Politicians, lawyers and activists have commenced discussions about ways to punish Russian citizens that live in Latvia with permanent residence permits and who are unable or are unwilling to pass the state language exam.

It would seem the possibility of deportation for people whose residence permits run out is inevitable. It could have an impact on the countrys society (both for welcomers and deporters), as well as Latvias allies.

If you want a longer holiday but frequent court hearings interfere with your plans, just ask the judge. Follow Aivars Lembergs example.

In ancient times, before Crimea, NATO was generally referred as an umbrella under which to seek refuge. But no more now its a shield we are holding up ourselves. On the 19th anniversary of Latvias membership of this alliance the country received a valuable gift a new member. Finland will soon enter the alliance.

The Minister of Finance continues patiently convincing residents there is no way to go on without reviewing taxes. The review must go up, he says. He also delicately mentioned Estonia, where the general tax burden from GDP is about three percentage points higher than Latvias 30.8%. Higher taxes in Europe means more welfare. For everyone, the minister says.

Donald Trump, who is accused of accused him of concealing financial information, will enter the history of US presidents. He will be the first US President, though an ex-president at this point, to stand before a court of law. Even Richard Nixon managed to escape this fate by resigning.

Talks about Artificial Intelligence are no longer something seen exclusively in science fiction movies. But it is time to wake up the frightening aspect of this is exactly the prospect of AI technologies rapidly developing.

BNN gives you a summery of the most relevant events of the past week in the following topics: Deportations are nigh; Themis with benefits; Latvias shield; Almost Metallica; In welfares name; Nuclear neighbour; Hit the brakes!; Stormy consequences.

On Thursday, the 30th March, Latvias Saeima passed in the first reading amendments to the Immigration Law that provide certain minor reliefs for Russian citizens to make it easier for them to update their residence permits. The planned amendments caused sharp discussions among deputies certain politicians said the proposed changes will basically permit forced deportation of these people from the country.

69 deputies voted in favour of amendments, 12 voted against, and eight abstained in the vote. The final reading of amendments to the Immigration Law is planned for next week.

Jnis Dombrava from the National Alliance said the arguments from For Stability political party leader Aleksejs Rosikovs against the proposed amendments to the Immigration Law can be considered as pitiful Russian propaganda.

Opinion piece

The so-called Aivars Lembergs criminal case has been in review by Riga Regional Court for more than a year. Among the accused are ex-Mayor of Ventspils Aivars Lembergs, his son Anrijs Lembergs and once business partner Ansis Sormulis.

The court hearing of Monday, the 27th of March was organised, like many previous ones, using a video conference call. However, at the very start the usual trial process was interrupted by Aivars Lembergs. He asked the judge to cancel the court hearing that was unexpectedly scheduled for the 11th of April. The reason: it would interfere with his family already paid for Easter holiday trip.

The court, after consulting with the prosecution and defence about schedule, happily postponed this hearing to the 21st of April, perhaps partially because the prosecutor dared to attack Lembergs, asking why deputies, unlike him, are allowed to travel around during work time. The prosecution made it clear again that the honoured court would not allow any liberties, stressing that everyone involved must know their place

Wednesday, the 29th of March, marks 19 years of Latvia receiving the most effective means of protection for the nation and state Article 5 of NATO Treaty.

Latvia lacking its own aircraft carriers and fighter jets is part of the worlds strongest military force. At least the country sees it this way in these troubled times.

There have been talks from certain westerners that Latvia, and Baltic States in general, only consume NATO security, not contribute to it. There has also been an increase of scepticism among Latvian residents about the guarantees provided by Article 5: will the big and powerful members of the alliance truly rush to our aid is disaster strikes? We can see the answer to this in dai.

So what was Latvias main contribution to its partners these years?

Ticket prices for the XXVII Latvian Song and XVII Dance Celebration will be approximately 40% higher than they were in past years. Various estimates indicate as much. Nevertheless, the Cabinet of Ministers will need to review the price list before it is approved.

The price rise for various events is not equal. There are also events whose ticket prices have gone down. Unlike the celebration in 2013 and 2018, the range of tickets is down, specifically the cheapest tickets.

