Perhaps more than any other moment in NASA’s history, the Columbia shuttle disaster reshaped the US space agency’s approach to innovation, forever altering how it balanced risk with the call to explore beyond Earth.

The tragedy killed seven astronauts as the Columbia shuttle disintegrated upon its return to Earth on February 1, 2003, due to damage the vehicle sustained during launch. More than 20 years later, the lessons learned continue to shape the space industry and NASA’s approach to working with private-sector partners such as SpaceX.

Changes at NASA were necessary, according to a formal investigation about the Columbia disaster published six months after the accident. A culture of complacency and misplaced trust in the space shuttle’s experimental design spelled disaster, the report outlined.

The disaster led directly to the decision to end the broader NASA space shuttle program, forcing the US space agency to rely on Russia for rides to space — one of myriad ways Columbia altered history.

Cultural changes: ‘Safety days,’ review boards and round tables

Columbia marked the second deadly mishap for the shuttle program after the space shuttle Challenger exploded during launch in January 1986.

Following the Columbia disaster, NASA grounded its remaining fleet of three shuttles as the space agency sought to parse what went wrong.

Some changes were simple: An audio-conferencing system was replaced with video, Hale said. And in the shuttle mission’s management team meeting room, a round table replaced the rectangular table.

“We were told by the sociologist that if you had this straight, long table with the father figure at the head … that might discourage people from speaking up,” Hale said.

NASA also had “safety days” — time set aside for engineers to stop work and just “contemplate how to better improve our organization’s approach to safety,” Hale added.

Shifting perspectives

The tragedy touched the entire NASA organization, leaving a legacy with which the remaining astronaut corps had to contend.

“Obviously it affected us emotionally,” said Garrett Reisman, a spacecraft engineer from California who in 2003 was member of the NASA astronaut corps waiting to make his first foray into space.

“I remember being called into the office, volunteering to work with families,” Reisman added.

For two years, he said his entire job at NASA was to check in on the family of Ilan Ramon, the Israeli astronaut who had died on the Columbia mission. He went with Ramon’s kids to their guidance counselor to help them pick out classes. He and other astronauts helped find a house for Ramon’s wife. Reisman still visits the family in Israel once a year.

“It helped me understand exactly what the consequences are, not just for you (the astronaut) — but for all the people you love,” Reisman said. “That stayed with me.”

Reisman flew on two shuttle missions after the program resumed flight in 2005 as NASA put in numerous safety stopgaps, including a mandate that a spare shuttle was always prepared to rescue crew members in orbit if their vehicle was damaged during launch.

Despite any lingering anxieties, the changes provided a newfound sense of security, Reisman said.

“We had all these inspection and repair techniques,” he said. “I felt like when I was flying on Endeavour and Atlantis and Discovery (the three remaining shuttles) that it was much more safe than what the crew on Columbia — and certainly Challenger — had taken on.”

NASA forced to rely on Russia

The space shuttle Atlantis completed the final flight of the program in July 2011, leaving NASA without a means to fly its astronauts to the International Space Station.

The program’s end forced the space agency to turn to Russia, which — as tensions eased in the post-Cold War era — was a primary US partner on the space station and had a reliable vehicle called Soyuz to ferry its cosmonauts to the orbiting outpost.

The arrangement kept NASA astronauts space-bound. But as US-Russia relations became strained once again in the mid-2010s, sharing those rides to space became increasingly politically unpopular.

Culture clashes in the commercial world

By the end of the shuttle program, a contingent of engineers within NASA already had ideas for the path ahead.

Rather than keeping the design and development of the next astronaut-worthy spacecraft in-house, NASA could turn to the burgeoning private space industry to take over the task.

Commercial companies had a bit more leeway to innovate in the post-Columbia era, Hale and Reisman acknowledged.

“I think one of the big challenges was to find the right path between the really huge bureaucracy and paperwork requirements that NASA had — which in some cases were frankly over the top — and figure out how to accommodate the culture of a commercial (company),” Hale said.

In 2014, NASA selected the Elon Musk-led SpaceX and its longtime partner Boeing to take up the task.

The prospect of moving faster and paving a new future for the astronaut corps excited Reisman, who left NASA in 2011 to work for SpaceX on its Crew Dragon vehicle.

Wary after the Columbia tragedy, NASA didn’t always see eye to eye with its commercial partners. The result was a culture clash that played out behind the scenes.

“I have an org chart that shows all the different (NASA) review boards that all engineers working on NASA programs had to go to approve any major design decision,” Reisman said. “What happened was, post-Columbia, they were listening to dissenting voices so strongly that all of those dissenting voices effectively became a veto.”

Long, painful meetings characterized relations between SpaceX and NASA, according to records of the era that the space agency compiled.

But eventually, SpaceX got its Crew Dragon to the launchpad, and its inaugural crewed mission in 2020 returned astronaut launches to US soil for the first time in a decade.

Boeing is still working toward the first crewed mission of its Starliner spacecraft.

