Chinese leader Xi Jinping held rare talks on Wednesday with a former president of Taiwan who supports closer ties with China, a highly unusual meeting just weeks before the democratic island swears in a new leader Beijing openly loathes.

Ma Ying-jeou, who led Taiwan from 2008 to 2016 and is currently in Beijing on an 11-day tour across China, met Xi on Wednesday afternoon, state broadcaster CCTV reported.

The carefully choregraphed moment is steeped in political symbolism: it’s the first time a former president of Taiwan has been hosted by China’s top leader in Beijing since Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang (KMT) fled to Taipei in 1949.

It is also the first meeting between Xi and former KMT leader Ma, since their historic summit in Singapore in 2015.

But their reunion also highlights the widening political divide across the Taiwan Strait – and how Xi’s ever more aggressive posture toward Taipei has driven more Taiwanese away from China.

In his opening remarks, Xi praised Ma for opposing “Taiwan independence”, promoting cross-strait exchanges and agreeing that both sides of the strait belong to “one China.”

“Compatriots on both sides of the Taiwan Strait are all Chinese people. There is no grudge that cannot be resolved, no issue that cannot be discussed and no force that can separate us,” Xi told his guest. “External interference cannot stop the historic trend of the reunion of the family and the country.”

In response, Ma said that although two sides of the strait developed under different systems, the people both belong to the Chinese nation.

“If a war breaks out between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait, it will be an unbearable burden for the Chinese nation,” he said. “I sincerely hope that both sides respect the values and way of life treasured by the people and maintain peace across the strait.”

But the appeal of a shared Chinese identity has waned considerably in Taiwan as Xi ramps up military, economic and diplomatic pressure on its democratic island neigbor.

That trend was underscored in January, when Taiwanese voters shrugged off warnings by China and handed the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) a historic third term by electing Lai Ching-te, who has long faced Beijing’s wrath for championing Taiwan’s sovereignty.

Since then, Beijing has poached another of Taipei’s dwindling number of diplomatic allies and ramped up patrols around Taiwan’s frontline islands after two Chinese fishermen drowned in nearby waters, while continuing to fly its fighter jets near the self-ruled island.

Ma’s meeting with Xi also coincides with a frenetic week of diplomatic activity in Washington where President Joe Biden will host the first-ever leaders’ summit between the US, Japan and the Philippines. Joint concerns over China’s increasing assertiveness under Xi, including toward Taiwan, are a key driver of that summit.

Talks preconditions

China’s pressure tactics are intended to nudge Taiwan’s incoming Lai administration toward a more accommodating political stance toward China, said Amanda Hsiao, senior China analyst for the International Crisis Group.

“Ma’s visit continues this effort by underscoring Beijing’s position that cross-strait dialogue is only possible with those in Taiwan who accept the idea that the two sides of the strait belong to ‘one China,’” she said.

Beijing has cut off high-level official contacts with Taipei since President Tsai Ing-wen from the DPP took office in 2016, riding a wave of anger over Ma’s controversial trade deal with Beijing and capitalizing on the growing number of Taiwanese voters determined to maintain the island’s distinct identity.

Unlike the KMT, the DPP rejects Beijing’s precondition for official talks – an agreement under which both sides accept there is “one China,” with their own interpretations on what that means.

Official communication is unlikely to resume for Lai, who has vowed to follow Tsai’s cross-strait policies. Beijing has repeatedly rebuked Lai’s offer for talks and denounced him as a dangerous separatist and “troublemaker.”

But by fixating on Ma, who has been out of office for years and wields little power to shape Taiwan’s political reality, Beijing may be revealing “its inability to find or cultivate another Taiwanese political figure of comparable stature who is willing to play dove toward Beijing today,” said Wen-Ti Sung, a Taiwan-based fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub.

Beijing’s messaging

Ma is becoming something of a frequent flyer to the Chinese mainland.

The 73-year-old became the first former president of Taiwan to set foot on the mainland in late March last year, when he embarked on a 12-day trip across the Taiwan Strait. But he failed to win an audience with any leader on the Politburo Standing Committee, Beijing’s innermost ring of power.

Like last time, this year’s visit was timed to overlap with Qingming Festival – traditionally a time for people to pay tribute to deceased family members and worship their ancestors; it also comes just weeks before Lai’s inauguration as Taiwan’s president on May 20.

“A meeting at this juncture enables Beijing to highlight the shared cultural roots between Taiwan and China, and to exert pressure on Taiwan’s next administration,” Sung said.

“Beijing is using this meeting between Xi and Ma to underscore the credibility and durability of its carrots – that Beijing is good to its friends, incumbent or retired. It signals to political leaders around the world that befriending Beijing is a worthwhile long-term investment.”

