”Förde in flaskan i mig gång på gång!” Det har varit en jobbig vår för Johnny Depp, 58. Mycket tid har han tillbringat i en rättssal i Virginia för att bestrida 36-åriga exfrun Amber Heards text publicerad i tidningen Washington Post, där hon pekade ut ”Gilbert Grape”- stjärnan som en kvinnomisshandlare. Men kanske finns det nya glädjeämnen i stjärnans liv. Mitt i den turbulenta tiden har Johnny setts med armarna om en ny ung kvinna. TOG BAKVÄGEN UT Depp är mest känd som skådis, men han är också musiker. Bland annat spelar han i bandet Hollywood Vampire. Dagar innan den omtalade rättegången påbörjades spelade skådisen under en välgörenhetskonsert på nattklubben The Troubadour i Los Angeles. Efter spelningen syntes han gå ut bakvägen i sällskap av en ung mystisk brunett. Enligt sajten JustJared höll Johnny…

THIS ISSUE YOU ARE reading is historic in that it is the opening issue of the 16 issues of The Hockey News’ 75th season, which all began back on Oct. 1, 1947. The Hockey News began at the start of the NHL’s 31st season, when the Original Six teams played a 60-game schedule leading up to the Toronto Maple Leafs winning the Stanley Cup. The Hockey News has outlived most of the players from that year, as well as the ownership groups and anyone in the league office. It was 11 years before Willie O’Ree made history and played for Boston and 14 years before Wayne Gretzky was born. This and the following 15 issues will be full of stories and references celebrating the 75th season, culminating on Oct. 1, 2022, which…

MOD70 record smashing continues The ongoing battle for record honours between the MOD70s continues, with Jason Carroll’s Argo demolishing the Bermuda-Plymouth transatlantic record in June. Argo took over 16 hours off the previous record for the 2,870-mile eastbound course across the North Atlantic, crossing in 4d 19h 30m. The crew sailed a total of 3,347 miles at an average speed just under 29 knots. Les Voiles turns 40 Les Voiles de Saint-Tropez celebrates 40 years of the annual French classic this year. The event will run this year with a new two-week format, as adopted in 2020, with the classic and modern yachts racing from Saturday 25 September and the Maxi yachts competing the following week from Tuesday 5 October. Teens set first IRC record The first recipients of a ratified record from the newly…

In the still-youthful genre of prog-metal, Dream Theater are the undisputed silverbacks. Founded 36 years ago in the fertile breeding ground of Berklee College Of Music in Boston, the line-up took the calling cards of classic prog and turned up all the dials, leading the charge for a new movement that made you both bang and scratch your head. Comprising seven extended tracks, groaning with super-technical solos and pinballing between tricky time signatures, this year’s A View From The Top Of The World album represents everything you love/hate (delete as applicable) about the genre. Co-founding guitarist John Petrucci tells us more. Undoubtedly you’re pleased with the new album. I had a feeling when we finished it: “There’s something special about this one.” We started the band in 1985. A View From The Top…

THIS ISSUE: Mikey conducts a zenith-error test and auditions Channel D’s latest Lino C phono preamplifier. Plus, a pretty and pretty effective record weight. The stylus that cuts the grooves in your favorite records is best described, in simple terms, as “chisel-shaped.” The most accurate playback styli—the “extreme” ones that extract the maximum amount of information from the grooves—have a similar shape, with sharper and more severe contact edges than a standard elliptical stylus, itself an advance over spherical styli. These extreme shapes, with names like Line Contact, Fine Line, Gyger, Replicant, Shibata, and van den Hul, have complex geometries with long, narrow vertical contact patches that sit deep within the groove, can better trace the deepest lateral modulation crevices, and beat the fastest, most efficient path up and down those modulation…

The Old Testament of the Bible describes the journey of the Israelites to the Promised Land. They needed to cross the kingdom of Edom, a land that straddled modern southern Israel and Jordan. The Israelites pleaded with the Edomites to “go by the King’s Highway until we have passed through your territory” (Num. 21:22). The existence of the King’s Highway can be traced back to the Bronze Age. This royal route was central to trade in the Middle East, connecting Egypt via the Gulf of Aqaba on the Red Sea all the way north to Damascus. No great empire was centered along this road, but the cities along it grew rich from commerce, as traders bearing grain from Egypt, incense from Yemen, pearls from the Red Sea, and spices from India…

THE INSPIRATION FOR Mike Rabbitt’s HO scale H&R Steel Co. layout came to him in a flash – literally. As a youth in Sandusky, Ohio, Mike entertained himself riding his bicycle through the industrial landscape, observing the workings of the many factories and railroads in the city. One day he was outside a steel mill that he could look inside to see workers loading an electric arc furnace that converted scrap metal into steel. A sudden flash of light and blast of hot air almost knocked him over as the melting process began. The sight – as well as a wave of searing heat – took his breath away. It was a moment that kicked off a lifelong study of iron and steel, and ultimately the construction of several model railroads focusing…