For example the tickets for the final concert in Meaparks will be presented in five price groups 20, 40, 60, 80 and 100 euros. Tickets for the concert in 2018 were presented in six price groups 15, 25, 35, 45, 55 and 65 euros. In 2013 there were seven ticket price groups, the cheapest cost 3 lats or 4.3 euros.

The volume of collected taxes in Latvia is insufficient to afford all of the outlined budget needs. This is why when working on the Tax Policy guidelines for 2024-2027, there will be discussions about all 14 active taxes, as Minister of Finance Arvils Aeradens told journalists on Wednesday, the 29th of March.

The minister explained there will be a review of all existing taxes. Offers from political and social partners will be considered as well. Aeradens explained that coalition and social partners put an emphasis on labour taxes. New Unity plans to propose a sustainable healthcare funding model in upcoming discussions.

Currently Aeradens does not predict how discussions might end. At the same time, he said discussions about labour taxes will be the most difficult.

The announcement from Russian President Vladimir Putin regarding the deployment of tactical nuclear arms in Belarus is yet another attempt to intimidate the West, so that they reduce support for Ukraine, said ex-Director of Latvias Constitutional Protection Bureau Jnis Kaoci in an interview to TV3 programme 900 seconds.

He explained that Russian armed forces have a tough time, because the intended three-day war in Ukraine has become too long and the successes achieved so far are few and weak. This is why Putin has decided to return to a tactic that would intimidate the West the most and force them to reduce direct support for Ukraine. This method is waving nuclear arms around.

In this case it is clear they [Russians] could have brought nuclear arms to Belarus sooner if they considered it necessary.

Leading figures in the world of modern technology want to stop training of the most powerful artificial intelligence (AI) systems, stating that there is a threat to humanity, writes the BBC.

Twitter and Tesla owner Elon Musk, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and Deep Mind researchers are among the signatories of the petition calling for a halt to training AI systems for at least six months.

OpenAI, which also developed ChatGPT, recently released GPT-4. It has impressed observers with its ability to perform simple tasks, such as answering questions about pictures or objects.

In a letter created by the Future of Life Institute and signed by supporters, it is said that the development of AI should be stopped at the current level for the time being, pointing to the risk that even more advanced systems may pose in the future: AI systems with human-competitive intelligence can pose profound risks to society and humanity.

Former US President Donald Trump has become the first ex-president to face criminal charges after a Manhattan court formally accused him of concealing financial information, writes Reuters.

At the moment, the exact wording of the indictment is not known, but the CNN television channel reported on Thursday, the 30th of march, that Trump faces indictments in more than 30 episodes. The former president, on the other hand, has declared that he is completely innocent and is not going to give up the fight for the position of president in next years elections. He accused the Democratic Party of trying to destroy his chances in the elections:

This is Political Persecution and Election Interference at the highest level in history.

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BNN SUMMARY OF THE WEEK: Deport or not deport. Blessed ... - bnn-news.com

Autobiography and memoir

The poet and author grew up in a coastal village defined by hardship and scenic beauty. What would she find when she returned to an area with some of the lowest wages and highest property prices in the country?

Natasha Carthew

There is a part of me that hates the village I grew up in. How each house and path and landmark holds some catch-breath memory as I walk the two-mile-long coastal road that connects Seaton to Downderry. Memories that are embedded in every step, the places where I grew up and the places where my father, his parents and their families were born, lived and died, our initials still scratched in concrete in each and every footing, but built over now with extensions, double driveways, patios.

The road is the same but the buildings are higher, and the pockets of green have been paved, the trees where we used to play in front of our flat replaced by too-big houses. The upper reaches of the village are no longer a sea of green: nothing left of the swath of gold that was our daffodil field but two neat borders of yellow in the front garden of a solitary oversized house. Past the shop on the left and the butchers thats now a house on the right, the working mens club that has been rebranded for the blow-ins as a soulless village hall, then finally down the dog shit-covered path that passes the pub and the wall where we working-class kids used to sit and drink and think about the purpose of all of this.

As a young girl I knew that I didnt want to spend the rest of my life cleaning holiday homes, and I certainly didnt want to marry a farmer. If anything, I wanted to be a farmer but in Cornwall in the 80s that dream was strictly reserved for boys, sons of landowners. I was gay, a tomboy, different from all the other girls. My saving grace was the natural world and my notebook, words to keep me safe, keep me hidden in the tangle of hedgerows and rockpools.