China’s receptivity towards Ma’s visit is also a signal to Taiwan and others that peaceful unification through winning over hearts and minds remains Beijing’s preferred option – at least for now, despite festering cross-strait tensions, Sung added.

And carefully curated footage of the talks – expected to reach millions of homes on prime-time television news in China – also serves as a message to the Chinese public that unification with Taiwan is still possible despite the DPP’s historic election victory.

“For Beijing, Ma’s visit is also a useful way of assuring its domestic audience – ‘We have not lost the hearts and minds of the Taiwanese people, there remains cultural and historical connections that bind us, and the DPP does not represent mainstream Taiwanese views,’” said Hsiao, the analyst.

‘A journey of peace’

Ma, who is traveling in a personal capacity, called his trip a “journey of peace and friendship” before departing for the mainland with a delegation of Taiwanese students.

He has received effusive coverage from Chinese state media, which referred to him simply as “Mr. Ma Ying-jeou” or former chairman of the KMT, with no mention of his former role as the president of Taiwan.

In the southern metropolis of Guangzhou, he bowed in front of a memorial honoring a failed uprising against the Qing Dynasty launched by Sun Yat-sen, who founded the Republic of China (now the official name of Taiwan). Sun is regarded as the father of modern China on both sides of the strait.

In the northwest province of Shaanxi, Ma attended a ceremony to honor the Yellow Emperor, a legendary ancestor of the Chinese people, and urged young people in Taiwan to “remember the roots of Chinese culture and the Chinese nation.”

On the Great Wall in Beijing, he sang a Chinese patriotic song about the fight against Japanese invaders during the Second World War. The song, composed soon after the invasion started, was popular among both the Communists and Nationalists.

But his emphasis on a shared Chinese identity is increasingly out of tune with mainstream sentiment in Taiwan, where less than 3% of the population now identify primarily as Chinese, and under 10% support an immediate or eventual unification.

Meanwhile polls show growing numbers of people – especially younger voters – view themselves as distinctly Taiwanese and have no desire to be part of China.

Reaction in Taiwan

Ma’s itinerary – and his meeting with Xi – has been closely watched in Taiwan.

“The ruling party DPP will likely play down the significance of Ma’s China visits, preferring to describe it as the private act of tourism by a retiree,” said Sung, with the Atlantic Council.

“Taiwan’s opposition KMT will be torn – it wishes to celebrate Ma’s achievements with Beijing, but is also hesitant to flaunt it in the face of the Taiwanese electorate, which remains wary about closer cross-strait ties.”

Ma remains a senior member of the KMT, which won the most seats in Taiwan’s parliamentary elections in January, but failed to capture the presidency for the third time running.

As the biggest opposition party, the KMT is eager to show they are more capable of managing relations with both China and the United States, but Ma’s meeting may do more harm than help, said James Chen, an assistant professor in diplomacy and international relations at Taiwan’s Tamkang University.

“The DPP and its supporters have questioned Ma’s loyalty at home and labels the KMT (as) pro-China. Washington, especially Capitol Hill, may not appreciate Ma’s trip to China under the bipartisan anti-China sentiment,” he said.

Few experts believe the meeting will result in any substantial change to the status quo in cross-strait relations.

“The value of this meeting is primarily in its symbolism – an attempt to shape the cross-strait narrative to both parties’ favor while fundamental political differences remain,” said Hsiao, from International Crisis Group.

But for Ma, the meeting will cement his legacy on cross-strait policy regardless of its outcome.

“He likely wishes to be remembered as the sole Taiwanese leader who can break the ice with Beijing,” Sung said.

Wind power is vital to help decarbonize the energy industry. However, while the electricity it generates has a small carbon footprint, the towers of conventional wind turbines are predominately made using carbon-intensive materials like steel. Swedish company Modvion believes it has found a greener alternative — building turbine towers from wood.

Almost two tons of carbon dioxide are emitted for every ton of steel manufactured, and a modern onshore wind turbine “contains around 120 metric tons of steel per megawatt of capacity,” according to industry group WindEurope.

Instead of steel, Modvion uses laminated veneer lumber (LVL), made from multiple layers of wood stuck together with adhesives. The LVL boards are manufactured into modules which are then transported and assembled into cylinders on site, before being stacked on top of each other, and joined with glue, to create a tower.

The company says it uses Scandinavian spruce wood sourced from reforestation-certified sustainably managed northern forests in Sweden, and a typical tower uses between 300 to 1,200 cubic meters of wood.

