Iran has vowed to retaliate after it accused Israel of bombing its embassy complex in Syria on Monday, in a deadly escalation of regional tensions over the war in Gaza that once again appeared to raise the risk of a wider Middle Eastern conflict.

The airstrike destroyed the consulate building in the capital Damascus, killing at least seven officials including Mohammed Reza Zahedi, a top commander in Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), and senior commander Mohammad Hadi Haji Rahimi, according to Iran’s Foreign Ministry.

Zahedi, a former commander of the IRGC’s ground forces, air force, and the deputy commander of its operations, is the most high-profile Iranian target killed since then-US President Donald Trump ordered the assassination of IRGC Gen. Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad in 2020.

Iran and Syria accused Israel of authoring the attack, with Tehran warning of a “serious response,” and the powerful Iran-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah saying the strike will be met with “punishment and revenge.” Iran also said it would hold the United States “answerable” due to its support of Israel.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi on Tuesday blamed Israel for the attack and said it will “not go unanswered,” state news agency IRNA reported.

Four unnamed Israeli officials acknowledged that Israel carried out the attack, the New York Times reported.

The US considers its own embassies and consulates abroad, as well as foreign countries’ embassies and consulates in the US to have a special status. According to the US State Department, “an attack on an embassy is considered an attack on the country it represents.”

Significant attack

Israel has intensified its military campaign against Iran and its regional proxies following the October 7 attack on Israel by Tehran-backed Palestinian group Hamas, which killed about 1,200 people and saw more than 200 taken hostage.

Israel’s subsequent war in Gaza has killed more than 32,800 people, according to the Ministry of Health in the besieged enclave, wrought widespread destruction and brought more than 1 million people to the brink of a man-made famine.

While Israel has long targeted Iran and its proxies in Syria, its latest apparent attack in Damascus is a significant escalation due to both the location and the target. The consulate building, which includes the ambassador’s residence and is located next to the Iranian Embassy, is considered sovereign Iranian territory.

“This is perhaps the first time that the Zionist regime allows itself to attack an official building of the Islamic Republic of Iran embassy, which had the flag of the Islamic Republic raised on top of it,” said Iran’s ambassador to Syria Hossein Akbari.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani warned that Tehran “preserves the right to take reciprocal measures and will decide the type of response and punishment against the aggressor.”

And the country’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian called the attack a “violation of all international obligations and conventions” that demanded a “serious response” from the international community.

Amir-Abdollahian also held the United States responsible given its support for Israel, underscoring the increasing strain between Tehran and Washington.

“The United States should be answerable,” Iran’s top diplomat said in a post on X.

Tehran summoned the Swiss chargé d’affaires in the early hours of Tuesday local time to discuss the incident, Amir-Abdollahian added. Switzerland represents US interests in Iran.

“The dimensions of the Israeli regime’s terrorist attack and crime were explained, and the American administration’s responsibility underlined,” Amir-Abdollahian said.

Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad meanwhile described the strike as a “gross violation of international regulations, especially the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.”

Braced for escalation

Analysts say one of the most immediate fallouts of the consulate strike could be a rise in attacks by Iran’s proxies, particularly against US troops.

Since the outbreak of war in Gaza, Iran’s proxies have launched attacks on Israel and its allies, while demanding a ceasefire in the Palestinian enclave.

Iran-backed forces in Iraq and Syria have launched dozens of attacks aimed at US military positions in those countries — in January, three US troops were killed in a drone attack on a US outpost in Jordan, near the border with Syria.

In retaliation, the US carried out strikes on dozens of Iran-backed targets in Iraq and Syria.

Meanwhile, Houthi rebels have launched a series of attacks on commercial ships and Western military vessels in the Red Sea, a major artery for international trade.

“It’s very clear that these escalations by the Iraqi militias who are supported by Iran, no doubt, are coming as a response to what is happening in Gaza,” Parsi said.

Increasing pressure

As the Middle East braces for a potential Iranian response, Tehran is under pressure to show strength in the wake of the consulate attack while not drawing the region into a wider war.

