NASA’s deep sea drone Orpheus has plans to one day go to space

When the Orpheus drone emerged from the waters off of Cape Cod in September 2018, deep sea biologist Tim Shank felt relieved. Four and a half years earlier, Shank, a scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), had sent a state-of-the-art exploration craft to crushing ocean depths — but the vehicle never returned.

Only shattered pieces of plastic drifted back up to the surface world.

This time, the new exploration robot Orpheus passed its first test: The machine dove alone into the darkened sea for an hour, without any human control. Critically, the drone came back. Enthusiastic about Orpheus’ return, Shank said he fired off an email to his ocean exploration colleague, the filmmaker and deep sea explorer James Cameron.

“We’re back,” Shank wrote.

Scientists from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) collaborated to build Orpheus, a small, autonomous robot capable of exploring the deepest, uncharted realms in the ocean — and possibly one day exploring extraterrestrial ocean worlds in our solar system, like the moons Europa and Enceladus.

In these far-off realms, without a tether linking the robot to humans above, such a craft must be able to explore, map, and photograph these worlds on its own, without a human at the controls. “You let it go and let it run its course,” John Leichty, a NASA robotics engineer, said in an interview.

NASA and Woods Hole’s greater scheme is not just to have a single Orpheus capable of visiting uncharted waters, but to have a fleet of them scouring the deep ocean like a school of inquisitive sharks.

A graphic of two Orpheus drones exploring the ocean.

On Earth, Orpheus is designed to plunge into the extreme pressures and pitch dark of the ocean’s hadal zone — which ranges from depths of 6,000 to 11,000 meters (20,000 to 36,000 feet) beneath the surface.

“We have some fundamental questions about who lives there,” said Shank. “It truly is an alien world on a non-alien world.”

These uncharted regions are located within the ocean’s dark trenches and compose large swaths of the deep central Pacific Ocean.

“We have some fundamental questions about who lives there.”

“This is an area over half the size of Australia that we haven’t explored yet,” said Shank.

During Orpheus’ first run in the fall of 2018, the OceanX exploration vessel Alucia left Woods Hole and traveled to waters off of Cape Cod. There, crew members lowered the drone into the water before releasing the tether, allowing Orpheus — which is not yet capable of exploring with complete autonomy — to follow a preprogrammed route some 570 feet under the ocean.

These ocean endeavors, especially with large vessels like the Alucia, aren’t cheap. For the next four years, OceanX and the charity Bloomberg Philanthropies have committed $185 million to Orpheus’ research missions, and others.

Acknowledging that deep sea endeavors are often hampered by funding, Orpheus’ engineers intentionally kept the craft small. It measures five feet long and weighs in at around 550 pounds. In contrast, many traditional robotic exploration craft, commonly known as ROVs, are around the size of a Volkswagen station wagon, noted Shank. “They’re quite massive,” he said.

Building a smaller ocean exploration vehicle is cheaper, easier, and doesn’t require a massive ship, explained NASA’s Leichty. And for oceans beyond Earth, smaller robots are easier to blast into space.

“Sending heavy things into space is difficult,” said Leichty.

The OceanX crew launching Orpheus into the Atlantic Ocean.

A cash-sensible solution, then, for both trips into the most remote realms on Earth and beyond, is essential. Although the hadal zone covers a significant swath of the planet, it remains a largely mysterious place. Below depths of 6,000 meters, or 20,000 feet, life is different. Shank describes 6,000 meters as a boundary where a great, sudden change in species occurs thanks to the crushing pressure, a pressure he described as 16,747 airliners plopped on top of a dime.

“There’s a biology there that’s separate from the rest of the ocean and we want to get there.”

“There’s a biology there that’s separate from the rest of the ocean and we want to get there,” said Shank.

Though the hadal zone is inhospitable to most life on Earth, critters there flourish. Shank said that if he lowered a 20-pound mackerel down to these depths, the life teeming in the dark would simply devour the fish over the course of hours. “There would be nothing but bones left,” he said.

Recently-discovered wide-mouthed fish scour the ground, “mud monsters” lay in wait for prey, and shrimp with protracted antennae lurk in the dark water column.

Orpheus has yet to enter the hadal zone, but the robot’s small, nimble frame is designed to survive the pressure here, unlike most ROVs. “The pressures get so great that a normal ROV will collapse,” noted Shank.

And unlike other robotic explorers, Orpheus is designed to land on the deepest ocean floor, 36,000 feet down, to sift through the alien ground, gather samples, and carry them back up to the surface.

