Former F1 driver Jolyon Palmer, who left Renault during the 2017 season, has joined the BBC team to offer insight and analysis from the point of view of the competitors.

To win five Formula 1 world titles, as Lewis Hamilton has now done, is a phenomenal achievement.

Winning one World Championship is what every young driver dreams about, but very few would understand the amount of hard work, dedication and outright skill that is involved to achieve it.

I don’t know the feeling of winning an F1 title from first-hand experience, but I do know just how much hard work and dedication it took for me even to be on the grid, one of 20 elite drivers in the world.

The demands on an F1 driver are intense.

Firstly, to be physically super-fit. Secondly, to immerse yourself within the team, and understand what are very complex cars inside out – the controls and procedures, which change every year. And on top of that, there is so much demand for a driver’s time for PR activities and events. Particularly if you are Hamilton driving for a global brand like Mercedes.

To judge the potential effects of these demands, you only have to look at Hamilton’s former team-mate Nico Rosberg.

He was an excellent driver and he ran Hamilton fairly close while they were at Mercedes together.

He won the title in 2016 – but to do so he had to up his game that year to a level he had never reached before, shutting out almost everything else in his life.

Rosberg achieved it – with help from some Hamilton reliability woes – and promptly retired. It was all too much. He had achieved his boyhood dream, but burnt himself out in the process, and he didn’t have anything left in him to continue the fight.

Rosberg’s retirement speaks volumes about the skill of Hamilton but also the resolve needed to keep going for that long and at that level of intensity.

Having said that, Rosberg did probably have to put in slightly more effort than Hamilton, because Hamilton makes up extra performance with a pure natural ability that few in F1 history have ever possessed.

Rain highlights Hamilton’s extravagant gift

There is no better demonstration of this than his skills in wet weather. For me, pace in the wet highlights pure driving skill, as it is reliant on the driver’s natural ability to find grip and feel the limit without the natural references you build up in the dry. Hamilton thrives in it, and has done throughout his career.

Back in his debut season in 2007, at the Japanese Grand Prix – three races from the end of the season – the championship fight was coming to a close.

Hamilton was neck and neck with team-mate Fernando Alonso, who is also one of the best of all time in my opinion. Conditions were atrociously wet at Fuji, but Hamilton won the race and Alonso, the reigning champion, crashed out. It was a big moment in the title race (although Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen would end up winning on a dramatic final day in Brazil).

At the 2008 British Grand Prix at Silverstone, I was a fan watching trackside in the teeming rain. Hamilton was an absolute class apart.

Again, conditions were terrible and everyone else was spinning left, right and centre. His title rival that season, Ferrari’s Felipe Massa, spun five times in the race, while Hamilton showed absolute dominance to win by over a minute, lapping everyone up to third place.

In 2018, some of the season’s decisive moments have come in wet weather.

Hamilton won the German Grand Prix from 14th on the grid after a rain shower, which caught out title rival Sebastian Vettel, who crashed out of the lead.

Pole position in the rain in Hungary then set him up for a win on a track that Ferrari were looking stronger on. It was a critical 14-point swing in the title race just before summer break.

Hamilton exposes Vettel’s flaws

Vettel is a world-class driver. He has won four titles himself and has been well on top of team-mate Raikkonen. But this year Hamilton has exposed his flaws, while driving flawlessly himself.

Vettel had all the pressure and kept cracking. Major errors at the French, German, Italian, Japanese and US Grands Prix cost him. Hamilton was unflappable.

Vettel could have won the title this year, given his turn of speed and the form of Ferrari.

He and Hamilton started the season with four titles apiece, and nothing to choose between the cars. There was plenty to choose between the drivers once it all panned out.

Hamilton would have won the championship in either car, with the form he has been in this season.

Dedication is what you need

Hamilton lives a celebrity lifestyle, often jetting off to the US often in between races. He is involved in the fashion and music worlds and hangs out with a plethora of A-listers.

When things don’t go well, people are quick to question his commitment, but even with all the talent in the world you cannot win five world titles without absolute dedication to the sport.

The question now is how much more can he achieve?

Hamilton signed a new two-year deal with Mercedes in the summer that will keep him there until at least the end of 2020, when there are likely to be major rule changes.