Iran’s most powerful paramilitary ally, Hezbollah could be the most likely tool.

The Lebanese Shia militant group has been embroiled in daily crossfire with Israeli forces for nearly six months. It has walked a fine line between trying to limit its field of militant operations to the border area, while trying to enforce tit-for-tat rules of engagement.

Its involvement has also increased fears that Israel’s war in Gaza could spill over into a wider regional conflict.

Hezbollah on Tuesday warned that Israel would pay for the consulate attack and hailed Zahedi and others killed as “great martyrs.”

In a statement, the group said the assassination would not stop the “roaring tide of people’s resistance” and that the enemy would face “punishment and revenge.”

In Israel, Prime Minister Bejamin Netanyahu is also facing significant pressure domestically to secure the release of all the hostages taken captive during the October 7 terror attack.

Thousands of people took to the streets of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem over the weekend in the largest protests the country has seen since the start of the war against Hamas, with banners calling on the prime minister to resign and for Israel to hold new elections.

However, Israeli military spokesman Hagari blamed Iran for escalating tensions in the region.

“[Iran] is the main actor that makes atrocities in this region using the proxies in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen.”

When the total solar eclipse traces a path across Mexico, the United States and Canada on April 8, spectators can anticipate a multitude of awe-inspiring moments.

During a total solar eclipse, the moon completely blocks the face of the sun for a brief period known as totality — and 32 million people in the US who are located along the 115-mile-wide (185-kilometer-wide) path of totality for April’s event will have a chance to enjoy this full expression of the celestial spectacle.

It’s worth taking some time to stop and take in this historic celestial event because a total solar eclipse won’t be visible across the contiguous US again until August 2044 and an annular eclipse, in which the moon can’t completely block the sun, won’t appear across this part of the world again until 2046.

“Until you’ve actually seen (a total eclipse), it’s almost impossible to describe,” said Dr. John Mulchaey, Carnegie Institution for Science’s deputy for science and the director and Crawford H. Greenewalt Chair of the Carnegie Observatories. “When you see totality, you can see how it’s had such a huge impact on humans through thousands of years. It’s one of the most beautiful things most people will ever experience.”

But the phases surrounding totality — including a couple phenomena stunning enough to have earned their own names — are pretty memorable, too, eclipse experts say. Here’s what to look out for.

What to watch for during the eclipse

The moon doesn’t suddenly appear between Earth and the sun — the event begins with a partial eclipse, in which the moon appears to take a “bite” out of the sun. Depending on your location, the partial eclipse can last between 70 and 80 minutes, according to NASA.

For those living outside of the path of totality, a crescent-shaped partial eclipse, rather than a total eclipse, will be the main event.

Within the path, the partial eclipse is the longest phase, but as the time for totality nears, look for changes in the sky’s appearance.

“About 15 to 20 minutes before totality, the sky starts getting this really weird gloomy color,” Mulchaey said. “It’s almost like a gray because the sun’s way high in the sky, but it’s almost entirely blocked out. It’s not like twilight, sunset or sunrise when (the sun is) low in the sky. It’s above you. And all of a sudden, you’re losing most of the sun’s light, and it feels very weird.”

The eerily darkening sky is a cue for skywatchers that the stellar show is about to begin. Just make sure you have eclipse glasses handy to safely view the sun before the event gets underway.

Two breathtaking phases occur within the final moments before totality, Mulchaey said.

When the moon begins to cross in front of the sun, the star’s rays will shine around valleys on the moon’s horizon, creating glowing drops of light around the moon called Baily’s beads. The phenomenon was named for English astronomer Francis Baily, who noted them during an annular eclipse on May 15, 1836.

As totality nears, Baily’s beads will quickly disappear and make way for the “diamond ring,” a nickname for how it looks when a single point of light remains — like a glistening giant diamond ring.

Both of these phases last less than a minute, Mulchaey said.

Then, it’s time for totality.

