When the Chang’e-4 mission landed in the Von Karman crater on January 3, 2019, China became the first and only country to land on the far side of the moon — the side that always faces away from Earth.

Now, China is sending another mission to the far side, and this time, its goal is to return the first samples of the moon’s “hidden side” to Earth.

The Chang’e-6 mission, launched Friday, is set to spend 53 days exploring the South Pole-Aitken basin to study its geology and topography as well as collect samples from different spots across the crater.

The South Pole-Aitken basin is believed to be the largest and oldest crater on the moon, spanning nearly a quarter of the lunar surface with a diameter measuring roughly 1,550 miles (2,500 kilometers). The impact crater is more than 5 miles (8 kilometers) deep.

Scientists hope that returning samples to Earth will help answer enduring questions about the intriguing far side, which hasn’t been studied as deeply as the near side, as well as confirming the moon’s origin.

“The far side of the moon is very different from the near side,” said Li Chunlai, China National Space Administration deputy chief designer. “The far is basically comprised of ancient lunar crust and highlands, so there are a lot of scientific questions to be answered there.”

No real ‘dark side’

During a NASA budget hearing on April 17, congressman David Trone asked NASA administrator Bill Nelson why China was sending a mission to the “backside” of the moon.

“They are going to have a lander on the far side of the moon, which is the side that’s always in dark,” Nelson responded. “We’re not planning to go there.”

The moon’s hidden side has sometimes been referred to as the “dark side of the moon,” largely in reference to the 1973 Pink Floyd album of the same name.

But the phrase is a bit of a misnomer for a couple of reasons, according to experts.

While the far side of the moon may seem dark from our perspective, it experiences a lunar day and lunar night just like the near side, and receives plenty of illumination. A lunar day lasts just over 29 days, while the lunar night lasts for about two weeks, according to NASA.

The same side always faces Earth because the moon takes the same amount of time to complete an orbit of Earth and rotate around its axis: about 27 days.

Additionally, the far side of the moon has been more difficult to study, which led to the “dark side” nickname and created an air of mystery.

“Humans always want to know what’s on the other side of the mountain and the part that you can’t see, so that’s a kind of psychological motivation,” said Renu Malhotra, the Louise Foucar Marshall Science Research Professor and Regents Professor of Planetary Sciences at the University of Arizona in Tucson. “Of course, we’ve sent space probes that have orbited the moon, and we have images, so in a sense, it’s less mysterious than before.”

Several spacecraft, including NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter that constantly circles and takes images of the lunar surface, have helped to shed light on the moon.

Yutu-2, a lunar rover that Chang’e-4 released in 2019, also explored loose deposits of pulverized rock and dust littering the floor of Von Karman crater, located within the larger South Pole-Aitken basin.

But returning samples to Earth would enable the latest and most sensitive technology to analyze lunar rocks and dust, potentially revealing how the moon came to be and why its far side is so different from the near side.

Far side mysteries

Despite years of orbital data and samples collected during six of the Apollo missions, scientists are still trying to answer key questions about the moon.

“The reason the far side is so compelling is because it is so different than the side of the moon that we see, the near side,” said Noah Petro, NASA project scientist for both the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and Artemis III, a mission which aims to land humans on the moon for the first time since 1972. “For all of human history, humans have been able to look up and see the same surface, the same side of the moon.”

But in 1959 the Soviet Union sent a probe to fly past the far side of the moon and captured the first images of it for humanity.

“We saw this completely different hemisphere: not covered in large volcanic lava flows, pockmarked with craters, a thicker crust. It just tells a different story than the near side,” Petro said.

Returning samples with robotic missions, and landing humans near the transition between the two lunar regions at the south pole through the Artemis program, “will help tell this more complete story of lunar history that we are lacking in right now,” he said.

Although scientists understand why one side of the moon always faces Earth, they don’t know why that particular side permanently faces our planet. But it could have something to do with the moon being asymmetrical, Malhotra said.

“There is some asymmetry between the side that’s facing us and the other side,” she said. “What exactly caused those asymmetries? What actually are these asymmetries? We have little understanding of that. That’s a huge scientific question.”

Orbital data has also revealed that the near side has a thinner crust and more volcanic deposits, but answers to why that is has eluded researchers, said Brett Denevi, a planetary geologist at the Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Lab.

“It has a different kind of geochemical composition with some weird extra heat-producing elements. There are a ton of models for why the near side is different than the far side, but we don’t have the data yet,” Denevi said. “So going to the far side, getting samples and doing different kinds of geophysical measurements is really important to figuring out this really long, long standing mystery.”

Chang’e-6 is just one mission heading to the moon’s far side as NASA has plans to send robotic missions there as well.

Denevi helped design a mission concept for a lunar rover called Endurance, which will undertake a long drive across the South Pole-Aitken basin to collect data and samples before delivering them to the Artemis landing sites near the lunar south pole. Then, astronauts can study the samples and determine which ones to return to Earth.

