There are constant reminders in our everyday surroundings of the many chapters of life that have unfolded on Earth.

Rocks and dirt preserve evidence of the epochs that came before ours, such as the oldest known fossilized forest on the planet where unusual trees once grew 390 million years ago.

Fossils reveal the diversity of life that has flourished and disappeared over millennia, and graves tell the stories of humans who lived through unimaginable hardship centuries ago.

The one constant about life on Earth is that it changes continuously. Even scientists can’t agree on whether or not a new chapter of Earth’s history has begun.

While it may seem impossible to bring long extinct creatures back to life, scientists are achieving breakthroughs that could enable a comeback, perhaps in the not so distant future.

Back to the future

An ambitious plan to genetically engineer a woolly mammoth — a giant that hasn’t roamed Earth in 4,000 years — has taken another step toward reality.

Colossal Biosciences, a Dallas-based company aiming to create a mammoth hybrid that looks exactly like its extinct counterpart, has reprogrammed cells from an Asian elephant. The species is the closest living relative to the woolly mammoth.

The now modified cells could eventually be used to help the hybrid mammoth grow a woolly coat and develop other traits needed to survive in the Arctic.

The company believes that resurrecting the woolly mammoth could possibly help restore the vulnerable Arctic tundra, which is at risk as the world warms.

Across the universe

The far-reaching infrared gaze of the James Webb Space Telescope has spied a mysterious galaxy that existed when the universe was only 700 million years old — in its adolescence, astronomically speaking.

The discovery surprised scientists, who found that it was the oldest “dead” galaxy ever observed, and it stopped forming stars almost as soon as star birth in the universe began.

Violent interactions between stars or black holes can deprive galaxies of the gas needed to form stars, but so far, no theories explain exactly what happened in this distant galaxy.

Curiosities

Bread and cheese are among the best culinary pairings, but perhaps not when the bread in question is 8,600 years old and the cheese is known for its pungent aroma.

Archaeologists discovered a palm-size spongy residue at an ancient oven structure in Turkey and determined that it was an uncooked round of fermented bread made in 6600 BC, making it the world’s oldest known loaf.

Meanwhile, France’s favorite Camembert cheese may be facing an extinction crisis.

The fungus used during the cheesemaking process, which gives Camembert both its distinct smell and rich flavor, is in short supply, causing connoisseurs to worry that Camembert’s days are numbered.

Fantastic creatures

Strolling through Earth’s forests 120 million years ago would have afforded a familiar sight amid an otherwise dinosaur-dominated landscape: birds. Well, that is, until the feathered creatures opened their beaks to reveal rows of teeth.

Back then, toothy birds were the norm. But researchers have unearthed a fossil of a newfound species, dubbed “Attenborough’s strange bird” in honor of the British naturalist Sir David Attenborough, that was an oddball because it was toothless.

The discovery of the robinlike bird is changing the way scientists think about the complicated story of avian evolution.

Separately, an eagle-eyed amateur paleontologist out for a stroll with his dog happened to spot an exposed bone that led to the discovery of a nearly complete titanosaur skeleton connected from skull to tail.

A long time ago

Scientists have used a uniquely celestial method to determine that ancient humans were in Europe 1.4 million years ago.

Pebbles buried within a quarry in Ukraine along with stone tools found beneath layers of earth underwent analysis for radioactive particles locked inside the mineral grains.

In the distant past, when the rocks were still at the surface, cosmic rays, or charged particles that travel across the universe and land on Earth, had penetrated the stone, creating the radioactive markers that help researchers determine how long the archaeological layer was buried.

The freshly dated artifacts are the earliest known evidence of hominins in Europe. The team is still trying to determine exactly which species of early human made the tools, but the study findings have provided clues.

Explorations

Grab a cup of coffee and catch up on these fascinating reads:

— Towering pyramid-like star dunes are some of the tallest features in Earth’s deserts, and researchers have uncovered evidence that the distinctive mounds began forming thousands of years ago.

— A 13-year-old may have cracked the code on how ancient Greek inventor Archimedes’ fabled “death ray” could have harnessed sunlight to burn ships.