Mercedes have been the dominant team since 2014, when turbo hybrid engines came in. Although Ferrari potentially had the best car for much of this season, it was pretty close on balance, and it would be a real surprise if Mercedes as a team were not able to mount a title challenge again next year, especially with Hamilton at the helm.

Hamilton turns 34 in January. That is the sort of age at which drivers traditionally move towards the twilight of their careers. Alonso is retiring at the end of the season at 37 years old, and Jenson Button was 36 when he retired at the end of 2016.

Raikkonen bucks that trend, though, and his move to Sauber next year means he will still be driving at 41. With Hamilton’s current form, it doesn’t look as though age is any problem for him.

In 2018, he’s had his best year of his career to date. He’s been unbelievably quick, decisive in his overtaking, and has made so few mistakes.

Whether he can get to Michael Schumacher’s record of seven world titles or even beyond will depend largely on his motivation, because his talent is unquestionable and his team are proven winners.

Even more than that though, if Mercedes were to drop back for whatever reason, any other team would jump at the chance to sign Hamilton, because he can make the difference to a title-winning campaign as he’s proven this year.

Who could challenge Hamilton in 2019?

There are more challenges coming next year, though, and they were on brilliant display in Mexico on Sunday as well.

Max Verstappen is the obvious one. In terms of outright speed, he might be the closest to Hamilton. His pace is ferocious, and if he can manage to consistently temper the aggression he showed earlier in the season, which too often got him in to trouble, then he could be a serious threat to Hamilton.

Verstappen showed how dangerous he can be in Mexico, dominating the entire weekend, albeit pipped to pole by team-mate Daniel Ricciardo. It was about the only lap Ricciardo was quicker than Verstappen all weekend, but he did it when it counted most.

Verstappen’s race was also exemplary, defending well against Hamilton at the first corner before showing very strong pace, tyre management and race management to cruise home to a comfortable win.

The Red Bull car is his only obstacle to a championship bid for next year, particularly its engine. But with a switch from Renault to Honda next year, there is much optimism within the team. Honda have made great progress over the past few years and seem now to have a better engine than Renault.

Potentially the most significant threat to Hamilton comes from the old enemy, though. Charles Leclerc joins Ferrari, replacing Raikkonen, and he possesses huge talent.

His signing should force Vettel to find another gear for next year. Leclerc will be hungry for success and nipping at the heels of the established drivers immediately, as he seeks to make his mark.

For Ferrari it’s exactly what they need if they are to topple Hamilton next year. A new, exciting driver to get in amongst the action.

Leclerc’s rookie season has been super-impressive, including his drive to seventh on Sunday.

If Leclerc can continue in that form then he can pressure Vettel, or maybe even mount a championship challenge himself if Ferrari can provide the two of them with a car at least as good as this one.

So for now Hamilton can enjoy the success he has worked so hard for and absolutely deserved this season.

But if he relaxes too much over the winter there are plenty of rivals who will be working unbelievably hard and would love to take his crown for 2019.

Onlookers were caught by surprise on Saturday when hundreds of “witches” breezed past them on brooms paddleboards, according to Oregon Live.

The floating coven turned heads as men and women dressed up in full witch and warlock attire paddled along the Willamette River in Portland, Oregon for the Stand Up Paddleboard Witch Paddle, an annual event in the area.

Ginny Kauffman started the event two years ago after seeing a similar event take place in California, according to Oregon Live. Now they have hundreds of participants.

Just take a look at this happy, paddling coven:

Despite any preconceived notions you might have about witches, the event was centered around giving.

Participants brought canned food, packaged socks and underwear, according to Oregon Live, all of which will be brought to clothing and low-income assistance charities, Sunshine Division and Our House in Portland.

Witches rule.

[H/T: Twitter Moments]

The inevitable has happened.

After a dreadful start to a season in which they have lost four of their first 10 La Liga games and dropped to ninth in the table, Real Madrid have sacked Julen Lopetegui.

The identity of the man replacing him is something of a surprise, especially to outsiders. Santiago Solari is a relatively unknown figure even in Spain.

However, Real’s announcement of Solari’s appointment made it clear he is only a temporary measure, and there is a widespread assumption that a better-known figure will be recruited before long.

So what is going on at Real Madrid?

Is Solari the new Zidane?

Lopetegui’s fate was inevitable even before Sunday’s humiliating 5-1 El Clasico loss to Barcelona, and the widespread expectation in the wake of that defeat was that former Chelsea boss Antonio Conte would be the new boss at the Bernabeu.

