The 13 Turpin children’s horror-filled lives makes grim reading – deprived of food, medication, washing or toilet facilities, chained to their beds. Their parents are now up on 40 charges, including torture, false imprisonment, abuse on a dependent, and child abuse; and have been ordered to have no contact with the children, aged from two to 29, who are now all hospitalized suffering from severe malnourishment. Once released, the six younger ones will be split between two foster homes, and the seven adults who have developmental issues, will be sent to an assisted living facility.

What makes it worse is that the father had a decent job; and that some of the kids were seen at school – and no one did anything about their condition, until one escaped and went to the police.

David Turpin was born 17 October 1961 (net sources) and Louise, 24 May 1968.

He’s a Sun Libra square Saturn Jupiter in Capricorn and sextile Uranus North Node in Leo. He also has Mars, Neptune, Mercury in Scorpio sextile Pluto; and Venus in Virgo trine Jupiter Saturn. His Moon is either Capricorn conjunct Jupiter Saturn, or in Aquarius opposition his Scorpio planets which might make more sense. It’s a chart that needs a birth time to make sense of his deliberate and depraved cruelty. Mars in Scorpio does have an exceptionally nasty side; and my impression of Jupiter Saturn conjunctions is they are less humanitarian when in earth signs, but not malefic to this degree.

His wife, Louise, has a more obviously stressed chart, with a combative Sun Mars in Gemini; and more pointedly a Yod of Neptune sextile Pluto Uranus in Virgo inconjunct Saturn (North Node) in Aries. A Saturnine Yod brings a heavy karma with it, needing maturity to get the best out of it; otherwise it is self-defeating with a good deal of inner frustration and despair. Saturn in Aries can be hard even on its own,  forced-to-be-self-reliant early on and unsympathetic to those that are struggling. Her Moon is probably Taurus; with her Venus also in Taurus in a frivolous, indulgent square to Jupiter in wannabe-grand Leo. In fact she has a second Yod of Saturn sextile Mercury in Gemini inconjunct Neptune which will make her escapist, emotionally disorganized, again self-defeating and prone to feeling unworthy – which she assuredly is.

It’s an odd relationship (obviously). But on the astrology, if the birth dates are sound – her Saturn opposes his Sun, her Sun Mars squares his Pluto and her Uranus Pluto is conjunct his Venus. They block and bully each other in various ways. In these circumstances it’s all too easy to think of her as the suppressed woman. But in these symbiotic relationships (lashed together at a pathological level) it’s usually half a dozen of one and the other.

Their relationship chart has the composite Sun in a delusional, grandiose square to Jupiter Neptune; with downbeat Saturn opposition Mercury, Uranus Pluto; and perhaps the composite Moon also opposition Uranus Pluto.

William Fichtner’s latest movie, out this week, The Neighbor is getting positive reviews as a stand-out suburban thriller, an 8/10 from Rotten Tomatoes. Fichtner is one of these actors who have worked constantly for decades, giving sterling performances, been a high earner and still managed to stay out of the superstar trap. He is worth mega-millions, from stock investments, property holdings, endorsement deals; owns several restaurants, a Football Team and has launched his own brand of Vodka, a top-selling perfume and a fashion line. Den of Geek has him pinned to the wall as a hero.

Born 27 November 1956 9.30pm, Mitchel Field Air Base, New York, he studied criminal justice before moving into acting and hasn’t stopped since.

He’s certainly got a tough, enduring, sombre and private chart with a 4^th house Sun Saturn in Sagittarius square Pluto and trine Uranus Ascendant in Leo. His Mercury in Sagittarius is in his performing 5^th house; with his Libra Moon in the 3^rd on the focal point of a mini-Grand Trine of Mercury trine his Ascendant. So a mix of light and shade. What will drive his business instincts is Mars in Pisces in the 8^th opposition Jupiter in Virgo in his 2^{nd  —} he’s a risk-taker and lucky.

He doesn’t look overly upbeat at the moment so perhaps the box office won’t be that great. He looks to be making a radical change of direction this year with tr Uranus moving across his zero degree Taurus midheaven from mid-May onwards, perhaps with some trepidation. Though good fortune will smile on him from July onwards with tr Uranus picking up two of his Jupiter midpoints for eighteen months.

Year after year, decade after decade, young athletes made complaints to coaches, counsellors, police and university-employed trainers about sexual abuse by team doctor Larry Nassar and were ignored. One former gymnast became an attorney and was the first to speak up publicly in 2016 which opened the floodgates. A staggering 156 gave evidence at his 16 month long trial and he’ll now die in jail. What comes next are civil suits for negligence against Michigan State, USA Gymnastics, the United States Olympic Committee and Twistars Gymnastics Club, all of which have been named as co-defendants in cases going to court. The Guardian said: “the institutions that oversaw Nassar failed these young women time and again, it required the external force of investigative journalists, and the public pressure their work ignited, to hold a predator to account.”