— Did you glimpse the 2017 total solar eclipse? Expect this year’s eclipse on April 8 to be different in several key ways, including duration and visibility of the celestial event.

Two police stations near Haiti’s National Palace were attacked by armed individuals Friday night, as gang violence in the Caribbean nation’s capital of Port-au-Prince continued to spiral.

The Haitian capital has been gripped by a wave of highly coordinated gang attacks on law enforcement and state institutions in what gang leader Jimmy Cherizier has described as an attempt to overthrow Prime Minister Ariel Henry’s government.

Armed groups have burned down police stations and released thousands of inmates from two prisons, and Cherizier has warned of “a civil war that will end in genocide” if the prime minister does not step down.

The US State Department arranged for the evacuation of non-essential personnel from the US embassy overnight due to “heightened gang violence.” US Southern Command said in a statement Sunday the move was consistent with “standard practice for Embassy security augmentation worldwide.”

“Our Embassy remains focused on advancing U.S. government efforts to support the Haitian people,” US Southern Command said, adding that the evacuation helps to “allow our Embassy mission operations to continue.”

President Joe Biden approved the operation, according to a National Security Council spokesperson, and remains “deeply concerned” about the situation.

Henry has had difficulty returning to the country since leaving for Kenya last week to sign an agreement for a Kenyan-led multinational mission to restore security back home.

On Friday, Haitian police union Synapoha encouraged all police officers to reinforce their police stations. “We need to stay united to not lose our symbol, the police. The leadership needs to put adequate support for all the units,” the union said.

The violence comes just a day after intruders broke into Port-au-Prince’s Caribbean Port Services (CPS) terminal, a major player in Haiti’s food import supply chain.

But the UN said Friday the police had been “able to push back coordinated gang attacks on key infrastructures, including the airport.”

“We remain deeply concerned by the rapidly deteriorating security situation amid ongoing gang violence and sporadic confrontations between heavily armed gangs and police forces in some parts of Port-au-Prince,” Stephane Dujarric, spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General, said.

The Haitian government has decreed a state of emergency will run until April 3 in the country’s West Region and the capital Port-au-Prince and a curfew will remain in force until March 10.

The chaos in Haiti has forced tens of thousands of people to flee their homes in the past few days, adding to the more than 300,000 already displaced by gang violence.

The head of Doctors without Borders in Haiti said she is concerned about the civilian displacement, pointing to the lack of necessities.

Hospitals have been targeted by gangs. Only one public hospital is still operating in Port-au-Prince’s metropolitan area, according to an official from the country’s Civil Protection.

Pierre Espérance, Executive Director of NGO the Haitian Human Rights Defense Network, called Haiti’s situation “chaotic” with “no end in sight” and said the country had “completely collapsed.”

Canada said a protest lasting 90 minutes broke out in front of its embassy on Thursday, with a burning tire being thrown over the outside gate, while the US has said it’s looking into “contingency options” at its embassy.

CARICOM (the Caribbean Community and Common Market), a regional bloc of 25 countries which works on economic integration, security and social development, is to hold a meeting on Haiti in the Jamaican capital of Kingston on Monday, according to the UN.

Haiti is a member state, but it is unclear if Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry will be at the meeting.

Jim Rogers, Rafy Rivera, Michael Conte and Abel Alvarado contributed to the reporting.

Two police stations near Haiti’s National Palace were attacked by armed individuals Friday night, as gang violence in the Caribbean nation’s capital of Port-au-Prince continued to spiral.

The Haitian capital has been gripped by a wave of highly coordinated gang attacks on law enforcement and state institutions in what gang leader Jimmy Cherizier has described as an attempt to overthrow Prime Minister Ariel Henry’s government.

Armed groups have burned down police stations and released thousands of inmates from two prisons, and Cherizier has warned of “a civil war that will end in genocide” if the prime minister does not step down.

The US State Department arranged for the evacuation of non-essential personnel from the US embassy overnight due to “heightened gang violence.” US Southern Command said in a statement Sunday the move was consistent with “standard practice for Embassy security augmentation worldwide.”

“Our Embassy remains focused on advancing U.S. government efforts to support the Haitian people,” US Southern Command said, adding that the evacuation helps to “allow our Embassy mission operations to continue.”