Extraterrestrial Oceans

There’s no doubt that our deepest ocean depths are largely uncharted realms.

“We know the surface of the moon better than we know the bottom of our oceans,” said Andrew Dombard in an interview, a planetary scientist at the University of Illinois at Chicago who has no involvement with the Orpheus project.

The Orpheus drones will change that, noted Wood Hole’s Shank. But visiting oceans beyond Earth is, as one might expect, a significantly more ambitious, long-term goal.

“The challenges are many and are extreme,” said Dombard, who has studied ways to bore through the 15-mile thick ice shell surrounding Europa, Jupiter’s fourth-largest moon.

Europa's icy crust, criss-crossed with cracks. — Europa’s icy crust, criss-crossed with cracks.

One of the greatest challenges is powering the extraterrestrial ocean probe, said Dombard. On Earth, Orpheus can get by with batteries, but that won’t cut it on an alien planet, where batteries can’t be recharged. Nuclear power might do the trick, he said, but that means building a drone that can manage the radiation and excessive heat produced by nuclear reactions.

Then, there’s the terrible pressure. On Europa — if a space probe ever found a way to bore through the moon’s robust icy crust — the drone might have to descend 100 miles beneath the sea to reach the ocean floor. “You’re dealing with pressures that are far worse than what you’re dealing with on Earth,” Dombard explained. Though he noted that pressures on Saturn’s smaller moon Enceladus would be less, so it might be better-suited for an ocean exploration mission.

Orpheus’ training to become mostly autonomous has started, and in the next couple of years the machine will employ image-recognition technology — like that increasingly employed by cars — to identify objects and critters, said Shank.

“On Europa having that autonomous decision-making will be key,” said NASA’s Leichty.

Orpheus illuminates the water as it ascends to the surface.

In the end, perhaps the greatest challenge to exploring Europa’s seas isn’t technical.

“I have learned over my career to never underestimate the ideas these engineers come up with,” said Dombard. “I think that these are solvable problems but it requires money, and right now it may require too much money.”

NASA’s budget is already strained, with its expensive mega-rocket — which is still years from a test — sapping the $19 billion budget. The space agency, however, does have plans to launch its Europa Clipper spacecraft to the ocean world as soon as 2023. The Europa probe will swoop by the moon’s surface and assess the likelihood that it could support life.

For now, Dombard said he’s pleased to know that a fleet of Orpheus drones may soon dive down to the alien realms on our own planet. Anything more would be an added benefit.

“Exploring Enceladus and Europa would certainly be gravy,” he said.

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What’s so funny about Amy Klobuchar’s bad temper?

Amy Klobuchar, by some accounts, is a tyrannical boss, prone to paroxysms of anger and frustration that have her hurling insults and even physical objects toward staff — a management style that has left a trail of shaken and humiliated former employees.

So … that should certainly be good for some laughs.

Story Continued Below

As luck would have it — not clear yet whether it’s good luck or bad — the Minnesota senator is the Democratic speaker at Saturday night’s annual Gridiron Dinner. The invitation to appear before journalists and assorted Washington insiders comes at the precise moment Klobuchar is trying to send her presidential campaign aloft amid a downdraft of news reports about her allegedly foul moods and the intimidating work environment these spawned.

Klobuchar right now surely has a team of advisers — those who have not quit and told their stories to reporters — working last-minute on lines that can simultaneously acknowledge her reputation and, with the right mix of humor and humility, drain it of toxicity.

It is an old Washington challenge — how to preempt attacks on a point of personal vulnerability — applied in a new Washington context, in which sensitivity to unequal power dynamics means a former junior staffer willing to speak out could doom the aspirations of his or her former boss.

Klobuchar’s upcoming performance turned into something of a parlor game this week with old hands who have helped other politicians prepare for Washington media dinners. One of those was Bill Clinton, whose sense of humor does not naturally incline to the self-deprecating and ironic sensibility that typically works best at Washington dinners. He usually soared at these events, even though he sometimes didn’t get his own jokes. (“Trust us, sir. They’ll think it’s funny.”)

The consensus, among these off-the-record interviews: There is enough raw material to make it relatively easy for Klobuchar to crush it — if she has the self-confidence and brio to crush herself. “A target-rich environment” is how one veteran Democratic operative described the comedic landscape.

She could tell a lame joke that purposely falls flat, then launch into a flamboyant tirade against a nearby aide: “You are the worst joke writer ever!” Or she could take the opposite tack, perhaps with a behind-the-scenes video at her office showing her ostentatiously lavishing praise on employees, watering their plants, picking up their dry cleaning and so on. The lead anecdote in a New York Times piece, about her eating salad with her comb, then supposedly making an aide wash the comb, offers many possibilities.