Cracking the lunar code

One of the most fundamental questions that scientists have tried to answer is how the moon formed. The prevailing theory is that some kind of object had an impact with Earth early in its history, and a giant chunk that went flying off our planet formed the moon.

Scientists also want to know how the moon’s original crust formed.
Volcanic flows created dark patches on the moon, while the lighter parts of the surface represent the moon’s primordial crust.

“We think at one point the moon was entirely molten, and it was this ocean of magma, and as that solidified, minerals floated to the top of this ocean, and that’s that lighter terrain that we can see today,” Denevi said. “Getting to the really big expanses of pristine terrain on the far side is just one of the goals.”

Meanwhile, the study of impact craters littering the lunar surface provides a history of how things moved around during the solar system’s early days at a critical point when life was starting to form on Earth, Denevi said.

“As impacts were happening on the moon, impacts were happening on the Earth at the same time,” Petro said. “And so whenever we look at these ancient events on the moon, we’re learning a little bit about what’s happening on the Earth as well.”

Visiting the South Pole-Aitken basin could be the start of solving a multitude of lunar mysteries, Malhotra said. While researchers believe they have an idea of when the crater formed, perhaps 4.3 billion to 4.4 billion years ago, collecting rock samples could provide a definitive age.

“Many scientists are sure that if we figured out the age of that depression,” she said, “it’s going to unlock all kinds of mysteries about the history of the moon.”

Time is running out to prevent starvation in Darfur, in western Sudan, a UN agency has warned, as escalating violence devastates the African nation.

People have been forced to consume “grass and peanut shells,” the regional director for Eastern Africa of the World Food Programme (WFP) said on Friday. “If assistance doesn’t reach them soon, we risk witnessing widespread starvation and death in Darfur and across other conflict-affected areas in Sudan,” Michael Dunford added.

Sudan has been gripped by civil war since April 2023, when fighting erupted between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). It quickly descended into a brutal conflict characterized by reports of sexual and genocidal violence and civilian casualties, triggering an exodus of refugees.

On Thursday, two International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) drivers were killed by gunmen in South Darfur, in an attack that left three other staff members injured, according to the humanitarian organization.

The ICRC team was attacked en route to assess the crisis among communities affected by armed violence in the region, the organization said.

The latest surge in violence comes as the RSF encircles North Darfur’s capital, El Fasher.

In the city and its surrounding localities, there have been “increasing arbitrary killings,” systematic “burning of entire villages” and “escalating air bombardments,” the UN deputy humanitarian coordinator for Sudan, Toby Hayward, said on Thursday.

Hayward added that El Fasher is the only city in Darfur that has not been captured by the RSF and hosts thousands of people who have been displaced by the war. At least 500,000 of those sheltering in the city have been displaced from violence elsewhere in Sudan, according to the UN’s children’s agency (UNICEF).

More than 36,000 people have been forced to flee their homes in El Fasher in recent weeks, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported.

At least 43 people have been killed in and around the city since the escalation of fighting a little over two weeks ago, UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell said on Thursday.

“Recent attacks on more than a dozen villages in western El Fasher have resulted in horrific reports of violence, including sexual violence, children injured and killed, homes set on fire, and destruction of critical civilian supplies and infrastructure,” Russell detailed.

Meanwhile, deliveries of food assistance in Darfur “have been intermittent due to fighting and endless bureaucratic hurdles” and at least 1.7 million people within the region are experiencing emergency levels of hunger, according to the World Food Programme.

“The latest escalation of violence around El Fasher has halted aid convoys coming from Chad’s Tine border crossing – a recently opened humanitarian corridor that passes through North Darfur’s capital,” the WFP added. Restrictions imposed by authorities in the coastal town of Port Sudan have hindered aid deliveries, the WFP said, preventing the transportation of relief via Adré, a town in neighboring Chad.

More than 8.7 million people, including 4.6 million children, have been displaced by the war in Sudan and 24.8 million need assistance, according to OCHA.

Italy’s Ministry of Health has banned the popular wellness trend of “puppy yoga” amid concerns that the puppies used in the practice could be exploited and mistreated.

Typically, sessions involve puppies roaming around a yoga class and sometimes being incorporated in poses.

Giovanni Leonardi, head of the One Health department of Italy’s health ministry, ruled Tuesday that the use of dogs during exercise sessions falls under Italy’s Animal Assisted Interventions act. This means that only adult dogs can now be used in yoga sessions to “protect the health and well-being of the animals, as well as the safety of users.”

The ruling comes following an investigation in March by the popular Italian news show “Striscia la Notizia,” which alleged that puppies were mistreated at various yoga centers and kept in pens between sessions.

The puppies used in the sessions were transported in boxes or plastic bags, were used for long hours covering multiple sessions, and were not provided water or food to “prevent the dogs from doing their business in the gym,” LNDC alleged, noting that the Striscia la Notizia investigation found that many of the puppies were only 42 days old.

