A massive jawbone found by a father-daughter fossil-collecting duo on a beach in Somerset along the English coast belonged to a newfound species that’s likely the largest known marine reptile to swim in Earth’s oceans.

Scientists consider the blue whale, which grows up to 110 feet (33.5 meters) long, to be the largest known animal ever to exist on the planet. But it’s possible that the 202 million-year-old reptile, known as an ichthyosaur or “fish lizard,” may have rivaled it in size.

The ichthyosaur’s jawbone, or surangular, was a long, curved bone at the top of the lower jaw just behind the teeth, and it measured more than 6.5 feet (2 meters) long. Researchers believe the creature, named Ichthyotitan severnensis, or “giant fish lizard of the Severn” in Latin, was more than 82 feet (25 meters) long, or the length of two city buses.

Justin and Ruby Reynolds, who live in Braunton, England, recovered the first pieces of the jawbone in May 2020 as they looked for fossils on the beach at Blue Anchor, Somerset. Ruby, 11 at the time, spotted the first chunk of bone, and then she and her dad found additional pieces together.

The remarkable find could shed more light on the prehistoric giant’s role in evolutionary history and the ocean ecosystem it called home, according to Marcello Perillo, a graduate student of evolutionary paleobiology at the University of Bonn in Germany. He is a coauthor of a new report describing the discovery that appeared Wednesday in the journal PLOS One.

Uncovering an unknown ichthyosaur

Encouraged at the thought that the fossil find could be significant, the Reynoldses reached out to Dr. Dean Lomax, a paleontologist at the University of Manchester and 1851 Research Fellow at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom. An ichthyosaur expert, Lomax has named several species new to science in recent years.

Intrigued by the fossil, Lomax contacted fossil collector Paul de la Salle, who had found a giant ichthyosaur jawbone that looked remarkably similar in May 2016. De la Salle discovered the first jawbone about 6.2 miles (10 kilometers) away from Devon along the coast at Lilstock.

Lomax, who served as lead author of the new report, and coauthor de la Salle had studied the earlier find together and coauthored an April 2018 paper on the discovery, suspecting it might belong to a previously unknown ichthyosaur species. But the researchers needed additional evidence, and a second, nearly identical jawbone presented an opportunity to potentially confirm a new species.

“To think that my discovery in 2016 would spark so much interest in these enormous creatures fills me with joy,” de la Salle said. “When I found the first jawbone, I knew it was something special. To have a second that confirms our findings is incredible. I am overjoyed.”

Together, the Reynoldses, Lomax, de la Salle and others returned to Blue Anchor to search for additional fragments. The team recovered other pieces that fit together perfectly, like completing a puzzle.

“When Ruby and I found the first two pieces we were very excited as we realised that this was something important and unusual,” Justin Reynolds said in a statement. “When I found the back part of the jaw, I was thrilled because that is one of the defining parts of Paul’s earlier discovery.”

The researchers reassembled the jawbone by October 2022.

“I was amazed by the find,” Lomax said in a statement. “In 2018, my team (including Paul de la Salle) studied and described Paul’s giant jawbone and we had hoped that one day another would come to light. This new specimen is more complete, better preserved, and shows that we now have two of these giant bones — called a surangular — that have a unique shape and structure. I became very excited, to say the least.”

Piecing together a giant ichthyosaur

The bones date back to the end of the Triassic Period, during a time known as the Rhaetian when ichthyosaurs swam in the oceans and dinosaurs reigned on land.

The newly discovered jawbone is a better-quality specimen than the first, showcasing the features of the creature’s surangular that makes it distinct from other species, Lomax said.

The jawbones of severnensis date back roughly 13 million years after giant icthyosaur fossils belonging to different species that were previously found in Canada and China.

Ichthyosaurs, which slightly resembled modern dolphins, first appeared about 250 million years ago. Over time, some of them evolved to have larger body sizes, and by 202 million years ago, ocean titans such as severnensis were likely the largest marine reptiles.

But scientists believe that the giant ichthyosaurs disappeared during an ocean acidification event that occurred around 200 million years ago, and surviving ichthyosaurs never grew to such gargantuan sizes again before vanishing 94 million years ago.