I have returned to Downderry to write this, the same way a finger traces the outline of a scar. It is September but already the bay has endured at least one high tide. I can tell by the trail of weed and driftwood banked against the muddy clay cliffs, and the way the tiny stream that passes our old primary school has settled into its usual winter shape in the sand, finding its place effortlessly.

The beautiful far-reaching vistas after the fog lifts, the smell of an early catch as the bellyful trawlers return to harbour, the taste of cream teas and pasties lingering on the lips for visitors, these passing moments will be the things that forever come to mind. But the truth is that Cornwall, my home, is a place of deep, long-lasting deprivation. Poverty and inequality are worse than ever, with 20 neighbourhoods in the county among the 10% most deprived in England. This is a place of forever summers and even longer winters, filled with despair and hardship and fear.

These two things, the beauty of the Cornish landscape and the brutality of growing up nose pushed against it, have without doubt informed the greatest part of my life. Its a story of what ebbs and flows just below the surface of a beautiful ocean day, the unseen, the undercurrent.

***

When the sea spray starts to thicken and become drizzle, I close my eyes and return to one of my earliest memories. Like today, it is raining. My sister and I are watching the oily raindrops as they smack up against the glass. I remember the window shaking with the wind, the draught as the gusts blew in from the south-west, the sea less than a hundred metres from our second-floor flat. Those sou-westers always had us believe we were afloat, the window becoming the wheelhouse on our pretend fishing trawler, the reflection of the lamp in the corner suddenly a navigational star out there in the pitch-black night.

Imagination was our thing, making stuff up and making do with the little we had, not just out of necessity but a need to shut out certain things: the raised voices, slammed doors, fists punched into walls.

I open my eyes to see a lone seagull come into the bay. I watch as she calls her two babies out of hiding. When she leads them towards the gully where the lugworms are at their fattest Im reminded of my own mother, how she worked every available cleaning job in the village so she could provide for me and my sister. Her meagre wage went on food, rent and the clothes on our backs.

Some folk call seagulls opportunists, scavengers, thieves, but in truth they are intelligent, resourceful and loyal. They have found a way to succeed despite being thought of as the underclass of the bird world. When their habitat is taken over by tourists they refuse to retreat, and I love that it reminds me of Mum, a woman who argued that a council house in this village, the village that my forefathers built from the shore-side up, was the only place good enough for her girls.

As a little girl I didnt notice the size of our home. It didnt bother me that my parents slept in the front room, yet the cut of poverty slipped beneath my skin without me noticing, carving deep into my flesh as I watched the world pass by outside the window every day.

Disadvantage is a lonely word, and when I was growing up my mother never uttered it once. Looking back, I know that the blot of that word must have stuck to us like skin-sodden fog. There wasnt a day that went by that she didnt tell us how lucky we were to have the sea at the end of the road. We collected dog whelks and tiny ribbed cowries for prettiness, picked yellow cranesbill and red campion for jam-jar love, and I also had my sea-glass jewels to look at when the things I was yet to understand got too loud.

During the 2020 lockdown, Cornwall saw the largest increase in children taken into care in the whole of England and Wales, a 17% jump. Official reasons why so many Cornish kids ended up in the care system include abuse, neglect, breakdowns in family relationships, but there is nothing to say why Cornwall saw the biggest jump of all counties. Ill bet anything that greater factors are at play, such as access to health and care services, transport, education, leisure. These are the undercurrents that move in and around society without ever being properly recorded, the things in a young persons life that mean the difference between love and loss.

On average, earnings in Cornwall are well below the UK national average. It also has some of the highest costs of living in the UK. Housing is some of the most expensive outside the south-east and London with 10 times price-to-earnings ratios in popular locations. According to the Trussell Trust, the national charity that supports some 1,200 food banks throughout the UK, including the one in Truro, there was an increase of 11% in the use of food banks in 2021 compared with the same period in 2019.