However, Conte has not agreed terms with Real president Florentino Perez, and with Lopetegui’s position clearly untenable the club have been forced to take a short-term emergency measure by promoting B team coach Solari.

In many ways, there are strong similarities between the path trodden by Solari and his former team-mate Zinedine Zidane before the Frenchman’s appointment as manager in 2014.

They played together for Real during the early years of Perez’s presidency, with Argentine winger Solari making 148 appearances for Los Blancos between 2000 and 2005, albeit often from the bench.

Solari then departed for Inter Milan before finishing his playing career in his native South America, but he was lured back to the Bernabeu as youth-team coach in 2013 and graduated to become manager of the club’s B team – Real Madrid Castilla – in 2016, shortly after Zidane left that role to take over the first team.

So now he is taking the exact same step as Zidane: a trusted confidante of Perez who played for the club in the early 2000s and later took charge of Castilla, before being elevated to the senior squad during a mid-season crisis.

Does all this mean Solari is the next Zidane? In short, no.

Only a stop-gap for two weeks

The similarities between Solari and Zidane – unfortunately for the Argentine – only go so far.

For starters, Zidane had long been earmarked as first-team manager by Perez, with the Frenchman spending the 2013-14 season serving as an assistant coach to Carlo Ancelotti to prepare him for the bigger role at a later date.

Zidane was also, of course, an undisputed legend – an untouchable icon who was fondly remembered as one of the greatest players in Real’s history, as well as a fine ambassador for the club with a charismatic personality that ensured instant and unquestioning respect from everyone around him.

Solari is different. He was by no means a star turn during his playing days at the Bernabeu, and he is regarded by fans as “just another” former player rather than an all-time great.

Unlike Zidane, he has never worked with Real’s first team – or any other first team – in a coaching capacity, and he has overseen mediocre results during his time with the B team, finishing 8th and 11th in the third-tier Segunda B division during his two seasons in charge.

And although Solari is trusted by Perez, he is also something of an outsider. He played for cross-town rivals Atletico before joining Real, and has regularly expressed his strong admiration for Barcelona forward Lionel Messi – with whom he shares a hometown, Rosario in Argentina.

While Solari occupied the relatively low-profile position as B team coach, the fact that he had frequently hailed Messi as by far the best player in the world didn’t really matter.

But combined with his relative lack of status and total inexperience in senior management, it adds up to make him a less-than-convincing candidate for the role of Real Madrid manager on a long-term basis.

When will a permanent replacement be appointed?

Real have made no attempt to disguise the fact that Solari is only a short-term measure, announcing that he is “provisionally” in charge in a statement which also came down surprisingly hard on Lopetegui, lamenting the “great disproportion between the quality of the squad” and “the results obtained so far”.

So how long will he be at the helm?

The key factor is next month’s international break, which will give Perez a couple of weeks to secure the long-term replacement for Lopetegui before a busy period of fixtures which includes the remainder of the Champions League group stage, four La Liga games and the Fifa Club World Cup before Christmas.

Another important factor in the timing of Perez’s next move is a Spanish federation regulation (Article 60, in case you were wondering) stating that provisional managers can only be in charge for two weeks, after which a permanent replacement must be named.

Before then, Solari’s task is to guide his team through four games – Wednesday’s Copa del Rey first-leg trip to third-tier Melilla, league games against Real Valladolid and Celta Vigo, and a Champions League fixture at Czech side Viktoria Plzen.

(Incidentally, Melilla is a Spanish enclave in North Africa, bordering Morocco – which provides a great trivia quiz question for the future: which Real Madrid manager’s first competitive game took place in Africa?)

Those four fixtures may appear to be perfectly straightforward – but they are exactly the kind of games Real have been losing in recent weeks. Shortly before Sunday’s Clasico debacle they had lost three in a row to Levante, Alaves and CSKA Moscow.

So nothing can be taken for granted, and the main priorities for Solari are to steady the ship, be sensible, restore the fragile confidence of the squad and just keep things ticking over before the permanent manager is named.

The chances of that man being Solari are very slim.

Who will be the long-term replacement?

In the aftermath of the thrashing by Barcelona, the widespread expectation was that Conte would be named as the new Real Madrid manager.

But the former Chelsea boss is playing hardball, with Marca reporting on Monday that he is demanding a long-term contract, plus the signing of a new striker and a new central defender – presumably to play in his favoured three-man back line.