Redefining rocket design

The lessons learned from Columbia — and the Challenger explosion before it — have left an indelible mark on the design of modern US spacecraft.

“Probably the biggest example is just by putting the crew on top of the rocket instead of on the side of the rocket, you eliminate the hazard of any debris coming off the vehicle and hitting the spacecraft,” Reisman said.

“A lot of those things were baked into the requirements that NASA gave us,” he said, referring to instructions given to SpaceX and Boeing.

Crew Dragon, Starliner and NASA’s own Orion capsule — designed to return humans to the moon later this decade — all launch atop rockets rather than being strapped to the side of them.

In this new era of rocketry with commercial companies largely leading the way, Hale said the challenge is to ensure the space industry avoids being lulled into the same complacency that led to the Columbia disaster.

“My only concern now, as an old retiree, is — all these years later — how well are those lessons still communicated?” Hale said. “After 20 years, are people starting to forget?”

“Vigilance,” he added, “has got to be maintained.”

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards seized an Israeli-linked container ship in a helicopter operation near the Strait of Hormuz, state news agency IRNA reported, with tensions already high after Iran warned it would retaliate for a suspected Israeli strike on its consulate in Syria.

IRNA reported that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Navy seized the Portuguese-flagged MSC Aries, which is now being “directed back to Iranian territorial waters.”

According to IRNA, the vessel is managed by the Zodiac Maritime, a company linked to Israeli businessman Eyal Ofer.

Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) has confirmed the seizure, saying there are 25 crew on board. Portugal’s government said that it was in touch with the Iranian authorities.

The Strait of Hormuz, at the northern end of the Gulf of Oman, is the biggest oil chokepoint in the world. About 20% of the world’s daily consumption of oil passes through it every day.

Iran has carried out similar seizures before. In January, Tehran seized an oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman and transferred it to an Iranian port in response to the United States confiscating the same vessel and its oil last year.

Tensions in the region are heightened after the strike on Iran’s consulate in the Syrian capital Damascus, which killed seven officials including a top IRGC commander, and the seizure comes against the backdrop of the conflict in Gaza.

The Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen have frequently been targeting shipping in the Red Sea area, while there have been regular exchanges between Hezbollah and Israel along Lebanon’s southern border.

The United States currently expects Iran will carry out strikes against multiple targets inside Israel and that Iranian proxies could also be involved in carrying out the attacks, sources say, in what would mark a major escalation.

US President Joe Biden on Friday predicted that Iran’s attacks were coming “sooner rather than later” and sought to once again issue a stern public warning, saying that his message to Tehran was simply: “Don’t.”

In a video statement released Saturday, Israel Defense Forces spokesperson Daniel Hagari warned Israel was on “high alert” for “Iranian aggression.”

European officials warned against further escalation between Israel and Iran.

The United Kingdom’s Foreign Secretary, David Cameron, wrote on social media platform X that he had spoken with Israeli war cabinet minister Benny Gantz.

The two discussed their “shared concerns about Iranian threats to attack Israel,” Cameron wrote, adding that “further escalation in the region is in no-one’s interest and risks further loss of civilian life.”

Juan Brito López was in his mid-20s when soldiers rushed into his home in the village of Pexla, nestled in Guatemala’s western highlands. He escaped, hiding in the wilderness, but could not save his wife and four daughters.

Now 70 years old, Brito López recounted the horrors of that day to High Risk Court A in Guatemala City this week, saying the soldiers murdered his family during the early morning raid on January 20, 1982, burning their bodies inside their wooden home.

Their deaths took place in the middle of Guatemala’s 36-year-long civil war as a series of US-backed military governments cracked down on leftist rebels across the country. Guatemala’s counterinsurgency campaign led to the death of over 200,000 people, 83% of whom were indigenous Maya, according to a United Nations-backed truth commission in 1999.

Decades later, the bloodshed is being relived in the high-profile trial of the former head of Guatemala’s army, Manuel Benedicto Lucas García, in a monthslong process that is expected to see more than 150 witnesses, 30 survivors of sexual violence and dozens of forensic experts give testimony.

According to Brito López and other witnesses who lived in the western Quiche region, troops under the command of Lucas García killed men, women, and children, driving the indigenous Maya Ixil people who lived there away from their homes.

The former laborer, who sometimes broke into tears during his testimony, spoke in front of a large screen broadcasting Lucas García’s impassive figure. Lucas García participated in the proceedings via video link from a military hospital.

The retired general has been indicted for genocide, crimes against humanity, forced disappearances, and sexual violence against the Maya Ixil people, according to the organization representing the victims, the Association for Justice and Reconciliation (AJR).

AJR accuses him of ordering more than 30 massacres and destroying 23 villages in the Maya Ixil region, causing the death of at least 1,771 people when he led the army between 1981 and 1982 – during the tenure of his brother President Fernando Romeo Lucas García.