Larry Nassar was born 16 August 1963 and is a charming Sun Venus in Leo in a hard opposition to Saturn in Aquarius in a slippery square to Neptune. Venus Saturn is oddly enough often found in ‘sex addicts’ charts. He has an opportunistic Mars in Libra opposition Jupiter in upfront Aries which squares onto a North Node and Moon in Cancer. His Saturn is on the focal point of a Yod inconjunct Mercury sextile North Node (Moon), which is a heavy-duty aspect which if mishandled tends to be self-defeating. Though he had a long enough run. His Mars is exactly conjunct his Neptune/Pluto midpoint leading to cunning and deceitful behaviour.

What brought his life crashing down was the move  of his Venus opposition Saturn by Solar Arc to collide with his Mars thus bringing the three central configurations of his chart together, which is often/always a major crisis point.

Judge Aquilina said at the end of the trial: “Inaction is an action. Silence is indifference. Justice requires action and a voice. Anywhere you walk, destruction would occur to those most vulnerable. I just signed your death warrant.”

“Belligerent, generally drunk, wilfully unprofessional and one of the most brilliant and inimitable figures in the history of music” is how Mark E Smith has been described as news of his death emerged. He formed the group The Fall in 1976, named after Albert Camus’s novel, replacing The Outsiders, an earlier choice. His music was “a brutal mix of clattering rockabilly and garage rock”; “primitive – with intelligent lyrics.” “Rock n’ roll isn’t even music really,” he once said. “It’s a mistreating of instruments to get feelings over.” He was known for his turbulent relationship with his bandmates, with 66 different members over the years. Over the years he produced 32 albums and latterly performed from a wheelchair in October.

Born 5 March 1957 into a working class family, he left school at 16, took a job in a meat factory and studied for an A in English literature in the evenings.

He had his Sun, Venus, Mercury in Pisces with his Sun square Saturn in philosophical Sagittarius. He had a stubbornly determined Mars in Taurus opposition a Scorpio North Node square Pluto in Leo – so would have tremendous staying power and be ultra-resistant to outside influences or anyone trying to control him. His Uranus was square in Neptune which can be oddball and fanatical, which might have been tied into his Moon.

Certainly a one-off and self-destructive in terms of his lifestyle, but he seems to have been intelligent and admired by afficionados of the pop scene.

In an unusually frank warning, the UK’s chief of the general staff, Gen Sir Nicholas Carter, has described Russia as the biggest state-based threat to the UK since the cold war and warned that hostilities could begin a lot sooner than the UK expects. The likelihood of a boots-on-the-ground confrontation is unlikely, but he’s concerned about cyber-attacks and the possibility of Putin pushing against NATO in the Baltic states. He said Russia has used the Syria excursion to test the new weaponry and that the UK was falling behind because of budget cuts, a view which has also been expressed by the US military about the UK. He said the new warfare wouldn’t necessarily involve “something that goes bang” but could involve the exploitation of energy, bribery, corrupt business practices, cyber-attacks, assassinations, fake news, propaganda and military intimidation.

Carter, 11 Feb 1959, Kenya, is a Sun Mercury in Aquarius opposition Uranus; with a tough Pluto square Mars, sextile Neptune and trine Saturn. He looks distinctly unhappy this year and next; and won’t have made himself popular with the PM or with the chancellor, neither of whom are exactly militarily-minded. He serves at the politicians’ pleasure so may find himself out on a limb. Certainly he’s out of sorts with May and Hammond after mid year.

Wars are notoriously tricky to spot even on relationship charts. Both the Russia 1917 and 1991 charts merged with the UK, look edgy this year, perhaps more so in 2019.

NATO looks under extreme pressure from this March onwards for two years, though that could be for various reasons. Again 2019 looks more fraught. The NATO/Russia relationship charts are volatile at the best of times and in a state of great unease and disruption in 2018 to 2021. So anything is possible.

Ursula Le Guin, the fantasy and science fiction writer, who influenced  other great novelists, has died aged 88. Best known for her Earthsea series and The Left Hand of Darkness, she won many awards, despite having to battle against a male-dominated genre and indeed against the literatti who tended to look down on sci-fi. She wrote about cultural interaction in her books, a legacy from her anthropologist father, and was an activist for peace, gender and environmental issues.

Born 21 October 1929 5.31pm, Berkeley, California, she had a 6^th house Libra Sun in a sensible sextile to Saturn on the cusp of the communicative 9^th. That contrasted with her dream-like Neptune in the creative 5^th square Jupiter Moon in Gemini, which drew her to Tolkien, Philip K Dick and Alice in Wonderland and into her visionary world. Her Mercury in Libra was trine Jupiter, giving her the confidence to speak and write what was on her mind.

She also had Pluto on her IC and despite claiming she had a happy and stimulating childhood, there must have been undercurrents that bothered her, especially about the role of women. She once said: “When women speak truly they speak subversively — they can’t help it: if you’re underneath, if you’re kept down, you break out, you subvert. We are volcanoes. When we women offer our experience as our truth, as human truth, all the maps change. There are new mountains.”