So far, Perez is unwilling to accept those terms and the next couple of weeks could well become a battle of attrition between two strong-minded men who do not like giving up any ground.

Conte remains the most likely option, but the strong negotiating stance the Italian is taking at the moment does not necessarily bode well for his future relationship with Perez or the Real players.

There is a serious concern that Conte will prove to be too much of his own man. Demanding to do things his way or the highway would not go down well with a squad who expect to be treated as respected equals – as they were by Zidane – rather than being strictly disciplined by an authoritarian coach like Conte.

So perhaps the talks will break down for good, and Perez will have to look elsewhere.

The club’s former player and sporting director Jorge Valdano has already pinpointed Belgium coach Roberto Martinez as the ideal appointment, telling Spanish radio station Onda Cero: “Conte has prestige because he has won in various countries, but Roberto would adapt to this team.”

If Conte doesn’t budge Martinez would be a perfectly reasonable solution.

But in the coming days we can also expect to see the (probably scurrilous) suggestion of a much more dramatic move: would Perez wait for a potential Jose Mourinho departure from Manchester United and take the opportunity to give the Portuguese a second spell in charge?

Image: dustin drankoski/mashable

After giving us a glimpse at the house of the future with home robot Vector, Anki is refocusing on Cozmo, its adorable robot companion. 

Nearing 2 years old and still going strong, this toy robot still has quite the magnetic personality and ecosystem to support it. Now, its companion app is getting a facelift that focuses on letting you do what you want, when you want, with Cozmo.

It’s a relatively small update, but should improve the experience in major ways. Anki is now emphasizing what you can actually do with Cozmo over just taking care of him. Previously, there was a chance you might have to feed him or give him a tune-up before you could take control, or more importantly, gain access to Explorer Mode and games.

Now, the “Nurture” option has been moved to the top of the interface and won’t run dry as quickly. It should also increase the length of playtime with Cozmo and let you get to what you want to do with your robo-buddy faster.

By moving this interface to the top, it’s now possible to easily access all the games, tricks, and activities Cozmo has to offer. Most importantly, it’s taken the occasionally annoying requirement of nurturing the little robot out of the equation.

Additionally, a new mode called Cozmo Performs is launching later this year. It will offer an easy and expansive way to control Cozmo’s facial expressions and what he says. To some degree, it’s like the basis for a modern puppet show, since you can take total control and have your robotic companion play out various scene. 

It’s great to see that Anki is continuing to refine the overall experience and introducing new modes. This array of new options could potentially encourage users to try the builder and dive into some light coding as well. 

The updated user interface is rolling out as the Cozmo 3.0 update to all users today. Cozmo Performs will ship in a separate update before the end of the year in December.

For those looking to purchase a robotic companion of their own, Cozmo’s price will remain the same at $179.99, with Anki releasing a limited edition Interstellar Blue version on Nov. 2.

Zakho, Iraq – When the boat turned over, Mahabad Ismael struggled to get to the surface. When she did, she found her husband, Issa, and her 12-year-old son, Abdullah. Her other four children were nowhere in sight.

“My boy started crying: Where are they? They died. They died. No, I said, they are alive. They are around,” she recalls.

But he didn’t believe her. From the shock of what had happened, he started shaking and eventually drowned. She couldn’t save him. Then she saw all members of an Afghan family die one after the other, their bodies floating around her. Then the waves swallowed a Kurdish man called Mohammed. And then her husband, Issa. She was left all alone in the darkness, fighting for her life amid a stormy sea.

Mahabad spent 28 hours in the water off the coast of the Turkish town of Karaburun, praying and thinking of her dead children. She was the sole survivor of a boat of 35 people – Syrians, Afghans and Iraqi Kurds – who had tried to reach the Greek island of Chios.

Dressed in black and sitting in the guest room of her relatives’ home, Mahabad speaks with difficulty of the tragedy that took her whole family on October 9. She takes long pauses but does not cry. 

“It is a miracle I survived, it is what God ordained,” she says.  

Eventually, sea currents pushed her to the shore, where she found the strength to pick herself up and start walking. She tried to wave down cars passing by but no one would stop. She tried knocking on doors, but no one would open.