Charlie and Beverly Heebner woke up early on Dec. 18, 2017, ready to be a part of history. The couple from Olympia, Wash., purchased tickets to be aboard the first Amtrak Cascades train to take the newly rebuilt Point Defiance Bypass, a 14.5-mile route that moves passenger trains away from Puget Sound and inland toward Interstate 5. Days earlier, the couple had taken one of the last Cascades trains to run on the original route, which BNSF Railway still uses. The Heebners had little idea that they would be present for a different historic event, a more infamous one, when, minutes after departing the Tacoma, Wash., station, Amtrak train No. 501 derailed on a curve at speed. The lead locomotive and 12 cars derailed and some landed in the middle of…

Those of us who grew up in the 1980s were keenly aware that the “golden age” of railroading had passed. We heard about how great things once were, and why many people with an interest in trains were no longer excited by the ones they now saw. In the Northeast, Conrail had taken over. Drastic changes had come, and Conrail itself was born of government action required to save the railroad industry in the region. Main lines were consolidated, even outright abandoned. But the trains still ran. And although some “old hats” hated Conrail – it replaced the beloved railroads of their memories – for many of us, Conrail is the memory! Our parents dropped us off at trackside, but with no insider information or depot to visit, we had to improvise. We…

21 SECONDS. On May 30, 2021, a team of 300 nuclear scientists and engineers at the EAST (Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak) reactor at China’s Hefei Institutes of Physical Science, about halfway between Shanghai and Wuhan, accomplish something human beings have never done before. A new world record is established. 30 seconds. They’ve created a small “artificial sun” that burns hotter—120 million degrees Celsius or 216 million degrees Fahrenheit, 15 times hotter than the core of our actual Sun—than any temperature previously reached on Earth. 40 seconds. Now the question is how long they can keep the reaction going. 50 seconds. Superheated hydrogen plasma twists as it pushes around a circular path inside the reactor’s doughnut-shaped metal tube. 60 seconds. A series of superconducting toroidal and poloidal magnetic coils—an innovation unique to EAST—keeps the streams of superheated plasma from expanding…

Over the years, I’ve always been an advocate for the small-aperture telescope, touting its remarkable capabilities in my writings and through talks at astronomy conventions and club meetings. During my salad days as an amateur astronomer, back in the 1970s, my telescopic arsenal was made up of a 3-inch f/10 reflector and a 2.4-inch f/11 refractor. Modest in size though they were, these high focal ratio instruments were remarkably capable — especially on double stars, my favorite night-sky targets. In the early 1980s, I took a giant leap and purchased a 13.1-inch Dobsonian-mounted reflector. This “fast” (f/4.5) light-gobbling beast revealed deep-sky wonders well beyond the grasp of my little scopes. But it didn’t do well with double stars. The bright binary star Castor, whose component stars were separated by 2" at…

Minnesota occupies 86,943 square miles and ranks 12th among states in terms of land mass. While not exemplary in either category, it has played an outsized role in railroad history and commerce. Consider that the North Star State has historically been known as the gateway to Chicago and the Pacific Northwest for railroads such as Great Northern, Northern Pacific, and Milwaukee Road. Today, the “Land of 10,000 Lakes” serves as a funnel for BNSF Railway’s Northern Transcontinental main line, sending grain, oil, and other commodities east and west. The state is also a portal to the United States for both Canadian National and Canadian Pacific. CN’s former Duluth, Missabe & Iron Range ore lines provide taconite to make steel, while the Twin Ports of Duluth and Superior, Wis., serve as transfer points…

Titan experiences rainfall. But instead of water, Titan’s clouds dump liquid methane from above. IN 1908, WHEN PERCIVAL LOWELL PUBLISHED Mars as the Abode of Life, he saw the Red Planet as surely teeming with life. Today, we know that’s not the case — but the search for life in the solar system continues, and with far more tantalizing targets. We have since learned a great deal about the icy ocean moons of the outer solar system. We’ve seen cryovolcanoes erupting from Enceladus and witnessed nitrogen glaciers sliding across the face of Pluto. But still we wonder: What life might be out there? If biomes have secured a foothold on the distant worlds of our solar system, what form do they take? These days, astrobiologists are turning their sights to another alien world, nearly…

THINK ABOUT THE big-name car collections. The Collezione Umberto Panini in Modena, Italy. The Revs Institute in Naples, Florida. The Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles. Now consider the real heart and soul of connoisseurship—the smaller collectors, like Hank Davis, owner of Hank’s Garage in Bucyrus, Ohio, with his 14 Edsels, or Robert Lederer, owner of Chicago Parts & Sound, whose cars you see pictured here. Now imagine all that machinery left to rot. From the talk we heard at Monterey Car Week in August, it seems the car-collector world is facing a crisis. Future generations won’t care about vintage vehicles. The internal-combustion engine will be legislated off the road. The values of prized cars will plummet. Can that be true? Road & Track spoke with some big thinkers in the collector…