Prepare for totality

The totality phase of the April 8 eclipse is expected to last twice as long as it did in 2017 because the moon is currently closer to the sun. Those squarely along the center line of the path will see a total eclipse that lasts between 3½ and 4 minutes, according to NASA.

“All of a sudden, totality happens, and the corona shows up,” Mulchaey said. “Even though it’s dark out, it’s somehow glorious.”

The corona is the sun’s ultrahot outer atmosphere, which emits a glow that can be seen around the moon during the eclipse. Typically, the corona is hard to see because the sun’s surface is so much brighter. During the total eclipse, the corona will resemble white streams of light, according to NASA.

During the 2017 eclipse, the sun was approaching solar minimum, or the quiet phase of our star’s 11-year activity cycle. Now, the sun is nearing solar maximum, when the sun is exceptionally active, Mulchaey said. The corona will likely appear brighter and fuller, and there may be a chance to spot flaring loops of solar activity resembling streamers within the corona during the eclipse.

Spectators may also be able to see a region of the solar atmosphere called the chromosphere, which will appear as a thin, pink circle around the moon.

Bright stars or planets like Venus may shine in the dark sky, and the air temperature will drop as the sun disappears. The sudden darkness also causes animals to behave in unusual ways.

“We may start to see nocturnal behavior, like crickets chirping or bats emerging, and animals stopping daytime behaviors, like birds going to roost or flying insects landing,” said Dr. Andrew Farnsworth, visiting scientist at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

After totality ends, the diamond ring and Baily’s beads will briefly reappear before the partial eclipse returns as the moon slowly moves across the sun.

Why we have eclipses on Earth

It has only been six years since a total eclipse crossed the US, the path of the April 8 eclipse is a very different one, trekking from west to east.

On average, an eclipse occurs in the same place every 375 years, Mulchaey said.

And we’re living at the right time to truly enjoy the sight of a total eclipse on Earth, he said.

While eclipses occur throughout the solar system, none of them are exactly like the ones experienced on our world.

The moon is about 400 times smaller than the sun, but the moon is also about 400 times closer to Earth than the sun is, creating a “beautiful coincidence” that results in eclipses when the three celestial bodies align, Mulchaey said.

This alignment is called syzygy, or when three objects line up in space.

In the distant past, the moon was much closer to Earth, which means totality likely didn’t appear as it does now. And within another 60 million years or so, the moon will be so far away that it will never cover the sun, making this a rare moment in time, Mulchaey said.

Top Iranian military commanders were among the seven Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC) officials killed in an airstrike on the country’s consulate building in Damascus, Syria, according to Iranian officials and state-affiliated media, which blamed Israel for the attack.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry said that senior IRGC commander Mohammed Reza Zahedi was killed in the attack. Haji Rahimi was named as the second commander killed in the attack, according to the IRGC statement shared by state news agency IRNA later on Monday.

The IRGC statement named five other officials who were killed: Hossein Aman Elahi, Mehdi Jalalati, Mohsen Sedaghat, Ali Aghababaee, and Ali Salehi Roozbahani.

People gathered around the flattened building in Syria’s capital, according to photographs of the scene. Footage of the aftermath of the blast, published by Iranian state media Press TV, showed extensive damage, fire and smoke at the scene.

Speaking on camera to reporters in Damascus, Iranian ambassador Hossein Akbari alleged that the consulate building, located next to the Iranian embassy, “was targeted with six missiles from Israeli F-35 warplanes.”

In a separate interview, Akbari added that two Syrian policemen were also among the injured in the attack, which he said “is perhaps the first time that the Zionist regime allows itself to attack an official building of the Islamic Republic of Iran embassy, which had the flag of the Islamic Republic raised on top of it.”

When asked if Israel was involved in the attack, Hagari said, “I’m not going to comment on that strike but I want to tell you that in the last six months, Iran is making this region escalate. She’s the main actor.”

“[Iran] is the main actor that makes atrocities in this region using the proxies in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen,” Hagari said.

“Even this morning, an Iranian UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] has hit an Israeli base in Eilat,” Hagari claimed. “Iran is an actor that brings escalation.”

