students and citizens from home and explore space together via a network of online telescopes. This includes remote learning activities and support from Slooh's astronomy educators.

Follow Samantha Mathewson @Sam_Ashley13. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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Slooh will livestream astronomy lesson for K-12 students during coronavirus outbreak - Space.com

The Sky This Week from March 20 to 27 – Astronomy Magazine

Posted on March 26, 2020 by Danzig

Friday, March 20Its officially spring in the Northern Hemisphere. To celebrate, Mars and Jupiter meet up in the morning sky in the first of two planetary conjunctions this month. Look for the glittering stars of Sagittarius the Archer in the southeast in the two hours or so before sunrise. There, magnitude 0.9 Mars is a mere 0.7 south of magnitude 2.1 Jupiter.

About 7 east of Jupiter, magnitude 0.7 Saturn waits its turn for a close-up with the Red Planet. Mars will soon tango with the ringed world, coming closest on March 31.

Saturday, March 21Today is the perfect day to seek out our solar systems speediest planet. The Moon passes 4 south of Mercury at 2 P.M. EDT, but youll want to catch the pair in the morning before sunrise. At that time, the two will stand 5 apart, with Mercury glowing at magnitude 0.2 in the east-southeast 30 minutes before the Sun crosses the horizon.

Saturday is also Galactic Tick Day. The holiday is celebrated every 633.7 days (1.7361 years) to mark one galactic tick, which represents 1/100 of an arcseconds worth of the orbit our Sun and solar system make around the Milky Way. (It takes 225 million years to complete a full orbit.) You can learn more about the origins of this quirky and humbling holiday on the Galactic Tick Day homepage.

In honor of our journey through the galaxy, step outside from a dark site to see if you can spot the Milky Way running overhead. The plane of our galaxy runs through Cygnus the Swan, setting in the northwest as the sky grows darker after sunset. In the east, Orion the Hunter rises with the Milky Way at his right shoulder, which is marked by the bright red star Betelgeuse.

Sunday, March 22The fast-fading Moon is just 3 percent lit and rises shortly before the Sun, making tonight an excellent night to search out some of the skys fainter objects. Consider trying for M81 and M82, also known as Bodes Galaxy and the Cigar Galaxy, respectively. Both in the constellation of Ursa Major, these two galaxies appear only 37' apart on the sky and are easy to catch in the same field of view through binoculars or a telescope at low magnification. M81 has an active supermassive black hole in its center, while M82 is undergoing a massive burst of star formation hence its classification as a starburst galaxy. Astronomers believe this flurry of activity was actually caused by gravitational interactions with M81. Through a scope, M82 appears long and thin like a cigar while M81 has a rounder shape.

Monday, March 23Mercury reaches greatest western elongation (28) at 10 P.M. EDT, several hours before it rises ahead of the Sun. At sunrise, the tiny magnitude 0.3 planet is 10 above the horizon in the east-southeast, and its 7"-wide disk is just over half lit.

Today also marks the 180th anniversary of the first photograph ever taken of the Full Moon. John Draper captured the daguerreotype on this date from his observatory in New York after several previous attempts.

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The Sky This Week from March 20 to 27 - Astronomy Magazine

Astronomers have found the edge of the Milky Way at last – Science News

Posted on March 26, 2020 by Danzig

Our galaxy is a whole lot bigger than it looks. New work finds that the Milky Way stretches nearly 2 million light-years across, more than 15 times wider than its luminous spiral disk. The number could lead to a better estimate of how massive the galaxy is and how many other galaxies orbit it.

Astronomers have long known that the brightest part of the Milky Way, the pancake-shaped disk of stars that houses the sun, is some 120,000 light-years across (SN: 8/1/19). Beyond this stellar disk is a disk of gas. A vast halo of dark matter, presumably full of invisible particles, engulfs both disks and stretches far beyond them (SN: 10/25/16). But because the dark halo emits no light, its diameter is hard to measure.

Now, Alis Deason, an astrophysicist at Durham University in England, and her colleagues have used nearby galaxies to locate the Milky Ways edge. The precise diameter is 1.9 million light-years, give or take 0.4 million light-years, the team reports February 21 in a paper posted at arXiv.org.

To put that size into perspective, imagine a map in which the distance between the sun and the Earth is just one inch. If the Milky Ways heart were at the center of the Earth, the galaxys edge would be four times farther away than the moon actually is.

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To find the Milky Ways edge, Deasons team conducted computer simulations of how giant galaxies like the Milky Way form. In particular, the scientists sought cases where two giant galaxies arose side by side, like the Milky Way and Andromeda, our nearest giant neighbor, because each galaxys gravity tugs on the other (SN: 5/12/15). The simulations showed that just beyond the edge of a giant galaxys dark halo, the velocities of small nearby galaxies drop sharply (SN: 3/11/15).

Using existing telescope observations, Deason and her colleagues found a similar plunge in the speeds of small galaxies near the Milky Way. This occurred at a distance of about 950,000 light-years from the Milky Ways center, marking the galaxys edge, the scientists say. The edge is 35 times farther from the galactic center than the sun is.

Although dark matter makes up most of the Milky Ways mass, the simulations reveal that stars should also exist at these far-out distances. Both have a well-defined edge, Deason says. The edge of the stars is very sharp, almost like the stars just stop at a particular radius.