The trial is among several important war crime proceedings since the 90s that have been attempting to address atrocities during the civil war, which ended in 1996. The proceedings have stuttered over the years, some producing ground-breaking results – including the first time a Guatemalan head of state was put on trial. In 2018, a Guatemalan court ruled that the army committed acts of genocide, but no one was convicted.

Human rights organizations and the Mayan victims of wartime massacres have been increasingly frustrated by the slow road to justice – especially when the alleged perpetrators and their victims begin dying of old age.

Scorched earth campaign

The bloodshed during the civil war increased dramatically under President Romeo Lucas García’s regime (1978-1982), according to a report by Human Rights Data Analysis Group, which saw “what had been a selective campaign against guerrilla sympathizers turned into a mass slaughter.”

“Under his rule, that is when the scorched earth campaign against indigenous communities of Guatemala really picked up,” Jo-Marie Burt, a senior fellow at the Washington Office on Latin America, who is an expert on human rights and transitional justice in Guatemala, said. The period saw soldiers and paramilitary forces execute Mayan authorities; tens of thousands of people were forcibly disappeared, and entire villages were burned to the ground.

A UN-backed Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH) report found that between 1981 and 1983, a period when Lucas García helmed the military, the Guatemalan state committed acts of genocide against five Mayan groups, including the Ixil people.

The army said it was countering a leftist insurgency, but the report found the state “deliberately magnified the military threat of the insurgency” and “in the majority of cases… intentionally exaggerated” the connection between the Mayan communities and the guerrillas.

Racism was a component behind the violence, the report said, as it also concluded that “the undeniable existence of racism expressed repeatedly by the state as a doctrine of superiority” explains the “brutality with which military operations were carried out against hundreds of Mayan communities.”

Burt said this “expression of racism is extremely profound,” and its knock-on effects are evident in Guatemala today. During a separate genocide trial in 2013, which led to the conviction of dictator Efrain Rios Montt, Burt, who was observing the proceeding in person, saw supporters of the general spray perfume on seats that had been sat on by indigenous people.

Today, Guatemala’s indigenous communities account for more than 40% of the country’s population, but “their participation in public institutions and public life is certainly smaller in comparison to their size,” said Tiziano Breda, a Latin American expert at the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, of the deep inequalities that remain in Guatemala.

“Infrastructure and services in areas mostly habited by the indigenous population (are) very dire, and the fact there are 22 Mayan languages in the country, and there are almost no signs in the capital in those languages” are telling, he added.

A million people became refugees due to the civil war, and today, inequality has made the Central American country one of the highest source countries for migrants encountered at the US borders, many of whom come from rural areas largely populated by indigenous Guatemalans.

Delayed justice

It took post-conflict Guatemala years to build up capacity in its judicial system. Positive steps were made in the 2000’s with vital reforms and leadership by individuals like Claudia Paz y Paz, who became attorney general from 2010-2014 and worked to break the tradition of impunity by criminal elements in the country, Burt said.

International actors, like the UN-backed International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), assisted in hundreds of convictions, trained prosecutors, and has been attributed for helping reduce the country’s homicide rate.

But CICIG was dissolved in 2019 during a period of democratic backsliding in the country, where successive Guatemalan governments and the country’s elites have been accused of attempting to control the country’s judiciary.

Dozens of prosecutors and judges fled the country. Those who remain have reported privately about receiving death threats, say experts.

“The system is co-opted,” Silvio from AJR said. “So, this case has been delayed for 13 years and we still do not understand the reasons but this year they gave us the possibility.”

The issue was not building a case, but it was “overcoming the fear of going after some of these people, some of the most violence operators in Guatemala’s military regime, who maintain connections with armed actors and their own network of violent people,” Will Freeman, Fellow for Latin America studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, said.

The victims’ advocates hope the trial will bring a measure of accountability to those who perished during the war, but time is running out, said Michelle Liang, who has been monitoring the trial as an international accompanier for the Network in Solidarity with the People of Guatemala (NISGUA).

Lucas García’s team has been deploying “tactics of delay to basically try to wait out the witnesses,” she said. “They know that other witnesses are getting old, and already more than 40 witnesses have passed away.”

When the trial was due to start at the end of March, Lucas García’s lawyers announced their resignation. He ended up using a public defender, who needed five days to familiarize herself with the case, according to the law, pushing proceedings back to April 5.

During Brito López’s testimony this week, he admitted to not being able to remember some details like the age of his wife when she was killed or the names of some of the 66 villagers he said were killed in his village.

What remains clear is the trauma of that period, where he was too devastated to collect the remain of his family members. “I couldn’t stand the sadness,” he said. “I fainted, so others collected the ashes.”

Another victim Catarina Chel told the court about the days she spent in the mountains in January of 1981. She was hiding from soldiers who had rounded up her neighbors and killed them in a house used to store corn, she said.

Now more than 40 years after that date, she is no longer in hiding. Dressed proudly in traditional dress, she made her testimony feet away from a screen broadcasting a live feed of her village’s alleged tormenter, Lucas García.

“He was the one who commanded the armies, and they killed my children,” she said.