A successful evening would have her replicating the achievement of Leona Helmsley, who returned from prison for tax evasion in the 1990s with a reputation for berating her employees (the “Queen of Mean,” the New York tabloids called her) and launched an ad campaign boasting, “Say what you will, she runs a helluva hotel.”

If making fun of herself should be easy, another question for Klobuchar remains hard: What should people — reporters and average voters alike — make of the underlying issue?

The evidence is unambiguous that many people have found her challenging to work for. The evidence is deeply ambiguous about how far outside the standards of Washington bosses Klobuchar really lies. The Republican speaker balancing Klobuchar on Saturday night will be Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana, whose office last year had among the highest staff turnover rates in the Senate, surpassing Klobuchar’s unflattering top ranking from the year before.

The question for voters is not whether they would want to work for Klobuchar but whether they would want her to work for them. Do they care about the difference between setting “high expectations” (her description) or whether some aides found their experience “dehumanizing” (according to The Times)? Lyndon B. Johnson was either a good president because of civil rights or a bad one because of the Vietnam War. But the standards of his era never required him to tap Bill Moyers to come up with funny jokes for Gridiron about LBJ’s penchant for calling aides into the bathroom to bark orders while he evacuated his bowels.

Indeed, this year’s Gridiron promises an especially odd juxtaposition of old politics and new.

Both the criticism and defense of Klobuchar reflect a contemporary cultural moment. It is a modern sensibility that says it is no longer okay to have an impressive public persona — in Klobuchar’s case, as a proven winner with voters at home, and an intelligent and conscientious record in Washington — that masks an abusive or hypocritical private character. To take an example outside the political arena, many people can no longer appreciate Kevin Spacey’s work on-screen knowing what they do of his behavior off-screen. At the same time, many people rallying to Klobuchar’s defense harness their argument to identity politics that have taken on a sharp new edge in the Trump Era: A woman is being shamed for behavior that is tolerated, even celebrated, when practiced by men.

This modern question — how to judge public figures for personal failings? — will play out at an evening that is a creaky vestige of earlier generations. The Gridiron Club (I am not a member but am invited to this year’s dinner) throws an annual white-tie (does that even still exist in other settings?) evening of satirical skits and speeches by reporters and politicians. Most years, by my lights, it is mildly entertaining, mildly cringey and mildly consequential.

A new era of social media and hyper-saturation of average voters in the daily churn of politics on cable has diluted but not eradicated the taste-making and agenda-setting power of bureau chiefs, senior correspondents and the like at Gridiron. Klobuchar and team are well aware of the historical role of the evening in inoculating politicians against vulnerabilities.

The most famous examples go way back. There was, in 1958, the aspiring presidential candidate John F. Kennedy lampooning his reputation as spoiled rich kid by pretending to read a telegram from his tycoon father: “Dear Jack: Don’t buy a single vote more than is necessary because I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay for a landslide.” And Nancy Reagan defused controversy over borrowing expensive dresses from famous designers by singing a ditty called “Second Hand Clothes” to the tune of “Second Hand Rose.”

Later, Hillary Rodham Clinton in 1995 made fun of her own recent string of bad luck with a video in which she presented herself as Forrest Gump. Just last year, Donald Trump — not typically a devotee of self-deprecating humor — got a sincere laugh by cracking wise about his desire for a summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. “As far as the risk of dealing with a madman is concerned, that’s his problem, not mine,” deadpanned Trump, before reverting to a more standard litany of self-praise and criticism of Washington journalists.

The Times story cited an email sent by Klobuchar complaining about how staff was managing her Twitter feed: “We are becoming a joke, and it is making me a joke.”

Obviously, it could not have been pleasant to be on the receiving end of that one. Less obvious, though, is that it could not have been pleasant to be on the delivering end, either. In its own way, the Gridiron dinner is highlighting one reality of public life that is likely connected to Klobuchar’s temper — not to mention the rank behavior of other politicians of both sexes: Aides do their work in the shadows; she is the one on whom public criticism will land. Advisers advise; she has to perform.

Even so, the advice keeps coming. Klobuchar must answer the question, one veteran Democratic operative said, “How do I turn this on myself in a way that humanizes and disarms and conveys a sense that I get it?”

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‘This is how we’ll change the country’ – Inside Kabul’s book bus

Kabul, Afghanistan – A blue bus stops on a small street on the outskirts of Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul.