The researchers stressed that further evidence is needed to confirm the exact size of severnensis, and they remain hopeful that a complete skull or skeleton may be discovered in the future, Lomax said.

Coauthor Perillo of the University of Bonn studied the histology, or microscopic anatomy, of the ichthyosaur bones and discovered that the reptile was likely still growing at the time of its death, meaning an adult severnensis may have been larger than a blue whale.

Histology can reveal the hidden biological information in fossilized bones, revealing how individual animals developed and adapted to specialized lifestyles, he said. For example, some ichthyosaurs had bones that helped them dive deep or live in shallow waters.

“Through the histology we can also understand how fast and for how long they grew; in the case of (the ichthyosaur) we could not see convincing signs indicating a stoppage of growth,” Perillo said. “This supports the idea that, had the animal not died, it likely would have kept getting larger, over its estimated 25 meters. So much about these giants is still shrouded by mystery, but one fossil at a time we will be able to unravel their secret.”

Uncovering the history of marine reptiles is crucial to understanding ancient ocean ecosystems because the creatures filled various niches and shaped ocean food chains, Perillo said, creating competition and a “never-ending spiral of evolution.”

“From them we can understand how evolutionary laws shaped life, what led life to be what it is now,” he said. “We can understand how changes in the environment recoil on ecological communities and predict future ecological developments in our current environment.”

The future of paleontology

Paleontologist Mary Anning and her older brother, Joseph, discovered the first known ichthyosaur fossils in 1811 and 1812, decades before the word dinosaur was even part of our lexicon. Since then, fossils belonging to more than 100 species of ichthyosaurs have been identified around the world.

The discovery made by the Reynoldses and de la Salle will soon be displayed at the Bristol Museum and Art Gallery in the UK.

“It was so cool to discover part of this gigantic ichthyosaur. I am very proud to have played a part in a scientific discovery like this,” Ruby Reynolds said in a statement.

Lomax said he has enjoyed working with fossil collectors in recent years because he believes paleontology is a scientific field in which anyone can make a significant contribution.

“For Ruby Reynolds, not only did she find this important fossil but also helped to name a type of gigantic prehistoric reptile,” Lomax said in an email. “There are probably not many 15-year-olds who can say that! A Mary Anning in the making, perhaps. But, whether or not Ruby goes down the path of palaeontology or science, the important thing is that she and Justin and Paul have contributed immensely to palaeontology and our understanding of the ancient world.”

A popular lake in central Mexico that is a major tourist destination during the Day of the Dead festivities is drying up due to drought, deforestation, and the theft of its water.

The lake, which is part of a municipality that shares its name and is also known as the “magical town,” is being affected by several “environmental factors” and the “illicit extraction of water,” according to Patzcuaro’s local government.

The municipality says that a new committee created in April to help save the lake has already prevented the theft of “600,000 liters of water per day.”

Authorities say droughts are also affecting the lake, both because its water levels aren’t being replenished and because dry spells encourage criminals to siphon off its water to sell it on.

Both the town of Patzcuaro and its lake are major tourist destinations, especially during its November Day of the Dead festivities.

In a 25-minute video that has gone viral on social media, YouTuber El Perepeche walks over cracked soil where once there was water.

“As you can see, it’s all dry,” the YouTuber says as he walks over the soil.

The alarming scenes in the video, which shows some water from the shores of Janitzio Island, contrasts starkly to the images of fishermen and small boats that appear in government tourism videos of the lake.

Experts told Televisa that deforestation in surrounding areas was also affecting the lake’s water levels.

They said that when parts of the lake dried out it was common for people to plant crops and settle on the new land.

Police in Brazil have detained a woman suspected of wheeling a dead man, who she said was her uncle, to a bank to withdraw a four-figure loan.

Footage of the woman’s encounter with the bank has sparked a nationwide discussion in Brazil after going viral on social media. It appears to show the woman at the counter of a Rio de Janeiro branch of Itau Bank, propping up the head of an elderly man in a wheelchair and trying to get his hand to clasp a pen.

According to police, she was attempting to take out a loan equivalent to $3,000, which had already been approved by the bank but still needed the elderly man’s sign-off.