According to Otto Lundman, co-founder and CEO of Modvion, using wooden towers reduces the lifecycle emissions of a wind turbine by over 25%, and by 90% if you only compare the tower component of the turbine.

He adds that if you take into account the carbon dioxide absorbed by trees when they grow, the wooden towers can be considered to store more carbon that they emit. However, some researchers dispute the idea that building with wood can be carbon neutral.

“Changing the perspective on wood”

Modvion was founded in 2016 by Lundman and architect David Olivegren, and four years later, with some funding from the Swedish Energy Agency, Modvion launched a prototype 30-meter tower on Björkö island, Sweden.

In 2023 the company installed its first commercial two-megawatt unit, a 105-meter-high (345 feet) wooden turbine tower, called Wind of Change, outside Skara, Sweden, for electric utility company Varberg Energi.

Besides the environmental benefits, Lundman says laminated wood has several logistical advantages. Wood has a higher strength per weight than steel, and tall steel towers need extra enforcement to hold their own weight, unlike wooden ones. That means Modvion’s towers can be 30% lighter than a steel one, according to Lundman.

The towers’ modular design means they can be transported using standard trucks and roads, and once the turbine is decommissioned, the wood can be taken down to be reused in the construction industry as high-strength beams. The company says that over time, its towers are cheaper than steel ones, with taller towers giving bigger savings.

“We hope and we are seeing that we are changing the perspective on wood as a material,” says Lundman. “This is really nature’s carbon fiber, green steel that grows. It should be used a lot more.”

Testing the towers

Dr. Abbas Kazemi Amiri, from the Wind Energy and Control Centre at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow in the UK, who is unrelated to Modvion, says that while wood has significant potential, there are many unknowns about laminated wood that could cause concerns.

“Unlike steel, concrete, and synthetic composites, which have undergone extensive mechanical and fatigue testing over decades, this type of novel laminated wood lacks such comprehensive testing,” says Amiri. “Conducting thorough tests in the future will be crucial for the widespread commercialization of wooden towers.”

He adds: “The mechanical properties of wood can change with environmental conditions, potentially impacting the behaviour of wooden towers … Further research is needed to address these uncertainties.”

Lack of existing research and guidelines into the use of wood for giant structures like wind turbines were Modvion’s biggest challenges, says Lundman.

“We’re designing our towers that correspond to the standards in both wind power and wood construction,” he explains. “But in wind power standards, wood is not really considered for the towers, it’s mostly steel and concrete. And in the wood construction standards, they don’t really get into the kind of dynamically loaded structure that a wind power machine is.

“Hence, we needed to bridge this gap, and we’ve done a lot of testing of all the various parts in our towers to prove by showing in reality how these components work [over the] life of a turbine.”

Modvion towers are coated with a thick, waterproof paint, and like steel towers, they have a lifetime of 25 to 30 years, according to the company.

Currently, Modvion is in the design phase for its first six-megawatt turbine, which will be installed next year. By 2027, it aims to start commercial production of the turbine in a new factory.

While the company is only focusing on the tower component, Lundman says turbine blades — which are traditionally manufactured from fiberglass bound together with epoxy resin, an incredibly strong material that is difficult and expensive to recycle — could also be made with wood.

Other start-ups have begun to tackle this issue, including German company Voodin Blades, which makes turbine blades from LVL, which it says are completely biodegradable.

“Wind power is one of the most attractive renewable energy sources that we have,” says Lundman. “By enabling taller, more efficient towers both from an emissions and cost perspective, we make them even more attractive.”

Simon Harris has become the youngest-ever prime minister of Ireland, officially taking office in Dublin on Tuesday after Leo Varadkar suddenly stepped down last month.

Harris, 37, ran unopposed to replace Varadkar as leader of the ruling Fine Gael party, and the final formalities of his rise to power were completed in the Dáil, Ireland’s parliament.

He has held a number of government positions since being earmarked as a rising political star in his late 20s, most recently serving as the minister for higher education and science.

But Harris faces a daunting political challenge in the coming months; a general election in Ireland must be held by late March 2025, and Fine Gael is trailing in opinion polls to the Irish republican group Sinn Fein, which was once the political wing of the Irish Republican Army (IRA).

Varadkar led a charge to liberalize some of Ireland’s socially conservative laws, most notably easing the country’s strict anti-abortion mandates.

But his government faced backlash over Ireland’s housing crisis and soaring immigration numbers.

In his first speech after being elected, Harris condemned Israel for its conduct in Gaza, vowing “not to be silent” on the war in remarks that immediately make him one of the West’s most forceful critics of Israel.