Soon after the doors of the bus open, joyful children crowd the mobile library to pick up their favourite book and retreat into a corner to learn about the adventures of a superhero or the wisdom and kidness of a fairy.

The Charmaghaz (walnut) project started in February last year and soon become a regular sight around the city.

It operates daily and visits up to four communities a day across Kabul, with every visit lasting two hours.

“The main goal of the mobile library is to promote critical thinking, which we believe it is not promoted in our education system or our society” said Freshta Karim, the 26-years-old founder of the Charmaghaz project that runs the mobile library.

“When children read stories from around the world and see issues through somebody else’s eyes, they learn to think critically and realise their potential.”

“It’s been one year since we started working with children and we realised they are very passionate and they have so much energy and thirst for knowledge.

“They deserve a lot of investment. Education is one of the areas we need to invest because this is how we will change this country,” Karim added.

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What’s behind the unrest at Al Aqsa’s Bab al-Rahma?

Occupied East Jerusalem – Palestinian activist Hanady Halawani has lost count of the number of times she has been banned from visiting the holy Al Aqsa Mosque.

Over a span of 15 years, she says she’s been arrested at least 24 times, much of the time due to her social media posts, in which she would update her followers on the latest developments unravelling at the flashpoint site.

Her posts include videos of Israeli settlers performing prayers at the holy compound, in violation of the status quo.

Other photos from this past summer show land and graves that have been dug up by Israeli authorities at the historic Bab al-Rahma cemetery, located just outside the compound’s eastern wall.

Protests over the summer this year by a small group of Palestinians were of no avail as the centuries-old graves of Muslim leaders reportedly lie in the way of a planned Israeli park.

Even when the site – known as Haram al-Sharif (Noble Sanctuary) for Muslims and Temple Mount for Jews – may at times appear to be relatively calm, Halawani and other Palestinians know that this is an illusion.

They believe the fragile status quo is being gradually eroded as Israelis continue to take steps in asserting sovereignty over the site, with the goal of spatially and temporally partitioning the holy compound and eventually building the Third Temple over the ruins of Al Aqsa, as propagated by the Temple Movement activists.

According to the status quo reaffirmed in 1967 between Israel and Jordan, the holy compound is administered by the Islamic Waqf endowment seated in Jordan. Non-Muslims can enter to visit the site, but cannot pray there.

This coincided with the Chief Rabbinate of Israel’s declaration in 1967 that Jews are not allowed to enter the compound as it would desecrate the site’s holiness.

The latest unrest has broken out over the formerly abandoned building at Bab al-Rahma (Gate of Mercy or Golden Gate) in the Al Aqsa compound.

For the first time in 16 years, Palestinians have reopened its gates, which had been closed under Israeli order, and hundreds have been praying at the site – their biggest achievement since forcing Israel to remove the unilaterally installed metal detectors from the compound in July 2017.

Palestinians perform Friday prayer outside Bab al-Rahma in the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound on February 22 [Faiz Abu Rmeleh/Anadolu Agency]

Israel closed Bab al-Rahma in 2003 alleging the site was being used by members of the outlawed Islamic Movement in Israel Northern Branch for political activities, an allegation denied by the Islamic Waqf.

Since reopening the building’s prayer hall, some 100 Palestinians have been reportedly arrested, including Sheikh Abdel-Azeem Salhab, head of the Waqf, and his deputy after they joined Palestinians in prayer at the site.

After being arrested at 5am last week from his home, Salhab was banned from Al Aqsa for a week, which was an unprecedented move.

Halawani was also issued another ban following a house raid and arrest. Authorities claimed her presence at Al Aqsa is dangerous and problematic.

“‘The most dangerous woman’ – that’s what they chose to call me to justify bringing a big army force to knock down the door of a defenceless woman. They searched every room in the house then beat me and forcefully dragged me on the floor before arresting me,” Halawani wrote on Instagram, adding that she’s been banned for another six months.

Reportedly days after the gate was reopened, an Israeli court ruled that several Palestinians arrested for praying at the site are not guilty of any crime as the structure no longer belongs to an alleged “terror organisation”, but to the Waqf.

Israel Hayom’s Shragai claims Palestinians are “Chipping away at the Status Quo” by renewing Muslim access to, and Waqf maintenance of, Bab a Rahme. But this was reality till Israel’s 2003 restrictions for alleged use by terror org. Court now ruled organization no longer exists.