“Given their age, it is highly likely that these puppies had not even completed their vaccination prophylaxis,” the LNDC complaint suggested.

LNDC’s President Piera Rosati called the practice “exploitation for commercial purposes that takes no account of the well-being and psychophysical health of creatures who are still too fragile to be treated in this way.”

“At that age, puppies should not have to face travel and stress, but stay in a calm and protected environment under the guidance and care of their mother who can teach them to socialize correctly and to face the outside world with confidence,” Rosati continued.

Allen called the practice “a sales gimmick designed to promote the breeding of ‘pedigree’ dogs – who are prone to severe physical problems later in life – and which violates the fundamental principle of yoga: ahimsa, or doing no harm.”

“While governments around the world should take heed, we must not wait to do the right thing: PETA urges yogis to stay away from this cheap ploy that uses sensitive animals as props to their detriment,” Allen said.

A prominent surgeon in Gaza has died in an Israeli prison after being held for more than four months, according to Palestinian prisoners’ groups, which decried his death as part of a “systematic targeting” of health care workers.

Dr. Adnan Al-Bursh, head of orthopedics at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, was declared dead by Israeli prison authorities on April 19, according to a joint statement Thursday from the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society and the Commission of Detainees’ Affairs.

His body has not yet been released by Israeli authorities.

The prisoner associations blamed Israel for his death, saying it was part of a “systematic targeting process against physicians and the health care system in Gaza,” according to the statement.

“This is the last thing we expected, and it’s difficult for the human soul to bear this news,” he said. “Dr. Adnan loved life, was cheerful, and was loved by everyone.”

Abu Saada said he had earlier asked Israeli authorities about Al-Bursh’s detention but “didn’t receive any news.” Abu Saada was told that one of Al-Bursh’s fellow prisoners – who had since been released – said the surgeon had been tortured and was killed.

The IDF has previously said it treats all detainees in accordance with international law.

Earlier on Thursday, Israel released dozens of Gaza detainees via the Kerem Shalom crossing in southern Israel.

The release included the return of the body of Ismail Khadr, a Palestinian man from Gaza, who had also recently died in Israeli custody, the prisoner associations said in the joint statement. The total number of Palestinian detainees who have died in Israeli custody since October 7 rose to 18, the statement said.

Israel launched its military offensive in Gaza after the Hamas-led October 7 attacks when militants killed more than 1,200 people in southern Israel and took more than 200 people hostage. Israel’s military response has since sparked a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza that has inflamed opinion globally.

The seven-month bombardment of Gaza has killed more than 34,600 people, according to the Gaza health ministry. Half of the 2.2 million people in Gaza are on the brink of starvation and man-made famine is imminent, according to a scale used by United Nations agencies. Concerns are also heightened over an anticipated Israeli military operation in southern Gaza’s Rafah, prompting renewed calls for a ceasefire.

There has been fierce criticism of Israel’s actions in and around hospitals in Gaza, as medical groups and NGOs warn the health system in the territory is on the brink of collapse.

Israel has defended its military raids at medical facilities in Gaza, alleging that Hamas fighters used hospitals to run military activities through a network of underground tunnels. Hamas and medical staff at various hospitals across Gaza deny the allegations, and Israel has been under significant international pressure to prove its claims.

Britain’s governing Conservative Party suffered heavy losses in local elections, a sign that they could be in real trouble when the country holds a general election at some point later this year.

With around a third of the results declared, the loss of more than 100 seats on local councils and one parliamentary seat in a by-election suggest that national polls in which Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and his party trail by a distance are correct. It also means that if a general election were held tomorrow, the opposition Labour Party would almost certainly win power.

Conservatives are attempting to spin some positives, with one campaign source saying: “Whilst this is a tough night for the Conservative party, it’s clear there is absolutely no love for (opposition leader) Keir Starmer.”

There may be some truth to this: Conservative losses were not exclusively gains for Labour. Parties across the political spectrum, including the new populist right-wing Reform UK, benefited from the Conservatives’ poor performance.

What these results don’t tell us is when the general election will take place. That decision rests solely in the hands of Sunak, who has until December 17 to call an election.

Conservatives are divided on when they think Sunak should bite the ballot bullet. He has to date only committed to it happening in the second half of 2024. The harsh truth is that there is no obvious good time for Sunak to call the election. In all scenarios, there are vanishingly few who think he has any chance of winning re-election, with most instead basing their opinions on what what be the least bad loss.

There has recently been speculation that he could decide to go to the polls as early as July.

The advantage of a summer election, proponents say, is that Sunak can tell a better story than he has been able to for some time. His flagship immigration policy, under which asylum seekers are flown to Rwanda to have their claims considered there, is finally getting off the ground.

Earlier this week, the government sent out a press release celebrating that immigration officers had rounded up people destined for Rwanda. Photographs showing asylum seekers in handcuffs and being locked in the back of vans were met with mixed responses, but the intended message was clear: We are serious and our plan is working.