“In Gaza, we are witnessing a humanitarian catastrophe. And we are seeing innocent children, women, and men being starved and slaughtered,” Harris told lawmakers in the Irish parliament. “We have not been silent on the unforgivable terrorist actions of Hamas on October the seventh. Nor can we be silent on the disproportionate reaction of the Israeli government.”

A TikTok taoiseach

Harris has been quick to praise his predecessor during his coronation as Fine Gael’s new leader, but his path to the top of Irish politics is unlike many of those who came before him.

The son of a taxi driver, born in eastern Ireland, Harris studied journalism and French at a Dublin university but dropped out to instead focus on politics. It was his brother’s diagnosis with autism, and his subsequent struggle to access special needs services, that propelled a teenage Harris’s political ambitions.

“I saw the stress and strain my parents went through, and called a public meeting in my hometown,” he told Irish magazine Hot Press in 2022. “I ended up finding myself politicised at a young age.”

He was a councillor, and then a member of the Dail, in just a few years. And Harris’s youth has been a feature of his political identity throughout his career. Anti-abortion campaigners held up banners reading “I fancy Simon Harris” in 2018. He famously told committee members to “chillax” six years earlier. “Didn’t realise chillax was such a big deal … was just fed up!” he wrote on Twitter amid the ensuing media fascination.

Harris was catapulted into the prominent role of health minister in 2016, a steep rise that cemented his position as one of Fine Gael’s new guard. He was seen as a potential leadership candidate as early as the following year, when premier Enda Kenny stepped down from his role, but the then-30-year-old ruled himself out, insisting he didn’t yet have the experience.

As health minister, Harris was prominent when Ireland voted to legalize abortion. He hailed the move as “a vote to end lonely journeys, end the stigma and support women’s choices in our own country.” He also fronted Ireland’s initial response to the pandemic, before being moved to a new brief in mid-2020 — a fortuitous shift that spared the popular politician the complexities of dealing with Ireland’s emergence from the Covid crisis.

But his time in the department was not without controversy. In 2018 a scandal erupted after the Irish health service was found to have provided incorrect smear tests for cervical cancer to more than 200 women. Harris later acknowledged that he personally had made mistakes in the handling of the scandal, saying there was no part of the episode “where there are not lessons to be learned and no-one escapes responsibility.”

Harris remained as minister for further and higher education, research, innovation and science until his elevation to party leader, which capped a speedy ascent through Ireland’s political hierarchy.

“I know, in many ways, my career has been a bit odd,” he told Hot Press in 2022. “Life came at me a lot faster than I expected it to.”

A host of challenges

Harris’s rise was fast, but his time at the top may be brief.

“I will take office when time is short, but there is so much to do,” he admitted when addressing his party last week. The shine of Varadkar’s government wore off during his second stint as taoiseach; Harris inherits a governing coalition facing a difficult fight to return to office.

A housing crisis has gripped Ireland, felt especially by younger voters whom Harris will be so keen to court. That, coupled a cost of living crunch and concerns over immigration, has helped diminish public support for the two traditional parties that have dominated Irish politics over the last century.

In their place, Sinn Fein has surged. The left-wing, Irish nationalist party has swept recent elections in Northern Ireland, and is also leading polls in the south.

Sinn Fein was once considered to be the political wing of the IRA, which fought a bloody three-decade military campaign to end British rule and unite the island of Ireland, though the party has since positioned itself as a grassroots left-wing political party focused on social issues on both sides of the border.

Its reemergence as the prominent political bloc on the island of Ireland has raised discussions about a so-called border poll on the reunification of Ireland, though that prospect still remains a distant one.

Harris told Sky News after his election as Fine Gael leader on Saturday that reunification is “a legitimate aspiration,” but added: “That’s not where my focus and priority is right now and quite frankly, it’s not where I believe our focus and priority should be.”

Colombia’s capital, Bogotá, will begin rationing water this week as several of its reservoirs face unprecedented lows amid a drought made worse by the El Niño climate pattern.

Speaking to the media on Monday, Bogotá Mayor Carlos Fernando Galán said reservoirs had reached “historically low” levels and been worsened by El Niño, which causes high temperatures and impedes precipitation.

Starting Thursday morning, restrictions or rationing measures will be put in place for Bogotá residents and dozens of towns and municipalities surrounding the capital, according to a handout on the city’s official website. The measures will affect around 9 million people.

The country and region have experienced long periods without rain since June 2023 due to El Niño, the city wrote on its official website.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro issued a natural disaster decree in January, allowing the government to access more resources to combat El Niño’s devastating effects, including wildfires and water stress.