President Joe Biden approved the operation, according to a National Security Council spokesperson, and remains “deeply concerned” about the situation.

Henry has had difficulty returning to the country since leaving for Kenya last week to sign an agreement for a Kenyan-led multinational mission to restore security back home.

On Friday, Haitian police union Synapoha encouraged all police officers to reinforce their police stations. “We need to stay united to not lose our symbol, the police. The leadership needs to put adequate support for all the units,” the union said.

The violence comes just a day after intruders broke into Port-au-Prince’s Caribbean Port Services (CPS) terminal, a major player in Haiti’s food import supply chain.

But the UN said Friday the police had been “able to push back coordinated gang attacks on key infrastructures, including the airport.”

“We remain deeply concerned by the rapidly deteriorating security situation amid ongoing gang violence and sporadic confrontations between heavily armed gangs and police forces in some parts of Port-au-Prince,” Stephane Dujarric, spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General, said.

The Haitian government has decreed a state of emergency will run until April 3 in the country’s West Region and the capital Port-au-Prince and a curfew will remain in force until March 10.

The chaos in Haiti has forced tens of thousands of people to flee their homes in the past few days, adding to the more than 300,000 already displaced by gang violence.

The head of Doctors without Borders in Haiti said she is concerned about the civilian displacement, pointing to the lack of necessities.

Hospitals have been targeted by gangs. Only one public hospital is still operating in Port-au-Prince’s metropolitan area, according to an official from the country’s Civil Protection.

Pierre Espérance, Executive Director of NGO the Haitian Human Rights Defense Network, called Haiti’s situation “chaotic” with “no end in sight” and said the country had “completely collapsed.”

Canada said a protest lasting 90 minutes broke out in front of its embassy on Thursday, with a burning tire being thrown over the outside gate, while the US has said it’s looking into “contingency options” at its embassy.

CARICOM (the Caribbean Community and Common Market), a regional bloc of 25 countries which works on economic integration, security and social development, is to hold a meeting on Haiti in the Jamaican capital of Kingston on Monday, according to the UN.

Haiti is a member state, but it is unclear if Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry will be at the meeting.

Jim Rogers, Rafy Rivera, Michael Conte and Abel Alvarado contributed to the reporting.

Several major news agencies have withdrawn an image distributed by Kensington Palace showing Catherine, Princess of Wales, and her children, saying they believe the photo has been manipulated.

The photograph was the first officially released image of the princess since she underwent abdominal surgery in January. The image was released on Sunday along with a message from the princess thanking the public for its support while marking Mother’s Day in the United Kingdom.

The Associated Press noted that “at closer inspection it appears that the source has manipulated the image.”

AFP said it had withdrawn the photo due to “an editorial issue.” The image “may no longer be used in any manner. Please immediately remove it from all your online services,” AFP said.

This story is breaking and will be updated.

The Irish government conceded on Saturday that it had lost two referenda to change what it called “sexist” language in the constitution in an embarrassing defeat.

Ireland went to the polls on Friday in votes deliberately timed to coincide with International Women’s Day to replace two constitutional references.

One said that the the family unit was “founded” on marriage, the other that a woman supports the Irish state through “her life within the home.”

Prime Minister Leo Varadkar on Saturday afternoon said it was clear that the referenda had not passed.

“I think it’s clear at this stage, that the family amendment and the care amendment referendums have been defeated,” Varadkar said at a press conference in Dublin.

Official results for both votes are expected to be announced separately later on Saturday.

Varadkar had championed the vote as a chance to change “very old-fashioned, very sexist language about women”, according to Reuters.

There was a low turnout reported throughout the day, in some areas less than 30% of registered voters, PA Media reported.

If the votes passed, the constitution was to say the family is based “on marriage or on other durable relationships.”

Religious and socially conservative groups who campaigned for a “No” vote took issue with the concept of a “durable relationship” and argued in support of the constitution’s original wording.

In a charged RTE debate days before the vote, conservative campaigner Maria Steen clashed with the Irish deputy prime minister, Micheál Martin, insisting that “the reality is that the majority of women do the majority of work in the home.”