Her creative 5th harmonic was well aspected; even more so her imaginative 7H; and her writers’ 21H.

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Julian Assange has moved from being Ecuador’s shining badge of honour in the fight for freedom to being ‘more than a nuisance’ and an ‘inherited problem’ by the new President. An attempt to get him diplomatic immunity as an Ecuador representative failed and they are now actively seeking a way of getting him out of the tiny London Embassy – with only one bathroom evidently and murmurs that he doesn’t wash too often.

Tr Saturn is sliding down his 1^st house and quadrant, pulling him away from his glory days. Tr Saturn is also aiming to make a jolting square to his Uranus in April and December and thence to oppose his Cancer Sun before the New Year. He will be on edge and more discouraged than before.

Though with a lucky break coming late March for two weeks lifting his hopes and flashes of his old bullish self-confidence through the autumn.

Relocating his chart to Ecuador does put the MC in early Capricorn so it will catch the tr Saturn conjunction, bringing a series of reality-checks through this year.

London was always going to be his nightmare location since it puts his Pluto on his IC, with his Sun in the hidden 12^th; and his enfuriated and trapped Mars in the 8^th. If and when he gets out, if free he certainly won’t be returning with any glee.

In Gaza, they are fearful of the USA’s latest move to slash funding to the UN Relief Agency which brings food aid to Palestinian refugees. Just as VP Mike Pence is in Israel talking blithely about a peace plan. Observers say the situation unfolding now is unprecedented, with the backdrop of a 10-year blockade by Israel. “Nobody has ever taken away their bread and that is precisely due to UNRWA’s presence in all Palestinian camps,” said a senior UN official. They give aid not only to Gaza, but to Palestinian refugees in camps in the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan – where five million refugees rely on their basic services, including health and education.

Gaza, 9 November 2017 9am, does have their Neptune Saturn in Leo in the line of fire of the late January Lunar eclipse, as well as the mid-year one, which will bring high anxiety. Tr Neptune is opposing the Virgo Moon through this year, undermining the population; and tr Saturn is in hard aspect to the Venus opposition Pluto, especially marked this February and returning later in the year, bringing anguish and depression.

The USA is the biggest contributor to UNRWA and one might wonder whether UK and indeed EU foreign aid might not be better deployed to those in dire need, instead of sending it into countries who are capable of feeding their own poor.

There are rumblings from the mare’s nest in the White House that Trump is falling out of love with John Kelly, his chief of staff, who recently said POTUS was ‘uninformed’ over the border wall issue. And he won’t be best pleased as senior advisor, Stephen Miller, is being given media credit for pulling Trump back from a deal that would have avoided the government shutdown. Bannon was pushed off the plank because he was labelled as the ‘great manipulator’ and ‘the real president’ which might have been a warning that a similar fate befalls any who dare to steal the narcissist’s thunder.

John Kelly looks untypically confused and uncertain this month with tr Neptune opposing his Saturn and losing hope and confidence in February with tr Neptune squaring his Mars/Jupiter. From mid March onwards he’ll be under assault, trapped, enraged and fuming from tr Pluto opposition his Sun/Mars and that runs on and off till late 2019.

His relationship chart with Trump has a chained-together and resenting it Saturn Pluto conjunction; and though there’s a friendly Sun Venus conjunction that is in an argumentative square to Mars and in a disillusioning trine to Neptune.

Miller, 23 August 1985, is known as a ‘racist nativist’ which in English-speak means anti-immigrant, who previously worked for Jeff Sessions and whose views are lauded by white supremacist Richard Spencer. His relationship chart with Trump appears to be hitting a major hiccup in February and especially March with tr Uranus square the composite Venus, Mercury, Sun; with high-tensions and miscommunications in April. The pressure will mount. From mid year his Virgo Sun and then his Pluto in Scorpio get a Uranian jolt, so he won’t be on a steady trajectory upwards.

The lovely, melancholy Melania appears to be free to make her own rules, with her delayed arrival in DC and now ducking out of the Davos jamboree. From reports, it has been an open secret that they have led separate lives for several years; and she was certainly at daggers drawn with him through the campaign and up until last autumn. At that point tr Saturn was hitting his Sun/Moon midpoint which is usually a significant separating influence. Though their marriage may have effectively ruptured years back. Rumours of him having a present affair; and indeed one with the porn star when she was pregnant with Barron can’t have gone down well. She certainly looks in a rebellious mood through February. But with her Sun, Saturn, Mercury and Venus in Taurus, she’s not one for impulsive decisions.

The upcoming January 31^st Lunar Eclipse will catch the composite Uranus on their relationship chart, which may in part be the present unpleasant publicity with more to come. Her Solar Arc Pluto is opposing her Saturn now and probably for a few months ahead so she will be feeling stuck in a bleak place. It was never a great love match to start with; a heavily Plutonic relationship power and control connection.