Lux tux This season, the tuxedo jacket takes a leading role on glamorous nights out. The new elevated evening blazer has that effortlessly cool-without-trying look and can be worn as part of a suit or casually draped over a strappy dress, if you prefer some arm coverage. Choose decorative designs or keep it classic and simple in black velvet, but style with an off-white fairy-tale ruffle blouse to bring feminine allure. When the party’s over, just add jeans. Relaxed glamour When you want to feel dressed up but not too dressy, a mesmerising sequin skirt is the answer. It instantly feels less ‘done’ than a gorgeous gown, but still shows you want to have fun. Keep it casual on top with a glittery sweater or, for an even more relaxed vibe, switch strappy…

Tänk dig en korsning mellan Indiana Jones och tv-serien Bones. Då har du ett hum om vad arkeologen, osteologen och kriminalteknikern Zorah Linder Ben Salah jobbar med. – Det finns en en stor etisk del i det att ta tillvara på människors kvarlevor utan att information går förlorad. Sommaren 1952 blev ett svenskt signalspaningsplan nedskjutet av Sovjetiskt stridsflyg över Östersjön. Sovjet nekade så klart inledningsvis till att de hade någon aning om var planet, en DC 3:a, blivit av. Det här utspelade sig när det kalla kriget var som kyligast. Anhöriga till de åtta besättningsmännen ombord fick vänta länge på svar om vad som hänt deras makar, söner och bröder. DC 3:an hittades inte förrän 2003 av ett privat konsortium. – Helt fantastiskt att de lyckades. Det var som att söka efter en nål…

A TRILLION DOLLAR COMPANY Over the past several months, Apple has been on the brink of becoming the first technology company in the world to reach a trillion-dollar market capitalization - a feat many thought would be impossible. Now, after Apple announced stronger-than-expected earnings, the company has topped $1 trillion for the first time, overtaking its rivals in Samsung, Alphabeat, Microsoft, and Amazon to the crown. Today, we look back at how Apple got there, and predict the tech giant’s next moves. FROM HUMBLE BEGINNINGS Apple may now be a trillion-dollar company with a string of successful product lines, but that wasn’t always the case. In the late 1970s, three men, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Mike Markkula, came together to design and market the Apple II series of computers. The result? The first…

TEST TEAM NOTES: You’ll come off the Moto thinking, ‘That’s the kite for me!’, but then Cabrinha go and make the 01 Switchblade more manageable in stronger wind conditions for more riders! If you love twin-tip riding, the Switchblade could be your weapon, and it still delivers to bigger riders in a unique way. The Switchblade is now one of the longest running kite models in the business, having been delivering super smooth low end performance and benchmark park and ride ease of use for well over a decade. You just can’t argue with it for general kiting conditions. When we have riders who are over 90 kilos coming up and asking which kites we recommend for them (especially if they don’t want to have to size up to a 14 metre…

When the story broke about the Suez Canal fiasco I was reminded of my transit in May of 1980, not least of all how I got there in the first place. It all started in Fremantle. I was asked by Peter Wright, the owner of the Swan 65 Independent Endeavour, a yacht I skippered on the 1979 Parmelia Race (Plymouth to Cape Town to Fremantle) what we should do with the boat as it had to leave Australia to avoid paying VAT. I suggested a charter season in the Med. Peter Wright was a fascinating chap who, with his partner Lang Hancock, prospected, discovered and developed the Pilbara iron ore fields in Western Australia, which made their fortunes. Logically the Suez Canal was our route north, and Peter, a sprightly septuagenarian, wanted to…

BORN: Jan. 12, 1930, Cochrane, Ont. NHL CAREER: 1950-1974 TEAMS: Tor, NYR, Pit, Buf STATS: GP 1,445 G 115 A 403 P 518 PIM 1,611 ALL-STAR: 6 (First-3, Second-3) STANLEY CUPS: 4 HHOF: 1977 IT REMAINS ONE OF THE enduring oddities that in the 66 years the Norris Trophy has been awarded, a Toronto Maple Leafs defenseman has never won it. It’s particularly ignominious considering their Original Six cohorts have won the trophy a total of 42 times, with the Boston Bruins leading the way with 14 and the Montreal Canadiens next with 11. But Tim Horton came close. And throughout the 1960s, there weren’t many defensemen better than Horton. There probably weren’t any as tough, although Horton did not possess a malicious bone in his body. And certainly there were none as strong as Horton, who had…