Ireland’s constitution, published in 1937, was strongly influenced by Catholic social teachings, according to legal scholars. In recent decades Catholic influence has slowly decreased, and the country’s Church has been rocked by a series of abuse scandals involving the clergy.

Ireland has held referendums on a number of social issues in recent years, with voters repeatedly supporting progressive changes to the country’s constitution.

In 2015, voters overwhelmingly supported the legalization of same-sex marriage. Three years later, they cast ballots to end an abortion ban, and in 2019, divorce laws were liberalized after another referendum.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

It was just over a year ago that Toyota appeared to acknowledge it had dropped the ball on electric vehicles. Its CEO, Akio Toyoda, stepped down from his post, painting himself as “an old-fashioned” man unfit to take the world’s biggest carmaker through the electric revolution.

But since then, the Japanese company has done little to embrace a fully electric future, instead sticking firmly to its wildly popular hybrid cars, even though they typically emit more planet-heating pollution than EVs.

Auto experts say the company’s foot dragging on EVs was no fumble, rather, a calculated strategy to give consumers what they want — although EV sales are rising, problems like affordability, battery range and sparse charging stations are dampening growth in demand.

Toyota’s decision to favor hybrids has paid off handsomely: The company is crushing its rivals, including the all-electric Tesla. Globally, it sold 11.2 million cars last year, more than any other automaker. A third were hybrids; fewer than 1% were EVs.

Some experts say Toyota’s lobbying is holding the EV industry back, and Toyota’s plans will have huge implications for global warming. Road transportation accounts for around 25% of global carbon pollution. And as the industry leader, whatever Toyota does, its rivals will consider following.

If Toyota embraced EVs sooner, it would push others in the same direction, said Daniel Sperling, founding director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California.

“It would put a lot more pressure on Ford or GM to move faster,” he said. “It would pressure EPA to move faster.”

As other automakers start to review their own EV investments, observers are now debating what role EVs and hybrids will have in the future. Those more concerned with the climate crisis are asking a bigger question: what does this all mean for the planet?

Which cars pollute the most?

To know exactly how much planet-warming pollution a car emits, its whole life cycle needs to be taken into account — not only what comes out of the tailpipe, but what it took to build the car and get it to the dealership.

Gas-powered cars, hybrids and EVs all emit roughly the same amount of pollution to manufacture, until you get to producing the battery.

Fully electric cars use large batteries made of materials that require heavy mining. That makes them 40% dirtier to produce on average than hybrid and gas-powered vehicles, one study shows.

But the picture changes over their whole life cycle. Gas-powered cars are the cleanest to make, but are the dirtiest over their lifetimes because their tailpipe pollution is so high.

EVs might be the most carbon intensive to manufacture, but they emit the least carbon pollution over their lifetimes: 40% less than a gas-powered cars. Another study shows that after around two years, the pollution saved by driving an EV offsets the pollution it generated during production.

Hybrids fall in the middle; on average, they produce around 17% more carbon pollution than EVs. But not all hybrids are created equal.

A pure hybrid runs on gasoline and stores excess energy from the brakes, and occasionally from the gas engine, making them more fuel-efficient than regular cars.

Plug-in hybrids, on the other hand, offer the best of both worlds — the reliability and range of a gas car but with less pollution and fuel use, and better affordability than EVs. Plug-in hybrids use EV-like batteries and can typically go for 20 to 40 miles powered by electricity, but they also have fuel tanks and can switch to pure hybrids once the battery is depleted.

Some plug-in hybrids are going head-to-head with EVs on full life cycle pollution. A report from the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy showed Toyota’s plug-in hybrid, the Prius Prime SE, is the least-polluting vehicle on American roads, according to its 2024 rankings, even compared to EVs. That’s because of a combination of factors, including the Prime’s weight and shape, which make fuel use more efficient.

The Prius Prime is a trophy vehicle for Toyota, because it supports the company’s vision of the future, where consumers have the choice between EVs and these more advanced hybrids.