It is not money that the victims want, what they need is accountability, Silvia from AJR said.

“Whether or not a conviction is achieved,” he said, what the AJR and its witnesses seek is a record of “what happened so that is never repeated.”

A team of rescuers has suspended its efforts to save an orca calf that has been stranded for nearly two weeks in a remote lagoon on Vancouver Island off the west coast of Canada.

Crews with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the Ehattesaht First Nation made the decision Friday afternoon the orca calf was not ready to be moved and stood down from their rescue attempt, according to a news release from the department.

The calf became stranded in the Zeballos lagoon after its mother got trapped on a sandbar in the lagoon’s shallow waters and died on March 23. The mother was pregnant at the time of her death.

Crews tried several methods to coax the calf into the shallow area of the lagoon but she refused, the release said. Friday’s operation was the result of almost a week of planning and the work of 50 people, including six boats and 15 people in the water. Meanwhile, the whale has received an outpouring of love from the surrounding community as they hope for it to be reunited with its family.

“It is during efforts like this that many of us are truly humbled at the intelligence, adaptability and resilience of the orca,” department officials said in the statement. “No matter how much we study these amazing creatures the more we realize how little we know.”

Officials have been monitoring the calf daily and working to formulate the best plan to relocate the animal and reunite it with its family pod. The orca is still in good health and swimming well, according to veterinarians who assessed the animal.

Dr. Martin Haulena, a veterinarian with the Vancouver Aquarium, said the veterinary team got a closer look at the whale than they have in the past. The orca is “doing very well” and there are no critical animal health concerns, but its skin is turning a little white, which might have to do with the lagoon’s salinity, Haulena said. It is difficult to tell whether the calf is eating, though there are duck, seals and fish in the lagoon, so the immediate need is to provide her nutrition in some way.

“This is not a spot where she should normally be and she is not with the whales that she should normally be accompanied by. And she’s a very young whale that would normally still be very close to her mother and depending on her mother for things,” Haulena said at a news conference Friday. “In the long-term, this is not a great situation by any stretch.”

Crews are taking Friday afternoon to work on planning the next steps for the rescue operation. They have tried multiple methods to get the calf to leave the lagoon on its own, including “acoustic playbacks” – playing the sounds of other orca whales, but nothing worked, Paul Cottrell with Fisheries and Oceans Canada said earlier Thursday.

“Some of the techniques that we’ve been using in the past, they’re less effective, unfortunately, as we use them more,” Cottrell said at a news conference Friday. “So we are looking to change our approach going forward to maybe a different tactic and we’re gonna be working on that in the next while to see if we can implement that, some planning and logistic changes, to see if we can help this poor calf get back to its family.”

With the orca reluctant to leave the area, Cottrell said, they will have to work within the space to see if they can isolate the whale.

Officials initially planned to transport the calf using a helicopter, but pivoted to using a truck and boat to avoid stressing the animal. They hope to eventually lure the calf into an area where they can move it onto a truck then drive the animal and place it on a boat, which would bring it into a net pod, Ehattesaht First Nation Chief Simon John said. They plan to continue the rescue operation within a few days, John said Friday.

The orca, which locals have named “Little Brave Hunter” or “Kʷiisaḥiʔis” in the Ehattesaht First Nation language and writing system, will then wait in the net pen until its family passes by. It will hopefully be released and reunite with its relatives, John explained. The net pen is planned to be in Esperanza, southeast of Zeballos.

Officials hope they can implement the plan within the next week. “It’s a huge effort and we have a long way to go,” Cottrell said. “We’re hoping for the best possible outcome.”

The orca’s family pod was last spotted March 30.

“There’s a lot of eyes and ears that are looking out for the related pod,” Cottrell said Friday. “There’s a very high likelihood in a short amount of time there will be some sort of interaction or reunion and that’s what we’re hoping for.”

“This whale’s skin has just started to slough in sizable patches along the top of the head and base of the dorsal fin on each side perhaps due to the freshwater runoff into the lagoon it is in,” says the organization.

Moving the orca calf “will require a lot of patience as well as cooperation from the whale,” Bay Cetology added.

Orcas – also known as killer whales – are found in all the world’s oceans, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. They are highly social, living in family pods of up to 20 or more whales. Calves typically stay with their mothers for the first two years of life, according to the agency.

This is not the first time officials in Canada have strategized to rescue a solitary and stranded orca calf. In 2002, an orca calf who came to be named Springer was spotted alone in Puget Sound, prompting an extensive capture and relocation effort. She is considered the first orca in history to successfully rejoin a wild population after human intervention.

The world’s biggest election kicks into gear next week when the first ballots are cast in India’s mammoth national polls, considered the most consequential in decades with the potential to shape the country’s future.

Nearly 1 billion people are eligible to decide whether to grant Prime Minister Narendra Modi a rare third consecutive term in office and extend the 10-year rule of his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Under Modi, India has become the world’s fastest growing major economy, pushing the country of 1.4 billion people to near-superpower status.