The plan will see nine different zones take turns rationing water services. Each zone’s water restrictions will begin at 8 a.m. local time and last 24 hours before shifting to the next zone in line.

Hospitals and schools will have contingency plans, Galán said on X, ensuring they won’t lack water.

“The critical levels of the reservoirs from which we draw drinking water for Bogotá lead us to take measures aimed at saving water and reducing consumption from 17 cubic meters per second to 15,” Galán’s post read.

“This must be the beginning of a behavioral change that is sustainable over time and guarantees that water is enough for everyone,” he continued.

Colombia joins Mexico, whose own capital, Mexico City, has also been experiencing a severe water crisis due to years of abnormally low rainfall, longer dry periods and high temperatures.

The total solar eclipse has come and gone after creating a celestial spectacle Monday in the skies over Mexico, the US and Canada. But some people may be experiencing eye discomfort, rather than awe, in the aftermath.

You might be wondering if maybe your eclipse glasses were fake. Perhaps you forgot to slip them back on as the first bit of sunlight reappeared after totality. Or you noticed your child, friend or family member looking up at the sun without putting on their glasses.

Looking at the sun without proper eye protection, such as certified eclipse glasses or solar viewers, can result in solar retinopathy, or retinal damage from exposure to solar radiation. While the highly specialized cells inside our eyes don’t feel any pain, the rods and cones and photochemical reactors become inflamed and damaged when looking at the sun, said Ronald Benner, an optometrist and president of the American Optometric Association.

During the 2017 total solar eclipse, a young woman was diagnosed with solar retinopathy in both eyes after viewing the eclipse with what doctors believed were eclipse glasses not held to the safety standard.

There is no treatment for solar retinopathy. It can improve or worsen, but it is a permanent condition.

Post-eclipse eye damage symptoms

Symptoms of eye damage after viewing the eclipse without proper protection can take hours or days to manifest. They include loss of central vision, altered color vision or distorted vision.

“Damage from the eclipse is unlikely to cause pain or discomfort in your eyes because the retina does not have any pain nerves. Instead, you would notice visual symptoms within 4-6 hours. But some may notice symptoms after 12 hours,” said Michelle Andreoli, an ophthalmologist and clinical spokesperson for the American Academy of Ophthalmology, in an email.

If you notice any symptoms or experience eye discomfort, make an appointment with a health care provider or eye care specialist immediately, experts said.

“For most people, it’s an alteration of color vision,” Benner said. “The next morning, colors just don’t look right, or it may be bleached out it or just kind of hazy all the time. For others, it may be that they actually have holes in their vision.”

If the damage occurs in the center of someone’s vision, it can affect the ability to read or recognize faces, Benner said.

It’s a bit like the effect that occurs when we see a camera flash go off, which can distort our vision for a few minutes before it goes away. But the intensity of solar retinopathy causes permanent damage that isn’t immediately apparent. Overnight, the cells can die, and they won’t be replaced.

The changes in a person’s vision depend on the type of damage that is done, and these can occur in one or both eyes.

“The retina is an extension of the brain, so it’s actually neurological tissue, and when you damage that, it doesn’t always come back,” Benner said. “If you damage one cell, that cell may never be the same. But if you damage a group of cells, then you’re going to end up with blotchy vision, like having someone dab oil on your windshield. If you just kind of damage them and they don’t completely die, then color vision is going to be altered. What can you do about it? Absolutely nothing other than prevent it.”

Benner also suggests that parents talk with their kids about what the symptoms of eye discomfort may feel like if they viewed the eclipse together, especially if there are any concerns that their children may have removed or peeked around the eclipse glasses. It may be difficult for children to articulate what they’re experiencing, like not being able to clearly see out of one eye, Benner said.

Now that Monday’s celestial spectacle has come and gone, millions of people across North America may find their protective eclipse eyewear lying around the house.

For the fortunate folks who witnessed the rare solar event, there may not be a need to throw out gently used pairs of solar eclipse viewing glasses.

Eclipse glasses that meet a specific safety standard, known as ISO 12312-2, are safe to reuse, according to the American Astronomical Society. That means the same glasses worn during the 2024 total solar eclipse will serve as effective protection during the next total solar eclipse in 2026 that will be visible over Greenland, Iceland, Spain, Russia and a small portion of Portugal and appear as a partial eclipse in parts of Europe, Africa and North America.

The glasses can also shield eyes in 2044 during the next total solar eclipse that will be visible from the contiguous United States, over North Dakota and Montana.

“It’s best to store eclipse glasses away from anything sharp that could scratch or puncture the filters, and if there’s any doubt about the safety of your glasses by the time of the next eclipse, it’s best to discard the glasses and get a new pair,” said Dr. Kerry Hensley, editor of AAS Nova and the society’s deputy press officer, in an email.