But the elderly man in the video – filmed by a bank attendant – remains unresponsive. His arm is limp and his head keeps falling back as she talks to him.

“Uncle, are you listening?” she asks him. “You need to sign. If you don’t sign, there’s no way. I can’t sign for you, it has to be you. What I can do, I do.”

“Sign it so you don’t give me any more headaches, having to go to the registry office. I can’t take it anymore,” the woman continues.

At that point, one of the bank attendants says, “I think he isn’t feeling well,” and a second attendant agrees.

Rio de Janeiro Civil police chief Fabio Luis Souza said the bank attendants then decided to call an ambulance. When paramedics arrived, they concluded that the man had been dead for a couple of hours and must have been dead when he arrived at the bank.

Police say they are still trying to establish the relationship between the woman and the dead man.

Authorities say they are investigating the case, but have not brought charges.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Myanmar’s detained former leader and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi has been moved from prison to house arrest, a spokesperson for the military government told media.

“Since the weather is extremely hot, it is not only for Aung San Suu Kyi … For all those, who need necessary precautions, especially elderly prisoners, we are working to protect them from heatstroke,” junta spokesperson Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun said in comments reported by four media outlets.

It was not immediately clear where Suu Kyi had been moved to. Zaw Min Tun did not respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.

Suu Kyi, 78, was held under house arrest for a total of 15 years under a previous junta at a decrepit, colonial-style family residence on Yangon’s Inya Lake, where she famously gave impassioned speeches to crowds of supporters over the metal gates of the property.

Suu Kyi has been detained by the Myanmar military since it overthrew her government in a 2021 coup. She faces 27 years in prison for crimes ranging from treason and bribery to violations of the telecommunications law, charges she denies.

In February, her son Kim Aris said she was being held in solitary confinement and that she was in good spirits “even if her health is not as good as it was in the past.”

World leaders and pro-democracy activists have repeatedly called for her release.

A spokesperson for the NUG shadow government called for the unconditional release of Suu Kyi and U Win Myint, Myanmar’s ousted president, who has also been moved to house arrest according to the media reports.

“Moving them from prisons to houses is good, as houses are better than prisons. However, they must be unconditionally freed. They must take full responsibility for the health and security of Aung San Suu Kyi and U Win Myint,” spokesperson Kyaw Zaw told Reuters late on Tuesday.

More than 5,500 years ago, two women were tied up and probably buried alive in a ritual sacrifice, using a form of torture associated today with the Italian Mafia, according to an analysis of skeletons discovered at an archaeological site in southwest France.

Researchers investigated the unusual position of three female skeletons found in 1985 at the site in the town of Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux, and concluded that two of the women probably died from a form of torture known as “incaprettamento,” which involves tying a person’s throat and ankles so that they eventually strangle themselves due to the position of their legs.

The researchers also reviewed skeletons found at other archaeological sites across Europe and identified 20 other probable instances of similar sacrificial killings. The practice may have been relatively widespread in Neolithic, or late Stone Age, Europe, according to the study, published in the journal Science Advances last week.

The women’s burial place was aligned with the sunrise at summer solstice and sunset at winter solstice, leading the study’s authors to hypothesize that this site acted as somewhere people gathered to mark the turning of the seasons, which may have involved human sacrifices.

“There is always this idea that somebody is dying and that the crops will grow,” Crubézy added, referencing that belief appearing in other cultures such as the Inca practice of human sacrifice in South America.

Crubézy was part of the original team that excavated the site in 1985 but it wasn’t until the break caused by the Covid-19 pandemic that he and his colleagues set about researching other instances of such sacrifices.

By reviewing the existing literature, researchers pinpointed 20 other probable examples of people being sacrificed in the same way over 2,000 years in the Neolithic period. The study said the actual number was probably higher but there was insufficient information about skeletons at other archaeological sites to draw firm conclusions.

“In different parts of Europe, it was the same type of sacrifice,” Crubezy said. “And this sacrifice is very particular because it’s a cruel one … and you have no blood and no people who killed another, the people killed themselves.”

Though it is impossible to prove definitively that the women in the grave at Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux died in situ, their position “stacked atop each other and entwined with fragments of grindstones” implies that they were placed there forcefully and deliberately, “strongly suggesting that their demise likely occurred” in the grave, the study said.