But India has also become increasingly polarized along religious lines and critics say another five-year term will give Modi’s right-wing BJP a mandate to continue its policies that have transformed the country from a secular republic to a Hindu-first nation.

Here’s what you need to know about the largest election in human history:

How does India vote?

India’s national elections are a giant exercise in democracy and logistics that take over a month to complete.

About 968 million people are eligible to vote — more than the populations of the United States, the European Union and Russia combined.

Given the size of the electorate, there isn’t a single date when everyone will vote. Instead, polling will unfold over seven phases around the country, beginning on April 19 and ending on June 1. All the votes from the country’s 28 states and eight union territories will be counted and results released on June 4.

Under a multi-party, first-past-the-post system, Indians will vote to fill 543 of 545 seats in the lower house of parliament, called the Lok Sabha, with two other seats nominated by the country’s president.

The party with the majority will form a government and appoint one of its winning candidates as prime minister.

Who are the contenders?

Modi and his BJP remain hugely popular and he is widely expected to secure another five years in power.

The 73-year-old was first elected prime minister in 2014 with a roaring majority on a ticket of development and anti-corruption. He is credited with implementing welfare and social reforms, and easily secured a second term in 2019, this time on a more apparent platform of Hindu nationalism.

In that election more than 67% of Indians cast their ballot — the highest voter turnout in the country’s history.

The main challenger to the BJP is the Indian National Congress, which has governed the country for much of the 77 years since independence but now finds itself in the doldrums.

In an effort to prevent another Modi win, the Congress formed an alliance with other opposition leaders, including major regional parties. The Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance, or INDIA, launched its campaign late last month on a platform of “saving democracy.”

Political scion Rahul Gandhi is the face of the Congress party but other key figures include popular leader of the Aam Aadmi Party and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal.

There are also regional heavyweights such as the West Bengal chief minister and All India Trinamool Congress’ Mamata Banerjee and the south’s Tamil Nadu chief minister Muthuvel Karunanidhi Stalin, who will be vying to block a BJP takeover in their respective states where Modi is yet to break through.

How strong is the opposition?

The INDIA bloc has been beset by infighting and is yet to put forward its candidate for prime minister. Analysts say it is struggling to match the kind of star quality and appeal projected by Modi.

The opposition is also under pressure from what it says is a campaign by the BJP to weaken Modi’s opponents.

Several prominent members of the opposition, including Delhi chief minister Kejriwal, have been arrested or investigated by state agencies in moves decried as political by their parties. The Congress had its bank accounts frozen by federal tax authorities and said it was asked to pay a further $218 million in taxes.

The BJP has denied political interference.

Meanwhile, another victory for Modi would cement his place as one of India’s most important and longest-serving leaders.

Modi’s party and its allies are aiming to win more than 400 seats in the Lok Sabha — giving them enough votes to change India’s constitution. That figure will also improve its absolute majority secured in 2019 when the BJP won 303 seats, to the Congress party’s 52.

What are the main issues?

India is the world’s largest democracy but over a decade of BJP rule, analysts say the populist Modi has tightened his grip on its democratic institutions.

Minorities, especially the country’s 200 million Muslims, say they have been persecuted under the BJP’s Hindu-nationalist policies.

And Modi has been accused of silencing his critics including cracking down on India’s independent media. In the annual World Press Freedom Index, India has dropped from 140th in 2014 — the year Modi came to power — to 161 out of 180 nations in last year’s list.

From demolishing Islamic monuments, to renaming cities founded by ancient Muslim rulers and revising history textbooks, Modi’s rule has been a seismic shift for India, from its secular founding values to that of a Hindu-first nation. Analysts say another BJP term will push India further along this road.

Modi’s supporters point to his economic record: India is poised to become a 21st-century powerhouse as its economy rapidly expands. They say his presence on the world stage — including hosting the G20 — has cemented the country as a modern global power, along with a history-making moon landing.

Modi has also delivered on many of his key promises, with his crowning achievement the inauguration of the controversial Ram Janmabhoomi Mandir, a Hindu temple in the holy city of Ayodhya that was built on the site of the destroyed Babri mosque.

But while India’s economy is rising, the world’s most populous country has failed to generate enough jobs for the millions of young people struggling to enter the workforce. Unemployment among 20- to 24-year-olds was a staggering 44.4% at the end of 2023.

Farmers have also emerged as the biggest threat to the ruling party in recent years, repeatedly taking to the streets to demand stronger protection of their economic welfare including higher fixed prices for their crops.

Agriculture is the primary source of livelihood for about 55% of India’s population and farmers have previously had success strong-arming Modi into repealing unpopular agriculture policies.

Party symbols and voting at 15,000 feet

India’s election is believed to be the world’s most expensive, even outstripping US presidential elections. In 2019, political parties, candidates and regulatory bodies spent up to $8.6 billion, according to the Delhi-based Centre for Media Studies. This year, spending is expected to surge past that.