***

When we got our own council house in the 1970s it was everything to us, but once the word got around at school that we now lived in Treliddon Lane, it was as if we had been stamped on the forehead. Every kid knew the words for what they had been told we were, and it wasnt long before I heard the slur council house trash. I can still see the whispering girls in the classroom, pulling away the boys who were my friends, can still hear their pretend laughter when I walked into the room, jealous because, despite my humble life, I was good at art, good at sport, jealous because I hit puberty first. Ill always remember years later when my mum was collecting my young brother from school and being asked by one of the posh mothers: What do all of you actually burn on your fires up there on the council estate? Without blinking an eye, Mum replied: Fir cones and old shoes. The woman went red and Mum went on her merry way. I love her for that.

What nobody seemed to realise about us council house trash was that while we were cash-poor, we were rich in laughter and tall tales, generosity and love. These women had a way of fighting for (sometimes with) each other and they had a way of connecting despite most of us not owning a phone. The Got an extra shift, can you look after the kids? shriek over the back fence and the Heading up to the shops, you need anything? shout were their calls of the wild, our tribe. I was often roped in to entertain a baby while their mother cried on my mums shoulder, or ran up to the shop with a fiver and a note to plead for Mindys emergency fags. No longer did my sister and I live in the shadow of our father in a one-bedroom second-floor flat, but smack-bang in the middle of a new clan of people, our people.

Thatchers right to buy scheme in the 1980s would be the end of such communities. When a council tenant sold up (often at a profit) a private buyer would move in. This meant that those families living in poverty, needing a roof over their heads, found it increasingly hard to access social housing. Cornwall is still littered with abandoned caravans; it is also starting to fill with them again. On a walk along any coastal path you will likely come across someone living among the bracken and briars, off-grid not because of some environmental middle-class yurt-driven want but because of necessity, extreme poverty.

House prices during the coronavirus pandemic rose even higher to sate a gluttonous demand for Cornish homes. By December 2022, the average property price in the county was 323,000, 10 times the average Cornish wage. Property in Cornwall has always been expensive, in comparison with local wages, but a surge in pandemic staycations meant many private landlords moved into making long lets to affluent Londoners, evicting local tenants. Working from home during Covid also meant a lot of rich folk from up-country could live their dream of a cottage in Cornwall, while keeping their remote jobs, pushing locals even further towards the fringes of society.

What does this all mean for Cornish communities? It means there are entire villages, such as the beautiful twin fishing villages of Kingsand and Cawsand, along the coast from Downderry, where in winter all the cottages are boarded up, not just because of the battering sea but because they are holiday homes, second homes, and nobody is there. Cornwall has as many families waiting for social housing as there are holiday homes.

***

At the age of 19 I met my first proper girlfriend and we moved into a basement flat together in Plymouth. I was out of my beloved council house that no longer felt like home and out of Downderry, the village where Id always found myself mostly alone.

I returned to Cornwall in my mid-20s, an age when many decide to leave home, but I was done with hunting. I had finally dug up a little something inside myself, had fallen in love while living in London with the woman Ive been lucky enough to call my partner for 26 years, had my first collection of poetry published there, and I brought these two best parts of my life home with me to Cornwall. Another village, but the county and place I came from.

I am Cornish proud, but for every strand of the childhood and teen trauma I endured, the village I grew up in will never be a friend to me. When I think about it I feel overwhelming pain. When I visit it I feel a deep desire to escape all over again.

Often poverty is not a tsunami but an incoming tide of tiny waves. They hit and they hit until finally you are overwhelmed with water, and with little option you struggle to keep afloat, your head above water, trying to think of all the ways to make some cash so you might survive the next breaker crash, hoping that at one point you might witness the dark in its final dawn retreat, light breaking through and the glimmer of something close to hope.

This is an edited extract from Undercurrent: A Cornish Memoir of Poverty, Nature and Resilience by Natasha Carthew, published by Hodder & Stoughton (16.99) on 13 April. To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

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I felt a deep desire to escape: Natasha Carthew on Cornish beauty and brutality - The Guardian

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Elon Musk and dozens of other technology leaders have called on AI labs to pause the development of systems that can compete with human-level intelligence.

In an open letter from the Future of Life Institute, signed by Musk, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and 2020 presidential candidate Andrew Yang, AI labs were urged to cease training models more powerful than GPT-4, the latest version of the large language model software developed by U.S. startup OpenAI.