At the other sites across Europe, men and children as well as women were also found sacrificed in this way, the study said.

In the future, Crubézy says, the researchers intend to analyze the familial relationship between the three women at Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux and investigate unusual death rites observed in other graves around the site.

A record quantity of bribes, including cash, booze, drugs and precious metals, has been seized by Indian election authorities in the run-up to mammoth nationwide polls that begin on Friday.

The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Monday revealed it had recovered inducements worth just over $550 million since March — the largest amount in the country’s 75-year electoral history.

It marks a “sharp increase” on the more than $400 million in bribes seized by the ECI in the country’s last general election in 2019, the agency said.

The two states that saw the highest total amounts change hands are both strongholds of the ruling right-wing Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP): Rajasthan and neighboring Gujarat, home state of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

While Gujarat recorded the largest amount in drug seizures, Rajasthan was top of the list for “freebies” — goods and services promised (usually by politicians) gratis to voters in exchange for their support.

Modi previously took aim at what he described as a culture of offering freebies for votes during a 2022 speech, urging voters to be careful.

“People of this Revdi (freebies) culture will never build new expressways, new airports or new defense corridors for you,” he said. “People of this Revdi culture think that by distributing freebies to people, they can buy them – together we need to defeat their thinking.”

The total value of freebies confiscated ahead of the 2024 vote marked a jump of nearly $130 million from the election five years ago.

Data from the ECI’s latest seizures meanwhile show non-BJP-ruled states also topped specific inducement categories.

The southern state of Tamil Nadu, a bastion for two regional parties that have held their own against both the BJP and the opposition Indian National Congress for decades, saw the most amount of cash seized.

One of the few Congress strongholds, Karnataka, had the most amount of liquor confiscated.

“The seizures are a critical part of ECI resolve to conduct the Lok Sabha elections free of inducements and electoral malpractices and to ensure a level playing field,” the Election Commission said Monday, referring to India’s parliament.

The ECI said it had also made seizures worth nearly $900 million in January and February, with drugs making up some 75% of those confiscations.

India’s political parties and leaders routinely preach against election corruption and inducements, but the level of monitoring and tackling of graft across such a vast nation varies widely.

Transparency International’s annual Corruption Perceptions Index ranks India 93rd of the 180 nations and territories it monitors, on par with Kazakhstan and the Maldives.

Earlier this year, India’s Supreme Court made a major ruling concerning the often opaque nature of political funding declaring electoral bonds “unconstitutional.”

The system, introduced by the Modi government in 2017, allowed individuals or groups to buy bonds from the government-run State Bank of India and donate them anonymously to any political party.

Anti-corruption groups had long complained that the system meant a lack of transparency in donations to political parties — allowing corporations to donate large sums without disclosure.

The court also urged the disclosure of details around contributors and recipients, paving the way for more transparency in how campaigns are funded.

Voting in India’s six-week long election will be conducted in seven phases from Friday, with Modi and his ruling party seeking a rare third consecutive term in power.

A lack of air defenses meant Ukraine was powerless to prevent a Russian airstrike last week that destroyed the biggest power plant in Kyiv region, President Volodomyr Zelensky said.

Russia fired 11 missiles towards the Trypilska power plant, Zelensky said. Ukrainian air defenses downed the first seven missiles, but the next four completely destroyed the plant.

“Why? Because we had zero missiles. We ran out of all missiles,” Zelensky told PBS NewsHour in an interview that aired Monday.

Zelensky has repeatedly warned allies that Ukraine’s air defenses are running perilously thin, as Russia has recently renewed its assault on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. But a desperately needed military aid package from the United States has for months been blocked by House Republicans in Congress.

Zelenksy said Iran’s thwarted attack on Israel demonstrated that Western countries were able to protect the skies of their allies. Iran fired more than 300 projectiles at Israel in an unprecedented attack over the weekend, but the attack was stymied with the help of US, UK, French and Jordanian air defenses.

“Israel, by itself, wouldn’t be able to protect against such a numerous, powerful strike. And here, definitely, they used air defense and aviation, many things that, frankly speaking, Ukraine is lacking,” he said.