He has other relatively positive stories to tell, compared to the past few months of relentless misery. While interest rates have not fallen as fast as hoped, the economic situation has improved. Tax cuts for workers are coming into effect and he has committed to raise British defense spending to 2.5% of GDP.

The proximity to government victories – especially Rwanda – could help Sunak fight off attacks from the right, who have been pressuring him on immigration for months. The longer he delays, the more time the public – especially those most concerned about immigration – will have to see any flaws in the policy.

Others think Sunak should look toward the end of the year, as it allows the most time for things to improve.

It is true that Sunak inherited a mess from his two predecessors Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. Johnson had to resign in disgrace after months of scandals dogging his premiership while Truss became the shortest-serving PM in history after her controversial economic policies saw the pound slump to its lowest ever point against the dollar.

Naturally, these left Sunak in a difficult position with the public, trailing in the polls. However, the picture has not gotten any better since Sunak took over and there is every chance that waiting could lead to things actually getting worse.

This is the unenviable situation Sunak finds himself in. Virtually no one thinks he will still be in power this time next year and even his allies are resigned to treating the rest of his time in office as damage limitation. Of course, there is always the chance that some freak event could change everything. But that seems unlikely and since taking office in late 2022, Sunak has not been a man who can rely on luck.

China launched an uncrewed lunar mission Friday that aims to bring back samples from the far side of the moon for the first time, in a potentially major step forward for the country’s ambitious space program.

The Chang’e-6 probe – China’s most complex robotic lunar mission to date – blasted off on a Long March-5 rocket from the Wenchang Space Launch Center in south China’s Hainan island, where space fans had gathered to watch the historic moment. The country’s National Space Administration said the launch was a success.

The launch marks the start of a mission that aims to be a key milestone in China’s push to become a dominant space power with plans to land astronauts on the moon by 2030 and build a research base on its south pole.

It comes as a growing number of countries, including the United States, eye the strategic and scientific benefits of expanded lunar exploration in an increasingly competitive field.

China’s planned 53-day mission would see the Chang’e-6 lander touch down in a gaping crater on the moon’s far side, which never faces Earth. China became the first and only country to land on the moon’s far side during its 2019 Chang’e-4 mission.

Any far-side samples retrieved by the Chang’e-6 lander could help scientists peer back into the evolution of the moon and the solar system itself – and provide important data to advance China’s lunar ambitions.

“The Chang’e-6 aims to achieve breakthroughs in the design and control technology of the moon’s retrograde orbit, intelligent sampling, take-off and ascent technologies, and automatic sample-return on the far side of the moon,” Ge Ping, deputy director of the China National Space Administration’s (CNSA) Center of Lunar Exploration and Space Engineering said last week from the launch site.

Ambitious mission

The Chang’e-6 probe will be a key test for China’s space capabilities in its effort to realize leader Xi Jinping’s “eternal dream” of building the country into a space power.

China has made rapid space advancements in recent years, in a field traditionally led by the United States and Russia.

With the Chang’e program, launched in 2007 and named for the moon goddess of Chinese mythology, China in 2013 became the first country to achieve a robotic lunar landing in nearly four decades. In 2022, China completed its own orbital space station, the Tiangong.

The technically complex Chang’e-6 mission builds on both the Chang’e-4’s 2019 record of landing on the far side of the moon, and Chang’e-5’s 2020 success returning to Earth with near-side moon samples.

This time, to communicate with Earth from the moon’s far side, Chang’e-6 must rely on the Queqiao-2 satellite, launched into lunar orbit in March.

The probe itself is composed of four parts: an orbiter, a lander, an ascender and a reentry module.

The mission plan is for the Chang’e-6’s lander to gather moon dust and rocks after touching down in the sprawling, roughly 2,500-kilometer diameter South Pole-Aitken basin, a crater formed some 4 billion years ago.

An ascender spacecraft would then transport the samples to the lunar orbiter for transfer to the reentry module and the mission’s return to Earth.

The complex mission “goes through virtually every step” that will be required for Chinese astronauts to land on the moon in the years ahead, according to James Head, a professor emeritus at Brown University who has collaborated with Chinese scientists leading the mission.

In addition to returning samples that could yield “fundamental new insights into the origin and early history of the moon and solar system,” the mission also serves as “robotic practice for these steps” to get astronauts to the moon and back, he said.

China plans to launch two more missions in the Chang-e series as it nears its 2030 target of sending astronauts to the moon before building a research station in the following decade on the lunar south pole – a region believed to contain water ice.

Chang’e-7, scheduled for 2026, will aim to search for resources on the moon’s south pole, while Chang’e-8 roughly two years later could look at how to utilize lunar materials to prepare for building the research base, Chinese officials have said.

Competitive space

Friday’s launch comes as multiple nations ramp up their lunar programs amid a growing focus on the potential access to resources and further deep space exploration access that successful moon missions could bring.