"Contemporary AI systems are now becoming human-competitive at general tasks,and we must ask ourselves:Shouldwe let machines flood our information channels with propaganda and untruth?" the letter read.

"Shouldwe automate away all the jobs, including the fulfilling ones?Shouldwe develop nonhuman minds that might eventually outnumber, outsmart,obsolete and replaceus?Shouldwe risk loss of control of our civilization?"

The letter added, "Such decisions must not be delegated to unelected tech leaders."

The Future of Life Institute is a nonprofit organization based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that campaigns for the responsible and ethical development of artificial intelligence. Its founders include MITcosmologistMax TegmarkandSkypeco-founderJaan Tallinn.

The organization has previously gotten the likes of Musk and Google-owned AI lab DeepMind to promise never to develop lethal autonomous weapons systems.

The institute said it was calling on all AI labs to "immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4."

GPT-4, which was released earlier this month, is thought to be far more advanced than its predecessor GPT-3.

"If such a pause cannot be enacted quickly, governments should step in and institute a moratorium," it added.

ChatGPT, the viral AI chatbot, has stunned researchers with its ability to produce humanlike responses to user prompts. By January, ChatGPT had amassed 100 million monthly active users only two months into its launch, making it the fastest-growing consumer application in history.

The technology is trained on huge amounts of data from the internet, and has been used to create everything from poetry in the style of William Shakespeare to drafting legal opinions on court cases.

But AI ethicists have also raised concerns with potential abuses of the technology, such as plagiarism and misinformation.

In the Future of Life Institute letter, technology leaders and academics said AI systems with human-competitive intelligences poses "profound risks to society and humanity."

"AI research and development should be refocused on making today's powerful, state-of-the-art systems more accurate, safe, interpretable, transparent, robust, aligned, trustworthy, and loyal," they said.

OpenAI was not immediately available for comment when contacted by CNBC.

OpenAI, which is backed by Microsoft, reportedly received a $10 billion investment from the Redmond, Washington technology giant. Microsoft has also integrated the company's GPT natural language processing technology into its Bing search engine to make it more conversational.

Google subsequently announced its own competing conversational AI product for consumers, called Google Bard.

Musk has previously said he thinks AI represents one of the "biggest risks" to civilization.

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO co-founded OpenAI in 2015 with Sam Altman and others, though he left OpenAI's board in 2018 and no longer holds a stake in the company.

He has criticized the organization a number of times recently, saying he believes it is diverging from its original purpose.

Regulators are also racing to get a handle on AI tools as the technology is advancing at a rapid pace. On Wednesday, the U.K. government published a white paper on AI, deferring to different regulators to supervise the use of AI tools in their respective sectors by applying existing laws.

WATCH: OpenAI says its GPT-4 model can beat 90% of humans on the SAT

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Elon Musk and other tech leaders call for pause on 'dangerous race' to make A.I. as advanced as humans - CNBC

BOSTON, March 30, 2023--(BUSINESS WIRE)--RSA Conference, the worlds leading cybersecurity conferences and expositions, today announced a number of additional keynote speakers for its upcoming Conference, taking place at the Moscone Center in San Francisco from April 24-27, 2023.

Adding to the initial keynote lineup, RSA Conference welcomes Grammy Award-winning artist Chris Stapleton as a panelist on a session that explores cybersecurity and the music industry. Closing out the week at the Hugh Thompson Show: Quantum Edition, Emmy-award winning actor Christopher Lloyd, who played eccentric inventor Emmett Doc Brown in the Back to The Future trilogy, joins the stage to discuss his Hollywood blockbuster experience along with real quantum computing and cryptography experts.