Do not reuse the glasses if the lenses appear to be scratched, ripped or punctured, or if the solar filter is detached from the frame, Hensley added. Dispose of damaged or scratched solar eclipse glasses by removing the lenses and recycling the cardboard, according to the American Academy of Ophthalmology.

The American Astronomical Society advises against using any water or liquid glass cleaner to clean the lenses, as this may ruin the cardboard and cause the lenses to detach.

While some glasses may include a warning to discard them if they are more than three years old, the society states that the warning is outdated and does not apply to eclipse glasses that meet the safety standard.

Where to donate solar eclipse glasses

If the owner of a pair of solar eclipse glasses is not planning on globe-trotting to catch a glimpse of the upcoming solar eclipses, there are several organizations collecting viewers with the aim of donating to those who will be on the path of upcoming events.

Eclipse Glasses USA, a retailer of eclipse glasses approved by the American Astronomical Society, is collecting used but undamaged glasses to send to schools in Chile and Argentina that will be within the path where the October 2024 annular eclipse, otherwise known as the “ring of fire,” will be visible.

Astronomers Without Borders, a nonprofit organization that collected more than 2 million glasses after the 2017 total solar eclipse and redistributed hundreds of thousands of pairs before the 2024 eclipse, has a growing list of drop-off locations for donations of gently used glasses.

Walid Daqqa, one of the longest-serving Palestinian prisoners in Israel, died of cancer on Sunday at the age of 63 after almost four decades of incarceration.

Daqqa’s case was unique. At the time of his death, he was the longest imprisoned Palestinian in Israel, with the second-longest sentence served overall, according to the Palestinian Prisoners Society.

He was also one of the few Palestinian prisoners to have been continuously incarcerated since prior to the Oslo Accords, a series of agreements between Israel and the Palestinians in the 1990s that resulted in a number of Palestinians being released from Israeli prisons. Born in the Israeli town of Baqa al-Gharbiyye in the northern “triangle” region, Daqqa was a Palestinian citizen of Israel.

A spokesperson for the Israel Prison Service on Monday confirmed Daqqa’s death and said in a statement that his death will be investigated “like any event of this nature.”

In Israel, Daqqa was seen as a terrorist after he was convicted in connection with the killing of a soldier. But to many Palestinians, he was a symbol of their struggle for liberation from Israel.

Daqqa was arrested in March 1986 and sentenced to life in prison after an Israeli court convicted him of commanding the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) militant group, which abducted and killed 19-year-old Israeli soldier Moshe Tamam in 1984. Daqqa was not convicted of carrying out the murder but of commanding the group, which he denied, Amnesty International said. Tamam’s niece Ortal said on X that her uncle was subjected to torture before being killed.

In 2012, Israel reduced his sentence to 37 years, which he completed in 2023. He was then charged by an Israeli court with smuggling mobile phones to prisoners, and was given an added sentence of two years, according to the Palestinian Commission of Detainee Affairs. He died before his scheduled release date of March 24, 2025.

The Commission and the Palestinian Prisoners Society, based in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, said in a statement that during his detention, Daqqa “faced the policies of torture, assault, deprivation and isolation, in addition to successive medical crimes.”

‘Weight lifted from my chest’: niece

Moshe had been returning from a weekend visiting his girlfriend in Tiberias when he was kidnapped at the Beit Lid Junction in Israel, according to Tamam.

“When (Daqqa) died in jail, I was very happy,” Tamam said, adding that she felt relief after she and her family had fought for years to keep Daqqa in prison rather than have his sentence reduced.

“We fought hard to keep him in prison, and every moment of struggle paid off,” Tamam wrote on X.

Rare form of cancer

Daqqa’s health had deteriorated in prison. In 2015, he was diagnosed with neuromuscular disease after suffering from various health conditions, said Addameer, a West Bank-based prisoner support and human rights association. And in 2022, he was diagnosed with myelofibrosis, a rare form of bone marrow cancer and chronic pulmonary obstructive disease.

In 2023, Amnesty International called on Israel to release Daqqa so he could receive specialist medical care.

“The persistent lack of medical attention throughout Daqqa’s imprisonment and the prison authorities’ neglect in conducting regular check-ups had a negative impact on his health,” Addameer said, adding that prisoners have the right to receive adequate medical care under international conventions.

The group alleged that after the cancer diagnosis, “negligence” in providing urgent medical intervention meant the disease progressed and reached a “critical level three notches above the danger threshold.”