Last year, India landed its first spacecraft on the moon, while Russia’s first lunar mission in decades ended in failure when its Luna 25 probe crashed into the moon’s surface.

In January, Japan became the fifth country to land a spacecraft on the moon, though its Moon Sniper lander faced power issues due to an incorrect landing angle. The following month, IM-1, a NASA-funded mission designed by Texas-based private firm Intuitive Machines, touched down close to the south pole.

That landing – the first by a US-made spacecraft in over five decades – is among several planned commercial missions intended to explore the lunar surface before NASA attempts to return US astronauts there as soon as 2026 and build its scientific base camp.

NASA administrator Bill Nelson last month appeared to acknowledge that China’s pace – and concerns about its intentions – were driving the American urgency to return to the moon, decades after its Apollo-crewed missions.

“We believe that a lot of their so-called civilian space program is a military program. I think in effect we are in a race,” Nelson told lawmakers last month, adding his concern that China could try to bar the US or other countries from certain lunar areas if they arrive there first.

China has long said it stands for the peaceful use of space, and, like the US, has looked to use its space prowess to cultivate international goodwill.

This time, China has said the Chang’e-6 mission carries scientific instruments or payloads from France, Italy, Pakistan and the European Space Agency.

“China hopes to strengthen cooperation with its international counterparts and deepen international cooperation in the space field,” Ge of the CNSA told reporters a day ahead of the launch.

Demonstrations in solidarity with Palestinians under Israeli siege in Gaza have spread across university campuses in the United States and around the world in recent weeks.

More than 2,000 people have been arrested at US campuses since April 18, amid polarized debates over the right to protest, the limits of free speech and accusations of antisemitism.

But while clashes and standoffs with police at New York’s Columbia University, Portland State and UCLA have captured global attention, demonstrations and sit-ins are also being held on campuses in parts of Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

And although demands among protesters vary at each university, the majority of demonstrations have called for colleges to divest from companies that support Israel and the war in Gaza.

The current war began on October 7 when Hamas militants killed more than 1,200 people in southern Israel and took more than 200 people hostage. Israel’s military response has since sparked a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza that has inflamed opinion globally.

Israel’s seven month bombardment of Gaza has killed more than 34,600 people, according to the Gaza health ministry. Half of the 2.2 million people in Gaza are on the brink of starvation and man-made famine is imminent, according to a scale used by United Nations agencies. Concerns are also heightened over an anticipated Israeli military operation in southern Gaza’s Rafah, prompting renewed calls for a ceasefire.

Here’s a look at some of the pro-Palestinian campus protests around the world.

Australia

Over the past few weeks, pro-Palestinian protest camps have appeared in at least seven universities across Australia.

The University of Queensland in Brisbane has become a gathering point for rival camps pitched around 100 meters (328 feet) from each other – one populated by supporters of the Students for Palestine UQ, and another smaller cluster of tents with the Israeli flag among others strung between trees.

They were erected in solidarity with Palestinians under Israeli siege in Gaza and student protesters in the US, but some Jewish groups say they’re causing unnecessary tension on campus and Australia’s opposition leader has called them “racist” and “antisemitic.”

Students for Palestine UQ want the university to disclose all links to Israeli companies and universities and to cut ties with weapons companies.

So far, violent scenes that have erupted at universities across the US have not been repeated in Australia.

At the University of Sydney, about 50 tents line the quadrangle where up to 100 protesters are sleeping each night. On May 3, Jewish groups held a counter protest against what they said is “a disturbing trend of antisemitic and anti-Israel activities” at the university.

More than 200 people, some wearing Israeli and Australian flags, gathered at the Sydney campus, but there was no direct encounter between them and the pro-Palestinian group, which had urged followers to help them “defend” their camp.

United Kingdom

Pro-Palestinian protests have been held at universities across the United Kingdom since the early days of Israel’s war in Gaza, with some setting up encampments in recent days.

At Newcastle University, a small pro-Palestinian encampment has been set up on a lawn in front of the college’s buildings, video and pictures on social media showed.

The X account “Newcastle Apartheid Off Campus” shared images of their encampment, which shows around a dozen tents on the lawn, some adorned with Palestinian flags.

The group describes itself as a “student-led coalition fighting for an end to Newcastle University’s partnership with defense companies supplying Israel.”

Students in the English cities of Leeds, Bristol and Warwick have also set up tents outside their university buildings to protest the war in Gaza, according to PA news agency.

The campus protests in Britain have received criticism from some Jewish student groups amid calls for universities to take their duty of care to Jewish students more seriously.

France

In Paris, pro-Palestinian protests erupted at the Sciences Po university and the Sorbonne university in late April.

On Friday, riot police cleared the main hall of Sciences Po, with protesters shouting “shame!” and “free Palestine!,” though the removal otherwise appeared to take place calmly.

