2024
April
01
Monday

Monitor Daily Podcast

April 01, 2024
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Clayton Collins
Director of Editorial Innovation

Light pollution is the modern stargazer’s nemesis, pulsing wherever people congregate. That stands to make one of humanity’s greatest opportunities for shared wonderment – such a unifying force – a relatively exclusive one.

Erika Page reports today from Madrid on a metalworker turned sidewalk astronomer who offers passersby free peeks through his telescope. Yes, city light is a limiting factor. He can offer just the major celestial bodies: the closer planets, the moon.

Alfredo Paniagua is open-hearted about the open sky. He answers questions. But mostly he hangs back, letting the universe do its work. As Erika writes: “He gives visitors their own time with the infinite.”


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Today’s stories

And why we wrote them

A deeper look

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff/File
Charismatic Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti in Ramallah in 2001. Once a champion of the Oslo Accords who was convicted by Israel of a role in deadly violence, he commands the trust of Palestinians, and his release from prison has been sought by Hamas.

Today’s news briefs

Erika Page/The Christian Science Monitor
Alfredo Paniagua lifts a young girl up to see Jupiter through his telescope on a sidewalk in the center of Madrid, Feb. 2, 2024.
Parkwood/Columbia/Sony/AP
The cover of Beyoncé's latest album, "Cowboy Carter," features the singer embracing Americana.

The Monitor's View

AP
Istanbul Mayor and Republican People's Party, or CHP, candidate Ekrem Imamoglu take photographs with supporters during a campaign rally in Istanbul, Turkey, March 21.

A Christian Science Perspective

About this feature

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Elizabeth Robertson/The Philadelphia Inquirer/AP
Ramsy F. of Philadelphia helps his daughter, Sofia F., pick tulips at the 2024 Dalton Farms Festival of Tulips in Swedesboro, New Jersey, on Easter, March 31, 2024. The farm has 400,000 daffodils, 150 varieties of tulips, and has planted 1 million bulbs. The festival runs through mid-April.
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Karen Norris. )

A look ahead

Thanks for beginning another week with the Monitor Daily. On tomorrow’s schedule: a report by Lenora Chu from Estonia, a tech-forward country that might offer some lessons, which it learned over time, on how regulation and transparency can help build trust in data storage and other digital services.   

More issues

2024
April
01
Monday
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