THE LAYOUT AT A GLANCE NAME: Pacific & Eastern SCALE: HO (1:87.1) SIZE: 26 x 52 feet PROTOTYPE: semi-freelanced LOCALE: southern Oregon ERA: 1989 STYLE: double-deck walk-in MAINLINE RUN: 531 feet MINIMUM RADIUS: 34" MINIMUM TURNOUT: no. 6 (main),no. 4 (sidings) MAXIMUM GRADE: 2.5 percent (main), 4 percent (logging branch) BENCHWORK: engineered wood I-beams and 1 x 4 open-grid HEIGHT: 39" to 62" ROADBED: cork on plywood TRACK: code 83 flextrack (main), code 70 (industrial sidings) SCENERY: plaster shell over cardboard mesh or extruded-foam insulation board BACKDROP: hand-painted Pacific & Eastern HO scale (1:87.1) Layout size: 26 x 52 feet Scale of plan: 5⁄32" = 1'-0", 24" grid Numbered arrows indicate photo locations Illustration by Rick Johnson Find more plans online in the ModelRailroader.com Track Plan Database. The Pacific & Eastern RR is the Rogue Valley Model Railroad Club’s HO scale layout in Medford (Ore.) Railroad Park. It’s a “what if”…

I came to collage through weaving. Years ago my main interest was weaving wall hangings and decorative, nonfunctional pieces. I enjoyed being able to feel the various yarn textures and weights in my hands while I was working. When I began experimenting with watercolor, I missed the tactile quality that had become an integral part of how I expressed my ideas, so I turned to a combination of watercolor and collage. I started working in collage using various types of rice papers that I painted with watercolor and layered over one another, then blended with watercolor. Over the years, the papers and my approach to handling them have changed. I now make almost all of my own textures using archival tissue with black or white gesso, gloss medium or tar gel,…

Over the years, I’ve used a pair of slides (above) in some of my clinics to make the point that you can design the basic plan for any model railroad in a few seconds using a common household utensil: a fork. The idea is that a railroad has to come from Somewhere and go to Somewhere Else, with Somewhere and Somewhere Else represented by the tines of the fork – often passive staging or active fiddle yards. If you’re modeling a stub-end short or branch line, you can get by with a single fork, although it, too, should connect with the rail network at a junction with a trunk line. So maybe you better swipe another fork from the kitchen drawer and T it off the first two. If you want a…

Few things are simple for the New York & Atlantic Railway. And that includes motive power. The NY&A roster includes five locomotive models leased from four sources; legacy, Tier 3 plus, and Tier 4 emissions technology, and equipment with and without cab signaling and positive train control technology. That’s a lot of variety in just 14 locomotives “I’ve got to plug the hard work and effort of our mechanical forces,” says NY&A President James Bonner. “The variability of training required for each different locomotive — it’s a lot for a short line.” Much of the complexity in NY&A operations comes from the railroad’s status as the contract operator for freight service on the Long Island Rail Road, the nation’s busiest commuter line. The operational challenge of coexisting with more than 700 weekday…

The motivations for building a model are diverse, including subject, color scheme, history, nostalgia, and the movie of the week. Roden’s 1/144 scale Boeing 720 inspired me for a variety of reasons, not least of which was the desire to finish it in American Airlines’ terrific bare-metal lightning-bolt livery. That gave me a chance to try a non-traditional painting method using Alclad II lacquers. These metallic paints give great results but achieving multi-hued panel effects can be problematic. High-shine shades like chrome and polished aluminum, normally applied over gloss black, don’t take kindly to masking tape. In the past, I’ve successfully applied Alclad II paints over not only black but also gloss white and blue. I wondered what would happen if I used other base colors? A test on a sheet of…

Every year around Labor Day weekend, about 75,000 people converge on the Black Rock Desert in Nevada to build a city. Occupying more than 14,000 acres, the pop-up metropolis features distinctive neighborhoods, extensive dining and entertainment, even a small airport. I find no hint of this when I visit the playa, or desert basin, on a sunny afternoon in March. All I see is a flat expanse of white alkaline soil, nearly identical to what pioneers described in their 19th-century journals. The disappearing act is by design. It’s one of the core attributes of Black Rock City, guided by the tenets of the event for which this temporary metropolis is built: the annual pyrotechnic extravaganza known as Burning Man. Yet the weeklong festival’s leave-no-trace ethos has not stopped archaeologist Carolyn White…

OUR SOLAR SYSTEM SHIMMERS with a host of volcanoes. Its erupting menagerie includes forms familiar to us, like the cinder cones and graceful shields of the martian landscape. The mountains of Venus take on more alien shapes, given the planet’s dense atmosphere and unique rock chemistry: pancake domes, spiderwebs, and ticks. Farther out, the volcanoes on Jupiter’s moon Io display violent natures, blasting material hundreds of miles above the moon’s pizzalike face. Some volcanoes, called cryovolcanoes, even spew icy slush instead of rock: The ice worlds Europa and Enceladus have their own versions of Vesuvius, sending jets of freezing water into the void. At Neptune, the moon Triton flaunts unique eruptions, with chilled nitrogen columns wafting into dark skies. We even see hints of cryovolcanism at Pluto’s cratertopped Wright and Piccard…