“Over time, EVs are definitely better, when you look at their overall life cycle, but the challenge is, because they are also considerably more expensive and people can’t necessarily afford them, the number of those vehicles that you can get on the road in the near term is going to be far fewer,” said Sam Abuelsamid, the principal e-mobility research analyst at market intelligence firm Guidehouse Insights.

Of the 14.5 million cars Americans bought last year, just over 1 million were EVs, Abuelsamid said. That means there are millions of people who may not be able to afford EVs but could potentially buy a hybrid, he said. And that would still mean less climate pollution on the road overall.

“Right now, because of supply chain challenges of materials and getting general affordability of electric vehicles down, we can actually have a greater overall (climate) impact from selling more hybrids compared to the number of EVs that we are able to sell today,” he said.

And fully electric cars won’t be truly “green” until the energy that charges them comes from renewable sources, like wind and solar. For now, how much a car pollutes during daily use depends on where it’s located.

Driving an EV in California is nearly five times cleaner in terms of carbon pollution than a hybrid because around half of the state’s electricity is generated from renewables and nuclear energy. Even compared to a plug-in hybrid, an EV emits 2.8 times less pollution in California.

But in West Virginia, where 90% of power is generated from coal, an EV is only marginally cleaner than a hybrid or plug-in vehicle.

Delaying the transition

As the car market moves steadily toward all-electric, Toyota has been lobbying governments for at least three years to slow that transition, according to an analysis of the company’s engagement activities by InfluenceMap, the climate think tank. Toyota has done so in the US, Canada, UK and Australia, among others, the analysis found.

In a 2022 report, InfluenceMap ranked Toyota as the 10th most influential company blocking climate policy action globally out of more than 400 companies in its database.

Such a delay would be a huge win for Toyota, which supplied just 1.3% of the United States’ EVs — but more than 14% of all cars — last year, under the Toyota and Lexus brands, according to Cox Automotive and Kelley Blue Book.

Despite the dominance of hybrids and debate around EVs, demand for fully electric cars is still growing in the US, just not quite as quickly as forecast. The nation crossed a key threshold at the end of last year: 1.2 million electric vehicles were sold — a 46.3% jump from 2022.

That point has been getting lost as some automakers and groups jockey to weaken EPA rules, said Albert Gore, the executive director of EV trade group the Zero Emission Transportation Association.

Aggressive messaging against the EPA’s proposed rule and campaigns against electrification created a “false narrative” that EV demand is falling, Gore said, when it is clearly still rising.

“Once the rule is finalized and we get past the way it has warped the conversation about EVs for the past year, I’m eager for all of us to turn our focus back to the major industrial revolution taking place around the country,” he said.

The company used the same language in a July 2023 letter to the EPA.

In the memo, Toyota Motor North America group vice president of government affairs, Stephen Ciccone, described the EPA’s EV proposal as “draconian,” saying it was: “Bad for the environment. Bad for the country. Bad for the consumer. And bad for the auto industry.”

“Never before in the 120-year history of the US auto industry has an administration used its power more forcibly to dictate the future of the auto industry,” Ciccone wrote in the memo, saying the EPA’s mandate had caused an “existential crisis” in the industry.

“For more than two years, Toyota and our dealer partners have stood alone in the fight against unrealistic BEV mandates,” Ciccone wrote, referring to battery electric vehicles. “We have taken a lot of hits from environmental activists, the media, and some politicians. But we have not — and we will not — back down.”

Toyota confirmed the accuracy of the memo’s contents but did not comment specifically on it.

Akio Toyoda, who still serves as the company’s chairman, once said he couldn’t see more than 30% of the world’s cars being EVs at any time. And that’s where the company’s mid-term plans are now: It says it wants to produce 3.5 million EVs, around a third of its current sales, by 2030. But by that year, many of its competitors are planning to go entirely electric.

Some of Toyota’s own shareholders are pushing back on the company’s negative climate lobbying, including the Danish pension fund AkademikerPension, which said in a letter that Toyota was gaining “a global laggard status on climate action within the auto sector.”

“Toyota is a conservative, cautious company,” UC’s Sperling said. “Their incrementalist approach is to embrace plug-in hybrids. That’s a next step for them, it’s not disruptive in the market and for the consumer. They move slow; they do good engineering. You look at their behavior now — in that context it’s not surprising at all.”