Finally, two Turkish men walking a dog saw her and tried to help. Still wearing her lifejacket and dripping wet, she was taken to the local gendarmerie and then to hospital where doctors took care of her swollen body. She later found out that a few bodies had been recovered from the shore.

With a heavy heart, she went to the morgue where she recognised her husband, her eldest son and the Afghan lady and her husband who had been on the boat with them.

A few days later, relatives came to take her and the two bodies back to her village of Dashtmere near the Iraqi Kurdish town of Zakho. Apart from her family, 13 other Iraqi Kurds died on that boat. 

Zakho is a relatively prosperous town, with many families working in trade and transportation linked to the nearby Ibrahim Khalil border crossing between Turkey and the Kurdish region, the main gateway for the billions-worth of Turkish goods that Iraq imports. Like most Kurdish cities, it remained relatively safe and stable during the advance of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) and the subsequent war effort to dismantle it.

For the decade and a half since the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, the Kurdish region prospered, its residents enjoying a much higher standard of living than the rest of the country. Yet over the past four years, large numbers of Iraqi Kurds have attempted the dangerous journey to Europe.

The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) currently does not release official statistics on legal and illegal emigration, says Abdel Majid Shoukri, the head of the office of the Ministry of Migration and the Displaced in Dohuk Province, where Zakho is located.

“I think the government doesn’t publish the statistics because it doesn’t want to encourage young people to emigrate or to despair them,” he says.

In his estimate, thousands of Iraqi Kurds leave each year using human smuggling channels through Turkey to Europe, and hundreds die along the way, killed by the sea, harsh weather, or by the smugglers themselves.

According to Barzoo Eliassi, Associate Professor at the Swedish Linnaeus University, between 2003 and 2013, the economic prosperity of Iraq’s Kurdish region encouraged many Kurds who had emigrated before to come back.

But the political disputes that started between the KRG and Baghdad starting in 2013-2014 and the drop in oil prices gradually worsened the economic situation. A lot of major infrastructure projects were put on hold and foreign investment decreased, while the government cut the salaries of state employees.

But apart from the Erbil-Baghdad dispute, part of the blame for the deteriorating socioeconomic situation in the Kurdish region should also be put on the Kurdish political elite, says Eliassi.

“In Kurdistan, we have two parties, which, like parties in the rest of the Middle East, are run by two families [who] rule everything. They rule the economy, the military, […] the institutions and so on,” he says. “The wild corruption in the Kurdistan region has made many people frustrated.”

In his opinion, the 20-year-old power-sharing agreement between the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) has limited access to resources for people who are not directly affiliated with the two parties. In this regard, however, the Kurdish region is no different from the rest of Iraq, where some of the regions richest in oil, such as Basra, are also the poorest and most underdeveloped, Eliassi points out. 

“The political elite in Iraq is [so] corrupt that it has made many, particularly in our part of Iraq, yearn for Saddam [Hussein’s era],” he says. 

Last year, after the independence referendum conducted by the KRG, the Iraqi central government imposed an air blockade on the Kurdish region and cut its share of the country’s budget, which exacerbated the KRG’s economic woes even further.

This inevitably affected the region of Zakho. It was the family’s worsening economic situation that ultimately pushed Issa, Mahabad’s husband, to take the decision to leave for Europe three months ago. To provide for his family, he had been running an electric generator and selling electricity to other residents of their village during the long hours of blackouts which Iraq suffers from on a daily basis.

When the cost of running the generator went up and the money was no longer enough to secure the future of his five children, Issa started thinking of emigration.

Both he and his wife have relatives in Italy, Germany and the UK, who they were hoping could help them once they reached Europe.

The smuggler who arranged their trip was a man called Nazir, a German citizen originally from the Zakho area, Mahabad says. They paid $2,500 a person for their family of seven; to raise that much money, they had to sell their house in Dashtmere.

After they travelled by plane to Istanbul, Nazir took them to Karabunu, near the city of Izmir, where they stayed three days. Just before boarding the motorboat that was supposed to take them across the sea to Chios island, Mohabad and Issa changed their mind and decided to go back to Iraq. Nazir, however, convinced them that they had to go after having spent all this money to get to Izmir.

Half an hour after they left the shore, the boat started filling with water. Issa called Nazir twice asking him to either come and get them or call the Turkish police. Both times the smuggler said he would do that. But no one came to their rescue. Eventually, the boat ran out of fuel and a big wave turned it over.