“Which is better, a 3-inch refractor or 6-inch reflector?” That’s the kind of issue debated on astronomy forums. Oddly enough, this page has never offered equipment advice. Let’s do it now. But before I pretend to be an authority, let me briefly explain my background. It has a familiar beginning: I became an enthusiastic observer at age 12, thanks to a 60mm refractor I received for Christmas. My obsession drove me to memorize every star that had a name or Greek letter, along with their distances and spectral classes. Studying astronomy at a university provided sufficient credentials to teach astrophysics at Marymount Manhattan College in New York City, even though I’d never earned a doctorate. The old cliché is still true: No one telescope type can confer every advantage. Nor did I ever…

On Nov. 6, 2018, as millions of Americans cast their votes in a hotly contested midterm election, astrophysicist Avi Loeb sat in his office surrounded by four television crews. Loeb, chair of Harvard University’s Department of Astronomy and author of the new book Extraterrestrial (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2021), was not being targeted for his political insight. Instead, the media attention was due to his recent eye-catching paper-exploring whether the interstellar space rock ‘Oumuamua was really a piece of alien technology that’s sailing on sunlight. Loeb first pondered the possibility that the solar system’s first known interstellar interloper was an extraterrestrial craft back in late 2017, shortly after astronomers discovered the object (formally known as 1I/2017 U1) using the Pan-STARRS telescope at Haleakalā Observatory in Hawaii. But it wasn’t until he began…

There have been some notable and most pleasant surprises in recent times regarding projects to resurrect notable prototype locomotives or even complete railroads. Witness the recent restoration to service of Union Pacific Big Boy no. 4014 and Chesapeake & Ohio 2-6-6-2 no. 1309. Hulking Santa Fe 4-8-4s are no longer merely stuffed-and-mounted displays in parks. Nickel Plate Berkshire 765 continues to see service, and two Reading class T-1 4-8-4s are being restored to operating condition, as is Pennsylvania class K4s Pacific no. 1361. Even the mothballed East Broad Top has new owners whose plans far exceed its first restoration to service since its shutdown in 1956. All is remarkably good on the 12"-to-the-foot front. One of the biggest surprises regarding railroad resurrection, however, is happening indoors and in HO scale. Most veteran…

Situated high atop East Tennessee’s Cumberland Plateau lies the town of Crab Orchard. It’s home to Lhoist North America’s massive limestone mine, a tiny hamlet that is virtually unnoticeable to motorists on nearby Interstate 40. Crab Orchard has always been one of those places that you pass through to get to wherever it is that you’re going. When European explorers traveling west first discovered a gap in the mountains 300 years ago, they named it for the abundance of wild crab apple trees that dominated the forest. As the United States continued to expand in population and industrial development from 1830 to 1860, fuel was needed to power factories in America’s growing cities. Coal mining in Tennessee was virtually nonexistent prior to the 1850s, but with the completion of the Nashville…

FOR MORE THAN 25 YEARS I built and operated an HO scale model railroad based on the Boston & Maine RR in northern New Hampshire. Like many modelers, I was captivated by the 1950s rolling stock and the region’s rural charm. But I reached the point at which the roster and scenery were complete and there were few projects left. So the idea of building a new railroad based on a busy urban area began to seem more compelling. I could create areas that offered lots of switching. Urban architecture is different from that of rural areas, offering new and interesting construction opportunities. I also wanted a prototype location with seaport operations and a car float. I considered Virginia’s Tidewater area, where the cities of Norfolk and Newport News have a lot going…

MOST NOVICE ASTROPHOTOGRAPHERS have a defining moment, when they find themselves staring in disbelief at what they just recorded in their camera. For me, that moment came a decade ago, standing outside on my back patio with a new Canon Rebel T1i DSLR. Although dark skies will reveal the Andromeda Galaxy to the unaided eye, suburban light pollution had forced me to clumsily determine its location using star charts. Targeting our galactic neighbor as well as I could, I simply took a string of exposures with a basic camera lens. The setup was crude, at best. And the results were even more unsophisticated (see the image above). Still, that singular view on the back of my camera proved to me that astrophotography was something I could do from my own backyard. I…

Devil’s Bay National Park, Virgin Gorda, British Virgin Islands GO FOR: ADVENTURE Beaches are the main reason we go to the Caribbean, especially in winter when the weather at home is grim (which can also be said of much of the British ‘summer’, too!). Antigua alone has a beach for each day of the year (366 if you count the sister island of Barbuda). But if I had to single out just one, it would be Devil’s Bay on the island of Virgin Gorda. It’s utterly beautiful, of course, but getting to it is all part of the magic. From the car park at The Baths National Park, you have to follow a twisty path between (and occasionally under) an avenue of smooth, pinkish granite boulders as big as elephants, and wade…