Russia has begun using a powerful aerial bomb that has decimated Ukrainian defenses and tilted the balance on the front lines. It has done so by converting a basic Soviet-era weapon into a gliding bomb that can cause a crater fifteen meters wide.

The bomb is the FAB-1500, essentially a 1.5-tonne weapon of which nearly half comprises high explosives. It is delivered from above by fighter jets from a distance of some 60-70 kilometers, out of range of many Ukrainian air defenses. The FAB-1500 is another example of how Russia is fighting its war in Ukraine, inflicting massive destruction before trying to take territory.

Recent videos from the battlelines in Donetsk region have illustrated the immense power of these bombs as they have hit thermal power plants, factories and tower blocks – places from which the Ukrainians coordinate their defenses.

The FAB-1500 is directed towards its target by a guidance system and pop-out wings that allow it to glide towards its target. Joseph Trevithick, who has written about the development of the bomb for TheWarZone, says they “offer a new and far more destructive stand-off strike option for many of Russia’s tactical jets that also help pilots stay further away from enemy defenses.”

“Why they are using the FAB-1500? Because the damage done by it is very serious. If you survive, you are guaranteed to have a contusion.”

“It puts a lot of pressure on soldiers’ morale.  Not all of our guys can withstand it. While they are more or less used to the FAB-500 by now, but the FAB-1500 is hell.”

The use of FAB bombs has become a critical element in the Russian offensive in Donetsk region, especially in razing to the ground Ukrainian defenses in and around Avdiivka, which fell in February.

The FAB-1500 is the most powerful in a family of Soviet-era ‘dumb bombs’ now being converted at a plant near Moscow into a cheap but potent version of a missile.

Justin Bronk, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London, says that “while manufacturing the glide kits is a bottleneck, the basic explosive package is something they have in huge numbers.”

So the Russians have very heavy firepower to bring to bear on fixed defenses, increasing Ukrainian casualties, though not as yet enough to fundamentally change the frontlines.

Russian military bloggers began referring to the weapon last September when its accuracy was being tested. The Fighterbomber telegram channel noted that “after many months of trials and errors,” a FAB-1500 had “accurately” hit its “combat target” for the first time.

Fighterbomber, which is close to the Russian military and has nearly half-a-million subscribers, claimed that the newly developed glide kit had increased the range of the bombs. It also said the  FAB-1500 was accurate to within five meters.

Within a few weeks, both Ukrainian and Russian sources spoke of the use of the massive bomb in Kherson in the south and Kharkiv in the north.

Then in January, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu was seen toured the plant of the JSC Tactical Missiles Corporation – a major arms manufacturer – in the Moscow region, being shown the wrap-around wings developed for the bomb. According to the Ministry video, the company said it had developed “a high-precision” munition converting old free-fall bombs into weapons that would glide to their target.

The director of the plant proudly reported to Shoigu that productivity had increased by 40% as it had shifted to 24/7 production.

Bronk notes that the converted FAB bombs can only be used against fixed targets, but in the grinding attritional war in the east, the main Ukrainian positions are generally known to the Russians.

The Russian planes dispatching these bombs are not invulnerable. The Ukrainian air force has claimed that it has brought down several Su-34 fighters in recent weeks. But most Ukrainian air defenses do not have the range to hit planes some 70 kilometers away.

“The attack aviation Su-35 and Su-34 bombers don’t approach as close as they would like to. Still, if we had more long-range air-defense we would be able to take down these jets further [from our frontlines],” Ihnat added.

Bronk says the development of the glide bombs has given the Russians a way to use their tactical air force (as opposed to long-range bombers) more effectively after its limited role in the first phase of the war.  He says the US Patriot complex is just about the only defense that has the range to counter the threat, but the Ukrainians have a limited number. And the missiles used by Patriots are in short supply given the delay in the US Congress passing a further package of military aid for Ukraine.

Ukrainian officials from President Volodymyr Zelensky downwards have almost daily pleaded for longer range air defense weapons to fend off the Russian aerial threat. The F-16 combat aircraft on which Ukrainian pilots are now training are unlikely to take to the skies over Ukraine until the second half of the year but may force Russian combat aircraft to stay further away.