Additional panelists taking part in The Hugh Thompson Show include:

Shohini Ghose, Professor of Physics and Computing, Wilfrid Laurier University

Paul Kocher, Independent Researcher and Cryptographer

A newly added panel entitled "Face the Music: Cybersecurity and the Music Industry" features:

Hany Farid, Professor, University of California, Berkeley

Katherine Forrest, Partner, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP

Chris Stapleton, Musician, 8-time Grammy, 15-time CMA and 10-time ACM Award-winner

Herbert Stapleton, Special Agent in Charge, FBI Indianapolis (Moderator)

Additional keynote speakers and sessions at RSA Conference 2023 include:

Michael Alicea, EVP & Chief People Officer, Trellix

Vijay Bolinav, CISO, Deep Mind

Dr. Diana Burley, Vice Provost for Research, American University

General (Retired) Richard D. Clarke, U.S. Special Operations Command

John Elliott, Principal Consultant, Withoutfire and Pluralsight Author

H.E. Nathaniel Fick, Ambassador-at-Large for Cyberspace and Digital Policy, Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy, U.S. Department of State

Camille Stewart Gloster, Deputy National Cyber Director for Technology and Ecosystem Security, White House Office of the National Cyber Director

H.E. Nathalie Jaarsma, Ambassador-at-Large for Security Policy and Cyber, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands

Laura Koetzle, Vice President & Group Director, Forrester

Juhan Lepassaar, Executive Director, EU Agency for Cybersecurity

Dr. Laurie Locascio, Director of Under Secretary of Commerce for Standards and Technology, NIST

Brad Maiorino, Chief Information Security Officer, Raytheon Technologies

Chris McCurdy, General Manager and Vice President of Worldwide IBM Security Services, IBM Security

Daniel Rohrer, VP of Software Product Security, NVIDIA

Vivian Schiller, Executive Director, Aspen Digital, Aspen Institute

Patti Titus, Chief Information Security Officer & Chief Privacy Officer, Markel Corporation

Tara Wisniewski, Executive Vice President, ISC2

The Cryptographers Panel: Dr. Whitfield Diffie, Cryptographer and Security Expert, Cryptomathic (Moderator); Clifford Cocks, Former Chief Mathematician, Government Communications Headquarters, United Kingdom; Anne Dames, Distinguished Engineer, IBM Security; Radia Perlman, Fellow, Dell Technologies; Adi Shamir, Borman Professor of Computer Science, The Weizmann Institute, Israel

Story continues

For more information about the keynote program and to stay up to date with whats happening at RSA Conference 2023 please visit our website at https://www.rsaconference.com/usa.

About RSA Conference

RSA Conference is the premier series of global events and year-round learning for the cybersecurity community. RSAC is where the security industry converges to discuss current and future concerns and have access to the experts, unbiased content and ideas that help enable individuals and companies advance their cybersecurity posture and build stronger and smarter teams. Both in-person and online, RSAC brings the cybersecurity industry together and empowers the collective "we" to stand against cyberthreats around the world. RSAC is the ultimate marketplace for the latest technologies and hands-on educational opportunities that help industry professionals discover how to make their companies more secure while showcasing the most enterprising, influential and thought-provoking thinkers and leaders in cybersecurity today. For the most up-to-date news pertaining to the cybersecurity industry visit http://www.rsaconference.com. Where the world talks security.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230330005468/en/

Contacts

Ben WaringDirector, Global PR & CommunicationsRSA ConferenceRSAConf@shiftcomm.com

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Grammy Award-Winning Artist Chris Stapleton, Emmy Award-Winning Actor Christopher Lloyd Headline Additions to RSA Conference 2023 Keynote Speaker...

For almost 50 years, NOVA has explored the cosmos, taking viewers across our solar system, into distant galaxies, and right up to the edge of a black hole. From a Mars rover swooping down to the red planet, to a probes daring encounter with an asteroid, weve followed NASA and other space missions as theyve revealed the universe to humanity. Now we present a curated selection of space documentaries from the past five years so you can explore the universe alongside the scientists who make the journey possible.

In July 2022, NASAs James Webb Space Telescope released its first images, looking further back in time than ever before to show our universe in stunningly beautiful detail. But that was just the beginning: With tons of new data and spectacular images flooding in, Webb is allowing scientists to peer deep in time to try to answer some of astronomys biggest questions. Whenand howdid the first stars and galaxies form? And can we see the fingerprints of life in the atmospheres of distant worldsor even within our own solar system?

