Skua

Well it is saying that it's more dangerous than the entire Cold War

I can't imagine why they would have any particular opinions about him? Russia has demonstrated its willingness to carry out assassinations abroad, but Russia and SA are on pretty good terms and this guy doesn’t seem to have ever held a role that would be likely to get Russia to dislike him

He was apparently Minister of Police when the South African police murdered several dozen striking miners and faced no consequences over it, so I could see a possibility that it's someome seeking revenge over that (but with the disclaimer that I did not know anything about him before today)

This is actually a problem that space agencies approach already! Any time they're sending something to potentially life-harbouring locations. I believe that baking it is the standard solution

I'm only guessing here, but I would assume that sampling the output of geysers rather than actually accessing the underground sea also helps with this. It sounds a lot less difficult too, but I imagine that a reduced chance of contaminating the water is an extra benefit

The idea of life existing in the underground oceans is so captivating. It's like their own tiny little pocket universe (other than the geysers)

It seems to be Greenland that's setting the pace on independence rather than Denmark. They drafted a constitution and have been examining the practicalities of it. Right now, though, Greenland is extremely economically dependent on a grant from Denmark, woth the block grant from Denmark being most of the Greenlandic government's budget and something like a quarter of Greenland's GDP. As such, the leading pro-indepedence faction favours developing economic stability before making moves for independence, and polling seems to show most people don't want to declare independence right away if it means a huge hit to their standard of living. I suppose, though, that Denmark giving the block grant each year and substantially improving the quality of life of Greenlanders is a sort of reparations

It's a bit of a weird edge case. They're part of some EU things but not others, having actively chosen to withdraw from the European Communities (predecessor to the EU) in the 80s

Don't be ridiculous. The missiles weigh twice what an F-35 does. We have to mount the plane to the missile

It seems a bit odd to not mention that there are already nuclear-capable NATO aicraft in Estonia, though. There are French Rafales (France actually has its own air-launched nukes) and Italian F-35As (another NATO nuclear sharing state) there right now

Britain, however, does not have nuclear weapons that go on these planes. All of our nukes are submarine-based.

They were highlights as in most people would have to be absolutely baked to come up with that many stupid sentences in succession

He already has been, the amount of money Lockheed Martin has missed out on due to countries turning away from the F-35 is eye-watering