From the high peaks of the Himalayas to the remote forests of India’s central states, votes are cast electronically across more than 1 million polling stations. Some 15 million election workers will be deployed, traveling via road, boat, camel, train and helicopter to reach every Indian voter.

At 15,256 feet (4,650 meters), Tashigang, a village in the far northern state of Himachal Pradesh on the border with China, was the world’s highest polling station when its residents voted in 2022 state government elections.

In 2019, more than 8,000 candidates contested the election. This year, candidates are still being announced, but more than 2,700 parties will fight it out for seats in the Lok Sabha, including six national and more than 70 state parties.

Each party has a symbol allotted to them by the Election Commission that appears on the ballots — helping the dozens of parties to differentiate themselves, while making it easier for voters to make their choice in a country where around a quarter of the population is illiterate.

They are everyday objects like a ceiling fan, a comb and a mango.

The ruling BJP’s symbol is a lotus, while the Congress party is a raised, open-palmed hand. Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party (or the Common Man’s Party) is a broom, representing its origins in an anti-corruption street movement.

Six people have been killed and several others injured, including a child, in a mass stabbing at a busy shopping center in Sydney, Australian police said.

Police were called to Westfield Bondi Junction on Saturday afternoon local time following reports of multiple people stabbed. Witnesses described scene of panic with some forced to hide in shops as the attack unfolded.

The suspect – who police said acted alone – was shot dead at the scene by a lone officer.

New South Wales Police’s Assistant Commissioner Anthony Cooke said a senior police inspector was nearby when the attack unfolded.

She arrived on the scene first and was alone when she engaged with the attacker. She shot the offender when he raised a knife at her.

“She discharged her firearm, and that person is now deceased,” Cooke said.

The officer was also seen in videos on social media administering CPR to those who had been injured.

The suspect encountered nine people after he entered the mall at 3:10 pm local time, according to police. He left and reentered the mall at 3:20 pm before carrying out his attack.

No information has been given as to the perpetrator’s identity or a possible motive but Cooke said they were “not ruling anything out.”

After warning people to stay away from the area police say the incident is now over.

‘Pandemonium’

Videos shared on social media show shoppers running from multiple exits of the shopping center, while police helicopters can be heard overhead.

Two male eyewitnesses told 9 News they saw a baby and mother stabbed.

“We were holding the baby and trying to compress the baby,” one said. “Same with the mother, trying to compress the blood from stopping.”

Another man described seeing a man in a green shirt stabbing others “indiscriminately.”

“[We just heard] screaming, screaming and it didn’t seem that long before we heard ‘boom boom boom’ of the gunshot and we thought, ‘We hope it’s the police,’” the witness told Australia’s state broadcaster ABC. “It was just carnage.”

In a televised address, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the attack was “beyond words or understanding.”

He continued: “Today Bondi Junction was the scene of shocking violence. But it was also witness to the humanity and the heroism of our fellow Australians.

“Our brave police, our first responders, and of course everyday people who could never have imagined they would face such a moment.”

Mass casualty events are rare in Australia. At least four people were killed and one injured in a mass shooting in Darwin, northern Australia in 2019.

April 1996 saw a mass shooting which became known as the Port Arthur massacre – the deadliest in Australia’s modern history – when 35 people were killed in the tourist town in the state of Tasmania.

This is a breaking news story and will be updated

Agnes Marciniak-Kostrzewa’s phone won’t stop ringing. She’s been in the property business for 25 years, helping Poles to buy homes on Spain’s southern shores, but the past few months have been “really crazy.”

There are lots of reasons why people might trade the Baltic coast for the Mediterranean. More than three decades after the collapse of communism, Poles are richer than ever before. Many who started businesses in the early 1990s are now looking to retire. And remote work, ushered in by the pandemic, has allowed many to live more rootlessly and opt for warmer climates.

“I experienced two waves of rapidly growing interest in buying properties. The first was in February 2022, immediately after the outbreak of the war. The second has been since February 2024,” Marciniak-Kostrzewa said.

The mood has darkened in recent weeks, as Russia seeks to build on recent battlefield gains, testing for weak spots along the frontlines and pummeling Ukraine’s cities with airstrikes. President Volodomyr Zelensky warned this week that, if the United States Congress fails to approve military aid, Ukraine “will lose the war.”

And the comments of prominent Western figures are causing jitters elsewhere on Europe’s eastern flank. Former US President Donald Trump in February said he would encourage Russia to do “whatever the hell they want” to any NATO member not paying their due. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk last month warned Europe is in a “pre-war era.”

“After Trump’s statement and after Tusk’s interview, we got calls – I don’t even know how many – with people asking if they can come within three days and buy the property, and how long the whole procedure takes to get the keys,” Marciniak-Kostrzewa said.

A record-breaking number of Poles bought property in Spain in 2023, topping the previous record set the year before, according to Polish outlet Bizblog.

Maria Ruiz Lopez, a notary based between Spain and Warsaw, said demand has been “increasing incredibly” since the start of the year.