A NASA spacecraft named Lucy blasts off from Cape Canaveral on a mission to the Trojans, a group of asteroids over 400 million miles from Earth thought to hold important clues about the origins of our solar system. Just hours before, in Senegal, West Africa, a team of scientists sets out to capture extraordinarily precise observations vital to the success of the Lucy missioncrucial data needed to help NASA navigate Lucy to its asteroid targets across millions of miles of space. The teams leader, Senegalese astronomer Maram Kaire, takes viewers on a journey to investigate his nations rich and deep history of astronomy, reaching back thousands of yearsand the promising future ahead.

How did NASA engineers build and launch the most ambitious telescope of all time? Follow the dramatic story of the James Webb Space Telescopethe most complex machine ever launched into space. If it works, scientists believe that this new eye on the universe will peer deeper back in time and space than ever before to the birth of galaxies, and may even be able to sniff the atmospheres of exoplanets as we search for signs of life beyond Earth. But getting it to work is no easy task. The telescope is far bigger than its predecessor, the famous Hubble Space Telescope, and it needs to make its observations a million miles away from Earthso there will be no chance to go out and fix it. That means theres no room for error; the most ambitious telescope ever built needs to work perfectly. Meet the engineers making it happen and join them on their high stakes journey to uncover new secrets of the universe.

In the five-part series NOVA Universe Revealed, we delve into the vastness of space to capture moments of high drama when the universe changed forever. In this episode, we tackle an age-old question: Are we alone? Or do other lifeforms and intelligences thrive on worlds far beyond our own? Ultra-sensitive telescopes and dogged detective work are transforming alien planet-hunting from science fiction into hard fact. Join NOVA on a visit to exotic worlds orbiting distant suns, from puffy planets with the density of Styrofoam to thousand-degree, broiling gas giants. Most tantalizing of all are the Super-Earths in the Goldilocks zone, just the right distance from their sun to support life, and with one of them signaling lifes essential ingredient, water, in its atmosphere. Are we on the brink of answering that haunting question?

Follow along as NASA launches the Mars 2020 Mission, perhaps the most ambitious hunt yet for signs of ancient life on Mars. In February 2021, the spacecraft blazes into the Martian atmosphere at some 12,000 miles per hour and lowers the Perseverance Rover into the rocky Jezero Crater, home to a dried-up river delta scientists think could have harbored life. Perseverance will comb the area for signs of life and collect samples for possible return to Earth. Traveling onboard is a four-pound helicopter that will conduct a series of test flightsthe first on another planet. During its journey, Perseverance will also test technology designed to produce oxygen from the Martian atmosphere, in hopes that the gas could be used for fuelor for humans to breatheon future missions.

In October 2020, a NASA spacecraft called OSIRIS-REx attempts to reach out and grab a piece of an asteroid named Bennu to bring it back to Earth. The OSIRIS-REx team has just three chances to extend its spacecrafts specialized arm, touch down for five seconds, and collect material from the surface of Bennu. But if they can pull it off, scientists could gain great insight into Earths own originsand even learn to defend against rogue asteroids that may one day threaten our planet.

On the 50th anniversary of the historic Apollo 11 Moon landing, NOVA looks ahead to the hoped-for dawn of a new age in lunar exploration. This time, governments and private industry are working together to reach our nearest celestial neighbor. But why go back? The Moon can serve as a platform for basic astronomical research; as an abundant source of rare metals and hydrogen fuel; and ultimately as a stepping stone for human missions to Mars and beyond. Join the next generation of engineers that aim to take us to the Moon, and discover how our legacy of lunar exploration won't be confined to the history books for long.

Black holes are the most enigmatic and exotic objects in the universe. Theyre also the most powerful, with gravity so strong it can trap light. And theyre destructive, swallowing entire planets, even giant stars. Anything that falls into them vanishesgone forever. Now, astrophysicists are realizing that black holes may be essential to how our universe evolvedtheir influence possibly leading to life on Earth and, ultimately, us. In this two-hour special, astrophysicist and author Janna Levin takes viewers on a journey to the frontiers of black hole science. Along the way, we meet leading astronomers and physicists on the verge of finding new answers to provocative questions about these shadowy monsters: Where do they come from? Whats inside? What happens if you fall into one? And what can they tell us about the nature of space, time, and gravity?

Receive emails about upcoming NOVA programs and related content, as well as featured reporting about current events through a science lens.

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8 mind-blowing space documentaries to watch now on NOVA - PBS