In the future, astronomers can refine the location of the Milky Ways edge by discovering additional small galaxies nearby. Astronomers could also search for individual stars out at the boundary, says Mike Boylan-Kolchin, an astrophysicist at the University of Texas at Austin who was not involved with the study. The farthest such stars will be very dim, but future observations should be able to find them.

The measurement should also help astronomers tease out other galactic properties. For instance, the larger the Milky Way, the more massive it is and the more galaxies there should be revolving around it, says Rosemary Wyse, an astronomer at Johns Hopkins University who was not part of the new work. So far, there are about 60 known Milky Way satellites, but astronomers suspect that many more await discovery.

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Astronomers have found the edge of the Milky Way at last - Science News

We All Live In A Croissant-Shaped Giant Bubble, Say Astronomers – Forbes

Posted on March 26, 2020 by Danzig

Is this what the heliosphere looks like? New research suggests so. The size and shape of the ... [+] magnetic "force field" that protects our solar system from deadly cosmic rays has long been debated by astrophysicists.

Physicistshave revealed a refined new model of the heliospherethe vast region around the Sun extending more than twice as far as Plutothat depicts it as a crescent-shaped magnetic force-field resembling a freshly baked croissant.

Its the region of space that the Sun commands; its sphere of influence. Its the extent of the solar windcharged particles spewed-out by the Sunthat extends far past the orbits of the planets, creating a bubble around the Sun that accompanies it in its journey through interstellar space. At the edges of the heliosphere is where the solar wind meets the interstellar wind. It casts a magnetic force field around all the planets, deflecting charged particles that would otherwise get into the solar system ... and destroy DNA.

Thats controversial. Until recently, the consensus was that the shape of the heliosphere is comet-like. Its long been thought that the heliosphere stretches behind the solar system, creating a comet-like shapewith a round nose on one side and a long tail extending in the opposite direction. However, its also been described as a beachball-shape. However, according to Merav Opher, professor of astronomy and researcher at Boston UniversitysCenter for Space Physics, and her coauthor James Drake of the University of Maryland, the helio-sphere should really now be called the helio-crescent.

This graphic shows the position of NASA's Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 probes, outside of the ... [+] heliosphere, a protective bubble created by the Sun that extends well past the orbit of Pluto.

Opher and Drakes original paper in 2015 used data from NASAs Voyager 1 spacecraft, which crossed the boundary from heliosphere to interstellar space in May 2012. They identified two giant jets of material shooting backwards over the north and south poles of the Sun that curve around in two relatively short tails toward the back; a heliosphere that looks a lot more like a crescent moon than a comet.

A new simulation of the heliosphere the magnetic bubble surrounding the sun shows it to have two ... [+] relatively short jets streaming away from the nose.

Opher and Drakes research was controversial. It was very contentious, she says. I was getting bashed at every conference! But I stuck to my guns. However, in 2017 another model was proposed by scientists working on NASAs Cassini mission at Saturn. It stated that the heliosphere is much more compact and rounded than previously thoughtsomething like a beach ball.

Many other stars show tails that trail behind them like a comets tail, supporting the idea that our ... [+] solar system has one too. However, new evidence from NASAs Cassini, Voyager and Interstellar Boundary Explorer missions suggest that the trailing end of our solar system may not be stretched out in a long tail. From top left and going counter clockwise, the stars shown are LLOrionis, BZ Cam and Mira.

Its Opher and Drakes refined theory, with colleagues Avi Loeb of Harvard University and Gabor Toth of the University of Michiganoutlined in a new paper published in Nature Astronomythat two jets extend downstream from the nose rather than a single fade-away tail. Their new 3D model of the heliospheredeveloped on NASAs Pleiades supercomputer and supported by NASA and by the Breakthrough Prize Foundationreconciles their croissant model with the beach ball model. It does so by distinguishing between the solar wind and incoming neutral particles that drift into the solar system; the latter get much hotter so have an outsized influence on the shape of the heliosphere. However, there is still uncertainty; it depends on exactly how you define the edge of the heliosphere.

This artists impression shows the view from the surface of one of the planets in the TRAPPIST-1 ... [+] system.

The solar wind and the heliosphere could be key ingredients in the recipe for life in the Milky Way and beyond. "If we want to understand our environment we'd better understand all the way through this heliosphere," says Loeb, Opher's collaborator. Researchers studying exoplanets are keen to compare the Suns heliosphere with those around other stars. Theres also the DNA-shredding interstellar particles, which actually could have helped drive the genetic mutations that led to life like us, says Loeb. "At the right amount, they introduce changes, mutations that allow an organism to evolve and become more complex," he says. "There is always a delicate balance when dealing with life as we know it. Too much of a good thing is a bad thing," says Loeb.

Starting in the early 2030s, the Interstellar Probe would exit the solar system.

We need to explore the sea of space between our Sun and other potentially habitable systems. For now, all we have are the fading 40 year old science instruments on Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. Cue plans for the Interstellar Probe, a spacecraft that could launch in the 2030s and go farther and faster than any spacecraft before it to help us understand our home in the galaxy. It would start exploring the edge of the heliosphere 10 or 15 years after that. With the Interstellar Probe we hope to solve at least some of the innumerous mysteries that Voyagers started uncovering, says Opher.

Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.

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We All Live In A Croissant-Shaped Giant Bubble, Say Astronomers - Forbes

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