— Ofer Zalzberg (@OferZalzberg) February 25, 2019

Bab al-Rahma’s closure for 16 years under the claim of a court order turned out to be false, Wafa news reported.

Battle over sovereignty

Despite the court’s recent ruling and with Muslim prayers currently being held inside the building, Israeli MKs have been pressuring Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to reclose the gate and assert Israel’s sovereignty over the site.

[Dangerous idea] MK Smotrich to Ch 13:”There already are four mosques on the Temple Mount. A fifth one [Bab al Rahme] must not be allowed. I call upon Netanyahu to totally close the Temple Mount this Friday [to Muslims] or to limit [Muslim] entry by age. Whatever is neccessary”. pic.twitter.com/XTy1Q2GsjS

— Ofer Zalzberg (@OferZalzberg) February 27, 2019

Palestinian anxiety about the possibility of forced removal remains high, Israeli NGO Ir Amim noted in a press release on Thursday.

According to Ahmad Sub Laban, a field researcher with Ir Amim, the Islamic High Commission of the Waqf had decided to reopen Bab al-Rahma to assert their authority “in a move to show that this area is part of Al Aqsa and that it’s under the Islamic Waqf’s responsibility”.

“All 144 dunums, everything [within the compound] [belongs to the Waqf],” Sub Laban said, adding that when the Israeli police returned to lock the gate again, Palestinians considered this as interfering with the status quo since the compound’s management is under the jurisidiction of the Jordanian Hashemite Kingdom and the Waqf.

“As Muslims, we consider any kind of interference as an attempt to change the mosque and to divide it as part of the occupation,” Sub Laban said.

“For foreigners who come to visit the mosque, we welcome this but we don’t welcome anyone who comes to visit with the intention to change the situation at the mosque, damage it, divide it or take a part of it. It’s a holy area, it’s not going to be divided at all,” Sub Laban said.

Despite the “relative calm” at the site over the past year and a half, Israel has continued to take actions that compromise the management role of the Waqf and contribute to the erosion of the status quo, Ir Amim wrote.

Over the past two years the Israeli police have repeatedly restricted the Waqf from carrying out maintenance in the compound and have installed a watchtower over Bab al-Rahma, defying Waqf authorities.

Palestinian Muslims enter Bab al-Rahma in the Al Aqsa compound for the first time in 16 years [Ammar Awad/Reuters]

Building the Third Temple

For years, Ir Amim has been issuing reports warning of the danger and growing prominence of Temple Movement activists.

Temple activists openly declare that ascension to the compound and praying at the site is central in their strategy of breaking the status quo, asserting Israeli control and serves as the first step in eventually building the Third Temple over Al Aqsa.

The number of Jewish visitors to the compound has been breaking records over the past few years.

In the last Jewish year, 22,552 Jewish visitors ascended to the compound, which more than doubles the number of visitors two years ago.

Ir Amim warned in 2017 that the Israeli police, who are supposed to prevent non-Muslim worship at the site, are now working in “close coordination” with Temple activists and disregard Jewish worship that takes place, marking a “radical shift” in their relationship.

Activists have been seen praying in the Muslim cemetery and adjacent to Bab al-Rahma.

“Given the deepening ties between the movement and the right wing Israeli political establishment, there are rising suspicions in the Palestinian community that the State intends to establish a synagogue at the site,” Ir Amim noted.

“As a result, there is increasing pressure among some Palestinians to consolidate the Muslim presence at Bab al-Rahma in order to curtail any potential plans.”

According to messianic belief, building the Third Temple at the Al Aqsa compound where the First and Second Jewish temples stood 2,000 years ago would usher the coming of the Messiah [Mostafa Alkharouf/Anadolu Agency]

Restrictions for Palestinians

For Palestinians, maintaining a presence at the compound is necessary to ensure control over Al Aqsa.

With the desecration of mosques and other holy sites after 1948 and the division of Hebron’s Ibrahimi Mosque to allow Jewish worship, Palestinians have progressively lost control over religious sites and national symbols, Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG) reported in 2015.

While religious Jews are increasingly visiting the holy site, for Palestinians living in the occupied territories, visiting Al Aqsa remains a dream as they are typically not allowed to visit.

“Of course the occupation is trying to restrict [access for Palestinians], have fewer [Palestinians] go there,” Halawani said.

“It’s not giving permits for people from the West Bank. The police are always at the doors [to Al Aqsa] scaring people. They threaten people: ‘If you do what [Halawani’s] doing, you’re going to end up like her.’”