Dozens of students had begun a sit-in inside the university the previous day, prompting the closure of the campus, a Sciences Po spokesperson said. One protester said a student had begun a hunger strike in protest at the university’s response to “students wishing to support Palestine.”

Sciences Po is one of France’s most highly ranked universities and the alma mater of a slew of presidents including incumbent leader Emmanuel Macron. It has strong ties to Columbia University, where students have been staging widespread pro-Palestinian protests.

Amid the protests, the Ile-de-France region president said the university will no longer receive funding from the Parisian regional authority, “until serenity and security are restored to the school.”

Samuel Lejoyeaux, president of the Union of Jewish Students of France, called for more dialogue between protesters on both sides of the ideological divide.

In a piece for Le Monde newspaper on Thursday, he said pro-Palestinian protesters needed to do more to “clearly denounce anti-Semitism” but that sending in police was not the answer.

“I’ll never be happy to see CRS [riot police] entering a campus,” he wrote.“More than anything, I believe in dialogue. The great social advances in France have always been the fruit of militancy and debate,” he added.

India

Protests have been held at the prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi, in solidarity with students protesting at Columbia.

The protests coincided with an expected visit to the campus by US ambassador to India Eric Garcetti, which was postponed.

“JNU’s premises shall not provide a platform for administrations and personnel representing nations complicit in terrorism and genocide committed by Israel,” said a statement from JNU’s student union on April 29. The union has also expressed solidarity with protesters at Columbia.

JNU, one of India’s top universities, has been at the forefront of several protest movements, including 2019 demonstrations against a controversial law that critics say discriminates against Muslims.

Two student political parties at Jamia Milia Islamia University in New Delhi also expressed solidarity with pro-Palestinian protesters.

“We also denounce the stance taken by our BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party)-led government in supporting Israel, which deviates from India’s historical position,” said a statement from the Communist Party-affiliated Students’ Federation of India.

Canada

Protests against Israel’s war in Gaza have swept campuses across Canada.

At McGill University in downtown Montreal, pro-Palestinian student protesters have set up an encampment on the front lawn.

Like their counterparts in the US, students are demanding the college divest from companies with ties to Israel.

The university has attempted to disperse the protesters, saying it had requested police assistance after dialogue with student representatives failed to reach a resolution.

On May 2, a Quebec Superior Court judge rejected an injunction request that would have forced the pro-Palestinian protesters to leave their encampment.

Pro-Palestinian protesters have also set up encampments at the University of Toronto’s downtown campus and at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, among others, according to public broadcaster CBC News.

Lebanon

Hundreds of students gathered at campuses in Lebanon in late April, waving Palestinian flags and demanding their universities boycott companies that do business in Israel, Reuters reported.

In the capital, images showed students at the American University of Beirut protesting the war in Gaza outside the gates.

Some protesters said they were inspired by protests on US campuses.

“We want to show to show the whole world that we have not forgotten the Palestinian cause and that the young generation – which is aware and cultured – is still with the Palestinian cause,” Ali al-Muslem, 19, told Reuters.

Israel’s military and Iran-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon have routinely exchanged fire since October 7. More than 300 people — mostly fighters — have died in Israeli strikes. Eight civilians have been killed in Hezbollah attacks in northern Israel since last October.

Saudi Arabia and the United States are finalizing the details of a landmark deal to strengthen bilateral trade and defense – but an agreement will not be reached if the kingdom and Israel do not establish diplomatic relations, US officials said.

A defense treaty would solidify the seven-decade security alliance between Saudi Arabia and the US, and tie them ever closer to each other as US adversaries like Iran, Russia and China seek to expand their influence in the Middle East. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long sought relations with Saudi Arabia, home of Islam’s holiest sites, as the move could domino across the wider Muslim world.

The US is currently negotiating one mega-deal involving three components, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said on Thursday.

The first component includes a package of agreements between the US and Saudi Arabia, another component has the normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel, and a third component for a pathway to a Palestinian state.

“All of them are linked together. None go forward without the others,” Miller said.

For normalization to be realized between Saudi Arabia and Israel, there has to be a pathway for a Palestinian state and “calm in Gaza,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told a panel at an economic conference in Riyadh this week.

“The work that Saudi Arabia and the United States have been doing together in terms of our own agreements, I think is potentially very close to completion, but then in order to move forward with normalization two things will be required: calm in Gaza and a credible pathway to a Palestinian state,” he said.

On the sidelines of the forum, Blinken met Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman (MBS) to discuss the deal, the State Department said. Experts describe the Saudi-US pact as a “comprehensive set of understandings” that would include security, economic and technological guarantees to the kingdom, as well as support for its civilian nuclear program.

The normalization deal is expected to be modeled on the Abraham Accords, a set of treaties that saw four Arab states recognize Israel in 2020 that sidestepped the longstanding Arab demand for an independent Palestinian state as a prerequisite to recognition of Israel. MBS had said earlier that a pact with Israel would be “the biggest historical deal since the Cold War.”