MAC FOR GOOD A quality mac is worth the investment and it will be your go-to cover-up as the weather starts to turn. Choose belted shapes to enhance your waist or stick to a straight silhouette if you prefer something slim-line. Layer over a striped T-shirt, your favourite jeans and white plimsolls for a sporty, relaxed edge, and you can still use your summer raffia accessories – a bucket hat or basket bag – to keep it from feeling too autumnal. SMART CHOICE You heard it here first: it’s time to try out dungarees. Choose a relaxed fit to flatter and wear with a crisp white blouse to make them feel more grown-up. Smart leather accessories will take them from playful to polished. SHORTS STORY Not ready to give up your summer denim shorts just…

”Jag tror fortfarande mest på plastflasketeorin” En eftermiddag i mars 2018 stannar bekymrad allmänhet till vid en parkbänk i Salisbury inte långt från ortens turistmagnet – den storslagna katedralen. På bänken sitter en äldre man och en yngre kvinna till synes helt borta för världen. Mannen är medvetslös medan kvinnan har öppna ögon som stirrar blint framåt och skum runt munnen. Paret förs till sjukhus och när deras identiteter blir kända för-djupas dramat. Mannen heter Sergej Skripal och är rysk dubbelagent. Kvinnan är hans dotter Julia. Det är inte första gången avhoppade ryssar blir mystiskt sjuka och till och med dör utomlands. 2006 förgiftades till exempel avhoppade KGB-översten Aleksandr Litvinenko med Polonium, insjuknade och dog. Enligt en brittisk domstol låg två namngivna ryska agenter bakom mordet. Det låg alltså nära till hands att anta…

År 1968 var familjen Orlandi en av få barnfamiljer som bodde i Vatikanstaten, ett självständigt furstendöme med bara 400 innevånare. Pappan Ercole var stolt över att liksom sin far tjäna påven. Han arbetade i förvaltningen och koordinerade påvens audienser. Av barnen Orlandi var den åttaårige Pietro äldst, så kom tre flickor och år 1968 föddes Emanuela som Vatikanstatens yngsta medborgare. När hon var tio år gammal fick den katolska kyrkan ett nytt överhuvud, polacken Johannes Paulus II. Han såg som sin livsuppgift att bekämpa kommunismen och för att befria sitt hemland skänkte han svindlande summor till den självständiga fackföreningen Solidaritet. Varifrån kom pengarna för allt detta? Chefen för Vatikanbanken, ärkebiskop Paul Marcinkus, hade affärer med maffian och ägnade sig åtfinansbedrägerier. Den fullständiga omfattningen har aldrig kunnat klarläggas då påven vägrat samarbeta med…

When she’s feeling ungrounded or anxious, KK Ledford turns to one of yoga’s quintessential postures, Padmasana (Lotus Pose). As the San Francisco–based Anusara instructor moves into this time-honored asana, she feels her femurs root, her groins settle down, and her side body lift. Settling in, she finds her midline and visualizes her roots descending to the earth as the energy moves up and out of the top of her head. From this dance of stability and softness, a natural contentedness and calmness sweep over her. This powerful hip and heart opener completely shifts her energy. “I feel the earth is holding me,” she says. “And from that place I feel really balanced as a sense of freedom emerges from my heart.” Lotus Pose (Padmasana) is considered by many to be an…

Once spurned by electronic musicians, the guitar has seen something of a rebirth over the last decade. It has shifted from being a symbol of rock’s ubiquitous dogma, to becoming a creative paintbrush with which kaleidoscopic new sounds have been weaved via the use of software effects and samples, while the once restrictive price tags of high-end amplification can now be replicated via a range of simulations. So, if you’re a traditionally equipped guitarist looking for new ways to explore your instrument with software, or even if you’ve never previously recorded, come along for a tour! A very brief history Across its many decades of life, the guitar has always been an instrument that its players have sought to wrangle new sounds from. The blues players of the Mississippi Delta back in…

Garbo by Robert Gottlieb. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 437 pp., $40.00; $25.00 (paper) The Sun and Her Stars: Salka Viertel and Hitler’s Exiles in the Golden Age of Hollywood by Donna Rifkind. Other Press, 550 pp., $30.00 The Kindness of Strangers by Salka Viertel, with an introduction by Lawrence Weschler and an afterword by Donna Rifkind. New York Review Books, 343 pp., $18.95 (paper) Greta Garbo was born in 1905 in one of the poorest sections of Stockholm. She lived in a cold-water flat with no indoor toilet. Salka Viertel was born in 1889 into a well-to-do Jewish family living on an estate of rolling meadows and orchards in Galicia, near what is now Lviv, Ukraine. Their stories, which began in radically different circumstances, came together in the same place: Hollywood. They became lifelong friends and…