‘The [first ban] was very difficult for me. I’m very connected to Al Aqsa and I can’t live without it’ Halawani said [Mersiha Gadzo/Al Jazeera]

Halawani said it was when she started attracting large numbers of Palestinians to visit Al Aqsa that she first caught the attention of Israeli authorities.

In 2011 she started a programme for women at the mosque teaching Quran recitation. In the beginning 50 women attended. Two years later, the number had grown to 650, with women arriving countrywide, including from the Naqab (Negev) desert.

In summertime, the numbers multiplied with around 1,000 children attending camp at the compound every day.

It led to her first ban in 2012 and the program was disbanded.

“The idea of encouraging people to come to Al Aqsa, to be there, that in itself [is seen] as a threat,” Halawani said.

With little being done about the eroding status quo and with Israeli MKs continuously calling for Israeli sovereignty over the site, Halawani is determined to at least inform others through social media about the dangers facing Al Aqsa, even if it means another arrest or ban.

ICG explained in its analysis that “Jewish historical and religious sites in East Jerusalem have become foci of Israeli control, attracting a Jewish presence that securitises Arab surroundings and embitters residents”.

“Many Palestinians believe their last stand is at Al Aqsa, in a city already lost.”

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‘Hellboy’ drops apocalyptic and rather bloody trailer: Watch

By Shannon Connellan2019-03-01 06:35:32 UTC

Well, looks like some kind of apocalypse is here in the latest look at the forthcoming Hellboy film starring Stranger Things’ David Harbour.

Set to a cover of Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water,” the trailer offers up a pretty hectic look at the Dark Horse Comics-based film, with more than a few monsters for our pal to take care of.

Plus, there’s some kind of sexy blood shower, who knows?

Directed by Neil Marshall and starring Harbour, Milla Jovovich, Ian McShane, Sasha Lane, Penelope Mitchell, and Daniel Dae Kim, the film sees our main dude Hellboy attempting to thwart a powerful fifth century sorceress (Jovovich) with plans to y’know, destroy humankind. Classic.

Hellboy lands in cinemas on Apr. 12, 2019. Meanwhile, here’s the first trailer.

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Pete Davidson, John Mulaney, Jimmy Fallon trick each other with confessions

Was John Mulaney’s neighbor arrested by the FBI for cannibalism? Did Pete Davidson go to Jamaica with Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels over New Year’s?

See if you can guess what’s real and made-up, as the two comedians joined Jimmy Fallon for a game of “True Confessions” on The Tonight Show Thursday night.

The game works by each person revealing a random story, to which the others must guess whether it’s true or fake. But first, they must interrogate each other, and with these three, of course it’s hilarious.

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Is Bangladesh a one-party state?

In this episode of Head to Head, Mehdi Hasan challenges Gowher Rizvi, the adviser to the prime minister of Bangladesh on international affairs, on the state of the country’s democracy and whether it is heading towards authoritarianism.

Once one of the poorest countries in the region, Bangladesh’s economy has been booming over the last decade, with economic growth faster than its neighbours India and Pakistan. It also boasts lower infant mortality and longer life expectancy than its peers.

Just because a party has been elected three times, it is not a one-party state.

Gowher Rizvi

However, human rights groups warn that the country is becoming increasingly autocratic, accusing the government of clamping down on any form of dissent and hounding and locking up its political rivals.

In recent general elections, Bangladesh’s ruling party, the Awami League, reasserted its power following a landslide victory. The opposition rejected the results amid violence which saw 17 killed and allegations of vote-rigging and intimidation.

Rizvi, a close ally of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, is also a renowned historian and former Oxford University scholar. We challenge him on government’s record in office and whether it is increasingly trying to silence its critics.

We also ask Rizvi about the ongoing Rohingya crisis, as over one million refugees have fled Myanmar and are living in camps in Bangladesh. Is Bangladesh doing enough to help?

We are joined by a panel of three experts:

Saida Muna Tasneem – Bangladesh’s High Commissioner to the UK and Ireland
Abbas Faiz – South Asia analyst at Essex University, previously worked for Amnesty International for more than 30 years
Tasneem Khalil – Swedish Bangladeshi journalist, author of Jallad: Death Squads and State Terror in South Asia

Is Bangladesh a one-party state? with Gowher Rizvi will be broadcast on March 1 at 20:00 GMT and will be repeated on March 2 at 12:00 GMT, March 3 at 01:00GMT and March 4 at 06:00 GMT.

Follow us on Facebook and @AJheadtohead and watch previous Head to Head shows here.