Zelensky questioned why Israel has enjoyed such comprehensive support from NATO members despite not being a member of the alliance.

“Israel is not a NATO country. The NATO allies, including NATO countries, have been defending Israel. They showed the Iranian forces that Israel was not alone. And this is a lesson. This is a response to anyone on any continent who says you need to assist Ukraine very carefully so you don’t engage NATO countries in the war,” he said.

Allies have passed incremental aid packages but the main tranche of US funding – totaling some $60 billion – has not been brought to a vote in Congress by House Speaker Mike Johnson.

Johnson on Monday signaled that, by the week’s end, he would bring a revamped Ukraine funding bill to the floor of the House, which would be separate from funding bills for Israel and Taiwan. However, there are still doubts whether the bill will pass as Johnson faces opposition from within his own party.

Zelensky called the division of the bill “strange” and “pure politics.”

“Nobody cares how many people are dying in Ukraine every day. They only care about their approval ratings. That’s what it’s all about. But forgetting that dead people don’t care about ratings”, Zelensky said.

“People in Congress need to think twice about pushing these political matters with regards to support in Ukraine and vote to support all of the countries whose lives depend on it.”

Zelensky repeated his warnings that Ukraine risks losing the war if the US fails to approve military aid.

“I can tell you, frankly, without this support, we will have no chance of winning,” he said.

He said Russia enjoys a 10-to-one advantage in terms of artillery shells. “To defend 100 percent of what’s in our control, we would need to go from one to comparing numbers, 10-10.”

Astronomers have spotted the most massive known stellar black hole in the Milky Way galaxy after detecting an unusual wobble in space.

The so-called “sleeping giant,” named Gaia BH3, has a mass that is nearly 33 times that of our sun, and it’s located 1,926 light-years away in the Aquila constellation, making it the second-closest known black hole to Earth. The closest black hole is Gaia BH1, which is located about 1,500 light-years away and has a mass that is nearly 10 times that of our sun.

Astronomers discovered the black hole while combing through observations taken by European Space Agency’s Gaia space telescope for an upcoming data release to the scientific community. The researchers weren’t expecting to find anything, but a peculiar motion — caused by Gaia BH3’s gravitational influence on a nearby companion — caught their eye.

Many “dormant” black holes don’t have a companion close enough to munch on, so they are much more difficult to spot and don’t generate any light. But other stellar black holes siphon material from companion stars, and this exchange of matter releases bright X-rays that can be spotted through telescopes.

The wobbling movement of an old giant star in the Aquila constellation revealed that it was in an orbital dance with a dormant black hole, and it’s the third such dormant black hole spotted by Gaia.

The researchers used the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile’s Atacama Desert and other ground-based observatories to confirm the mass of Gaia BH3, and their study has also offered new clues to how such huge black holes came to be. The findings appeared Tuesday in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

“No one was expecting to find a high-mass black hole lurking nearby, undetected so far,” said lead study author Pasquale Panuzzo, an astronomer at the Observatoire de Paris, part of France’s National Centre for Scientific Research, and a Gaia collaboration member, in a statement. “This is the kind of discovery you make once in your research life.”

The secrets of ancient stars

The title for the most massive black hole in our galaxy will always belong to Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole located at the center of the Milky Way, which has about 4 million times the mass of the sun, but that is because it’s a supermassive black hole, rather than a stellar black hole.

The process by which supermassive black holes form is poorly understood, but one theory suggests it happens when massive cosmic clouds collapse. Stellar black holes form when massive stars die. So Gaia BH3 is the most massive black hole in our galaxy that formed from the death of a massive star.

Stellar black holes observed across the Milky Way galaxy are about 10 times as massive as the sun on average. Until the discovery of Gaia BH3, the largest known stellar black hole in our galaxy was Cygnus X-1, which is 21 times the mass of the sun. While Gaia BH3 is an exceptional find within our galaxy by astronomers’ standards, it is similar in mass to objects found in very distant galaxies.

Scientists believe stellar black holes with masses such as Gaia BH3’s formed when metal-poor stars collapsed. These stars, which include hydrogen and helium as their heaviest elements, are thought to lose less mass over their lifetimes, so they have more material at the end that can result in a high-mass black hole.

