A Bad Day For The U.K. & A Long Lost Map Of The Stars

October 21, 2022

Ding-Dong! The Prime Minister Is Resigning After Six Weeks

Remember Boris Johnson? We sure do – after all, it hasn’t been that long since he resigned in the face of a full-on Tory mutiny. Well, his successor hasn’t fared much better. Liv Truss resigned yesterday after just 6 weeks in office. Truss came to office during a time of economic crisis for the U.K. and the rest of Europe. Her plan for salvaging the British economy involved that classic conservative economic pipe dream – trickle-down economics. With the help of friend and finance minister Kwasi Kwarteng, Truss implemented “a true, Tory budget.” What does that even mean? £45 billion (over $50 billion) of unfunded tax cuts for the rich that she promised would jump-start the floundering British economy.

Unfortunately, the promised jump ended up being more of a dive – the British pound fell off a cliff, reaching its lowest-ever level against the dollar soon after her economic plan was announced. A long list of consequences followed the drop: the cost of government borrowing skyrocketed, mortgage costs were ready to hit the stratosphere, and business import costs also rose. Truss began running back her policies piece by piece, but was eventually forced to replace Kwarteng with her former rival Jeremy Hunt, who canceled the rest of her economic plans.

The Conservative Party began questioning Truss’ leadership in earnest around this time, with interior minister Suella Braverman stepping down while expressing concern about “the direction of the government.” While being questioned by the leader of the Labour Party Wednesday, Truss called herself a “fighter, not a quitter.” She resigned the next morning.

The Conservative Party will choose its new Prime Minister on October 28 following voting by Conservative lawmakers and dues-paying party members. Candidates include former finance minister Rishi Sunak, Leader of the House of Commons Penny Mordaunt, Defense Secretary Ben Wallace, and – drumroll, please – former Prime Minister Boris Johnson. (WaPo ($), Guardian, NPR)

This week, we shared a story about the application for student loan forgiveness being open. We’re curious to know how many of you will be taking advantage of this, so please fill out this survey to let us know, and feel free to share with your family and friends.

Keeping Up With The CEOs (And Their Planes)

Internet users stayed undefeated this week, even in their most recent matchup with the second-richest man on Earth. LVMH (full name LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton) CEO Bernard Arnault, who’s worth over $149 billion, reportedly sold his private jet after being pressured by Twitter users.
Arnault, 73, denied that he sold the plane out of any sense of shame for its greenhouse gas emissions, instead saying that he gave up the luxury vehicle for security purposes. “Indeed, with all these stories, the group had a plane and we sold it,” Arnault said on Monday. “The result now is that no one can see where I go because I rent planes when I use private planes. It’s not very good that our competitors can know where we are at any moment. That can give ideas, it can also give leads, clues.”
Private plane usage by public figures has become a trending topic this year. Some internet sleuths have tracked celebrities like Elon Musk and Kylie Jenner, naming and shaming them for their constant use of private jets that create massive amounts of emissions for even short trips. Some politicians have even proposed a ban or tax on private jets in order to curb emissions by the world’s richest individuals. (CNN)

Stopping The Steal

On Wednesday, the U.S. Justice Department announced it would be pressing charges against almost a dozen individuals and two companies for their participation in illegal schemes to send military technology to Russia.
“These charges reveal two separate global schemes to violate U.S. export and sanctions laws, including by shipping sensitive military technologies from U.S. manufacturers – including types found in seized Russian weapons platforms in Ukraine – and attempting to reexport a machine system with potential application in nuclear proliferation and defense programs to Russia,” read Attorney General Merrick Garland’s statement. Some of the military technology smuggled out to Russia has allegedly been recovered from battlefields in Ukraine.
One scheme involved five Russians and two Venezuelan oil brokers, who set up a network of shell companies in order to get U.S. military technology to Russia while also shipping Venezuelan oil to both Russia and China, circumventing U.S. sanctions. The other plot involved three Latvians and one Ukrainian who conspired to smuggle a high-precision grinding machine with uses in “nuclear proliferation and defense programs” to Russia. (CNN)

Additional World News

“Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.” – Edgar Allan Poe

Just Let Me Work, Man

The political and legal tug-of-war over the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA) has left Dreamers unsure of where they stand, despite having been raised in America. Federal law makes it illegal to hire undocumented immigrants, leaving many of these college-educated Dreamers working under-the-table jobs.
But that doesn’t have to be the case. Undocumented student leaders are working with top legal scholars to push for California to go against current interpretations of a 1986 federal immigration law and begin employing undocumented students at the 10 University of California campuses.
A new analysis from UCLA (backed by scholars from NYU, Cornell, Yale, and Stanford) argues that the interpretation of that law doesn’t apply to states. The U.C. system is the third-largest employer in California, which would make this change a huge deal for undocumented people living in the state. (NYT, $)

You’re Not My Boss Anymore!

Former Vice President Mike Pence was asked if he would vote for Trump if he were to run again in 2024, and Pence’s answer was…well, let’s just say it wasn’t as enthusiastic as one would expect from a former sidekick. Pence said at a Georgetown event, “Well, there might be somebody else I’d prefer more.”
Pence added, “What I can tell you is, I have every confidence that the Republican Party is going to sort out leadership,” Pence continued. “All my focus has been on the midterm elections, and it’ll stay that way for the next 20 days. But after that, we’ll be thinking about the future, ours and the nation’s, and I’ll keep you posted.” Trump has not officially announced he is running yet, but nearly everyone agrees that he will. (NBC)

Additional USA News

Indiana Jones and the Star Catalog

Screw the Holy Grail and forget the Fountain of Youth – the hottest medieval treasure today is something else entirely: a long-lost map of the stars. The star catalog, which played a key role in the history of astronomy, was recently rediscovered in the pages of a Medieval manuscript following a nearly two-millennia-long search.
The missing star map was created by Greek astronomer Hipparchus during the 2nd century B.C. It marks mankind’s first recorded attempt to map out the stars (and other celestial objects), noting the locations of over 800 using longitudes and latitudes. While the document was long referenced by other scripts, all of its copies were thought to be lost – until today.
“Hipparchus’ Star Catalog is the very first attempt in human history to precisely measure the positions of the fixed stars,” said Victor Gysembergh, the head of the team who found the document. “It is a major milestone in the birth of science as a collective endeavor to measure and predict our surroundings.” Major passages of the map were found underneath the text of a Christian manuscript that came from Egypt’s Saint Catherine’s Monastery. The team’s “new evidence is the most authoritative to date and allows major progress in the reconstruction of Hipparchus’ Star Catalog,” said Gysembergh. (Vice)

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