In the meantime, Ukrainian forces on the frontlines, especially in Donetsk, are exposed to a blitz of Russian air strikes – sometimes more than 100 in a day, according to the Ukrainian General Staff.

Just as the Russians previously wiped out Ukrainian positions with intensive artillery, they are now using a seemingly inexhaustible supply of these devastating bombs to leave Ukrainian forces with nothing to defend and nowhere to shelter.

Indonesia’s transport ministry will launch an investigation after two Batik Air pilots fell asleep during a recent flight, according to state news agency Antara, citing the ministry’s civil aviation director-general M Kristi Endah Murni.

According to a preliminary report released Saturday by the National Transportation Safety Committee (KNKT), both the pilot and co-pilot fell asleep simultaneously for 28 minutes during a flight from Kendari in Southeast Sulawesi province to the capital Jakarta on January 25, causing navigational errors as “the aircraft was not in the correct flight path.”

None on board – including 153 passengers and four flight attendants – were injured during the flight, and there was no damage to the aircraft, the KNKT preliminary report said.

The flight, BTK6723, lasted two hours and 35 minutes, and successfully landed in Jakarta, according to Antara and the preliminary report.

According to the report, the second-in-command pilot had notified his co-pilot earlier in the day that he had not had “proper rest.”

In the flight before the incident, the second-in-command was able to sleep “for about 30 minutes.” After the aircraft departed Kendari and reached cruising altitude, the pilot-in-command asked for permission to also rest and the second-in-command took over the aircraft. Around 90 minutes into the flight, the second-in-command then “inadvertently fell asleep,” according to the report.

Twelve minutes after the last recorded transmission by the co-pilot, the Jakarta area control center (ACC) tried to reach the aircraft, but there was no reply from the pilots, it said. Around 28 minutes after the last recorded transmission, the pilot-in-command woke up and realized the plane was not in the correct flight path. At that point, he woke up the second-in-command and responded to the ACC, it said.

The preliminary report detailed that the pilot-in-command told the ACC that the flight had experienced a “radio communication problem” that had been resolved.

The report did not reveal the names of the pilots, but identified the pilot-in-command as a 32-year-old Indonesian male and the second-in-command as a 28-year-old Indonesian male. The second-in-command had one-month-old twins and “had to wake up several times to help his wife take care of the babies,” the report said.

“We will conduct an investigation and review of the night flight operation in Indonesia regarding the Fatigue Risk Management for Batik Air and other flight operators,” Murni said in a statement, according to Antara.

Flight crews of BTK6723 have also been grounded according to standard operating procedure pending further investigation, she added, according to the news agency.

She also said the agency will dispatch a flight inspector authorized on Resolution of Safety Issue (RSI) to investigate the cause of the incident and recommend mitigation measures to flight operators and supervisors, Antara reported.

The first official photograph of Catherine, Princess of Wales, since she underwent abdominal surgery in January has been released by her and her husband, William, Prince of Wales.

Kate is seen seated outside, surrounded by her three children, Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis, in the photo credited to the Prince of Wales.

“Thank you for your kind wishes and continued support over the last two months. Wishing everyone a Happy Mother’s Day,” a post on their official Instagram account said alongside the photo. The message was signed off by “C”.

Sunday marks Mother’s Day in the UK.

The 42-year-old, who is recovering from surgery at home in Windsor, is unlikely to return to public duties until Easter, Kensington Palace said in January.

The palace did not reveal what her surgery was for, but said that it was noncancerous.

Kate’s absence from the public eye and William pulling out of an important family event late last month over an undisclosed personal matter have contributed to a wave of gossip and speculation.

Kensington Palace made the rare move of pushing back against the rumours on Kate’s whereabouts and health, with a spokesperson saying in February that the palace “made it clear in January the timelines of the Princess’ recovery and we’d only be providing significant updates. That guidance stands.”

Her father-in-law, King Charles III, underwent surgery for a benign enlarged prostate in January, before revealing in February that he had a form of cancer. Buckingham Palace did not say what kind but said he is receiving treatment.