But astronomers hadn’t been able to find evidence directly linking high-mass black holes and metal-poor stars until they found Gaia BH3.

The study authors said that paired stars tend to be similar in composition. True to expectations, the researchers found that the star orbiting Gaia BH3 was metal-poor, which means that the star that formed Gaia BH3 was likely the same.

“What strikes me is that the chemical composition of the companion is similar to what we find in old metal-poor stars in the galaxy,” said study coauthor Elisabetta Caffau, a Gaia collaboration member at the Observatoire de Paris, in a statement.

The star orbiting Gaia BH3 likely formed in the first 2 billion years after the big bang created the universe 13.8 billion years ago. The star’s trajectory, which moves in the opposite direction of many stars in the galactic disk of the Milky Way, suggests it was part of a small galaxy that merged with the Milky Way more than 8 billion years ago.

Now, the team hopes the research can allow other astronomers to study the colossal black hole and uncover more of its secrets without having to wait for the rest of the Gaia data release, slated for late 2025.

“It’s impressive to see the transformational impact Gaia is having on astronomy and astrophysics,” said Carole Mundell, the European Space Agency’s director of science, in a statement. “Its discoveries are reaching far beyond the original purpose of the mission, which is to create an extraordinarily precise multi-dimensional map of more than a billion stars throughout our Milky Way.”

Israel, aided by its allies, dodged a bullet Sunday.

To be more precise, 60 tons of explosives aboard more than 350 Iranian projectiles, some bigger than a family car, failed to dodge Israel’s defenses.

Yet Israel, in defiance of US President Joe Biden’s warnings to “take the win” and Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi’s threat of a “severe, extensive and painful” response to any retaliation, is contemplating just that.

Deterrence, shorthand for “meanest S.O.B. in the room,” Israel believes, is the cornerstone of its survival. Iran is stealing that brick.

In a paradigm shift after decades of shadow proxy war, Tehran is usurping Israel’s strategy. “We have decided to create a new equation,” Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Commander Hossein Salami said. “We will retaliate against them [Israel]”.

When faced with existential threats in the past, Israel has executed the most audacious raids the region has ever witnessed. Cloaked in extreme secrecy in 1981, they bombed Iraq’s nuclear reactor at Osirak before it went on line. Similarly, in 2007, they bombed Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad’s nuclear reactor before it could be built.

Both attacks partnered intelligence with conventional military assets. It was 11 years before Israel admitted to the Syria strike.

The point being, Israel won’t telegraph its attack plans as Iran did at the weekend.

Aside from the core members of Israel’s war cabinet – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Netanyahu’s former biggest political rival Benny Ganz – more than a dozen other people have sat at the table deep inside the Kirya, Israel’s maximum security defense headquarters in Tel Aviv, thrashing out their next move.

Notably, Mossad Chief David Barnea and Army Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi are among several security and intelligence officials who have been brought in.

Outside the room, Netanyahu faces huge pressure from his hard right governing coalition. Bezalel Smotrich is demanding he “restore deterrence,” and popular Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir is calling on the prime minister to “go crazy.”

Outside Israel, where allies are condemning Iran’s attack but urging restraint and some are also bitter about Netanyahu’s deadly treatment of Gaza’s Palestinians since Hamas’s brutal October 7 attack, calls for fresh sanctions on Tehran are growing.

War cabinet members Ganz and Gallant are both seized of the diplomatic opportunity – Ganz saying, “we will build a regional coalition to exact a price from Iran”, while Gallant, according to a government press release, “highlighted the opportunity to establish an international coalition and strategic alliance to counter the threat posed by Iran.” The defence minister has hinted heavily that Iran’s nuclear facilities are in his sights, saying it is “a state that threatens to place nuclear warheads on its missiles.”

Netanyahu, meanwhile, said in a statement on the X account of his office, “The international community must continue to stand united in resisting this Iranian aggression, which threatens world peace.”

Netanyahu’s next move will likely try to lock in sanctions, and strike before negative Gaza headlines dump the international good will filling his sails.

The clock is ticking. He needs two things, time to prepare a significant surprise strike, and time to coalesce international diplomacy. As both march to different beats, his legendary political acumen faces one of its stiffest tests yet.