Head to Head is Al Jazeera’s forum for ideas, a gladiatorial contest tackling big issues such as faith, nationalism, democracy and foreign intervention, in front of an opinionated audience at the Oxford Union.

Mehdi Hasan goes head to head with Gowher Rizvi on Bangladesh’s democracy [Screengrab/Al Jazeera]

Source: Al Jazeera

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Twitter looks to let you hide replies to your tweets

Twitter has been hiding replies from what it deems to be suspect or troll accounts for a little while now.

It’s a neat feature to help filter out questionable replies (or that reply guy), and now Twitter is looking to expand on it, essentially creating a way to moderate your replies.

As posted by serial feature spotter Jane Manchun Wong, you’ll soon be able to choose whether to hide replies to your tweets. This feature hides replies not just for yourself, but to other people viewing the conversation too.

“Hide tweet” will be accessible in a menu, and it appears you’ll be able to view all the tweets you’ve hidden too.

Twitter is testing replies moderation. It lets you to hide replies under your tweets, while providing an option to show the hidden replies pic.twitter.com/dE19w4TLtp

— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) February 28, 2019

To make it clear, this doesn’t mean replies you’ve chosen to hide would disappear. If you, or other users want to see these replies, you’ll need to click a button called “show more replies” to view them.

Twitter senior product manager Michelle Yasmeen Haq confirmed the feature in a tweet, and said it would be publicly tested in the coming months. The platform has long tried to improve “conversational health,” given how utterly toxic the place can be.

“People who start interesting conversations on Twitter are really important to us, and we want to empower them to make the conversations they start as healthy as possible by giving them some control,” she wrote.

“We think of conversations as an ecosystem of different groups: authors, repliers, the audience and the platform. We try to balance the experience across all four groups, and we are continuously exploring ways to shift the balance without overcorrecting.

“We already see people trying keep their conversations healthy by using block, mute, and report, but these tools don’t always address the issue. Block and mute only change the experience of the blocker, and report only works for the content that violates our policies.”

You’re not wrong if you think this feature could be used by powerful figures to silence or obscure undesirable replies, but Haq said Twitter has struck the right balance.

“We think the transparency of the hidden replies would allow the community to notice and call out situations where people use the feature to hide content they disagree with,” Haq added. “We think this can balance the product experience between the original Tweeter and the audience.”

Last week, Twitter started taking applications for beta testers of its new features, so you might be able to take a glimpse at this if you sign up.

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Dwyane Wade: James Harden ‘One of the Most Unguardable Players’ in NBA History

HOUSTON, TX - FEBRUARY 28 : James Harden #13 of the Houston Rockets and Dwyane Wade #3 of the Miami Heat talk after a game on February 28, 2019 at the Toyota Center in Houston, Texas. NOTE TO USER: User expressly acknowledges and agrees that, by downloading and or using this photograph, User is consenting to the terms and conditions of the Getty Images License Agreement. Mandatory Copyright Notice: Copyright 2019 NBAE (Photo by Bill Baptist/NBAE via Getty Images)

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Dwyane Wade had high praise for James Harden following the Houston Rockets‘ 121-118 win over the Miami Heat on Thursday.

Harden finished with 58 points and 10 assists in the victory.

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Wade used the occasion to put the 2018 MVP’s offensive dynamism in a historical context.

“He’s definitely one of the most unguardable players this game has ever seen,” Wade said, per Brian T. Smith of the Houston Chronicle.

This article will be updated to provide more information on this story as it becomes available.

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Myanmar government ups ante with military over political role

Yangon, Myanmar – Officials bribed and bullied voters, stuffed ballot boxes and pushed ahead with a May 2008 referendum on a new constitution despite the deadliest natural disaster in Myanmar‘s recorded history.

For the generals, the charter was a vital step towards a carefully planned new system that would resemble a democracy but keep the military firmly in charge.

And it could not be postponed. Even by Cyclone Nargis, which tore through the country’s Irrawaddy Delta leaving about 140,000 people dead.

Political activist Tint Soe was in the minority, at least according to the official results, when he picked up a pen at a polling booth and voted “no” to the junta’s proposed constitution.

“It was enacted by force when hundreds of thousands of civilians were dying,” Tint Soe told Al Jazeera. “It was a merciless act.”

Tint Soe is now a lawmaker for the ruling National League for Democracy (NLD), which last month began its boldest bid yet to wrest power from the generals and into civilian hands by changing the constitution.

He was among hundreds who backed a vote in parliament to form a new committee to amend the charter, bringing leader Aung San Suu Kyi a step closer to fulfilling one of her party’s key election pledges.