Four unnamed Israeli officials acknowledged that Israel carried out the attack in Damascus, the New York Times reported.

Warnings of ‘reciprocal measures’

Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman, Nasser Kanaani, warned of possible “reciprocal measures,” following the incident.

“Iran preserves the right to take reciprocal measures and will decide the type of response and punishment against the aggressor,” Kanaani said, according to IRGC-affiliated Fars News.

The foreign ministers of Iran and Syria also accused Israel of authoring the attack, with Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian calling it a “violation of all international obligations and conventions” and demanding a “serious response” from the international community.

Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad described the strike as a “gross violation of international regulations, especially the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations,” according to a readout of his call with Amir-Abdollahian.

Zahedi, the slain commander, was previously the commander of IRGC’s ground forces, the commander of IRGC’s air force, and the deputy commander of the IRGC’s operations.

Iran-backed Lebanese Hezbollah group issued a statement on Tuesday local time, accusing Israel of the strike, and warned that Israel would pay, vowing revenge.

United States State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said the US did not “have confirmation either of the target or the responsible party” at a briefing on Monday.

“Before we have gathered information about what exactly this was, I don’t want to speak to it specifically,” Miller added. “But of course, we’re always concerned about anything that would be escalatory or cause an increase in conflict in the region.”

The Russian Foreign Ministry “strongly condemned” the attack in a statement published on its website on Monday, saying “any attacks on diplomatic and consular facilities to be categorically unacceptable.”

It also called on “the Israeli leadership to abandon the practice of provocative military actions in Syria and other neighboring countries, which can lead to the extremely dangerous consequences throughout the region.”

This is a developing story and will be updated.

The attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus on Monday may be the most dangerous escalation outside of Gaza since the start of the Hamas-Israel war nearly six months ago.

Syria and Iran blamed Israel for the airstrike that destroyed a consular building, killing Mohammed Reza Zahedi, a top commander in Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), and several other officials, including another senior commander Mohammad Hadi Haji Rahimi. Israeli officials have not commented on the incident.

The attack is the latest in a recent string of apparent Israeli strikes in Syria that targeted the IRGC and Iran-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. So far, the attacks have not provoked a response outside the scope of months-long skirmishes on Israel’s border with Lebanon — despite repeated threats by Iran and Hezbollah’s leadership to respond to Israeli attacks in kind.

Monday’s incident, however, may be the last straw. Technically, Iran’s consulate is sovereign Iranian territory, making this the most overt attack on Iranian soil in years. And Zahedi is the most high-profile target since former US President Donald Trump ordered the killing of the IRGC’s storied general Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad in January 2020.

“Events in Damascus today indicate that Israelis have (Iranian Supreme Leader) Ali Khamenei in a box,” wrote Mohammad Ali Shabani, Iran analyst and editor at the online magazine Amwaj.media, in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

“Iran’s supreme leader is being embarrassed before his own praetorian guard, and Quds Force will have increasingly hard time justifying Khamenei’s indecisiveness before Iran’s regional allies.”

It is difficult to envisage an Iranian response that does not involve its most powerful paramilitary ally, Hezbollah. The Lebanese Shia militant group has been embroiled in daily cross-fire with Israeli forces since October 8. For nearly six months, it has walked a fine line between trying to limit its field of militant operations to the border area, while trying to enforce tit-for-tat rules of engagement. This has become harder as Israel strikes targets much further afield than the border area with growing frequency (Israeli airstrikes hit a major city in eastern Lebanon last week).

Iran’s regional allies say they entered confrontations with Israel on behalf of Palestinians in Gaza, where over 32,000 people have been killed, according to local authorities. This has boosted their regional popularity and shored up their political positions domestically. But they have sought to avoid an all-out conflagration, a relief to Washington, which has thrown its weight into preventing a regional war.

That may be an untenable position after today’s strike, which has again brought the region to the brink of an expanded war.

A key Ukrainian defensive line on the eastern front appears to have partially fallen to Russian forces in the past week, according to a British defense intelligence statement and military bloggers quoting sources on the ground.