In 2021, Netanyahu described the Accords as enabling Israel to replace “the old and dangerous doctrine of territories in exchange for peace and brought peace in exchange for peace, without giving up a single inch” and sought to expand what he called the “circle of peace.”

Since then, the Biden administration has made Israel-Saudi normalization central to its Middle East policy. The US and Saudi Arabia had continued discussions on the pact in 2023, and Blinken was expected to fly to Riyadh on October 10 last year to discuss the details, just three days before Hamas attacked Israel, postponing the effort.

The subsequent Israeli assault on Gaza, which has left the enclave in ruins and killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, may have changed the parameters of the deal for Saudi Arabia, analysts say. Now Israel’s acceptance of a component calling for an “irreversible” pathway to a Palestinian state would be key to the crucial normalization component of the wider deal.

“We have the broad outlines on what needs to happen on the Palestinian front…credible, irreversible [pathway to a Palestinian state],” Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan told a World Economic Forum panel without referencing normalization with Israel.

Netanyahu has repeatedly rejected the prospect of an independent Palestinian state, arguing that it would hurt Israel’s security, and is adamant on pressing ahead with the Gaza war until Hamas is eliminated.

Those obstacles might see the kingdom attempt to close the bilateral deal without the normalization component of the agreement, analysts say. But such an approach would face major hurdles. An agreement establishing a firm US military commitment to Saudi Arabia’s security, without the normalization component, is unlikely to pass through the US Congress, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham has said.

“If there is a mutual defense agreement negotiated in the form of a treaty, it needs 67 votes in the Senate to become binding. Without normalizing the Israeli-Saudi relationship and ensuring the security needs of Israel regarding the Palestinian file, there would be very few votes for a mutual defense agreement between the US and Saudi Arabia,” Graham said on X in response to reports of Saudi Arabia opting for a “plan B” to the agreement.

Experts say that Biden could be able to bypass Congress to reach the agreement by modeling it around another security agreement it signed with Bahrain last year.

“There is another pathway, modeled around the Comprehensive Security Integration and Prosperity Agreement the Biden administration signed with Bahrain in September of 2023,” according to Firas Maksad, Senior Fellow and Director for Strategic Outreach at the Middle East Institute in Washington DC. The text of that pact “explicitly states that other parties may be invited to join,” he said.

However, there has been no indication that the Biden administration would opt to bypass Congress for the bilateral agreement with Saudi Arabia to pass.

A victory for Saudi Arabia

For Saudi Arabia, a bilateral agreement with the US would be a major victory, marking an end to the era when Biden sought to undermine MBS by pledging to turn his country into a “pariah” after the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi at the hands of Saudi intelligence officials in Turkey.

The deal would also “consolidate America’s dominance in the Middle East for generations and would blunt the growing challenge posed by both China and Russia,” Maksad said.

MBS is eager to bolster the kingdom’s defenses and diversify the Saudi economy away from hydrocarbons, as he pursues an ambitious economic policy dubbed Vision 2030. The kingdom has a nascent civilian nuclear program that the Crown Prince is keen to develop with US support.

“Saudi Arabia would like to make a deal with the United States and this is probably the best time during the Biden administration to help some of the stickier issues get through Congress,” according to Karen Young, a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, referring to enrichment of nuclear materials.

Another sticking point in any US support for such a program is American opposition to local enrichment of uranium, a key component for nuclear power that could also be used to develop nuclear weapons. Saudi Arabia is rich in uranium deposits and has insisted on being able to enrich it domestically, which would be a first for an Arab state. Neighboring United Arab Emirates, for example, imports enriched uranium to power its nuclear plants.

On Wednesday, Democratic Senator Edward J. Markey, co-chair of the Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control Working Group, called on the Biden administration to ensure that Riyadh commits to forego enrichment and reprocessing of nuclear material, citing MBS as saying previously that Saudi Arabia would develop a nuclear weapon if Iran does too.

“The path towards Middle East peace should not include the prospect of a nuclear-armed Saudi Arabia, which would undermine the interests of the US, allies, and partners across the region,” he said in his letter.

The Saudi-US pact would make it incumbent on both countries to work together to deter and confront any external aggression, but doesn’t formalize it as a treaty alliance, according to Maksad.

“It is often described as Article 4.5, stopping just short of a treaty alliance that requires Senate approval but providing for a written commitment of mutual defense,” Maksad said, referring to the NATO treaty’s Article 5, which obliges all member states to come to the defense of any state facing attack.

“There will still be room for a multilateral security agreement that eventually includes Israel, along with Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the U.S. and others, when political circumstances allow…the choice will be Israel’s, when it’s ready to put something on the table that moves the ball forward towards a two-state solution with the Palestinians,” Maksad said.

Dozens of Palestinian children eagerly lined up for a meal in Deir al-Balah, in central Gaza, as aid workers unloaded huge saucepans of stew and rice from parked trucks under the bright sun.