The 45-member body is tasked with changing sections that pose an “obstacle” to multiparty democracy and free and fair elections, according to a document circulated among MPs.

Earlier efforts to amend the constitution to remove the military’s veto failed to meet the 75 percent support in parliament [Hnin Yadana Zaw/Reuters]

Military obstacle

Forming the committee, though, was the easy part. The generals made sure when they wrote the original charter that it would be all but impossible to amend without their say so, experts say.

When the committee publishes a draft outlining its proposed changes in July, it will need at least 75 percent of combined votes across both houses of parliament in order to become law.

But the constitution gives unelected military legislators one-quarter of all seats, so generals can veto any changes they do not like.

One observer has argued the NLD could, theoretically, oust the armed forces from parliament because the charter does not set a minimum number of military seats in the lower house.

Memorial held for Myanmar’s influential lawyer U Ko Ni

But critics say the military would never allow that, arguing it is obvious the charter’s authors intended to guarantee the military enough seats to veto any changes.

Assuming they are right, Suu Kyi is unlikely to succeed in changing clauses that, for example, give the military control of key ministries, even though she commands a large majority.

She would also have trouble convincing the military to scrap a clause that bars her from being president.

Section 59f, seemingly designed with her late British husband and two sons in mind, says no one with a foreign spouse or child can take the job.

To get around that, Suu Kyi’s advisers came up with the new role of state counsellor, through which she has ruled, as she puts it, from “above the president”.

The man credited with finding this loophole, a top constitutional lawyer named Ko Ni, was assassinated in broad daylight two years ago in what was seen as a reminder of the dangers of challenging the military’s power.

On February 15, a court in Myanmar’s main city of Yangon sentenced two men to death and gave jail terms to two others in connection with the murder.

No need for military

Outside the courthouse, Ma Ma Lwin, a campaigner, handed out stickers encouraging people to protest against the constitution.

“Nobody told the military to take these seats in parliament … they don’t need to be there,” she said.

On the second anniversary of Ko Ni’s death in late January, the NLD tabled an emergency motion to form the committee, though the timing was “just a coincidence”, said Aung Kyi Nyunt, the NLD lawmaker who proposed it.

The move sparked a protest from military legislators who said the party had failed to follow the proper procedure. Others complained the NLD had not given opposition groups enough seats on the committee.

Aung Kyi Nyunt dismissed that criticism. “The NLD has 58 percent of the seats in parliament,” he told Al Jazeera. “If we didn’t want to include any other parties we wouldn’t have to.”

But that majority is seemingly useless against the military’s veto, leaving many to wonder what the NLD realistically expects to achieve.

With the party looking ahead to the 2020 election, one goal could be to give voters more detail about what constitutional reform would actually look like – even if they are as yet unable to deliver it.

“I think it’s about getting it down on record and then if they were to be re-elected in 2020 they would use the following five years to really work on pushing through those reforms,” said Melissa Crouch, an expert on Myanmar’s constitution.

Another reason they might be turning to this issue now is the slow progress in the country’s peace process.

Striking an agreement with an array of ethnic armed groups who have been fighting the government for decades was another of Suu Kyi’s main election promises.

The military-written charter on sale at a stall in Yangon in April 2008 [Aung Hla Tun/Reuters]

Ethnic conflicts

As violence continues to rage in the borderlands, the committee is an opportunity to show these groups their demands for a federal system could soon be enshrined in the charter.

And there are plenty of smaller matters in the constitution that ethnic parties in peripheral states might want to address as part of the dialogue.

The 400-page softback, published in Burmese and English, covers everything from redrawing state boundaries to a provincial government’s right to tax the contents of a “treasure trove”.

But it is section 261 that will probably stir most debate. The military-backed opposition party has proposed amending it so that states can elect their own chief ministers.

Myanmar rebel groups consider alliance against government

Until there are significant changes to clauses that entrench military power, however, resentment is likely to linger.

The vast majority of people did not even get a chance to look at the proposed charter before the 2008 vote, says Tint Soe, the activist turned lawmaker who voted against it.

“Their approach was: the less people know the better,” he said.

At a recent rally in Mandalay, the country’s second city, protesters gathered to voice support for the government’s new committee.

One demonstrator, a poet named San Nein Oo, told a local reporter the only good thing about the constitution was its cover.

Others may disagree; with its generic sans serif font and drop shadow effect, the book’s exterior is no exemplar of design.

Then again, when it was first published ahead of the 2008 vote, the generals were not exactly trying to lure people into reading it.

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