The United Kingdom’s defense intelligence agency on Saturday released an unusually negative assessment of Kyiv’s fortunes near the city of Avdiivka, which fell to Russian forces in mid-February. The UK statement, which was shared on X, said: “Russian forces have maintained a gradual advance West of Avdiivka. In late March 2024, they almost certainly took control of two villages – Tonenke and Orlivka – and are continuing to contest others in the area.”

The agency added that Russia had significantly more personnel and munitions in the area than Ukraine and was able to replenish their forces by 30,000 troops a month.

While the villages are not in themselves of strategic significance and struggled to hold a few hundred residents before the war, they formed part of the defensive line that Kyiv has fought bitterly to hold after their forced withdrawal from Avdiivka. Their apparent fall in just over a month after a prolonged and brutal Russian assault is indicative not only of Russian momentum, but also the fragility of Ukraine’s defensive lines.

The UK statement marks a particularly dire analysis of Ukraine’s fortunes, at a time when Kyiv’s prospects in the conflict are looking increasingly bleak.

The Ukrainian military is desperate for weapons and money, as some $60 billion worth of military aide has been held up in Washington by isolationist Republicans aligned with former US President and current frontrunner for the GOP nomination Donald Trump.

President Zelensky told the Washington Post on Friday that no US aid “means we will go back, retreat, step by step, in small steps.”

Kyiv’s soldiers on the front lines are in pressing need of ammunition to fend off Russia’s latest salvos. While the European Union has attempted to fill the void created by partisan bickering in Congress, the bloc must overcome its own internal disagreements on military aid to Kyiv.

Ukraine’s General Staff has not directly commented on the British assessment, but their Monday update discussed fighting for the village of Umanske, about 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) to the west into Ukrainian territory from Tonenke.

Ukrainian journalist Yuriy Butusov posted on social media what he said was footage from a battle to the west of Tonenke.

The Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a US think tank, reported Sunday that Russian forces had conducted a “large-mechanized assault” near Tonenke on Saturday, committing 36 tanks and 12 armoured personnel carriers. The ISW said the Ukrainian forces appeared to have repelled the Russian mechanized assault, an apparent reference to the Umanske attack.

Further indications of Ukraine’s worsening position came when both Ukrainian and Russian bloggers said Russian forces made significant progress towards Chasiv Yar, the main Ukrainian stronghold outside the city of Bakhmut, which Russia captured after a months-long and grueling battle in May last year.

Multiple Ukrainian military bloggers wrote Sunday about the tough fight for Chasiv Yar, with one, named Chameleon, warning the distance “to the enemy positions is about 650 meters (2,000 feet).” The same distance between forces was reported by pro-Russian blogger Operation Z.

Turkey’s local elections on Sunday marked a major defeat for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party, as the main opposition party claimed victory in key cities including Istanbul and Ankara.

Turkey held nationwide elections on Sunday for city mayors, district mayors, and other local officials who will serve for the next five years. The setback for the ruling party came after Erdogan was re-elected as president in a knife-edge May election, defeating opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu in a close runoff vote. After his presidential victory, Erdogan had his sights on reclaiming cities lost to the opposition in 2019.

Preliminary official results showed the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) had won 49 out of 81 municipalities including 14 out of 30 urban areas in the country, Turkey’s High Electoral Council said.

With 99.8% of the votes counted, unofficial results showed Erdogan’s chief political rival Ekrem Imamoglu of the CHP re-elected as mayor of Istanbul with 51.1% of the votes, according to state broadcaster TRT. Nationwide, the CHP won the most votes, with 37.7%.

In the capital, Ankara, CHP candidate and incumbent mayor Mansur Yavas secured 60.4% of the vote. In Izmir, the CHP’s Cemil Tugay won with 48.9% of the vote.

“The period of one-man rule is over today,” Imamoglu, the 53-year-old businessman-turned-politician told cheering crowds in Istanbul on Sunday night.