“May God curse him. I would kill [Nazir] if I see him in the street. I lost my whole family in the sea because of him,” says Mohabad. “If he had just made one call to the police, they would have been alive today.”

Now, Mohabad spends her days hoping and waiting for the bodies of her four children to be retrieved so she can bury them and find some closure. 

Former United States Under-23 forward Chioma Ubogagu has been selected for England Women’s squad for next week’s friendlies against Austria and Sweden.

The 26-year-old, who was born in London but moved to Texas as a child, made her professional debut for Arsenal in 2015 and now plays for Brisbane Roar, where she is on loan from Orlando Pride.

Manchester City forward Georgia Stanway and keeper Ellie Roebuck also make the squad for the first time, while team-mate and captain Steph Houghton is set to win her 100th international cap.

Roebuck replaces her City team-mate Karen Bardsley, who is ruled out with an ankle injury, while forward Melissa Lawley and Reading midfielder Fara Williams also miss out.

As with men’s football, Fifa rules allow a player to switch their allegiances from youth football when making their senior international debut.

England visit Austria on Thursday, 8 November, before hosting Sweden on 11 November at Rotherham’s New York Stadium.

England squad:

Goalkeepers: Mary Earps (Wolfsburg), Ellie Roebuck (Manchester City), Carly Telford (Chelsea)

Defenders: Hannah Blundell (Chelsea), Millie Bright (Chelsea), Lucy Bronze (Lyon), Gabby George (Everton), Alex Greenwood (Manchester United), Steph Houghton (Manchester City), Abbie McManus (Manchester City), Leah Williamson (Arsenal)

Midfielders: Isobel Christiansen (Lyon), Fran Kirby (Chelsea), Jordan Nobbs (Arsenal), Jill Scott (Manchester City), Lucy Staniforth (Birmingham City), Georgia Stanway (Manchester City), Keira Walsh (Manchester City)

Forwards: Rachel Daly (Houston Dash), Toni Duggan (Barcelona), Beth Mead (Arsenal), Nikita Parris (Manchester City), Chioma Ubogagu (Brisbane Roar, on loan from Orlando Pride)

As Americans face the reality that the Supreme Court could now overturn the federally-protected right to abortion, advocates have launched a website and helpline to offer legal information and attorney referrals to people who induce their own abortion.  

The SIA Legal Team Helpline debuted Tuesday and offers three confidential ways to contact its experts: phone, the messaging app Signal, and the form service Formstack. Communication via Signal and Formstack is encrypted. 

“People who self-manage their abortions, and those who assist them, can risk unjust arrest, prosecution, and jail time,” said Jill E. Adams, founder and strategy director of the SIA Legal Team, an organization that works to change laws, argue cases, and provide legal information and referrals in support of people who’ve independently ended their pregnancies. “The idea is if people know their legal rights, they can understand factors that have led to arrests and prosecution, and keep themselves safe.” 

While it’s not clear how frequently people seek to end a pregnancy on their own, research shows that it does happen. In one 2012 survey conducted in Texas, a state with laws that restrict abortion access, 7 percent of abortion patients said they’d attempted to end their pregnancy on their own. A separate survey of internet users who Googled search terms related to self-abortion last year found that nearly three-quarters of respondents were pregnant and didn’t want to be. Forty-one percent of the participants were minors. 

Earlier this year, a website called Aid Access launched to provide U.S. residents with abortion medication by mail, after customers complete a digital consultation with a medical professional. The service is available to women and trans men who are healthy and fewer than 9 weeks pregnant. While the founder of Aid Access, a physician who created a similar site based in Europe called Women on Web, told the Atlantic that the Food and Drug Administration allows people to import medicine for personal use, the government agency told the outlet that abortion medication is not legally available online.

Adams says it’s impossible to tell yet whether the recent launch of Aid Access will increase outreach to the SIA Legal Team Helpline. Members of the SIA Legal Team staff have been helping women accused of illegally ending their pregnancies since 2013. Seven states have laws that explicitly make self-managed abortion illegal while others have arrested and prosecuted women based on laws against harm to a fetus or laws that criminalize abortion and are misapplied to people who independently end a pregnancy. Low-income women, immigrants, and women of color are most frequently targeted by law enforcement, says Adams. 