Pelagic Australis is sold. You read that right. On 17 May Pelagic Australis was handed over to Greenpeace International in Cape Town and is currently on her way to the Netherlands with skipper Chris, mate Sophie and a Greenpeace crew of three. The send-off was a carnival affair for the seller (second happiest day of a boat owner’s life…) and the buyer (the first…) complete with Zulu dancers cavorting on the foredeck thanks to Greenpeace South Africa. This was a one-on-one transaction with no brokers involved. DIY, just the way I like things. Greenpeace seldom divulges specific campaign plans going forward but we can say she will be undergoing a refit in the Netherlands, making ‘green-tech’ modifications and running a competition for a new name. Then she goes into campaign service. So,…

Ripples of the La Moine River roll across the tires of two Jeep Cherokees. Five photographers pile out for a photo of the Keokuk Junction Railway’s road train on its return to Keokuk, Iowa. On this first day of spring, March 20, 2017, the choking fumes of anhydrous ammonia drift across the valley as the sun burns through a milky sky. A local farmer rolls two pony tanks of the chemical back and forth in the field east of the tracks as the roar of his New Holland tractor gives way to a more familiar sound. The high-pitched howl of turbochargers of two basic-black GP20s and the drone of a GP9 mix with the sound of empty covered hoppers and tank cars as they roll on jointed rail laid by the…

SEVERAL YEARS AGO I DECLARED that my former HO Boston & Maine New Hampshire Division was finished. Of course there were still things to do, but everything appeared to be complete – there was no bare plywood showing, all track was in and operational, and there was appropriate equipment to run. My announcement brought several congratulatory replies, questions about what it was like to have a finished layout, and of course comments like “… so when are you going to tear it up?” One acquaintance even called asking if he could have the paper mill section. It’s a nice feeling to complete any project, especially a fair-sized model railroad. The grand plan came together pretty much as I had envisioned, and I’m generally satisfied with the result. But after working on…

It is hard to say whether I truly remember Mercury astronauts being bolted into tiny capsules and blasted into space, or whether I only remember remembering. Regardless, those images are there in my mind. That is where my lifelong love affair with science, engineering, and exploration took root. Even as a young kid, I understood that spaceflight was about pushing the limits of human experience. Maybe I became aware of the danger when Gemini VIII tumbled out of control after the first-ever docking of two spacecraft in orbit. A quick-thinking Neil Armstrong and David Scott narrowly averted tragedy by using the reentry system to wrestle the capsule back under control. Or maybe it all became real with the Apollo 1 fire. Along with much of the world, I was glued to the…

Apollo astronauts brought back to Earth 842 pounds (382 kilograms) of Moon rocks — a treasure-trove that carried the secrets of lunar formation. Among the many insights that scientists teased from these samples was the previously unknown ages of lunar craters. The rocks hinted that Earth’s satellite suffered a massive bombardment — a spike in the amount of material crashing into the Moon and, presumably, Earth. This catastrophe became known as the Late Heavy Bombardment (LHB) because researchers thought it occurred relatively late in the lunar lifetime, a few hundred million years after the Moon had formed, when the chaos of the early solar system had begun to calm down. Now, new results across multiple fields of astronomy are causing many to question the existence of this spike. Some scientists argue…

Phil is a longtime contributor to Astronomy and the author of many books. Back in the January 2020 column, we toured several colorful stars in the cold winter sky. Let’s head back out this month in search of summertime gems. We begin by aiming high in the sky toward dazzling Vega (Alpha [α] Lyrae). The brightest member of the Summer Triangle, Vega outshines its compatriots, Deneb (Alpha Cygni) and Altair (Alpha Aquilae). Vega lies 25 light-years away and is three times larger than our Sun. The striking sapphire blue color is due to a surface temperature of around 17,000 degrees Fahrenheit (9,400 degrees Celsius), about 7,000 F hotter than our Sun. That translates to a spectral class A rating. Our next colorful stop is too faint to see by eye, but is visible…

Vegetable gardeners’ big dreams can sometimes be squashed by small garden spaces. Their visions, inspired by myriad seed catalogs, collide with the actual dimensions of their plots. With a few simple tricks, though, you can maximize the productivity of even the smallest vegetable patch, and harvest the plethora of produce you’ve always imagined. Pick Your Produce Some vegetables make more efficient use of space than others. For example, a cherry tomato plant — taking up perhaps a 3-by-3-foot space — yields about as much usable vegetable matter as a pumpkin plant that takes up a 12-by-12-foot plot. Years ago, the National Garden Bureau (NGB) compiled a list of the most efficient vegetables to grow. Its ratings take into account the productivity of each plant per square foot, the value of the produce,…