“As we celebrate our victory, we send a resounding message to the world: the decline of democracy ends now,” the Istanbul mayor wrote Monday on X. “Istanbul stands as a beacon of hope, a testament to the resilience of democratic values in the face of rising authoritarianism.”

For Erdogan, Istanbul is a strategic and personal crown jewel that he was determined to take back in Sunday’s election. The city was for 25 years run by religiously inclined parties – first by the Welfare Party, of which Erdogan was a member, and then by the AK Party – until the secular CHP won its mayorship in 2019 under Imamoglu.

The AK Party lost 10 Istanbul districts to rivals in the latest election. Beyoglu, the district of Istanbul where Erdogan was born, was lost to the CHP.

Erdogan was not a candidate in this election, but the vote was largely seen as a test of whether the AK Party could win back the cities it lost in the 2019 elections.

The 70-year-old leader conceded defeat on behalf of his party, saying he plans to respect the will of Turkish people.

“Unfortunately, we could not get the result we wanted and hoped for in the local election test,” Erdogan said in a speech delivered Monday at AK Party headquarters in Ankara. Regardless of the results, he added, “the winner of this election is primarily our democracy, the national will, and all 85 million people, regardless of their political views.”

Scientists in South Korea have announced a new world record for the length of time they sustained temperatures of 100 million degrees Celsius — seven times hotter than the sun’s core — during a nuclear fusion experiment, in what they say is an important step forward for this futuristic energy technology.

Nuclear fusion seeks to replicate the reaction that makes the sun and other stars shine, by fusing together two atoms to unleash huge amounts of energy. Often referred to as the holy grail of climate solutions clean energy, fusion has the potential to provide limitless energy without planet-warming carbon pollution. But mastering the process on Earth is extremely challenging.

The most common way of achieving fusion energy involves a donut shaped reactor called a tokamak in which hydrogen variants are heated to extraordinarily high temperatures to create a plasma.

High temperature and high density plasmas, in which reactions can occur for long durations, are vital for the future of nuclear fusion reactors, said Si-Woo Yoon, director of the KSTAR Research Center at the Korean Institute of Fusion Energy (KFE), which achieved the new record.

KSTAR, KFE’s fusion research device which it refers to as an “artificial sun,” managed to sustain plasma with temperatures of 100 million degrees for 48 seconds during tests between December 2023 and February 2024, beating the previous record of 30 seconds set in 2021.

The KFE scientists said they managed to extend the time by tweaking the process, including using tungsten instead of carbon in the “diverters,” which extract heat and impurities produced by the fusion reaction.

The ultimate aim is for KSTAR to be able to sustain plasma temperatures of 100 million degrees for 300 seconds by 2026, a “a critical point” to be able to scale up fusion operations, Si-Woo Yoon said.

What the scientists are doing in South Korea will feed into the development of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor in southern France, known as ITER, the world’s biggest tokamak which aims to prove the feasibility of fusion.

KSTAR’s work “will be of great help to secure the predicted performance in ITER operation in time and to advance the commercialization of fusion energy,” Si-Woo Yoon said.

This announcement adds to a number of other nuclear fusion breakthroughs.

In 2022, scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility in the United States, made history by successfully completing a nuclear fusion reaction which produced more energy than used to power the experiment.

This February, scientists near the English city of Oxford announced they had set a record for producing more energy than ever before in a fusion reaction. They produced 69 megajoules of fusion energy for five seconds, roughly enough to power 12,000 homes for the same amount of time.

But commercializing nuclear fusion still remains a long way off as scientists work to solve fiendish engineering and scientific difficulties.

Nuclear fusion “is not ready yet and therefore it can’t help us with the climate crisis now,” said Aneeqa Khan, research fellow in nuclear fusion at the University of Manchester in the UK.

However, she added, if progress continues, fusion “has the potential to be part of a green energy mix in the latter half of the century.”

Crowds gathered in Germany overnight to celebrate the legalization of cannabis starting from Monday.