Recent evidence suggests his finger no longer feels the regional pulse as it once did.

Earlier this year, following Israel’s precise, targeted assassination of Saleh Al-Arouri, Hamas’s Lebanese chief, in a second-floor Beirut apartment, the former fighter pilot and former head of the IDF’s Military Intelligence Directorate Amos Yadlin told me Israel was acting inside “red lines” to avoid escalation.

“The threshold is quite flexible,” Yadlin explained. “Deterrence is a decision at the head of a leader that can give a command to pull the trigger to launch a missile to start a war.”

Yadlin knows a thing or two about deterrence and Israel’s past strikes against the nation’s existential threats. He was the fighter pilot who dropped the bomb that destroyed Iraq’s Osirak reactor in 1981, and in 2007 was the intelligence chief who planned the sophisticated audacious strike destroying Bashar al-Assad’s nuclear plant.

Last weekend, Iran’s leaders decided Netanyahu’s calculation to kill Mohammad Reza Zahedi, the IRGC’s commander running their proxies threatening Israel from Syria and Lebanon, in their Damascus consulate on April 1 had crossed a red line. Netanyahu’s calculation was wrong.

“I think the Iranians will be very, very careful, even if after a provocation is they will suffer a loss, but starting a war with the US or even with Israel. They are not there yet. The damage that can be inflicted on Iran is huge, is huge.”

So the most important question right now must be, can Netanyahu read the room right – with Iran threatening to attack, allies warning him not to – and avoid triggering a regional war.

And the answer to that is buried in Yadlin’s remarkable insights. Iran, he implied, won’t attack Israel as long as it fears America’s reaction. Netanyahu has so strained relations with the Biden administration over Gaza, Israel’s enemies smell blood.

Since the US abstained at a UN Security Council vote last month to call for ceasefire in Gaza,  Hamas has taken an intransigent turn to hostage negotiations.

Netanyahu is famed as a political survivor. But now he faces the biggest gamble of his career. He is betting the blood of his nation over Iran’s read of his rift with America.

Violent clashes erupted between protesters and police in Georgia’s capital, Tbilisi, on Tuesday as the country’s parliament continued debating a controversial “foreign agents” bill, criticized by Western and domestic opponents as authoritarian and Russian-inspired.

The bill, dubbed “the Russian law” by critics due to parallels with legislation used by the Kremlin to crack down on dissent, has been reintroduced for debate by the ruling Georgian Dream party, after it was dropped last year amid a wave of protests.

The legislation, which would require organizations that accept funds from abroad to register as foreign agents or face fines, has been criticized by Western countries, including the US and Britain, and seen by rights groups as an attempt to curtail basic freedoms in the country.

“Second night of massive protest in Tbilisi against the Russian Law,” Georgia’s President Salome Zourabichvili said in a post on social media on Tuesday.

“Insistence of the authorities to push through this law against the will of the population and despite partners protest is a direct provocation – a Russian strategy of destabilization,” said Zourabichvili, who has vowed to repeal the law if it crosses her desk.

The Georgian Dream party, which has been pushing for the law, has the parliamentary majority which could override a presidential veto.

Videos shared on activist Telegram channels and news agencies showed riot police trying to clear demonstrators from the area around the parliament. In the videos, police could be seen grabbing protesters by the clothes and firing what appeared to be water cannons.

At least one employee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs was injured during Tuesday’s clashes, the ministry said in a statement.

If protesters “continue their illegal actions,” the Ministry of Internal Affairs will “administer special measures defined by law,” it warned. “Each illegal action will be followed by appropriate legal response from the police,” it added.

Dramatic scenes unfolded inside the ex-Soviet country’s parliament a day earlier, as Georgian television showed the leader of the Georgian Dream party, Mamuka Mdinaradze, being punched in the face by opposition lawmaker Aleko Elisashvili. A wider brawl between several lawmakers followed.

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have denounced the “foreign agents” law, saying if adopted, it would also “impose additional onerous reporting requirements, inspections, and administrative and criminal liability, including up to five years in prison for violations.”

The legislation is “incompatible with international human rights law and standards that protect the rights to freedom of expression and association,” Human Rights Watch warned.

This is a developing story and will be updated.