The World Central Kitchen, a US-based non-profit that focuses on fighting hunger around the world, resumed work in Gaza this week, after a hiatus following a series of Israeli military strikes that killed seven staffers in April and drew the world’s condemnation. Israeli forces have previously taken responsibility for the deaths, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offering rare public acknowledgment and a promise to investigate the “tragic incident.”

World Central Kitchen founder Jose Andres wrote on Wednesday that returning to Gaza after losing his staff was not easy, but that the organization could not “stand by” as people in Gaza suffered.

“The decision… to restart feeding in Gaza is both the hardest and the simplest one we could make,” Andres wrote on X. “Hard, because only a month has passed since seven of our WCK colleagues were killed in an IDF attack. These humanitarian heroes risked everything to feed people they did not know and would never meet. And yet simple, because the need is so great. We cannot stand by while so many people are so desperate for the essentials of life.”

Human rights agencies have long warned of a spiraling humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza under Israel’s military’s seven-month assault, launched in response to the Hamas-led October 7 terror attacks. More than 34,600 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli attacks in Gaza as of May 1, according to the local ministry of health.

Over the course of the war, more than 1.9 million Palestinians have been forcibly displaced, according to the UN, with many sheltering in crammed tent camps that cannot offer enough access to sanitation or food.

The entire population of more than 2.2 million people is now at risk of famine, and at least 30 children have already died of malnutrition and dehydration in Gaza, according to the health ministry.

“Since yesterday after we resumed working, we could see people’s desperation. People have no food, and we’ve all been displaced,” he said.

“[The World Central Kitchen’s] food makes people feel that they are at home. It is decent food, it is clean. They also treat people well.”

“I say thank you and may God protect them.”

A desperate need for more aid

Human rights organizations have repeatedly warned that Israel’s strict limitations on passage into Gaza is diminishing critical supplies and drastically hindering relief efforts within the Palestinian territory.

In March, the United Nations’ human rights chief, Volker Türk, warned Israel’s sustained restrictions on aid into Gaza may amount to the war crime of starvation.

Israel says there is “no limit” on the amount of aid that can enter Gaza, but its inspection regime on aid trucks has meant that only a tiny fraction of the amount of food and other supplies that used to enter Gaza daily before the war is getting in now.

Shortly after the deaths of the World Central Kitchen workers in April, Israeli officials agreed to open the Erez border crossing into northern Gaza to allow aid deliveries. Food shortages have been the worst there after Israel concentrated its military offensive there in the early days of the war.

On Wednesday, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant described the opening of Erez as “essential” to “increase the volume of humanitarian aid into Gaza.”

But efforts to increase aid have also run into repeated trouble. At least 48 aid trucks were blocked on Wednesday after Israeli settlers attacked a aid convoy en route to Gaza via the southern Kerem Shalom crossing, according to Jordanian authorities.

The US State Department also said Thursday that a delivery of aid that passed through Erez crossing earlier in the week had been temporarily intercepted by Hamas, which controls the isolated enclave, before being retrieved by the United Nations.

A violent hailstorm wreaked havoc on vineyards in Chablis in the famous French wine region of Burgundy Wednesday evening, delivering another weather blow to already hard-hit local Chardonnay winemakers.

Huge hailstones, ranging from the size of a ping pong ball to the size of a lime, rained down on north Burgundy, with Chablis particularly badly affected, according to French weather agency Météo-France.

The precipitation was part of an violent and intense storm known as a supercell storm, Météo-France said.

“We’ve never seen anything like this, it’s dramatic,” Julie Fèvre, a winemaker, told  BFM.

“Everything is partially destroyed,” Paul-Étienne Defaix, another winemaker said.

Just last week, grapevines in Chablis froze during a sharp drop in temperatures, alarming winegrowers.

Government bodies are looking for ways to help winemakers following the destruction, the French agriculture minister Marc Fesneau posted on X.

Chablis is famous for dry white wine made from the renowned Chardonnay grape, which is at the heart of the local economy. Some 38 million bottles of Chablis Chardonnay wine are sold every year, generating an estimated $340 million turnover, according to the Burgundy wine association.

Around 67% of Chablis wine is exported to foreign markets, the association said.

“If winemakers don’t work well and make a nice harvest, it disturbs everyone: craftspeople, business owners, the whole economic activity way beyond Chablis,” the Chablis mayor told BFM.

Extreme weather, including drought and heat as well as frost and hailstorms, is affecting the wine industry globally.

The world’s wine harvest in 2023 was the lowest in 61 years because of “extreme climatic conditions” as well as widespread fungal diseases, an April report from the International Organisation of Vine and Wine revealed.

Some winemakers in France are trying to remain hopeful.

“We have no choice. Loss of morale won’t advance anything,” Louis Poitout, a winemaker in Chablis told BFM.

“We winemakers and farmers are generally quite combative. We have to try and find solutions, and we’ll find them,” he said.