There was music and dancing at the Brandenburg Gate in central Berlin, where attendees waved placards and blew clouds of smoke into the air.

One person could be seen cycling through the crowd dragging an artwork of a giant cannabis leaf on a trailer behind their bike, while another ceremoniously rolled a joint in front of television cameras.

Last month, Germany’s lower house of parliament voted to legalize cannabis for limited recreational use following a controversial national debate about the pros and cons of allowing easier access to the drug.

Health minister Karl Lauterbach hailed the move in a post on X on Monday.

“Cannabis use already existed yesterday, but it’s increasing. Now it’s exiting the taboo zone,” he wrote.

“This is better for real addiction help, prevention for children and young people and for combating the black market, for which there will soon be an alternative.”

The new rules mean adults can possess small amounts for personal use but the drug remains banned for under 18s.

Under the new legislation, put forward by Germany’s ruling coalition party, adults can cultivate up to three plants for private consumption and be allowed to possess 50g at one time at home, and 25g in public, starting from April 1.

From July 1, cannabis will be available in licensed not-for-profit clubs with no more than 500 members – all of whom would have to be adults. Only club members would be allowed to consume their output.

The German government said that cannabis would remain illegal for minors and highly restricted for young adults, adding that consuming the drug near schools and playgrounds would be illegal.

The move makes Germany the third country in Europe – after Malta and Luxembourg – to legalize the drug for recreational use, removing cannabis from the official list of banned substances.

The Netherlands bans possession of drugs but some municipalities permit them to be sold in coffee shops under its so-called policy of toleration.

In other countries, like Australia and the US, rules vary in different localities.

Dogs can understand that certain words refer to specific objects, according to a recent study, suggesting that they may understand words in a similar way to humans.

It offers the first evidence of brain activity for this comprehension in a non-human animal, researchers said, though the study’s conclusion has faced scrutiny from other experts in the field.

It has long been known that dogs can learn commands like “sit,” “stay,” or “fetch” and can respond to these words with learned behaviors, often with the help of a treat or two, but untangling their understanding of nouns has proven more difficult.

To understand dogs’ language skills, Lilla Magyari, an associate professor at Stavanger University in Norway and researcher at Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary, and Marianna Boros, a postdoctoral researcher at Eötvös Loránd University, were inspired by studies investigating the comprehension of infants before they can speak. They decided to mimic these experiments with dogs, they said.

As the study’s lead authors, they devised an experiment in which 18 dog owners said words for objects their dogs already knew. Then, the owners held up either the matching object or a different one while small metal discs harmlessly attached to the dogs’ heads measured brain activity in a process known as electroencephalography (EEG).

In this way, scientists observed that brain activity in 14 of the 18 dogs was different when they were shown an object that matched with the word, compared to one that mismatched. They said that the resulting brain activity was the same as those produced by humans in similar experiments.

“Our claim is to say that a dog understands a word, it means in the absence of the object, the dog activates a so-called mental representation,” Boros said. “We can imagine it as the memory for that object.

“When the owner shows the object which is not matching that mental representation, then there is a very typical brain response we observed in the dog’s brain that in humans is widely accepted as an index of… semantic understanding.”

There was a two-second gap between owners saying the word of an object and showing it, a condition favoring the interpretation that dogs understood the words rather than simply associated them with the object, the researchers argued in the study.

Words that dogs knew better – as determined by their owners – also produced a bigger mismatch effect when the wrong object was shown, which researchers said strengthened their hypothesis.

Previous experiments testing dogs’ understanding of nouns had involved them fetching specific objects when asked, according to a statement released by the Eötvös Loránd University.

This method suggested that dogs only fetched the correct object at a rate expected by chance though, as Magyari noted, dogs can perhaps be unmotivated or distracted during studies.

By using EEG, there was no need for this behavioral response and researchers were able to test the dogs’ “passive understanding because maybe they can reveal more than they are able to exhibit or show,” she added.

But the true extent of the dogs’ comprehension is still unknown, even by the study’s authors, since the dogs were responding to their own toys and objects that the owners brought to the lab.