Many investigations begin when a medical professional who opposes abortion suspects a patient of having induced one, or when they mistakenly think they’re required by law to report their suspicions. Adams says overzealous prosecutors often lobby for or pursue criminal charges, but may ultimately drop them due to a lack of evidence. The helpline, she says, is designed to provide support to callers who may feel terrified about what to expect next. 

“Our hope is that helpline callers will feel respected, supported, and informed,” says Adams. 

The line is not, however, a counseling or advice service for people trying to make a decision about whether to self-manage their abortion. 

“Our hope is that helpline callers will feel respected, supported, and informed.”

Abigail R.A. Aiken, assistant professor of public affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, says people choose self-managed abortions for various reasons. Her recent research, based on in-depth interviews with 32 people who sought abortion medication online, found that participants couldn’t access an abortion clinic because of logistical challenges or restrictive laws, or preferred to end their pregnancy independently for personal reasons, including feeling judged or stigmatized. 

Aiken says obtaining medication for abortion online and using it without the assistance of a physician is as effective as receiving abortion care from a medical professional. A study published last year in BMJ looked at outcomes amongst women in Ireland and Northern Ireland who used Women on Web to obtain abortion medication. It found that 95 percent of them used the medication to complete their abortion without needing surgical intervention, a rate similar to outcomes for women who receive an abortion in a clinic. 

Given the looming possibility that abortion will become increasingly harder to access, or even illegal, in the U.S. in the next few years, Aiken argues there’s a public health justification for making self-managed abortion as safe as possible.  

“I think that we are right to worry about that world, the post-Roe world people are talking about,” says Aiken. “We already have a sense of what it will look like from folks in states like Texas, where the ability to fulfill the right to an abortion is out of reach … We have folks already experiencing this world. Self-management is certainly a response to that in so many ways.” 

Tens of thousands of supporters of Sri Lanka‘s deposed Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe have protested in the capital, Colombo, as political turmoil on the island enters its fifth day.

Wickremesinghe’s United National Party (UNP) workers staged the protest on Tuesday outside his official residence, where he has remained since President Maithripala Sirisena dismissed him last week and appointed former president Mahinda Rajapaksa as his replacement.

“We are against the sacking, the people did not vote for Sirisena to act in this manner,” Wickremesinghe told supporters from a makeshift stage.

“We will resist what the president has done,” he said, as crowds chanted “down with the rogue PM”, referring to Rajapaksa, and “respect the mandate, recall parliament.”

Effigies of Sirisena were torn up in a symbolic protest against the president’s move, which has been described by many local newspapers as a “constitutional coup”.

Large crowds, many wearing caps in green, the UNP party colour, took part in the hurriedly arranged rally that forced the closure of several roads.

Colombo on edge

Sri Lanka was plunged into crisis on Friday when Sirisena sacked Wickremesinghe and suspended parliament, breaking up a fragile coalition governing the South Asian country.

“This is a coup. It has all the characteristics of a coup,” one of the protesters, Deepanjalie Abeywardene, told the Reuters news agency on Tuesday, while holding a sign which read “reconvene the parliament”.

“This is a third-grade act by Sirisena. We voted him as the president to ensure democracy,” said P Ariyadasa, a 62-year-old farmer from Mesawachchiya, 230km from Colombo.

Parliament speaker Karu Jayasuriya has warned that the crisis could lead to a “bloodbath” on the streets unless Sirisena ends the suspension of parliament to let MPs choose between Wickremesinghe and Rajapaksa.

Wickremesinghe has demanded that parliament meet so that he can prove he has majority backing.

Some of Wickremesinghe’s removed ministers have refused to accept his sacking. On Sunday, former oil minister Arjuna Ranatunga attempted to enter his office, leading to violence that left two dead.

Sirisensa named a new cabinet on Monday with Rajapaksa in charge of finance.

Sri Lanka is a key state in the battle for influence in South Asia between traditional ally India and China.

The Chinese government is one of the few to congratulate pro-Beijing Rajapaksa on becoming prime minister.

Tottenham’s England midfielder Dele Alli has signed a new contract that will keep him at the club until 2024.

The 22-year-old joined Spurs from MK Dons for £5m in 2015 and has scored 48 goals in 153 competitive matches.

He has played in six Premier League games this season – including Monday’s loss to Manchester City – but has not scored since the opening day.

“I’ve loved my time at Spurs so far,” Alli said on Instagram. “I’m very excited to see what the future holds.”