“Very often, our clients tell us that the reason for which they’re buying real estate is because they’re afraid of the war, they’re afraid of Russia, so they would like to have some place where, eventually, they could leave for fast, if there was such a need,” she said.

Some buy in a slight panic. Lopez said a client last month bought a property because they wanted to avoid being conscripted into the Polish military. Marciniak-Kostrzewa recalled another who, spurred by fears of the war spreading, last month bought an apartment in Spain and asked to rent it out, on the condition that they could access it swiftly if needed. When she explained that removing tenants from a property takes time, the client said: “OK, let’s keep it empty, just in case something will happen.”

Others buy with an eye to their investments. For Wieslaw, a retired Pole in his 70s, the prospect of war coming to Poland is a “black swan:” a low-probability, high-impact event. Still, he wants to hedge his bets.

“When I heard stories of Ukrainian people being forced to leave their country within an hour, taking with them all their belongings, I realized then that all my property is in Poland,” said Wieslaw, who preferred to give only his first name to maintain his privacy. He still lives in Warsaw, but bought a small property in Andalucia, southern Spain. “The trigger, really, was the war in Ukraine.”

Poles may be a special case. After its post-Communist economic “miracle,” more Poles are able to buy second homes abroad than before. And, due to its borders with Ukraine and Belarus, Poles may feel more need to do so.

But other Eastern European countries are also buying in the West. Liivia Illak started her business 20 years ago, mostly selling expensive Spanish properties to clients from her native Estonia. But this year, she’s received more requests than ever – and many of her clients are looking for smaller properties.

“Obviously, we are in NATO, but I must say there’s a big amount of people who are really, really afraid,” she said. This year, she says she has also helped Lithuanians to buy properties in Spain.

The spike in demand comes as Russia has stepped up its “war on nerves,” projecting an image of its own inviolability while Europe appears to dither on matters of its own defense.

In Russia, Putin’s grip on power is tighter than ever after his rule was extended another six years in widely discredited elections and the death of opposition figure Alexey Navalny.

And abroad, Putin is keeping Europe guessing. Missiles heading for Ukraine have strayed into Polish airspace. Belarusian troops – at the Kremlin’s behest – have built up on Poland’s border. Estonia has warned of “shadow war” attacks on its soil. And in Lithuania, one of Navalny’s aides was bludgeoned by a hammer – a message that even home soil is not safe.

Mohammad sits on the back of a donkey-drawn cart, trundling down what is left of a road, alongside the few belongings he managed to retrieve from his flattened home. Wednesday should have marked the celebration of Eid al-Fitr; instead, it is another reminder of what millions in Gaza have lost.

Mohammad has just returned to Khan Younis, the central Gaza city that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) bombarded for months until their withdrawal Sunday.

Nearby, another man has just picked through the belongings in his own destroyed house. He grabbed his daughter’s Eid clothes as he went, even though she won’t be able to wear them.

“We are alive for Eid, thank God,” he said. “We were alive for Ramadan, but it was a time of exhaustion and devastation.”

Muslims gather at Eid al-Fitr to mark the end of Ramadan and show gratitude to Allah. People in Gaza, as across the Muslim world, would typically celebrate the day by meeting with their families and sharing large meals.

But this year homes across the enclave lie in ruins, and all 2.2 million people in Gaza do not have enough food to eat, with half of the population on the brink of starvation, according to a UN-backed report published last month.

Israel’s war in Gaza has killed more than 33,400 Palestinians – the majority of whom are women and children – according to the Ministry of Health in the enclave. More than 76,000 people have been injured.

“Eid right now is basically dead. There is no joy, no delight,” said Ahlam Saleh, who was displaced from northern Gaza in the early stages of Israel’s war with Hamas and has since been living in Deir al Balah, in the center of the strip.

This is an Eid unlike most Gazans can remember. A true celebration is virtually impossible anywhere in the enclave, where the UN says more than 70% of homes have been damaged or destroyed since October.

There was once hope that a ceasefire could be agreed before Ramadan began. Instead, Muslims fasted throughout the month-long holiday despite the ongoing terrors of war; and now Eid is also taking place under the cloud of a conflict in its seventh month.

But Muslims in Gaza are marking the holiday with a mix of apprehension and defiance.

“Our presence here is a message to the enemy and to the world that we will celebrate Eid despite the bloodshed and devastation,” said a man in Jabalya, northern Gaza, where prayers took place in the elements. “We came here to pray outside in the rain for Eid to revitalize the energy within us… and to be with the martyrs,” a woman added.

One tradition that is more palpable than ever is Eid’s custom of commemorating the dead. Mourning women in Deir al Balah marked the holiday around freshly dug soil, where their husbands and sons, killed in the war, lay.

Um Ahmad came with her children to visit her husband’s grave. Nodding towards her son, she said: “This little one was banging on the stone, saying, ‘I want to see Baba. Who is going to celebrate Eid with me like Baba used to?’”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday that “no force in the world” will stop Israeli troops from entering Rafah, where 1.5 million people are sheltering.