Amnesty International senior director Erika Guevara-Rosas said Daqqa’s death “is a cruel reminder of Israel’s systematic medical neglect and disregard for Palestinian prisoners’ rights.”

Citing Daqqa’s lawyer, she said in a statement, “For Daqqa and his family, the last six months in particular were an endless nightmare, during which he was subjected to torture or other ill-treatment, including beatings and humiliation by the Israel Prison Service.”

During his detention, Daqqa wrote a number of books, and earned two degrees in 2010 and 2016. Amnesty described his writings as “an act of resistance against the dehumanization of Palestinian prisoners.”

Amnesty International on Monday called on Israeli authorities to return Daqqa’s body to his family so they could give him a “peaceful and dignified burial and allow them to mourn his death without intimidation,” said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty International’s Senior Director for Research, Advocacy, Policy and Campaigns.

9,000-plus Palestinians in Israeli prisons

There are currently 9,400 Palestinians prisoners in Israeli jails, according to the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society.

Daqqa’s death brings the number of Palestinians that have died in Israeli custody since 1967, the start of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories, to 251, according to the Palestinian Commission of Detainee Affairs.

And since October 7 of last year, Daqqa is the 14th Palestinian prisoner to have died in Israeli custody, according to the Palestinian Prisoners Society.

Physicist Peter Higgs, whose theory of an undetected particle in the universe changed science and was vindicated by a Nobel prize-winning discovery half a century later, has died aged 94, the University of Edinburgh said on Tuesday.

The discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012 at the CERN research centre near Geneva was widely hailed as the biggest advance in knowledge about the cosmos for over 30 years, and pointed physics towards ideas that were once science fiction.

“For me personally it is just the confirmation of something I did 48 years ago, and it is very satisfying to be proved right in some way,” the British scientist told Reuters at the time.

“At the beginning, I had no expectation that I would still be alive when it happened.”

Edinburgh University, where Higgs held a professorial chair for many years, said he had passed away peacefully on Monday at home following a short illness.

“Peter Higgs was a remarkable individual — a truly gifted scientist whose vision and imagination have enriched our knowledge of the world that surrounds us,” said Professor Sir Peter Mathieson, the university Principal and Vice-Chancellor.

Higgs described himself as “incompetent” in the physics laboratory at school and at first preferred maths and chemistry. But inspired by quantum physicist Paul Dirac, who had attended the same school, he went on to specialise in theoretical physics.

What came to be known as the Higgs boson would solve the riddle of where several fundamental particles get their mass from: by interacting with the invisible “Higgs field” that pervades space.

That interaction, known as the “Brout-Englert-Higgs” mechanism, won Higgs and Belgium’s Francois Englert the Nobel prize in physics in 2013. Englert’s collaborator Robert Brout died in 2011.

‘An incredible thing’

In 1964, Higgs’ first paper on the model was rejected by an academic physics journal at CERN as being “of no relevance to physics”. His revised paper, although published weeks after Englert and Brout’s, was the first to explicitly predict the existence of a new particle.

“Over a weekend … I gradually realised that I knew two things that had to be brought together,” he said. “I had to go back to my office on the Monday and check that I hadn’t made a mistake about this.”

The tantalising vision promised to fill a gap in the “Standard Model” — the basic theoretical framework of physics — if only the particle’s existence could be proven.

For nearly three decades, physicists at CERN and at Fermilab in Chicago replicated the “Big Bang” by smashing particles together, hoping to glimpse the Higgs boson in the resulting mini-explosions.

CERN’s massive Large Hadron Collider finally proved to be the sledgehammer needed to crack the nut, and in 2012 two experiments there independently found the Higgs boson.

Englert and Higgs were in the packed auditorium at CERN to hear the announcement of the discovery, while hundreds of thousands watched online.

“We have reached a milestone in our understanding of nature,” CERN Director General Rolf Heuer said, to a roar of applause.

Higgs, clearly overwhelmed, his eyes welling up, told his fellow researchers: “It is an incredible thing that it has happened in my lifetime.”

‘What award?’

The Higgs boson completed the Standard Model, but fully understanding it is a work in progress. Its discovery allowed theoreticians to turn their attention to the vast portion of the universe that remained unexplained, as well as esoteric ideas such as the possibility of parallel universes.

An atheist, Higgs loathed the nickname “the God particle,” which headline writers frequently bestowed on the boson that bore his name.

He had strong views on what was good and bad about science and resigned from a movement for nuclear disarmament when it began campaigning against the harnessing of nuclear energy.

In 1962 Higgs married Jody Williamson, an American linguist and nuclear disarmament campaigner, who died in 2008. They had two sons.

