A piece of garbage jettisoned from the International Space Station unexpectedly survived a fiery reentry from orbit last month and pierced the roof of a home in Florida, according to NASA.

When the federal agency disposed of a slab of spaceborne refuse weighing about 5,800 pounds (2,630 kilograms), it expected the trash to disintegrate as it plunged into Earth’s atmosphere on March 8.

But a small piece of the cargo roughly the size of a smartphone survived — and it crashed into a home in Naples, Florida, last month, NASA confirmed in an April 15 news release.

The impact event defied NASA’s expectations about what can and cannot survive the reentry process, according to the space agency — and it could have broader implications for future space debris disposal efforts.

A close call and unusual discovery

Otero said he recognized the object as a possible piece of space debris that tore through his roof, he said.

“Something ripped through the house and then made a big hole in the floor and on the ceiling,” Otero, who said he was not home at the time of the incident, explained. “I’m super grateful that nobody got hurt.”

After analyzing the piece of debris at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, NASA confirmed it was indeed a piece of discarded space station cargo, according to a statement released by the agency on Monday.

“The International Space Station will perform a detailed investigation of the jettison and re-entry analysis to determine the cause of the debris survival and to update modeling and analysis, as needed,” NASA said in the statement.

The federal agency did not immediately respond to additional questions about the investigation or whether the agency had changed any plans for future space station trash disposal.

Garbage disposal in space

NASA routinely brings home batches of science experiments, cargo and garbage from the space station using capsules such as the Dragon spacecraft built by SpaceX.

But after the installation of new batteries on the space station in 2021, authorities disposed of a pallet of aging nickel-hydrogen batteries in a different way.

A robotic arm pried the garbage, weighing roughly as much as an SUV, from the space station’s exterior and flung it into Earth’s orbit, according to NASA. The federal agency’s plan hinged on the belief that the discarded batteries, traveling at more than 22 times the speed of sound, would eventually be incinerated as they struck the atmosphere.

The garbage “will orbit Earth between two to four years before burning up harmlessly,” NASA said when the pallet was jettisoned on March 11, 2021.

The European Space Agency, which routinely tracks objects in space that are headed for Earth, said in a March 8 statement, “While some parts may reach the ground, the casualty risk – the likelihood of a person being hit – is very low.

“Large uncertainties, primarily driven by fluctuating levels of atmospheric drag, prevent more precise predictions at this time,” according to the ESA, which is one of NASA’s partners on the orbiting laboratory.

Not the first uncontrolled reentry

To be clear, there are thousands of pieces of uncontrolled junk in space, including discarded rocket parts, defunct satellites, and debris from satellite collisions and weapons tests.

The vast majority of the detritus does fully burn up as it hurdles toward Earth.

However, other massive objects have made an uncontrolled return from space before, including a 22-ton rocket body built in China that in 2022 was discarded in the Pacific Ocean. Pieces of the rocket likely survived, sinking to the bottom of the sea. Members of the international aerospace community, including NASA, widely criticized the China National Space Administration for the move.

But the debris that struck Otero’s house was the result of miscalculations about how space garbage would behave.

NASA already has strong policies in place to prevent objects from colliding in space — or impacting populated areas on Earth, said John Crassidis, a space debris expert and Moog Professor of Innovation at the University at Buffalo’s School of Engineering and Applied Science.

But, in this case, the federal agency’s assumption that the debris it cast aside in 2021 would not pose a threat to people on the ground when it plunged back toward Earth in March was a grave mistake. The space agency should be more conservative in its analysis if it attempts a similar trash disposal method in the future, he added.

“I think this was a good wake-up call to say, ‘Hey we need to do better’ — and the US should not ever have been in a situation where something came down like this and went through a house in Florida,” Crassidis said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has signed into law a key piece of legislation overhauling the country’s mobilization rules.

The legislation places a new requirement on all men between 18 and 60 to register with Ukraine’s military and to carry their registration documents on them at all times. The aim is to make recruitment processes more efficient and more transparent, the government says.

Men of service age who are living abroad will not be able to renew their passports at Ukrainian consulates without producing up-to-date registration paperwork.

The new law does not cover any potential increase in the number of people who might be called up to serve.

Neither does it contain provisions for demobilizing soldiers who have spent long periods fighting. Ukrainian lawmakers had for months debated whether to allow the longest-serving of Ukraine’s soldiers the chance to return home on rotation, or whether Russia’s renewed offensives meant they could not afford to allow exhausted soldiers to rest.

The draft law was amended more than 4,000 times since it was first introduced – a measure of how politically difficult crafting the legislation has been. Ukraine’s parliament eventually stripped out the plans for demobilization to keep as many soldiers at the front lines as possible, disappointing many families who had hoped a fixed period of three years active service would also be enshrined in the new law.

Ukraine’s parliament passed the law last week and Zelensky gave presidential approval Tuesday.

Late last year, the leader of Zelensky’s Servant of the People faction in parliament said the military was looking for an extra half million servicemen and women. But Ukraine’s Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrsyki said recently any increase in numbers would likely be significantly lower.

Zelensky’s signing of the law came shortly after Ukraine’s commander on the eastern front warned that Russian troops outnumbered its own by up to 10 times.

After the law passed last week, dozens of wives and relatives of servicemen gathered outside Ukraine’s parliament to protest and demand that mobilization deadlines be included.

“The country’s defenders, on whom the independence of the entire country rests, have been deceived,” she said.

Since I became a climate reporter — and then a new dad — bedtime stories are different now.

Coming home from flood or drought, wildfire or research lab there awaits a four-year old named River who loves story time almost as much as he loves animals. Armadillos, giraffes and humpback whales are the current top three, but when picking a name for his tee-ball team, he suggested the Brooklyn Cockatoos.

While I can’t yet bring myself to tell him how many of his favorites are endangered — or how his worried dad has been collecting practical ways to survive and thrive amid so much loss and change — I can at least update his animal fables to fit the times.

“Once upon a time, there was a camel,” I begin, after settling into the night-night chair and flipping to a picture of his old man after a ride around the Great Pyramids of Giza. I point out the splayed toes perfect for walking on sand, and eyelids seemingly custom-made to see through a sandstorm. “It looks like they were born to live in hot places, doesn’t it?”

River nods.

“Wrong!” I blurt with the zeal of discovery. “The camel is actually from Canada! Like your mom!”

I explain how fossils now show that for 40 million years, the so-called “ships of the desert” were ambling over beaver dams, nibbling through boreal forests and dodging bears across North America, until a train of dromedaries wandered west over the Bering land bridge around 17,000 years ago. Somewhere along the genetic line, camels’ ancestors discovered a big hump of fat used to get through cold winters can also help cross big, hot deserts.

Camel fur turns out to be a decent sunscreen that helps with thermal regulation, those snowshoe feet perform well in sand while triple eyelids evolved in countless blizzards also work in Sudanese haboobs.

But these accidental advantages were just the beginning. Camels got better at closing their noses to keep out sand and lock in moisture. They learned to drink saltwater, eat toxic plants and position their bodies in the coolest possible angles to the sun.

Camels changed everything — anatomy, physiology and behavior — to fit into their hot new climate.

But while they had eons to adjust, one generational tweak at a time, record-shattering heat is sending millions of species of plants and animals in search of more comfortable latitudes and elevations, some at speeds fast enough to challenge the definition of “invasive species.”

And to get my most poignant lesson in heat adaptation, I had to trade desert gear for a snowsuit, sail to the bottom of the world and hang out with penguins.

“They were everywhere,” I told River after returning from a reporting trip to the Antarctic Peninsula. He is happiest with nose pressed to the penguin house glass at the Central Park Zoo, so the kid sat rapt as I showed him my pics of a gentoo father diligently building a nest with his beak, one rock at a time.

But then I had to figure out a way to tell him none of these babies would survive.

Penguins need relatively dry, bare rock to nest, and after a warmer, wetter Antarctic summer dumped enough rain and snow to delay nesting season by a month, the new gentoos I’d met simply wouldn’t have enough time to grow the feathers and fat needed to swim and fish the Southern Ocean over winter.

But before I could mourn them for long, I learned the birds gathering rocks for worthless nests are the one species that happen to be surprisingly crushing Darwin’s survival-of-the-fittest test.

“Gentoo penguins are big climate change winners in the Antarctic,” Heather Lynch told me. As the endowed chair for ecology and evolution at Stony Brook University, her team had spent recent years watching as chinstrap and Adélie penguins remained committed to ancient nesting spots, fruitlessly trying to hatch eggs in standing water with populations crashing as a result.

Conversely, the more flexible gentoo penguins keep moving farther and farther south, chasing new prey, and even abandoning nests to increase the odds of long-term survival. As a result, gentoo population numbers have exploded by as much as 30,000% in just a few years.

“I think there’s a lesson in here for us as well,” Heather Lynch said. “If we just stick to what we’ve always done, it’s not going to turn out well for us. Just because Manhattan has always been where it is, does it make sense that it will be there in two hundred or three hundred years? I don’t know. But I think we would benefit from being flexible and adaptive. And I think that’s kind of what the gentoos are telling us.”

Here lieth the lesson of the camel and the gentoo: Heat will move us, one way or another. An overheated atmosphere and the resulting flood, drought, and storm will rearrange life on Earth, and those who can’t move like the gentoo will have to adapt like the camel.

As northern climates way up on the 50th parallel now experience the kind of temperatures once reserved for the tropics, folks from British Columbia to Yorkshire, England, suddenly understand why smart Arizonans keep oven mitts in the car. And those in already-scorching places like Phoenix will have to start thinking about temperature management and water conservation like the Fremen of Dune.

Sales of air-conditioned shirts and day- or weeklong heatstroke insurance policies are booming in Japan. Seville, Spain, became the first city to start naming heat waves like hurricanes, and after they appointed a chief heat officer, Miami, Los Angeles and Phoenix soon followed suit.

As our kids get older, our cities will get brighter.

While locals in places like Mykonos have been painting houses white for centuries, Los Angeles painted a million square feet of its heat-trapping asphalt with reflective paint. And Purdue professor Xiulin Ruan and his students supercharged the idea and discovered ways to make a white so brilliant, it can reflect up to 98 percent of sunlight back into deep space and keep a surface up to 19 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than its surroundings.

Seville is also reviving the use of qanats and windcatchers, 1,000-year-old Persian inventions that vent enough cool air from underground canals to lower the temperature of baking streets by 10 to 15 degrees. This $5 million investment, along with a “policy of shade” to extend awnings, tree plantings and drop-in cooling centers, is part of a specific campaign to save the cultural treasure known as charla al fresco — that delicious moment after sunset when grandmothers can pull their chairs together in courtyards for a “cool chat.”

But maybe the best test to see if Homo sapiens are as savvy as camels and gentoo penguins is whether we use technology that already exists on store shelves to cool more efficiently, at a lower cost and with less pollution and grid-crashing demand for peaker-plant power.

In 2018, the International Energy Agency found fans and air conditioners make up 20% of the total electricity used by buildings around the world, but not a single nation places minimum energy performance standards on cooling equipment that beat the efficiency of today’s readily available technology.

“Don’t let the cold out!” my dad would bellow as I left the door wide open in an urgent need to play, but both of us were clueless that our dumb energy hog was already working harder because most American air conditioners lacked a common part with the unsexy name of “inverter.” We could control the fan speed on window units, swamp coolers, and split systems back in the day, but the cooling compressor had only two settings—on and off. An inverter AC adjusts compressor speeds according to temperature and humidity, making the machine quieter and faster to cool while using 30–50% less juice.

While 90% of Americans enjoy air conditioning, they are outnumbered seven-to-one by people in the Global South who do not. But much the way they leapfrogged landlines with cell phones, the smartest developing markets are leaving the past in the past. The market share of inverter ACs in China exploded from 9% to 65% in a decade, thanks to government incentives and public affection, while in India, inverters were in 85% of the machines sold in 2022.

And then there is the heat pump.

They’ve been around since the 1850s, but if you had quizzed me for a definition over most of my life, I would have guessed it is a dance from the seventies. Who would ever consider such a thing when in sweaty need of home cooling? But it turns out that an air conditioner is — get this — a heat pump! It just pumps it in one direction, from inside to out, the same way our refrigerator pulls the heat away from our groceries. But a heat pump goes both ways and even in subzero extremes can find enough warm air outside to keep things toasty inside at up to five times the efficiency of an electric radiator.

In 2023, only 16% of US homes had heat pumps, but with state and federal incentives helping cover the upfront costs, Maine blew past a goal to install 100,000 of them by 2025 two years early and are now shooting for another 175,000 by 2027. And nationally, heat pumps just outsold gas furnaces for the second year in a row.

Homo sapiens may not have the thousands of years needed to change our anatomy and physiology, but what about the psychology and technology it will take to build a heat-resistant world?

Can we do it fairly? And can we do it in time?

As for the bedtime parable of the camel and the gentoo, I’m still working out the ending. I just know River won’t be satisfied without a magic plot twist that somehow saves all creatures great and small.

Georgian lawmakers came to blows in parliament on Monday as ruling party legislators looked set to advance a controversial bill on “foreign agents” that has been criticized by Western countries and sparked protests at home.

Footage broadcast on Georgian television showed Mamuka Mdinaradze, leader of the ruling Georgian Dream party’s parliamentary faction and a driving force behind the bill, being punched in the face by opposition MP Aleko Elisashvili while speaking from the despatch box.

The incident prompted a wider brawl between several lawmakers, an occasional occurrence in Georgia’s often raucous parliament. Footage showed Elisashvili being greeted with cheers by protesters outside the parliament building.

Georgian Dream said earlier this month it would reintroduce legislation requiring organizations that accept funds from abroad to register as foreign agents or face fines, 13 months after protests forced it to shelve the plan.

The bill has strained relations with European countries and the United States, who have said they oppose its passage. The European Union, which gave Georgia candidate status in December, has said the move is incompatible with the bloc’s values.

Georgian Dream says it wants the country to join the EU and NATO, even as it has deepened ties with Russia and faced accusations of authoritarianism at home. It says the bill is necessary to combat what it calls “pseudo-liberal values” imposed by foreigners, and to promote transparency.

Georgia’s government said Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze held a meeting on Monday with the EU, British and US ambassadors at which they had discussed the bill.

In a statement, Kobakhidze defended the draft law as promoting accountability, and said it was “not clear” why Western countries opposed it.

Georgian critics have labeled the bill “the Russian law”, comparing it to similar legislation used by the Kremlin to crack down on dissent in Russia.

Russia is widely unpopular in Georgia, due to Moscow’s support for the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Russia defeated Georgia in a short war in 2008.

Several hundred demonstrators gathered outside the parliament building ahead of a mass protest that civil society organizations have called for Monday evening.

Once approved by members of the legislature’s legal affairs committee, which is controlled by Georgian Dream and its allies, the foreign agent bill can proceed to a first reading in parliament.

Georgia is due to hold elections by October. Opinion polls show that Georgian Dream remains the most popular party, but has lost ground since 2020, when it won a narrow majority.

At least 17 people have died in flash floods triggered by heavy rain across Oman since Sunday, the country’s National Committee for Emergency Management (NCEM) reports.

On Tuesday, the government suspended the work of employees and workers in the public and private sectors in five governorates, including Musandam, Al Buraimi, Al Dhahirah, and Al Dakhiliyah, due to the weather conditions.

The government has allowed employees to work remotely if possible.

Authorities in Oman are conducting “rescue operations” after announcing all schools in six governorates including Muscat, would be closed Monday “due to unstable weather conditions,” according to a Monday UNOCHA statement.

Moderate heavy rainfall is expected across north-eastern and northern Oman over the next few days.

This is a developing story and will be updated

Israel has yet to agree how to respond to the Iranian attack over the weekend that saw more than 300 projectiles fired at its territory in the first direct military confrontation between the Islamic Republic and the Jewish state.

Israel must balance international pressure to show restraint on the one hand, while searching for an appropriate response to an unprecedented attack. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu now has to weigh his right-wing coalition’s call for a strong reaction against the risk of further international isolation for Israel by widening the war without international support.

Analysts say that Israel has few options, and each of those options comes with a price for the Jewish state, especially as it is already embroiled in a brutal six-month war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip and is confronting various Iran-backed militants in the region.

A direct attack on Iran would set yet another precedent. While Israel is believed to have conducted covert operations in Iran over the years, often targeting individuals or facilities seen as a threat to its security, it has never launched a direct military assault on Iranian territory.

“We are definitely in a new phase, and a very dangerous phase of the Israeli-Iranian confrontation,” said Raz Zimmt, an Iran expert at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in Tel Aviv. “Iran has certainly tried to change the rules of the game with Israel… We might expect more rounds of direct attacks in the future.”

While Israel may find it hard not to retaliate, he said, it may not conduct an immediate “full scale military attack against targets inside Iran” as Tehran has vowed to retaliate with an even bigger response than the attack launched over the weekend.

Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli diplomat, said it is unlikely that Israel will retaliate by directly striking Iran. But if it does, he said, the fallout will depend on the targets. Targets could include military assets or the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program, he said. “Each and every one represents a different level of escalation.”

Constrained by allies

Israel’s response may however be constrained by the fact that it acted as part of an informal coalition when fending off Iran’s barrage of missiles and drones, Tamir Hayman, Israel’s former head of military intelligence, said on X.

The attacks were thwarted with the help of allies including the US, UK and France, as well Jordan.

“This is effective and important, but it will limit the freedom of action in response,” Hayman, who now heads the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in Tel Aviv, said on Sunday. Western and Arab allies of Israel have been discouraging it from responding to Iran’s attack.

US President Joe Biden and senior members of his national security team have told their Israeli counterparts the US will not participate in any offensive action against Iran, according to US officials familiar with the matter. Biden sought to frame Israel’s successful interception of the Iranian onslaught as a major victory — with the suggestion that further Israeli response was unnecessary.

Domestic political considerations

Israel is also likely to take domestic political considerations into account. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu leads the most right- wing coalition in the country’s history, and keeping that government from collapsing would require appeasement of hardliners.

Netanyahu has come under intense criticism at home for not being able to prevent the Hamas-led October 7 attack on Israel and his inability to secure the release of the more than 100 hostages that remain in Gaza.

Pinkas expects any retaliatory decision by Israel to be heavily influenced by Netanyahu’s far-right coalition and the prime minister’s own needs for political survival.

“With Mr. Netanyahu, it’s all about politics and his own survival, and the maintenance of his coalition and his desire to broaden the war to distance himself from October 7 and the Hamas attack,” Pinkas said.

“So, in his mind, a regional conflict or a direct conflict with Iran is consistent with the fabricated narrative that he invented, that this (October 7) is not just a terror attack but part of a much bigger confrontation and campaign,” Pinkas said.

In Israel, Pinkas added, the public doesn’t want to open another front, with troops still fighting in Gaza.

“People are still devastated and shocked over what had happened in October, so I don’t think there is any public desire to escalate and open an entirely direct conflict with Iran,” he said.

‘International credit’

Ahead of the weekend attacks, Israel had become increasingly isolated on the world stage due to its conduct in the Gaza war, where more than 33,000 Palestinians have been killed. Since the attack by Iran, however, its allies have rallied around the Jewish state and its right to protect itself.

Some Israeli politicians have called for the state to take advantage of the support gained after the attack to hit back.

Others have called for Israel to use the “international credit” to either attack Tehran or invade Gaza’s Rafah city, where more than 1 million Palestinians are sheltering, and which Israel says is Hamas’ last stronghold. A planned operation in the city has been delayed amid a global consensus against it.

“We need to respond — and there are two good options: Either, we take advantage of the attack yesterday in order to attack Iran, or to come to an agreement with the United States to enter Rafah, and eliminate Hamas there,” Yaakov Amidror, former national security adviser to Netanyahu, told the Jerusalem Post on Monday.

Israel’s government is aware of the international support and goodwill from its allies and doesn’t want to squander that. At the same time, it recognizes that it cannot allow Iran’s first attack on Israeli soil to go unanswered.

Others disagree, saying retaliatory action from Israel that escalates tensions would only further isolate the Jewish state, especially from Gulf Arab states that Israel seeks to normalize ties with.

Risking Arab ties

Arab states, including those that are friendly with Israel, have expressed concern about a potential escalation from Iran’s attack, but haven’t outright condemned it. Israel said that most of the drones fired from Iran were intercepted outside its airspace. Jordan shot down a number of those drones and faced criticism in the Arab world for the move. It has argued that it was done to protect its citizens and in response to violations of its airspace.

“Now I think the pressure is on Israel not to escalate and work towards the objective that we all share, which is de-escalating the conflict,” Safadi said on Monday, warning that Netanyahu seeks an escalation to shift focus away from the war in Gaza.

Israel has also been on a mission to mend relations with Arab states, some of which sit across the Persian Gulf from Iran, house US military bases and have come under fire from Iran-allied groups in the past. Those nations have played a delicate balancing act between ties with Tehran and with Israel, and are wary of the impact of a full blown Iranian-Israeli war on their own stability and oil exports.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi once famously made a simple election promise: “good days are coming”.

To his adoring supporters, it’s a vision of a future now finally within reach should Modi and his right-wing Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) secure an emphatic and rare third consecutive term at this month’s nationwide election.

At his rallies, tens of thousands gather in near frenzied religious devotion in support of a man whose policies they say have transformed the lives of ordinary Indians – and helped enshrine the nascent promise of social mobility in a country still riven by caste divisions.

Modi projects himself as an outsider from humble origins. Born as the son of a tea seller in a small town in Gujarat, he does not fit neatly within the often privately educated, resolutely metropolitan, English-speaking template set by many previous Indian leaders.

The 74-year-old is unmarried, has no children, and seemingly shuns expensive material possessions in favor of a simple, ascetic lifestyle.

And though little is shared about Modi the man – his private life is assiduously guarded by a formidable public relations team – his persona resonates with many.

His political rise in some ways mirrors India’s own path from a newly independent nation freed from the shackles of colonialism to a confident, secure country inching ever closer to superpower status – albeit one wracked by deep and abiding fault lines.

Modi, his opponents argue, has done little to soothe those divisions.

Religious persecution and Islamophobia have increased sharply on his watch, with many accusing the prime minister of tacitly endorsing sectarianism as a means of further bolstering his Hindu-nationalist credentials, while diverting from policy failures – such as youth unemployment, which now stands at close to 50% among 20- to 24-year-olds.

Among India’s minorities, particularly the country’s 230 million Muslims, the prospect of another five-years for a prime minister who calls himself the “chowkidar” – or watchman – remains deeply concerning.

Many don’t believe Modi is watching out for them – instead, they say they are marginalized as he fulfills his party’s dream of transforming secular, pluralistic India into a majoritarian Hindu state.

“As he goes toward seeking a third term, Prime Minister Modi has positioned himself as a head priest alongside the head of the political system … the protector of the nation (and), as the creator of a Hindu-first nation,” said Saba Naqvi, author of “The Saffron Storm: From Vajpayee to Modi.”

This seemingly potent, populist mix of economic empowerment and Hindu nationalism has proved to be a successful electoral formula for Modi, confounding longstanding social and regional voting lines.

According to 2023 Pew research, about eight-in-ten Indian adults have a favorable view of Modi, including 55% who have a very favorable view. Such levels of popularity for a two-term incumbent prime minister defy all modern conventions, both in India and throughout much of the democratic world.

“He’s done something which has not happened before in Indian politics among all our prime ministers,” said Naqvi. “He has willfully created a cult of his own personality.”

‘Many people think he is God’

As the sun sets across the Ganges, Hindu devotees bathe in the holy river’s waters and priests offer daily prayer by its banks. It’s here, in the city of Varanasi – Modi’s own constituency – that this so-called cult of personality is on full display.

Billboards with the prime minister’s face appear on the corners of roads, and saffron flags with his party’s lotus symbol are hoisted on buildings across the dusty, meandering gulleys of the ancient city.

On the streets, his party’s volunteers go door-to-door advocating for the leader.

When Modi first ran for prime minister a decade ago, he did so on a promise of infrastructure, development and anti-corruption, choosing the city of gods as his constituency – its religious symbolism the perfect backdrop for his BJP’s Hindu nationalist ambitions.

In one of Varanasi’s oldest spice markets, shopkeepers say their lives have been transformed since.

“Many people think he is God,” said father of two, Akash Jaiswal, pointing to Modi’s welfare schemes and business incentives. “We’ve never had a prime minister like Modi ever. He’s done a great sacrifice for India, for us … We want him to be prime minister forever.”

Jaiswal even praised some of Modi’s most controversial leadership moments. “India had the least casualties during Covid,” he said, when in fact the country had the third highest number of pandemic-related deaths, after the United States and Brazil, according to the World Health Organization. Modi was highly criticized for his handling of the pandemic and accused of being underprepared, as hospitals reached their limit and morgues overflowed with bodies.

The city’s BJP President, Dileep Patel, who has helped Modi with all three of his election campaigns, however, isn’t surprised by his enduring levels of popularity. To him, Modi represents India’s future.

“Today India is strong, capable, and self-reliant under the prime minister’s leadership,” he said.

Son of a teaseller

Modi’s official party biography tells the story of a poor boy, the third of six children, whose father was a “chaiwallah” or tea seller, who’d serve customers at the local train station to support his young family

Promoted by the BJP, analysts say this tale of humble beginnings makes him relatable to hundreds of millions across the country. And it stands in stark contrast to the generations of India’s elite, urbane politicians that have historically risen to the top job.

“He comes from a poor background and that helps him understands the people of India,” said Varanasi BJP president Patel.

India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, was a member of the Indian National Congress, a political party that was pivotal in ending nearly 200 years of British colonial rule. His daughter, Indira Gandhi, also became prime minister, as did her son, Rajiv. All three studied overseas at Cambridge or Oxford.

The face of today’s Congress Party, and Modi’s primary opponent, is Rahul Gandhi, son of Rajiv, and an alumni of both Cambridge and Harvard.

Modi, by contrast, had a modest upbringing in the small town of Vadnagar, far from the political cut and thrust of the capital New Delhi, according to Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, author of “Narendra Modi: The Man, The Times.”

Mukhopadhyay notes Modi was an average student at school and his marriage was arranged to a woman at 17.

Though Mukhopadhyay claims the tale of Modi’s poverty is “grossly exaggerated,” his charisma – and confidence – was evident from an early age.

“He liked acting in school plays,” said Mukhopadhyay. “He always wanted to have the lead role. If the lead role was not given to him, he would not act in the play at all.”

Modi was still a child when he was exposed to the idea of Hindu nationalism through classes at the local branch of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a right-wing paramilitary organization that advocates for the establishment of Hindu hegemony within India.

Founded in 1925 by Keshav Baliram Hedgewar, a campaigner who had split from Nehru’s Congress party over what he believed to be “undue pampering of the Muslims,” its central mission is to “nourish the Hindu culture,” according to the group’s website.

At 17, Modi abandoned his family and his wife, left his village and traversed India with the group in search of a spiritual awakening, according to his biography. He devoted himself to the RSS, never remarried and learned to “leave all the pleasures in life,” according to an interview he gave in 2019.

By 1972, he had become a “pracharak” for the RSS, according to his biography, someone appointed to spread their cause through meetings and public lectures.

The turning point for the young activist came in 1975, when then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi invoked what she called necessary “shock treatment” to stamp out internal unrest. She imposed a state of emergency, tightening government control, rounding up critics, censoring her opposition and silencing the press.

Detached from the demands of marriage, Modi then 25, saw an opportunity, according to his biography. He joined a movement to restore democracy to India, his profile states, marking the start of his journey to political high office.

And in the absence of a family life, many of his supporters have claimed him as part of their own, adding to his everyman appeal. “Modi is our family,” said the shopkeeper Jaiswal in Varanasi. “We are all his family.”

Entry into the BJP

Modi joined the BJP in 1987, when the fringe political party started gaining traction fueled by the rise of Hindu nationalism in India.

Considered to be the political arm of the RSS, the BJP gained prominence that decade when it advocated for the destruction of the Babri Masjid, a 16th-century mosque believed by Hindus to have been built on the site of the birthplace of the religion’s revered Lord Ram.

And it was thrust into the mainstream in 1992, when – spurred on by members of the BJP – Hindu hardliners attacked the mosque, ripping it apart with their hands, and setting off a wave of sectarian violence that reverberated through the nation.

One of the BJP’s founders Lal Krishna Advani – widely believed to be the brains behind the mosque’s destruction – saw a leader in Modi, giving him immense responsibilities within the party.

No politician “brings the experience that Modi does,” Naqvi, the author, said last month from her home in New Delhi, referring to his various political roles.

Modi thrived under Advani’s guidance, working his way through the ranks of the BJP. In 2001, he was appointed chief minister of the wealthy state of Gujarat.

Under Modi’s governance, the state introduced a wave of infrastructure, industry, and innovation to its arid landscape – making the “Gujarat model” synonymous with development and government efficiency.

His tenure was not without controversy.

Violence erupted in Gujarat in 2002 when Hindus blamed Muslims for setting fire to a train in an incident that killed dozens of Hindu pilgrims and sought revenge by attacking Muslim-owned homes and stores.

More than 1,000 people – mostly Muslims – were killed, according to government figures. Critics accused Modi of being complicit in the violence, alleging that his administration failed to prevent or adequately respond to the unrest.

Modi faced international repercussions in its aftermath, with the United States banning him from entering the country for many years over concerns about human rights violations.

He vehemently denied any wrongdoing, and the Supreme Court cleared him of complicity. Months after the violence, he was re-elected with a roaring majority – the “first evidence” of his cult following, said Naqvi, the author.

But the polarization of communities deeply divided the nation, leaving scars that persist to this day.

Political scientist Christophe Jaffrelot suggested events in Gujarat made Hindu nationalists more confident. “But Modi himself is so insecure, he cannot face any questions,” he said.

Modi infamously walked out of an interview in 2007, when journalist Karan Thapar pressed him on his role in the Gujarat riots. He rarely gives interviews, and has not held a solo press conference since becoming Prime Minister.

“He cannot face debate,” Jaffrelot said.

Becoming prime minister

Modi’s “Gujarat model” had become a blueprint for India and in 2014, the BJP won by a landslide, crushing the Congress – the party’s worst defeat in more than 100 years of its existence.

Since entering into office, Modi’s administration has upgraded the country’s aging transport network, building highways connecting small villages with major cities. His administration has built new power plants and maritime projects, and, according to recent remarks from Modi himself, subsidized the construction of some 40 million concrete homes for improvised families.

The administration also bolstered the country’s military capabilities. And it’s invested money in sports, science and high-end technology – letting India thrive on the world stage.

But for some observers, a troubling pattern has also emerged.

“He was able to popularize Hindu nationalistic politics and their ideology,” said Mukhopadhyay, the writer and unofficial Modi biographer.

Modi appointed Hindu nationalists to top positions in government, giving them the power to make sweeping changes to legislation, instilling a sense of fear among the 230 million Muslims living in the country.

In 2019, he roared through polls yet again – this time on a more clearly defined ticket of Hindu supremacy.

He abrogated the special autonomy of Kashmir – India’s only Muslim-majority state – bringing it under the direct control of New Delhi. His government implemented a controversial citizenship law considered by many to be discriminatory against Muslims.

He built the Ram Temple in Ayodhya on the site of the destroyed mosque, reviving painful memories of 1992’s bloodshed for many Muslims, but brought a sense of pride for millions of Hindu devotees.

And to his more vocal critics, Modi’s economic policies are also open to question. Despite India now boasting an economy that is projected to grow 7.3% this fiscal year – the highest rate among major global economies – accusations persist that Modi has failed to create enough jobs, or adequately bridge the gap between the country’s billionaire class and its most improvised.

“He has made the poor, poorer. He has increased inequalities,” said Jaffrelot, in reference to the country’s wealth gap, which according to a recent study is more unequal than it was during British rule.

On the diplomatic front, he’s grown closer to the US, been wooed by Australia and courted by the United Kingdom.

At the same time, Modi has kept India’s historically close relationship with Russia — snapping up huge amounts of Moscow’s oil despite the Ukraine invasion — and he maintains relations with both Israel and other Middle Eastern countries at a time of increased polarization.

And an overwhelming majority of Indians appear to put their weight behind his leadership. A recent Morning Context poll ranked Modi as the world’s most popular global leader, with an approval rating of 76% at home.

“He’s the number one figure right now. He’s the only candidate for prime minister,” Naqvi said.

At a Modi rally in the northern city of Ghaziabad earlier this month, thousands of supporters thronged the large grounds as he walked on stage. Some dressed as the Indian god Ram, others head to toe in saffron, the official color of his BJP, their triumphant cries reverberating through the air.

In the city of Meerut in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, a Modi supporter says she is voting for him because he is “unlike any other politician in the world.”

“I have put Modi’s poster in my son’s room,” Raniva, who is 36 and goes by one name, said. “The way (he) is doing so much for the country, I hope my son also does good work for the country.”

On the streets of the capital New Delhi, opinion is more divided. “Nowadays there is so much fighting between Hindus and Muslims. We all know why,” said one rickshaw driver sitting outside the city’s famed Jama Mosque.

With Modi widely expected to comfortably win the upcoming election, some analysts say they have genuine fears about the future of the country’s democracy.

“I definitely see a decline in the quality of democracy in the country,” said Mukhopadhyay. “I see greater insecurity and marginalization of Muslims in India. That’s not a very rosy picture. But it’s the likely path India is going to take.”

At least 20 severely decomposed bodies have been found in a boat off the coast of northeastern Brazil, officials say.

The boat was found on the coast of Bragança, northeast of Pará, on April 13, the Brazilian Federal Public Ministry announced Sunday.

Two investigations have been since been opened.

Officials said at least 20 bodies had been found in the boat, but due to the decomposition of the remains it’s unknown how many died on the boat.

Local authorities say there have been no recent reports of missing Brazilians.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

A bishop was among several people reportedly stabbed in Sydney, Australia on Monday – just two days after the city was rocked by a mass stabbing in a busy shopping mall.

Video of the incident appears to show a clergyman being attacked during a ceremony at Christ The Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley, western Sydney.

A man was arrested after officers were called to the incident and “is assisting police with inquiries,” New South Wales police said.

Police said none of the victims received life-threatening injuries.

The incident comes shortly after six people were killed and several others injured, including a nine-month-old baby, in a stabbing attack at Westfield Bondi Junction on Saturday afternoon.

Australian police said Monday that the attacker in Bondi, 40-year-old Joel Cauchi, may have targeted women.

Five women were among the six people killed by Cauchi. Twelve others were injured, eight of whom remained in the hospital Monday in conditions ranging from stable to critical.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Chinese runner He Jie’s victory in Sunday in the Beijing Half Marathon is facing a probe after his win was called into question by Chinese internet users because a trio of African runners appeared to deliberately slow down to let him win.

A video clip of the finish to the race shows Kenya’s Willy Mnangat turn toward He and gesture him to move ahead as the four men run neck and neck just meters from the finish line.

Former 5km world record-holder Robert Keter, also of Kenya, then appears to wave at He to overtake the pack while signaling for his compatriot and Ethiopia’s Dejene Hailu to hang back.

The Chinese runner crossed the finish line in 1:03:44 to claim the $5,500 first prize, with the African trio just one second behind in joint-second place.

The video clip shows the African runners applauding He’s win and patting him on the back, though the Asian Games marathon champion appears less enthused despite winning his first ever competitive half marathon.

He, 25, who has broken China’s marathon record twice in the past two years, told reporters after the race that he “was not in my best competitive state” — but he did not address the controversial finish.

Some Chinese internet users called for an investigation into the race, while others demanded action from organizers.

“The so-called ‘ways of the world’ should not taint the fairness of competition in sports. Fairness is always at the core of sporting spirit,” said one user on social platform Weibo.

Another popular comment said: “I support an investigation, and fair play is vital,” with the user adding they hoped authorities “can give a clear explanation to maintain fairness of competition and respect athletes’ efforts.”

Race organizers the Beijing Municipal Sports Bureau and Chinese Athletics Association acknowledged “feedback has been received” and “will be processed further,” according to Chinese state media.

Chinese sports company Xstep, which sponsors both He and the Beijing Half Marathon, told Chinese state-run outlet The Paper that the situation is “being investigated and verified by multiple parties.”

“Further information will be communicated as soon as possible,” Xstep said in a statement to the outlet.

Some observers agreed the finish to the race seemed unusual.

“It’s just a bad look, however you slice it,” said sports analyst Mark Dreyer, author of “Sporting Superpower: An Insider’s View on China’s Quest to Be the Best.”

“It’s one thing for four runners running right at the end to potentially hold hands or cross the line together in a show of sportsmanship. That’s not what we saw.

“It’s not a sprint finish for anyone other than He Jie. It doesn’t take a genius or running expert to figure that out.”

He, who hails from northwest China’s Ningxia region, is considered one of the country’s most promising long-distance runners. He is ranked 77th in the world in men’s marathon by World Athletics and is expected to lead the way for Asian runners in the upcoming Paris 2024 Summer Olympics.

“He Jie is elite,” Dreyer said. “He doesn’t need charity like this.”