But Mostafa Alhelou, who was displaced from Gaza City to Rafah, said he and other Muslims “insisted” on praying inside Al-Farouq mosque, which was destroyed by Israeli bombardment, “so the world knows that we are holding onto our mosques, to our land, to our country.”

“Hopefully next Eid, we will celebrate it in Gaza City and pray inside the mosques we are used to praying in,” Alhelou said.

The total solar eclipse that delighted spectators across Mexico, the United States and Canada on Monday was a celestial experience not to be missed.

Millions were in the path of totality to watch as the moon moved between Earth and the sun. Readers shared their images of the eerie sight and stories that illustrate the excitement of the once-in-a-lifetime event, such as Daniel McCartney, who captured an image of the eclipse over Big Moose Lake in the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York.

“Such an incredible experience,” said McCartney of Syracuse, New York.

Mariel Williams took a series of images of the eclipse after traveling to her family’s hometown in Dayton, Ohio, “to see the whole show.”

“If it weren’t for my parents hassling me to take these photos, I probably would have been too amazed to move!” said Williams, who now resides in Royal Oak, Michigan.

Juan M. Soto Peña watched the eclipse with his wife, Fabiola, and their daughter, Luciana, from their home in Tucson, Arizona. He and his wife observed a partial solar eclipse together in December 2000 in the Mexican state of Sonora, but Monday’s event was the first time they could share the cosmic experience with their daughter.

“After 20 years (of) not seeing an eclipse we got to experience it again,” he said via email. “And a first timer thrilled to see the Sun and Moon together. Great experience!”

Young citizen scientists

And in Toronto, 12-year-old Michael Goldstein and his friends made the perfect plan to watch the eclipse and also launch a weather balloon 100,000 feet (30,480 meters) into the air.

Goldstein and Ilan Kagedan hatched the idea for the science project, as they had done it before. Together with Brady Sonshine and Michael “Misha” Vishnever, the boys have a space group called Star Galactic, and they designed an experiment they called Project Eclipse.

After launching the balloon, the quartet traveled to Burlington, Ontario, to be in the path of totality, where Goldstein snapped images of the eclipse with a Lumix FZ80 camera.

“The eclipse was amazing,” Kagedan said via email. “Ever since I was 1 years old I was very interested in space and space events. The solar eclipse was one of my favorites and in 2017 I got to witness it on my birthday and I was so happy when I saw it again on April 8th.”

The team released the weather balloon, carrying a payload with two cameras and two trackers, from Concord in the city of Vaughan, Ontario, just slightly north of Toronto. The balloon traveled 552 miles (888 kilometers) before landing in Green Hills Preserve in North Conway, New Hampshire, according to Goldstein.

Vishnever’s mother and father reached out to local businesses in New Hampshire for help retrieving the balloon, and Cynthia Gilmore of Center Conway, New Hampshire, and her son, Joshua, helped track it down.

“Project eclipse has been an enjoyable and memorable experience where we all worked together and accomplished something that I never dreamed of,” Vishnever said.

Hundreds of armed Israeli settlers stormed a village in the occupied West Bank on Friday, setting fire to several homes and cars in one of the largest attacks by settlers this year, according to Palestinian officials.

At least one Palestinian man was killed by gunfire in the village of Al-Mughayyir, east of Ramallah, according to the head of the village council Amin Abu-Alia, who is related to the deceased.

About 25 others were also injured in the rampage, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah, the scale of which has not been seen since hundreds of settlers stormed through the villages of Turmusayya and Huwara in two separate incidents last year.

According to Abu-Alia, Israeli security forces had informed Palestinian officials that the settlers were looking for an Israeli teenager who had gone missing earlier in the day.

He estimated that between 1,000 and 1,200 settlers surrounded the village, and around 500 stormed it just after midday local time on Friday, blocking all the roads in the area.

According to Abu-Alia, the Israeli military arrived at the scene at around 3 p.m. local time, but did not stop the settlers from attacking the village. Instead, Israeli soldiers allowed them to raid homes, prevented Palestinian residents from moving around and blocked ambulances from reaching the injured, he alleged.

“Security forces operated to disperse the violent riots. During the incident, rocks were hurled at IDF soldiers, who responded with fire. Hits were identified. Furthermore, IDF and Israel Border Police forces operated to withdraw Israeli civilians who entered the town of Al Mughayyir,” it added.

A statement from the Palestinian Red Crescent said 11 ambulances drove to the scene of Friday’s attack to pick up the wounded, reporting that several people were injured by bullet fragments.

Earlier on Friday, IDF spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said IDF forces had been working to search for the missing 14-year-old, who was last seen near an Israeli settlement and around 2 kilometers from Al-Mughayyir.

“IDF forces from the air and on the ground, including special forces, have been working since the early afternoon, along with the Israel Police and other forces, in the search for the 14-year-old boy who has been missing since this morning in the Malachei Ha’Shalom area in the Binyamin Brigade,” he said in a post on X.