Higgs was modest about his achievements and shy of the media. In an interview on the Nobel prize website, he recounted how, on the morning that the 2013 Nobel announcement was due, he had anticipated media attention and taken steps to avoid it.

He left his house in Edinburgh, where he was emeritus professor at the university, and went for a walk around the harbour, and then to lunch and an art exhibition.

On his way home, a former neighbour congratulated him on his award.

“I said: ‘What award?’” he recalled, chuckling.

Reporting by Robert Evans and Tom Miles, additional reporting by Farouq Suleiman; editing by Pravin Char and Mark Heinrich

A labrador retriever who failed to become a drug sniffing dog because he was overly friendly and playful has won hearts across Taiwan for his detection work in the aftermath of last week’s 7.4-magnitidue earthquake.

Rescue dogs play a crucial role in helping to locate both stranded people and bodies, and teams of capable canines were quickly deployed by Taiwanese authorities after last Wednesday’s deadly tremor.

The quake that hit the island’s rugged eastern coast, Taiwan’s strongest in 25 years, triggered deadly landslides in a scenic national park and caused several buildings to partially collapse.

Roger, 8, was among the dogs put to work, helping to locate the body of one of the 13 people killed in the quake, according to authorities and local media.

He and his handlers ventured into the Shakadang Trail of the heavily damaged Taroko National Park and found the body of a missing 21-year-old woman, according to Taiwan’s official Central News Agency (CNA).

While other dogs also played similar roles and were paraded for the media, Roger captured the island’s imagination — partly because of his backstory of an initial career failure.

Roger was born into a training center for drug-sniffing dogs. But his love for fun, food and people got the better of him, distracting his ability to pay attention and react to his trainers’ commands, CNA reported.

As a result, Roger failed to become a drug detective.

But his ebullient personality and intelligence made him a much better candidate to be a rescue dog, which was the career that was then chosen for him.

That excitedness was on full display during a media interview with his handler when Roger, tail wagging, lunged at a reporter’s microphone.

Chen Chih-san, captain of the rescue dog unit of the Kaohsiung Fire Department, told reporters that Roger was transferred to the rescue training school when he was 1 year old.

“I’m not saying he was not good or that he didn’t get along with others. But the requirement for narcotic detection dogs is that they can’t be too restless and independent,” Chen said.

“But (these attributes) are what we want in rescue dogs.”

The dogs have provided some much needed relief for Taiwan’s social media in the aftermath of the quake.

“Keep it up, heroes and little heroes,” one person wrote. Another said: “Roger is the pride of Taiwan.”

Roger is now something of an earthquake veteran. CNA said he had taken part in seven operations during his career, including a debut mission in the aftermath of a deadly 6.4-magnitude quake that hit the same region in 2018.

According to the Kaohsiung City Government, Roger was certified by the International Rescue Dog Organization in 2022, an accolade last achieved by a Taiwanese rescue dog in 2019.

But retirement is looming for Roger, with the Kaohsiung Fire Department sending rescue dogs to a suitable home once they reach age 9, CNA said, citing Chen.

A rare, blind mole, about which scientists know relatively little, has been spotted and photographed in Australia, Kanyirninpa Jukurrpa – an indigenous organization that deploys rangers – said as it announced the “incredible news.”

The northern marsupial mole was spotted in Martu Country, an area in northern Western Australia traditionally owned by the Martu – a group of Australia’s indigenous people.

Rangers there came across the elusive mole, marking the second sighting in just six months for an animal that typically only has five to 10 reported sightings every decade.

Also know as a Kakarrarturl, the marsupial mole is blind, with poorly developed eyes. It is covered in silky fur and has long, triangular claws protruding from its forefeet for digging beneath the soil, where it hunts grubs and earthworms.

About 10 centimeters (four inches) long, it has a snout and stubby tail.

Its close relative, the southern marsupial mole, is slightly bigger, at about 18 centimeters (seven inches), and found in central Australia.

Joe Benshemesh, a marsupial mole expert and researcher at the National Malleefowl Recovery Group, called them “arguably the world’s most burrow-adapted mammal” in an article published in Australian Geographic, as they have evolved to withstand the harsh temperatures of the desert.

They spend most of their time underground, only occasionally coming to the surface and staying there for a short time, explaining their elusiveness.

Weighing just 40-60 grams (1.4-2.1 ounces), “marsupial moles have such modest oxygen requirements that they subsist by breathing the air that flows between sand grains,” Benshemesh wrote.

But much about the creatures is still unknown, making any sighting incredibly exciting for researchers.

The last reported sighting of a marsupial mole was in June near Uluru in central Australia.