SCENERY IS ONE OF THE MOST distinctive features of any model railroad. While the trains you choose to run say a lot about the prototype you’re modeling and the era you’ve chosen to represent, it’s the scenery that really tells the viewer the region of the country you’ve selected. One of the appealing things about modeling the Virginian was that we got to build some tall scenery, which helped make the 4 x 8 foot layout seem much bigger than it really is, and that’s where we’ll begin this installment. Hills and trees Our Virginian project railroad is set in the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia, and that meant we were going to need rounded hills covered with trees. For the hills we used stacks of extrudedfoam insulation board glued together with latex…

VIEWING DOUBLE STARS is a popular activity at star parties. The presenter will usually point out Mizar and its dimmer companion, Alcor, in the bend of the Big Dipper’s handle; or, in summer, telescopes are often turned to Albireo in Cygnus, to everyone’s delight. But double stars are often neglected by today’s serious amateur observers, who are more interested in deep-sky objects. It’s a shame, because not only are double stars beautiful, but they are also a challenge by which to measure the skill of the observer and the quality of their telescope. Double stars were once the focus of both professional and amateur observers alike, and they have played an important role in our understanding of gravity and of the galaxy in which we live. Seeing double Mizar and Alcor have long…

Once in a while, after years of having no space to build a layout, an opportunity presents itself — such as one of your kids leaving for college. Our room-sized HO scale version of the Morristown & Erie Ry. will fill his old room nicely and give you hours of fun. When it comes to finding a modern prototype railroad that fits into a compact layout space, it doesn’t get any better than the Morristown & Erie. Until last year, the short line’s operation was made up of four branch lines that served a variety of customers. Everything was linked together by New Jersey Transit tracks, which also affords a little commuter modeling. Our plan fits in a room slightly bigger than 10 x 12 feet. It features key scenes found in…

På kvällen den 31 juli 2019 polisanmälde sambon att Gert-Inge Bertinsson inte kommit hem. Det hade bara gått några timmar sedan han varit inne och klippt sig och handlat, men det var inte likt Gert-Inge att inte höra av sig. Hennes man var visserligen pensionär, men hade inte kopplat av så mycket att han skulle strunta i klockan. Gert-Inge var noggrann och punktlig. Nu svarade han inte ens i sin telefon. – Han var väldigt noga med tider. Gert-Inge kanske hade blivit sjuk eller råkat ut för en olycka. Sambon var orolig för allt möjligt men under dagarna som följde närde hon ändå ett visst hopp att han levde. – Det var inte förrän polisen kom och sa att man hade hittat en kropp som jag insåg det. – Det är klart att vi…

Det är mycket folk i rörelse på Wisby hotell den 11 december 1996. Här finns både det sedvanliga klientelet av övernattande gäster plus sällskap som kommit hit för att äta julbord. Sammanlagt rör det sig om runt hundra människor övernattande gäster och ytterligare 60 ätande och festande besökare. Julen står för dörren och det är uppsluppen stämning bland syltor och skinka. När borden brutits blir det dans ända in på småtimmarna. Christina Olofson, 46, jobbar som nattportier. Christina är egentligen inte så förtjust i nattarbete men en plikttrogen och lojal medarbetare. Hon står bakom disken i receptionen när en gäst går för att ta hissen upp till rummet strax före tre på morgonen. Gästen hälsar och Christina hälsar tillbaka. Han är den sista som ser Christina Olofson i livet. Brutalt våld Tidigt på morgonen ringer…

ELEVEIGHT We were excited to receive news of the latest V5 release of the highly successful and versatile Eleveight RS kite – a firm freeride favourite amongst the KW test team. The new model is lighter for even more responsive handling, even in light or gusty winds. Thanks to the delta-hybrid design the Eleveight RS V5 boasts a broad wind range, ensuring you’ll be amongst the first to hit the water and one of the last back to the beach. Also recently launched, the Master is a high-performance twin-tip aimed at advanced riders. Whether you are focused on blasting full speed and launching massive jumps, or mastering slick lagoons for some advanced freestyle action, the advanced 3D shaping of the Master V4, combined with superb build quality, is bound to surpass your…

IF YOU TALK TO people in the real-estate business long enough, they can make a woodshed at the side of an expressway sound like the Chateau de Versailles. But you have to watch for those potentially misleading catchwords, because King Louis the 14th almost always let things slide. “Cozy” often means it’s large enough to house you or your pet, but not both. “Grandma’s house” translates into it’s really old and actually smells like grandma. “Unique decor” tells you there’s felt wallpaper on the bannisters. If it’s “airy,” look for cracks in the foundation. And “it’ll go fast” could mean anything from it will sell quickly to it’s situated on a sinkhole. It’s almost like he’s got a bit of magic. A magic touch – Cory Vitarelli, Perry’s youth hockey linemate It…