Alli signed for Spurs from his boyhood club after making his debut aged 16 in November 2012.

The attacking midfielder came on as a substitute in the defeat by Pep Guardiola’s side having not played since September’s Carabao Cup win against Watford because of a hamstring injury.

Alli follows team-mates Harry Kane, Son Heung-min,Erik Lamela and Harry Winks in signing new long-term contracts in recent months.

On September 12, 1970, the Soviet Union landed a robot on the moon. The probe, named Luna 16, drilled into the lunar ground for seven minutes and removed around 100 grams — just over one-fourth of a pound — of small moon rocks and fragments from a wide-volcanic plains named the Sea of Fertility. Then, it blasted off back to Earth.

Now, three tiny lunar fragments from the Luna 16 mission are being auctioned to the highest bidder through Sotheby’s. The current owner of the little bits of moon, however, remains anonymous.

It may seem odd that human-gathered lunar fragments fell into private hands — similar to perhaps a prized Picasso or a van Gogh. Indeed, most moon specimens are kept in closely-guarded environs, like most of NASA’s 842 pounds of treasured lunar material.

But these profoundly rare moon fragments are legitimately for sale, and they carry considerable significance. 

“It becomes more than a natural sample,” Robert Pearlman, a space historian who runs the website collectSPACE, said in an interview. 

“It becomes an artifact of our space exploration efforts,” said Pearlman. “It’s a testament, or touchstone — if you pardon the pun — to the greatest adventure humankind has ever been on.”

The official moon rock auction is set for November 29, and the next owner — like the current one — could remain unknown. 

“Winning bidders remain anonymous,” Hallie Freer,  a Sotheby’s press officer, said over the phone.

From the moon to private hands

After Luna 16 returned to Earth with its lunar bounty, the Soviet Union gifted the samples to Nina Ivanovna Koroleva, the widow of the Soviet Union’s former space director, Sergei Pavlovich Korolev.

“He’s a key figure in space history — though he died much too early,” said Pearlman.

Korolev’s widely-recognized brilliance played a prominent role in igniting the Space Race, a rivalry between the U.S. and Soviet Union. 

Korolev got there first. 

In 1957, the Soviets rocketed Sputnik — the first human-made satellite — into space. Four years later, the Korolev-led Soviet space agency sent the first man, Yuri Gagarin, into space.

But NASA — buttressed by astronomical federal spending — famously put people on the moon in the summer of 1969. 

“Neither we nor the Russians would have reached the moon without him [Korolev] taking the leadership role that he did,” said Pearlman.

But Korolev died in 1966. To honor his memory, the Soviet Union took three “soil particles” for the Luna 16 mission, placed them on a robust-looking plaque set behind glass, and gifted the artifact to his window. 

But in 1993, these rare pieces of moon left her hands: She contracted Sotheby’s to auction off the samples. 

Image: wikimedia/silvercat

The lunar specks fetched a price of $442,500. Now, Sotheby’s expects them to go for between $700,000 and $1 million. 

In some ways, that’s expensive for such tiny moon fragments, totaling about 0.2 grams.

“It has a built-in magnifying glass,” noted Pearlman. “It’s closer to looking at grains of sand than looking at pebbles.” 

Yet, to the right bidder, such historically rich extraterrestrial space objects might be priceless.

The fate of moon fragments

For 25 years, the whereabouts of the moon rocks haven’t been publicly known. 

Presumably, a wealthy individual with ample discretionary income bought the Soviet-era plaque. And presumably, the same thing will happen again. 

Although, the fragments may not be kept hidden this time.

“What you hope is that someone buys it and wants to display it,” said Pearlman, noting that billionaire Ross Perot previously bought a number of Russian artifacts and loaned them to the National Air and Space Museum. 

“Private ownership is not necessarily a detriment — it can be an asset,” he added.

But for anyone interested in legally owning human-gathered moon rocks, the looming auction is the only way to do it. 

NASA, for instance, has never gifted any space rocks to any individuals — even its famous astronauts. 

Though, of course, these Soviet-era moon fragments may remain inside a dimly-lit private study somewhere, perhaps known to just a handful of people.

“We don’t know who bought it in ’93, or who’s selling it now,” said Pearlman. 

With an Earthling populace that’s keen on space exploration, it’s likely that whomever is selling these bits of moon will receive a generous return on their lunar investment.