“In this study, we only know that when they heard the words they were expecting their (own) objects,” Magyari said.

“So we don’t know how much (understanding)… they have about the relationship between the word and the object, whether it also reflects categorical knowledge, which means whether they think the ball refers to many ball-like things not only to their own ball. This is something further studies need to look into.”

He said the time delay in the experiment “was neither here nor there, if it’s conditioning there can be a gap of some seconds” and that only familiar words would elicit a response explaining the greater mismatch effect.

He said that dogs lacked the two areas of the brain crucial for human understanding of language therefore the EEG pattern highlighted by the researchers was not shared by humans.

“If we’re making a claim that the pattern of the brainwave shows you that it must be an understanding of words, you need it to be the same pattern,” he said.

The study was published in the journal Current Biology on March 22.

Israeli military forces have withdrawn from Gaza’s largest hospital, Al-Shifa, after a 14-day siege that witnesses and Gazan authorities say left the medical facility largely destroyed.

“The situation is very bad,” said Mahmoud Bassal, a spokesperson for Gaza’s Civil Defense, on Monday. Al-Shifa is “completely destroyed and burned down. Many of its buildings are totally destroyed or charred,” he said.

“Injured and dead bodies fill the hospital grounds,” he added. “There are bodies buried in the hospital yards.”

Images from the area showed widespread destruction with charred and pockmarked buildings inside the complex.

More than 30 wounded people were transported from Al-Shifa to the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital east of Gaza City, Bassal said.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed their withdrawal in a statement on Monday, saying they had completed “precise operational activity” in the area.

The Ministry of Health in Gaza said about 3,000 people were inside Al-Shifa when the IDF began its raid on March 18, and that those attempting to leave were being targeted by snipers and fire from helicopters. Hamas previously accused Israel of striking targets “without regard” to the patients or medical staff inside – a claim echoed by people at the complex.

Targeting hospitals in wartime is prohibited under international law, but those standards change if enemy combatants are using the facility to attack an enemy.

The IDF said that during the raid, its troops “killed terrorists in close-quarters encounters, located numerous weapons and intelligence documents throughout the hospital, while preventing harm to civilians, patients, and medical teams.”

It has also said that civilians, patients, and medical teams were evacuated during the operation — though Palestinians inside and around Al-Shifa reported civilian casualties and arrests. Eyewitnesses have said medical personnel and other civilians were detained by Israeli troops.

Israel has for years said that Hamas fighters are sheltering in mosques, hospitals and other civilian places to avoid Israeli attacks. Hamas has repeatedly denied the claims.

‘Like a horror movie’

“Bulldozers crushed bodies of people everywhere around and in the yard of the hospital,” said Al-Za’anoun.

After the withdrawal, people began arriving at the destroyed complex to search for missing family members, he said, adding: “We found entire families dead and their bodies are decomposed in houses around the hospital.”

Those still alive in the complex are malnourished, with some survivors saying they had to share one bottle of water among six people each day, Al-Za’anoun said.

Second raid

This raid was the second of its kind at the hospital, with the IDF first raiding Al-Shifa in November. By January, the IDF said it had completed dismantling Hamas’ command structure in northern Gaza.

Israel’s closest ally, the United States, has repeatedly backed Israeli assessments that Hamas and other Gaza militants used Al-Shifa’s medical complex as a command hub, and to hold hostages and store weapons.

Asked about the attack on Al-Shifa, US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said on March 18 that “Hamas came back into Shifa” after Israel had cleared the hospital of the militant group.

Meanwhile, the siege has been condemned by international organizations, with World Health Organization (WHO) Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus saying in March, “Hospitals should never be battlegrounds.”

WHO and other humanitarian groups had been warning of an ever-nearing famine in northern Gaza. By late March, 70% of the population was suffering with catastrophic levels of hunger, according to a UN-backed report.

All 2.2 million people in Gaza do not have enough food to eat, with half of the population on the brink of starvation and famine projected to arrive in the north “anytime between mid-March and May 2024,” according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC).