Alejandro Gomez has been without proper running water for more than three months. Sometimes it comes on for an hour or two, but only a small trickle, barely enough to fill a couple of buckets. Then nothing for many days.

Gomez, who lives in Mexico City’s Tlalpan district, doesn’t have a big storage tank so can’t get water truck deliveries — there’s simply nowhere to store it. Instead, he and his family eke out what they can buy and store.

Water shortages are not uncommon in this neighborhood, but this time feels different, Gomez said. “Right now, we are getting this hot weather. It’s even worse, things are more complicated.”

Mexico City, a sprawling metropolis of nearly 22 million people and one of the world’s biggest cities, is facing a severe water crisis as a tangle of problems — including geography, chaotic urban development and leaky infrastructure — are compounded by the impacts of climate change.

Years of abnormally low rainfall, longer dry periods and high temperatures have added stress to a water system already straining to cope with increased demand. Authorities have been forced to introduce significant restrictions on the water pumped from reservoirs.

“Several neighborhoods have suffered from a lack of water for weeks, and there are still four months left for the rains to start,” said Christian Domínguez Sarmiento, an atmospheric scientist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).

Politicians are downplaying any sense of crisis, but some experts say the situation has now reached such critical levels that Mexico City could be barreling towards “day zero” in a matter of months — where the taps run dry for huge swaths of the city.

Historic lows

Densely populated Mexico City stretches out across a high-altitude lake bed, around 7,300 feet above sea level. It was built on clay-rich soil — into which it is now sinking — and is prone to earthquakes and highly vulnerable to climate change. It’s perhaps one of the last places anyone would choose to build a megacity today.

The Aztecs chose this spot to build their city of Tenochtitlan in 1325, when it was a series of lakes. They built on an island, expanding the city outwards, constructing networks of canals and bridges to work with the water.

But when the Spanish arrived in the early 16th century, they tore down much of the city, drained the lakebed, filled in canals and ripped out forests. They saw “water as an enemy to overcome for the city to thrive,” said Jose Alfredo Ramirez, an architect and co-director of Groundlab, a design and policy research organization.

Their decision paved the way for many of Mexico City’s modern problems. Wetlands and rivers have been replaced with concrete and asphalt. In the rainy season, it floods. In the dry season, it’s parched.

Around 60% of Mexico City’s water comes from its underground aquifer, but this has been so over-extracted that the city is sinking at a frightening rate — around 20 inches a year, according to recent research. And the aquifer is not being replenished anywhere near fast enough. The rainwater rolls off the city’s hard, impermeable surfaces, rather than sinking into the ground.

The rest of the city’s water is pumped vast distances uphill from sources outside the city, in an incredibly inefficient process, during which around 40% of the water is lost through leaks.

The Cutzamala water system, a network of reservoirs, pumping stations, canals and tunnels, supplies about 25% of the water used by the Valley of Mexico, which includes Mexico City. But severe drought has taken its toll. Currently, at around 39% of capacity, it’s been languishing at a historic low.

“It’s almost half of the amount of water that we should have,” said Fabiola Sosa-Rodríguez, head of economic growth and environment at the Metropolitan Autonomous University in Mexico City.

In October, Conagua, the country’s national water commission, announced it would restrict water from Cutzamala by 8% “to ensure the supply of drinking water to the population given the severe drought.”

Just a few weeks later, officials significantly tightened restrictions, reducing the water supplied by the system by nearly 25%, blaming extreme weather conditions.

“Measures will have to be taken to be able to distribute the water that Cutzamala has over time, to ensure that it does not run out,” Germán Arturo Martínez Santoyo, the director general of Conagua, said in a statement at the time.

Around 60% of Mexico is experiencing moderate to exceptional drought, according to a February report. Nearly 90% of Mexico City is in severe drought — and it’s set to get worse with the start of the rainy season still months away.

“We are around the middle of the dry season with sustained temperature increases expected until April or May,” said June Garcia-Becerra, an assistant professor in engineering at the University of Northern British Columbia.

Natural climate variability heavily affects this part of Mexico. Three years of La Niña brought drought to the region, and then the arrival of El Niño last year helped deliver a painfully short rainy season that failed to replenish the reservoirs.

But the long-term trend of human-caused global warming hums in the background, fueling longer droughts and fiercer heat waves, as well as heavier rains when they do arrive.

“Climate change has made droughts increasingly severe due to the lack of water,” said UNAM’s Sarmiento. Added to this, high temperatures “have caused the water that is available in the Cutzamala system to evaporate,” she said.

Last summer saw brutal heat waves roil large parts of the country, which claimed at least 200 lives. These heat waves would have been “virtually impossible” without climate change, according to an analysis by scientists.

The climate impacts have collided with the growing pains of a fast-expanding city. As the population booms, experts say the centralized water system has not kept pace.

‘Day zero?’

The crisis has set up a fierce debate about whether the city will reach a “day zero,” where the Cutzamala system falls to such low levels that it will be unable to provide any water to the city’s residents.

Local media widely reported in early February that an official from a branch of Conagua said that without significant rain, “day zero” could arrive as early as June 26.

But authorities have since sought to assure residents there will be no day zero. In a press conference on February 14, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said that work was underway to address the water problems. Mexico City’s mayor, Martí Batres Guadarrama, said in a recent press conference that reports of day zero were “fake news” spread by political opponents.

But many experts warn of a spiraling crisis. Mexico City could run out of water before the rainy season arrives if it carries on using it in the same way, Sosa-Rodríguez said. “It’s probable that we will face a day zero,” she added.

This doesn’t mean a complete collapse of the water system, she said, because the city isn’t dependent on just one source. It won’t be the same as when Cape Town in South Africa came perilously close to running totally dry in 2018 following a severe multi-year drought. “Some groups will still have water,” she said, “but most of the people won’t.”

Raúl Rodríguez Márquez, president of the non-profit Water Advisory Council, said he doesn’t believe the city will reach a day zero this year — but, he warned, it will if changes are not made.

‘I don’t think anyone is prepared’

For nearly a decade, Sosa-Rodríguez said she has been warning officials of the danger of a day zero for Mexico City.

She said the solutions are clear: Better wastewater treatment would both increase water availability and decrease pollution, while rainwater harvesting systems could capture and treat the rain, and allow residents to reduce their reliance on the water network or water trucks by 30%.

Fixing leaks would make the system much more efficient and reduce the volume of water that has to be extracted from the aquifer. And nature-based solutions, such as restoring rivers and wetlands, would help provide and purify water, she said, with the added advantage of greening and cooling the city.

In a statement on its website, Conagua said it is undertaking a 3-year project to install, develop and improve water infrastructure to help the city cope with decreases in the Cutzamala system, including adding new wells and commissioning water treatment plants.

But in the meantime, tensions are rising as some residents are forced to cope with shortages, while others — often in the wealthier enclaves — remain mostly unaffected.

“There is a clear unequal access to water in the city and this is related to people’s income,” Sosa-Rodríguez said. While day zero might not be here yet for the whole of Mexico City, some neighborhoods have been grappling with it for years, she added.

“I don’t think anyone is prepared.”

Gazing at February’s full snow moon, which will illuminate the night sky this weekend, may feel a little more special than usual after a dramatic lunar landing.

Just over a week after launching, the uncrewed Intuitive Machines’ IM-1 lander, also called Odysseus or “Odie,” successfully touched down near the lunar south pole Thursday night.

It was a historic moment. The milestone marked the first time a commercial spacecraft has soft-landed on the moon — and the first US-made spacecraft to reach the lunar surface since Apollo 17 in 1972.

However, Odie’s journey was anything but expected, and the spacecraft experienced a “dynamic situation” that forced the mission team members to think quickly on their feet to avoid disaster.

Tuning in to the webcast of the landing felt as dramatic as watching a space thriller, and it was a reminder of why it’s still so difficult to land on the moon more than 50 years after humanity initially achieved the feat.

Lunar update

Hours before Odie’s landing, the spacecraft experienced an unexpected navigation systems issue that might have prevented a safe touchdown.

Fortunately, the lander was carrying NASA’s Navigation Doppler Lidar. The sensor was aboard Odie as a technology experiment to help future landers achieve precise touchdowns, shooting lasers at the surface to find a safe landing zone.

The experimental technology ultimately saved the day, playing a key role in unlocking the monumental achievement.

Although Odie landed on its side after catching one of its feet on a lunar rock, the spacecraft remains stable, is capable of charging its solar panels and has already accomplished some key mission objectives.

Fantastic creatures

Vultures are often thought of as dirty animals, but these misunderstood birds help keep the planet as clean as their own feathers.

“Vultures are meticulous about their cleanliness,” said Kerri Wolter, founder and CEO of conservation group VulPro in South Africa. “They spend hours cleaning their feathers after feeding, because those feathers have to be so well streamlined and cleaned for flight. They don’t flap like other birds, they soar.”

Vultures efficiently scavenge dead animals and prevent bacteria from building up that could cause disease outbreaks in other animals and humans. Their stomachs are even capable of destroying anthrax.

But some vulture species in sub-Saharan Africa are critically endangered due to poisoning and hunting, which is why conservationists are eager to provide the much maligned birds with a haven.

Curiosities

When a 280 million-year-old ancient reptile fossil was found in the Italian Alps in 1931, researchers thought it was an exceptionally well-preserved specimen.

The dark color of the lizardlike animal’s remains resembled soft tissue and skin that might contain biological information, which could be used to understand how early reptiles evolved.

But a new advanced analysis has revealed that the fossil is largely a forgery. The dark color is just black paint that covered scales and a couple of leg bones encased in carved rock.

Now, the team has a new puzzle: figuring out exactly what kind of creature was trapped within the rock.

Sky watch

When a 5,000-pound European Space Agency satellite fell to Earth this week, it was one example of just how much space junk is encircling the planet.

It’s estimated that nearly 30,000 objects bigger than a softball are zipping by a few hundred miles above Earth at a speed 10 times faster than a bullet.

And as governments and private companies launch thousands of satellites in the future, astronomers worry that light pollution from all the objects in low-Earth orbit will affect scientists’ ability to study the cosmos.

A new mission just launched to take a closer look at space junk, such as an abandoned rocket stage, to determine the best and safest way to knock it out of orbit.

Ocean secrets

Scientists first heard whale songs underwater more than 50 years ago, and how the leviathans produce these reverberating sounds has long mystified researchers — until now.

A baleen whale, such as a humpback or minke whale, has a uniquely shaped voice box in its throat that enables the marine mammal to produce sound and take in massive amounts of air when it surfaces.

The songs, both eerie and fascinating, allow whales to find one another and mate within the ocean’s dark depths.

But the low-frequency vocalizations can only be made within 328 feet (100 meters) from the surface since whales need to breathe to send out their calls — and rumbling human-made vessels are creating a big obstacle that disrupts whale communication.

The wonder

These stories might blow your mind:

— Astronomers have spotted the brightest known object in the universe, and it’s powered by the fastest-growing black hole ever observed.

— Researchers have unveiled the stunning fossil of a 240 million-year-old marine reptile, and the mysterious creature resembles a mythical Chinese dragon.

— Forgotten artifacts within a Berlin museum’s collection have revealed that Neanderthals likely made glue that helped them grip stone tools, suggesting that these ancient human ancestors were capable of complex thinking.

— While it’s not possible for humans to board a spacecraft to Mars just yet, NASA is looking for volunteers to live and work inside a Martian simulator for one year.

The body of Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny has been given to his mother more than a week after he died, Navalny’s spokesperson Kira Yarmysh said on Saturday.

“Alexey’s body was handed over to his mother. Many thanks to all those who demanded this with us,” Yarmysh posted to social media.

Yarmysh added that Navalny’s mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, is still in Salekhard, the Arctic town where her son’s body was being held.

Navalny died on February 16 behind bars in a nearby penal colony. The Russian prison service said he “felt unwell after a walk” and “almost immediately” lost consciousness.

Navalny’s family and colleagues have blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin for Navalny’s death, which comes ahead of the country’s presidential election next month. Putin is not running against any meaningful opposition and is expected to sweep to a fifth term in office.

Funeral plans have not yet been made, Yarmysh said.

“We do not know if the authorities will interfere to carry it out as the family wants and as Alexey deserves. We will inform you as soon as there is news,” she added.

Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, accused Putin of ordering that the body be held to hide Navalny’s cause of death and out of fear that his funeral would draw large crowds.

The Kremlin has denied the allegations.

Navalny’s family had for several days pleaded for Russian authorities to release his body. The elder Navalnaya traveled to Salekhard to recover the body shortly after her son’s death, but was repeatedly rebuffed.

On Tuesday Navalny’s team released a video in which Navalnaya was filmed outside the prison colony where Navalny was held pleading with Putin to release the body. She said later that was allowed to see her son, but that investigators had threatened to let her son’s body “decompose” unless she agreed to their demand that he be buried in secret.

Yarmysh said on Friday that Navalnaya was given an ultimatum to agree to a secret funeral or see her son buried in the Arctic penal colony where he died.

Saturday marks nine days since Navalny’s death, at which time in the Orthodox Christian tradition prayers are supposed to be offered to the departed.

In a video released on Saturday morning before the news that Navalny’s body had been given to his mother, Yulia Navalnaya accused Putin of “breaking every law, both human and God’s,” by refusing to hand over her late husband’s remains.

She said that the Russian leader’s actions cut against his carefully crafted image as a devout Orthodox Christian protecting both the faith and the state from the infiltration of Western values.

This weekend marks two years since Russia invaded Ukraine, a conflict that has claimed tens of thousands of lives, upended long-held international norms and has no clear end in sight.

In more than one sense, Russia’s President Vladmir Putin has failed: Ukraine remains a sovereign nation, with Moscow in control of about one-fifth of its territory, far from his goal of toppling its government. Putin wanted to stop NATO expanding: He now faces an alliance that has added hundreds of kilometers to its border with Russia following Finland’s accession.

But as the war enters a third year, there are increasingly signs that it is turning in Russia’s favor, both on the battlefield and in terms of once-solid Western support waning.

We’ve been taking a look at some of the most significant moments of the war so far.

February 24, 2022: The ‘special military operation’ begins

Two years ago, Putin made an early morning address announcing a “special military operation” against Ukraine, his still frequently used euphemism for the full-scale invasion of the country.

Putin said he wanted the “denazification” of Ukraine, one of his justifications for the invasion that analysts say distorts history.

Moments later, the first explosions were heard across Ukraine.

While there had been Western intelligence warnings of a looming Russian invasion for months prior, the announcement took many by surprise.

Putin’s announcement signaled the start of Russia’s war in Ukraine, which has so far cost the lives of over 10,300 civilians, according to the United Nations. Military losses are harder to determine, but Russia is thought to have suffered more than 300,000 fatalities and injuries.

February 26, 2022: ‘I don’t need a ride’: Ukraine signals it will be no pushover

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was in Kyiv when Russia invaded, with Putin’s forces expected to quickly advance on the capital. Two days later, he turned down an offer of evacuation from the United States.

In defiant words, he told the US, “I need ammunition, not a ride.”

His attitude signaled his country’s fighting spirit in the face of Russian aggression and its determination not to crumble as some expected it to.

The Ukrainian defenders of Snake Island – a tiny island in the Black Sea – echoed this defiance in the early stages of the war when, outnumbered and ordered to surrender, they responded to a warning from an approaching Russian military vessel by saying, “Russian warship, go f**k yourself.”

Since then, the phrase has been adopted as a slogan during the war and used by demonstrators at Ukrainian solidarity protests in the West.

March 16, 2022: Mariupol theater bombing

Throughout the conflict Russia has carried out a relentless bombing campaign, and one of the worst examples came when Mariupol’s Drama Theater was hit by Russian forces.

An estimated 1,300 civilians were sheltering inside the theater when it was attacked.

Painted on the ground outside the building — in giant Cyrillic letters visible from the air — was the word “CHILDREN.”

Since then, there have been numerous high-profile Russian attacks on civilian targets. More than 40 people were killed in an attack on an apartment block in Dnipro in January 2023. At least 51 people were killed when Moscow’s forces targeted a café and a shop in Hroza, in the Kharkiv region, in October 2023.

April 1, 2022: Bucha atrocities

The following month, a small town to the west of Kyiv became a byword for war crimes.

International experts said they found “grave breaches” of international humanitarian law by Russian forces when they withdrew from the city of Bucha.

Residents there shared stories of looted homes, murders and failed escapes.

The town’s morgue ran out of space. Some locals described turning their vegetable patches and front yards into makeshift graves, since the presence of Russian forces made it impossible for them to transport their dead.

Evidence of execution was clear when bodies were found with their arms bound behind their backs with multiple bullet wounds.

April 14, 2022: Sinking of the Moskva

The Russian warship Moskva, the flagship of the Russian Navy’s Black Sea Fleet, sank on April 14.

The reason for this was disputed. Ukraine claimed that it hit the vessel with anti-ship cruise missiles, while Russia insisted that a fire caused it to sink.

Regardless, the sinking was a major embarrassment for Russia – its biggest wartime loss of a naval ship in 40 years.

It was an early sign of how the Black Sea would become an important front.

In October that year, Ukraine attacked the only bridge connecting annexed Crimea to mainland Russia and has been harrying Russia’s Black Sea fleet, claiming to have destroyed a third of its vessels.

November 9, 2022: Kherson liberation caps a successful autumn

There were scenes of euphoria when the city of Kherson was liberated after eight months of Russian occupation.

The retreat represented a major blow for Putin’s war effort – Kherson was the only Ukrainian regional capital that Russian forces had captured since February’s invasion.

The withdrawal of Russian troops east across the Dnipro River capped off a successful autumn for Ukraine, with it reclaiming swathes of land that Russia had occupied since the early days of the war.

Despite battlefield successes, the colder months brought a new danger when Moscow’s air force began pummelling the country’s energy network, an attempt to drain morale.

Millions of civilians were left without electricity, heat, water and other critical services during winter.

May 3, 2023: Drones hit the Kremlin, as the war comes to Russia

In the spring of 2023, an emboldened Kyiv increasingly brought the war home to Russia with a series of drone attacks on Russian soil.

Strikes peppered cities including the Moscow. On May 3, two explosive drones targeted the Kremlin, in the heart of the capital. They were intercepted and destroyed before they caused any damage or injury, the Kremlin said. Ukrainian officials denied involvement.

Later that month, Russian blamed Ukraine for another drone attack on Moscow, which left two injured and several buildings damaged.

Putin called the attack “a clear sign of terrorist activity” while a spokesman for Ukraine’s air force said it was aimed at Russians who felt the war was distant.

There have been subsequent attacks, such as on oil facilities and other infrastructure. This year Russia evacuated some residents from the border region of Belgorod following a surge in deadly Ukrainian strikes.

May 20, 2023: Russia takes control of Bakhmut

In a rare gain, Russia captured the besieged eastern city of Bakhmut following a months-long slog for every inch of territory.

The struggle for the city – whose symbolism outweighed its strategic importance – encapsulated the slow-moving nature of the ground war, which had grown to resemble the kind of fighting seen in World War One.

Moscow threw huge amounts of manpower, weaponry and attention towards the city yet struggled to break down a stubborn Ukrainian resistance that outlasted most expectations.

June 2023: Ukraine counteroffensive

After months of build-up, Ukraine began a counteroffensive aimed at recapturing Russian-seized territory.

With fighting focused on the southern and eastern fronts, its launch brought with it a renewed sense of optimism. However, Russia had had time to prepare layers of defenses.

As the months passed, it became clear that the counteroffensive would not provide the decisive breakthrough many had hoped for. For example, fighting around Robotyne, to the north of Mariupol, was marked by a crawl over vast minefields, with troops battling for gains counted in streets, or even buildings.

The counteroffensive had stalled by the time the winter returned, with Western intelligence assessments warning the battlefield could stagnate, turning the war into a “frozen conflict.”

June 23, 2023: Wagner mutiny

Yevgeny Prigozhin was the founder of Russia’s Wagner private military group, which played a crucial role in Bakhmut. He was once close enough to Putin to be called his “personal chef.”

But that all changed on June 23, when Prigozhin led an armed insurrection against Putin after railing against the country’s military brass over their handling of the Ukraine war.

His group started marching towards Moscow, shooting down military aircraft and killing Russian servicemen. But it was abruptly halted when a deal was brokered by Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko.

Criminal charges against the Wagner boss were dropped, yet Putin said in a speech at the time that those on the “path of treason” would face punishment.

Months later, Prigozhin was killed when a plane he was on board crashed northwest of Moscow.

January 2024: US aid stalls

A constant drip feed of aid from Western countries, particularly the US, as well as the provision of modern weaponry, has proved a vital lifeline for Ukraine in its war.

But in early 2024, a US aid package for Ukraine stalled. The US Senate passed with bipartisan backing a $95.3 billion foreign aid bill, which includes $60 billion to support Ukraine.

However, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson has resisted moves for a quick vote, which would likely face a revolt from members of his own party.

The episode of a reminder of how Ukraine’s fate is not entirely in its own hands. Ukraine commanders have warned of critical ammunition shortages impeding their fight.

February 8, 2024: Ukraine military chief fired

This month, Zelensky announced the dismissal of Ukraine’s top commander, General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, in the biggest military shakeup since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion almost two years ago.

The two are known to have fallen out and his firing marked a political gamble for Zelensky. Despite the failure of Ukraine’s counteroffensive, the now-former military chief remains one of the most popular leaders in the country.

The move also came as Ukraine was put back on a defensive footing by a flurry of Russian offensives along much of the frontlines.

On February 17, Russia said it had won full control of the eastern city of Avdiivka, marking the biggest gain for Moscow since Bakhmut. 

As the war enters its third year, the future of the conflict is all the more uncertain.

Two years ago, when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, I was among the many long-time observers of the Kremlin who got it wrong.

Few could fathom why Vladimir Putin, Russia’s calculating leader, would embark on such a risky military adventure, especially when the mere threat of a Russian invasion was already yielding results.

In June the previous year, as Russian forces massed near Ukraine, US President Joe Biden met Putin at a superpower-style summit, describing the US and Russia as “two great powers” elevating the Russian leader after previous US administrations had sought to downplay Russia’s influence.

In the days before the 2022 invasion, Washington offered a “pragmatic evaluation” of Moscow’s security concerns, signalling openness to compromise.

Pitching Russian forces against one of the region’s biggest standing armies seemed uncharacteristically reckless and, therefore, unlikely.

There were others, though, who rightly saw the invasion as inevitable, better reading the Kremlin’s intentions, and confidently predicting a swift Russian victory at the hands of Moscow’s vastly superior forces.

Two years on, I like to think that those of us who doubted the Kremlin’s resolve were wrong for the right reasons.

What Moscow still euphemistically calls a Special Military Operation has been a bloodbath of catastrophic proportions, unseen in Europe for generations. Even conservative estimates put the number of dead and injured at hundreds of thousands of people on each side. Small gains, such as the recent capture of Avdiivka, have come at enormous cost.

Russia’s once revered military has shown itself painfully unprepared and vulnerable to modern weapons in the hands of a determined Ukrainian resistance. Even if the war ends tomorrow, it is likely to take many years for its strength and numbers to recover.

And the past two years of brutal war have twisted and distorted Russia internally too.

Hundreds of thousands of its citizens have fled abroad to avoid conscription. Frustrations with the way the war was being fought provoked an armed uprising in which gun-toting Wagner mercenaries marched on Moscow, posing an unprecedented challenge to the Kremlin’s authority.

International disdain has made Russia the most heavily sanctioned country in the world. Even President Putin has been indicted for war crimes at the Hague.

And now Putin’s most vocal critic – Alexey Navalny – is dead. Amid a broader crackdown on dissent, this country has plunged further into isolation and darkness.

Take a longer view, and the direction of travel seems tragically clear.

I was in Chechnya when, in 2000, a newly installed President Putin brought that rebellious Russian region to heel, unleashing a relentless Russian military. We will bomb them in the outhouse, he remarked, in a crude but popular refrain.

In 2004, a leading Russia journalist, Anna Politikovskaya, was murdered, on Putin’s birthday. Her brave dispatches from Chechnya struck a chord. Other critics were silenced at home and abroad.

By 2008, Putin was intervening in neighbouring Georgia, carving out pro-Russian regions from the Georgian state. Before the territory of Crimea was annexed from Ukraine in 2014, Russian forces had for years successfully propped up the Syrian regime in that country’s own brutal crackdown on rebellion, despite international condemnation.

But February 24, 2022, was a watershed.

It’s not just that Putin miscalculated in his ambition to conquer Ukraine, although what was meant as a limited campaign is very much now an open-ended war.

Rather, his full-scale invasion of Ukraine was the moment Putin finally abandoned all semblance of cooperation with the West, and all pretence that dissent and criticism inside this great nation would be tolerated.

And there is currently little sign of any change in course.

In fact, two years into his Special Military Operation, Putin is tightening his grip on power with opponents silenced and elections in March set to confirm his fifth presidential term.

Privately, many Russians remain quietly hopeful that there will, one day, be a change in course. But few believe it is unlikely to be now or even soon.

At least 15 people were killed in a fire thought to have been started by an electric bicycle parked at a high-rise residential building in eastern China early Friday morning, state media have reported.

Forty-four people were also injured during the blaze that engulfed the 34-floor building in the eastern city of Nanjing, the media outlet CCTV said.

Two were in critical and serious condition while the rest suffered minor injuries, the state broadcaster reported, adding that all were hospitalized.

A preliminary investigation found an electric bike parked on an open floor of the building may have caught fire, according to the state broadcaster. Investigations are continuing.

Footage on Chinese social media showed a ball of fire spreading to the exterior of the building. Billows of smoke emerged from apartments on various floors, leaving burn marks on the facade of the building.

Authorities received calls for help at 4:39 a.m. and dispatched 20 fire engines to the scene, according to CCTV. The fire was put out at 6 a.m.

At a press conference early Saturday, Nanjing Mayor Chen Zhichang bowed to the public when he offered condolences and said he was “deeply sorry” to victims’ families and those who were injured, according to the Nanjing government’s official WeChat account.

He said officials were “deeply saddened” by the event, adding that an investigation is under way. “We will…give the victims and society an answer,” he said.

The blaze was a trending topic on the Chinese social media platform Weibo on Saturday, being viewed more than 470 million times by the afternoon.

Faulty electric bicycles have been reportedly linked to several blazes in the country in recent years.

Some commentators, including former Global Times editor-in-chief Hu Xijin, on Saturday called for stricter regulations on the increasingly popular form of transport.

“It’s really shocking and heartbreaking. How to manage electric bicycles is a major problem to tackle,” wrote Hu, who has 24 million followers on Weibo.

Some commentators called for the authorities to be more proactive.

“I don’t want to see leaders of a certain level apologize and bow after every major safety incident,” said one online commentator, with 179,000 followers.

“This kind of behavior won’t impress people these days as what everyone wishes to see is what they actually do for the people.”

Artem spends a lot of time thinking about the shots he can’t afford to take.

As a battery commander in the 26th Artillery Brigade of the Ukrainian military, he decides when his gunners fire and when they need to hold off.

Lately, it’s been a lot more of the latter.

“Last summer, we used 100 shells per day. The enemy infantry did not even think about moving here. They had no plans to advance because they knew that every unit that was here would use everything they had to repel their attack,” the 24-year-old, whose call sign is “Shaman,” said. He asked for his last name to not be published, for safety reasons.

These days, his men are forced to make do with a fraction of the amount of ammunition they used to have. That means they can only strike top priority targets, a limitation which is allowing Russian troops to slip through.

“In the past, if I saw their firing position, a dugout, machine guns… I would hit them. Now I don’t do that,” he said. “The priority is the tank, the gun – if it is firing, the multiple launch rocket systems. If I see infantry and no one gives me a command, then I don’t shoot, because we have to save the shells.”

It’s a scenario that’s playing out up and down the front lines in Ukraine. As the United States Congress stalls on US President Joe Biden’s request for an additional $60 billion in security assistance for Kyiv, Ukrainian commanders are facing tough choices on how to use the dwindling stockpiles of ammunition.

Kyiv suffered its most significant loss in recent months last week when its troops abandoned Avdiivka, a town that has been on the front lines since Russian-backed separatists seized control of parts of the eastern Donbas region in 2014.

It’s a blunt assessment, but one that international observers agree with. The Institute for the Study of War, a US-based think tank, said that delays in Western help, “namely artillery ammunition and critical air defense systems, inhibited Ukrainian troops from defending against Russian advances in Avdiivka.”

Oleh Kalashnikov, the spokesperson for the 26th Artillery Brigade, said that the change in supplies in recent months has been significant.

“When [the Russians] launch an assault and our infantry asks for artillery support, when it works well, the infantry immediately feels better and more secure because they know they are protected, because we simply cut off the enemy with the artillery fire,” he explained. “It has a psychological effect too.”

He said that, while the Ukrainian army had a clear advantage in the number of shells fired earlier in the war, that has gradually been lost, and it’s now Russia that has the clear edge on ammunition.

The Ukrainian military does not release exact numbers of artillery rounds it has available. Researchers, western and Ukrainian officials and others offer widely different estimates of Russian and Ukrainian fire. What is clear though is that Russia is firing multiple times as many rounds as Ukraine.

More injured, more killed

At a medical facility not far from the Bakhmut area front line, Dr. Sviatoslav Mykytiuk is also seeing the painful consequences of the ammunition shortages.

Mykytiuk is the surgeon of the 22nd Brigade’s medical company and has spent the past year stationed in the area. He said the nature of injuries he is dealing with has changed dramatically over that time.

“Because the weapons, their quantity and quality are changing. These are mainly (different types of) drones, long-range artillery and missiles,” he said.

Mykytiuk said more soldiers are getting injured on the front lines because Russian infantry can get within firing distance of Ukrainian troops more often.

Crucially, it is also taking a lot longer to bring the wounded to the medical point. When artillery cannot cover infantry, the troops must wait for a window of opportunity to evacuate casualties.

The standard goal in military medicine is to evacuate any casualties within the “golden hour” after injury to maximize the chances of survival and recovery.

In eastern Ukraine, Mykytiuk said, the evacuation can take up to a day, sometimes even longer.

This means Mykytiuk and his colleagues are seeing many more secondary injuries caused by the long delays. Soldiers get to him suffering with hypothermia and completely exhausted.

“It’s clear that our soldiers do not have enough of these modern weapons. Because we mostly use the remnants of the weapons that were left to us after the Soviet Union,” he said.

But the morale, he said, is still there.

He recalled a reconnaissance man who was hit in a drone attack when returning from a forward mission. With a deep wound across his shoulder and back, bleeding heavily, he walked some six kilometers (four miles) to get back to his unit.

Hours later, when he finally made it to the medical point, he explained what happened and said he was wounded, the doctor said.

“Then he asked: ‘Am I with the medics now?’ We said: ‘Yes, this is a stabilization point, doctors are working here, you are here.’ And then he said: ‘May I shut down now?’” Mykytiuk said.

“We paused, we didn’t understand what had happened, and we said ‘yes.’ He just collapsed. The amount of strength and concentration it took to walk six kilometers on foot, to get to the stabilization point, to make sure you were there, and then to just fall down from fatigue. He realized that he was in good hands, that he would be helped here. Spirit does exist,” Mykytiuk said.

That horrible feeling

Fighting the Russians around Bakhmut, Oleh Bulatetskyi, an artillery troop commander with the 30th Brigade, knows he needs to make every shot count. The troops on the front lines, including people he and his men know personally, are relying on him for protection.

His unit is using Soviet-era 2S1 Gvozdika howitzers. Developed in the 1970s in Kharkiv, not far from where he is now, these artillery pieces are a lot older than most of his men. They are reliable and easy to move around, but they lack precision compared to more modern Western weapons.

Lack of accuracy is not an insurmountable problem – one way to get around it is to fire as many rounds as possible to maximize the impact. But that strategy is no longer an option in Ukraine.

“We have had major problems with shortages during the Bakhmut and Soledar operation… now we must find different ways to make it work. At the moment, drones are helping us cope with this,” he said.

The Gvozdika howitzer that Bulatetskyi and his men use is a bit rusty and the ceiling of the narrow shaft that leads into the main compartment where the gunner and loader operate is covered with tiny icicles.

The platoon’s gunner, Artem, says that he would love to be able to fight the Russians with modern NATO weapons too. But the Gvozdikas are well-made machines and, with sufficient supplies, they can do the job, he said.

A 27-year-old whose call sign is “Sailor,” Artem sports a big beard and moves around the tight space inside the massive weapon with the confidence of someone who has been doing it for years. He spends weeks and months at a time staying in freezing dugouts, ready to launch at any moment. He has also asked for his last name to remain private.

Yet sitting in his seat inside the heart of the machine, Artem talks about the horrible feeling of not having enough ammunition.

“One time, I was firing, and it turned out that at that time, I was covering my nephew’s (infantry) unit. We fired very few shells there, I think, and there were lot of wounded,” he said. “We held the place, but there could have been fewer losses or maybe the injuries wouldn’t have been so severe (if we had more),” he said.

His nephew was injured in the battle and nearly lost an arm.

“If he was thinner, he would have lost it,” he said. “But he is ok now, fighting again.”

Nowhere is the toll of the ammunition shortage more evident than at the Kharkiv City Cemetery, where an entire new section is dedicated to recently fallen soldiers. There are hundreds of graves, each flying a large Ukrainian flag. The sound they make in the wind is overwhelming.

Most of the graves are new, many of them just a few weeks or even days old. “They say that we are stopping the Russian evil from spreading across the world at the expense of human lives, while Europe and America are only spending money. That’s a pretty good deal,” Kalashnikov said.

The widow of the late dissident Alexey Navalny said that Russian President Vladimir Putin is engaging in “satanism” by refusing to release her husband’s body.

“No true Christian could ever do what Putin is now doing with a body of Alexey,” Yulia Navalnaya said in video posted to social media. “It’s satanism.”

The video, titled “Putin’s fake faith,” was published nine days after Navalny’s death. Orthodox Christian death rites require that the deceased be buried three days after death and mourned for at a funeral service after nine days.

Navalny’s family and allies have accused Putin of having the 47-year-old killed and then holding his body to both hide his cause of death and out of fear that his funeral would draw large crowds.

“Murder wasn’t enough for Putin. Now his body is being held hostage,” Navalnaya said. “You mock the remains of the dead. Nothing more demonic can be imagined. You are breaking every law, both human and God’s.”

The Kremlin denied having anything to do with Navalny’s death.

Navalny, Putin’s most prominent political opponent, died on February 16 behind bars in a penal colony above the Arctic circle. The Russian prison service said he “felt unwell after a walk” and “almost immediately” lost consciousness.

He had been sentenced to 19 years in prison in August after being found guilty of creating an extremist community and other crimes, adding to the 11-and-a-half years to which he had previously been sentenced. Navalny had dismissed the charges against him as politically motivated.

His death came just weeks before Russia’s presidential election scheduled for March 17, at which Putin is expected to sweep to a fifth term in office, extending his rule until at least 2030.

With Navalny’s wife and team exiled from Russia, the duty of collecting his body and planning a funeral has fallen to his mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya. The elder Navalnaya has been in Salekhard, the Siberian town where Navalny’s body is being kept in a morgue, shortly after her son’s death.

On Tuesday Navalny’s team released a video in which Navalnaya was filmed outside the prison colony where Navalny was held pleading with Putin to release the body. She said later that was allowed to see her son, but that investigators had threatened to let her son’s body “decompose” unless she agreed to their demand that he be buried in secret.

Navalny’s spokeswoman said on Friday that Navalnaya was given an ultimatum to agree to a secret funeral or see her son buried in the Arctic penal colony where he died.

In her video published Saturday, Yulia Navalnaya held Putin responsible for the Russian state’s decision to hold Navalny’s body and said his actions cut against his carefully crafted image as a devout Orthodox Christian protecting both the faith and the state from the infiltration of Western values.

Putin, who has built a powerful symbolic and political alliance with the Russian Orthodox Church, has long attacked Western liberalism and accused the West of “pure satanism” in a September 2022 speech.

“Putin pretends to be a VERY religious man. He kisses icons and touches the relics of Saint Nicholas,” Navalnaya said. “Faith is not about kissing an icon. Faith is about goodness, about mercy, about salvation.”

Scientists working in the Amazon rainforest have discovered a new species of snake, rumored to be the biggest in the world.

A team from the University of Queensland traveled to the Ecuadorian Amazon to search for the previously undocumented northern green anaconda (Eunectes akayima), following an invitation from the Waorani people to observe anacondas “rumoured to be the largest in existence,” according to the scientists.

The team joined the hunters on a 10-day expedition to the Bameno region of Baihuaeri Waorani Territory, before paddling down the river system to “find several anacondas lurking in the shallows, lying in wait for prey,” Professor Bryan Fry, a biologist from the University of Queensland, who led the team, said in a statement.

Anacondas are giant, non-venomous constricting snakes found in or near water in warm parts of South America.

“The size of these magnificent creatures was incredible – one female anaconda we encountered measured an astounding 6.3 metres (20.7 feet) long,” Fry said of the team’s discovery, which was made while filming for National Geographic’s upcoming series “Pole to Pole with Will Smith.”

The team also said they had heard anecdotal evidence that snakes of 7.5 meters (24.6 feet) and 500 kilograms (1,100 pounds) had been sighted in the area.

Green anacondas are the world’s heaviest snakes, according to the UK’s Natural History Museum, which noted that the heaviest individual ever recorded weighed 227 kilograms (500 pounds). It measured 8.43 meters long (27.7 feet) and 1.11 meters (3.6 feet) wide.
While another species, the reticulated python, tends to be longer – often reaching more than 6.25 meters (20.5 feet) in length – it is lighter.

But experts studying the creatures discovered that the newly identified northern green anaconda species diverged from the southern green anaconda almost 10 million years ago, and they differ genetically by 5.5%.

“It’s quite significant – to put it in perspective, humans differ from chimpanzees by only about 2 per cent,” Fry said. The findings are described in the journal MDPI Diversity.

The team then set out to compare the genetics of the green anaconda with other specimens elsewhere to assess them as an indicator species for the health of ecosystems, and warned that the Amazon is facing numerous threats.

“Deforestation of the Amazon basin from agricultural expansion has resulted in an estimated 20-31 per cent habitat loss, which may impact up to 40 per cent of its forests by 2050,” Fry said.

Habitat degradation, forest fires, drought and climate change threaten rare species like the anacondas, which exist in such rare ecosystems, he added.

February’s full moon, known as the snow moon, is set to peak on Saturday, shining bright around the world in the night sky.

The moon will be at its most full at 7:30 a.m. ET Saturday, according to EarthSky, but to the human eye, the moon will appear full for a couple of days, so the best time to view it will be the nights before and after its peak.

While called the snow moon — a nickname inspired by the heavy snowfall typically seen in February in parts of the United States, according to the Farmers’ Almanac — the golden orb will look almost like any ordinary full moon. But this moon will be a micromoon, meaning it might look slightly smaller than usual.

“It’s just a little bit farther away from Earth than (the moon) typically is,” said Rachel Klima, a planetary geologist and lunar expert with Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.

“It’s about 10% smaller. So it may look a little bit smaller. But a lot of the time, when people see a really huge moon, it’s usually because it’s low on the horizon, rather than because of the actual distance of it,” Klima said. “(The micromoon) won’t be super, super tiny. It’ll just be a little bit smaller than your average full moon that you look up at.”

The full moon phase occurs when the moon, Earth and the sun are in alignment, in that order. February’s full moon will occur when the moon is at its farthest point from Earth in its elliptical orbit, known as the apogee, Klima said. The micromoon will also be dimmer than the moon typically looks by about 30%, according to EarthSky, allowing for slightly better visibility of nearby celestial objects, without the average luminous interference.

This year, the snow moon will be seen shining next to constellation Leo’s brightest star, Regulus. Near the moon’s peak, on the night of February 23, the star will be seen just below the orb, according to EarthSky.

You obviously don’t need any special equipment to enjoy moon-gazing, but binoculars can be a good tool for those looking to see its features and craters clearly, Klima said. While full moons are best observed in clear skies, even in slightly cloudy weather the moon will occasionally peek through the clouds, she added.

Lunar exploration

On Thursday, the Odysseus lunar lander successfully soft-landed near the moon’s south pole, accomplishing a feat that had not been attempted by any vehicle launched from the United States since the Apollo program ended more than five decades ago. Intuitive Machines’ IM-1 mission also marked the first commercial spacecraft to soft-land on the moon amid a renewed international dash for the lunar surface.

“The nice thing to kind of dream about when you look up at the moon right now is how much renewed activity there is internationally,” Klima said. “We’re basically opening up a new era of lunar exploration. … As these different companies start to land on the moon, we’re going to be able to learn much, much more and really have this whole new world — economic world and scientific world — opened up to us.”

More full moons this year

Of the 12 full moons in 2024, February’s full moon is the only micromoon of the year, while the September and October lunar events will be considered supermoons, according to EarthSky.

Definitions of a supermoon can vary, but the term generally denotes a full moon that is closer to Earth than normal and thus appears larger and brighter in the night sky. Some astronomers say the phenomenon occurs when the moon is within 90% of perigee — its closest approach to Earth in orbit.

Here are the remaining full moons of 2024:

Solar and lunar eclipses

Multiple eclipses will occur in 2024, including two types of lunar eclipses and two types of solar eclipses, according to the Old Farmer’s Almanac.

The most highly anticipated of these events is the total solar eclipse on April 8, which will be visible in parts of Mexico, the United States and Canada. A total solar eclipse occurs when the moon passes between Earth and the sun, completely blocking the sun’s face.

Those within the path of totality, or locations where the moon’s shadow will completely cover the sun, will see a total solar eclipse. People outside the path of totality will still be able to see a partial solar eclipse in which the moon only obscures part of the sun’s face.

A total solar eclipse won’t be visible across the contiguous United States again until August 2044.

An annular solar eclipse will occur on October 2 over parts of South America. This type of eclipse is similar to a total solar eclipse, except the moon is at the farthest point in its orbit from Earth, so it can’t completely block the sun. Instead, annular solar eclipses create a “ring of fire” in the sky as the sun’s fiery light surrounds the moon’s shadow.

Meanwhile, a penumbral lunar eclipse will be visible to many across Europe, North and East Asia, Australia, Africa, North America and South America between March 24 and 25.

A lunar eclipse, which causes the moon to look dark or dimmed, occurs when the sun, Earth and moon align so that the moon passes into Earth’s shadow. A penumbral lunar eclipse is more subtle and happens when the moon moves through the outer shadow, or penumbra, of Earth.

A partial lunar eclipse, in which Earth moves between the sun and the full moon without being perfectly aligned, will appear over Europe and much of Asia, Africa, North America and South America between September 17 and 18.

Check Time and Date’s website to see when each of these eclipses will appear.

Meteor showers of 2024

Sky-gazers can look forward to a multitude of meteor showers this year, according to the American Meteor Society. Here are the dates when meteor events are expected to peak this year.