It was a special day for Elmira Dergousova when Russian tanks rolled across the border into Ukraine: her fifth birthday.

A plastic crown perched on her head, she blew the candles out on her “Frozen” cake.

Her mom quickly took a picture – the uncertainty and fear in Elmira’s smile all too obvious – before they hurried down to the basement.

Russian shells were already landing in the streets.

Life for children across Ukraine has changed immeasurably since that day in February 2022. For those in the northern city of Kharkiv, just miles from the Russian border, it changed more than most.

Despite almost daily Russian shelling and missile strikes, the city has recovered an uneasy normalcy, with some residents returning, shops open and life going on.

But the fear of seemingly random Russian strikes makes school too much of a risk. None of the city’s schools are still used for lessons as it’s too dangerous. The city has looked underground, to the subway and newly built bunker schools to protect children as they learn.

‘They get used to it somehow’

Nestled in an old pedestrian tunnel, a few feet under the tarmac of the road above, the classrooms are cozy and colorful.

Gaudy cartoon characters and multiplication tables line the walls, while a banner reads “Indestructible Kharkiv.”

In a corner Lego and toys – their subterranean playground – sit ready for recess. But first, the national anthem plays, signaling the start of the school day.

It’s a moment of innocence, safe within the walls of her new school.

But she knows what war means all too well, her father is fighting on the front lines and she was a refugee in Poland with her mom for a year.

Given the limited space in the metro school, Elmira is forced to study from home every other day. She uses software and tablets pioneered during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Nearly 2,200 children attend classes in the metro school’s five sites in stations across Kharkiv, up from 1,000 in September when they opened, according to Kharkiv’s city hall, solely at their parents’ request.

In total, 106 classes of children through grades 1-11 rotate through the 19 metro classrooms. That’s a fraction of the tens of thousands of school age children in the city, according to the city’s mayor.

But studying underground means a school day without disruption, safe from the bombs and the fear of the sirens.

“The kids are probably getting used to it by now,” Elmira’s teacher Olena Rudakova said. “They get used to it somehow.”

Death from above

“No air raid alert can work,” he said.

Despite the proliferation of emergency shelters across Ukraine, concrete rooms visible on streets throughout towns and cities, civilians are far from safe from Russian air attacks.

“If earlier they shot at the energy infrastructure, today they hit in such a way as to intimidate people. They shoot at the housing stock, at the private sector, at residential buildings and there are a lot of victims,” Terekhov said.

Elmira’s old school, now boarded up, was hit by Russian shelling in the opening months of the war. Families were sheltering in the basement at the time but thankfully none were hurt.

Many haven’t been so lucky.

At least 10,000 civilians, including more than 560 children, have been killed since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine said in November.

More than 18,500 people have been injured.

The UN believes the true figures are likely significantly higher due to the challenges and delays involved in verifying deaths in areas of ongoing hostilities.

With space already at a premium in the city’s metro system – in 2022, some 160,000 people were sheltering in stations, according to a Karkhiv city’s education department – last year Kharkiv’s mayor commissioned a purpose-built underground school.

The school – set to open in March – looks like a bunker.

From the lighting and noise insulation to the ventilation, the school administrators have poured over plans to make the site, which will house 450 students, as comfortable and enjoyable for pupils as possible.

“The lungs must breathe as they do in the fresh air, it’s very important,” Terekhov said of the school’s future students.

‘They have grown up’

In the metro station, a psychologist is now part of the staff, an essential pillar of war-time teaching.

Once her students returned to classes last September, the change was impossible to miss.

“When we looked at their faces, they were already grown children returning.
They had the look of adults who had already experienced hardships,” she said.

“They have grown up.”

Play is central to the syllabus, Rudakova said, as they try to make learning as enjoyable as possible.

School is now more important than ever, Rudakova said. But as much as the metro school is a haven, it’s not the school the kids really want.

“They always say that they want peace and to return to their old school, which has everything for children: play areas, a sports hall, and a dining room,” Rudakova said.

“They understand what’s going on.”

Remarks by Donald Trump normally reverberate in an echo chamber of his own creation, a sort of vacuum that often strips them of any consequence globally. It is white noise, one might think – rhetoric designed to project strength and the rejection of the status-quo, rather than an expression of any actual policy. It is just Trump being Trump.

But when the former president suggested on Saturday that he would let Russia do “whatever the hell they want” to any NATO member that doesn’t meet spending guidelines, the impact was acute.

He recalled what he said was a conversation with a “large” NATO ally – it was unclear who he was referring to or when the conversation took place – which, according to his telling, had declined to spend the 2% recommended equivalent of their GDP on defense, but nevertheless wanted assurances from the US that they would be protected if Russia attacked. Trump said he would not give such an assurance, as the ally was “delinquent,” and Russian President Vladimir Putin should feel free to have his way.

Trump’s opinion of NATO has been known for years – he thinks it is the epitome of everything he despises about of America’s allies, taking advantage of US strength without giving anything in return: a store loyalty club in which you get points without proportionate spending.

As with much foreign policy, the Republican frontrunner radically misunderstood the nature and purpose of this relationship. NATO is not an alliance based on dues: it is the largest military bloc in history, formed to face down the Soviet threat, based on the collective defense that an attack on one is an attack on all – a principle enshrined in Article 5 of NATO’s founding treaty.

It’s purpose which suits the US profoundly: The White House invoked Article 5 after 9/11. And since NATO’s creation, US might has been often packaged globally as the expression of a dozens-strong consensus. NATO helps bolster the US’s ebbing position as the sole hyperpower. Strip away this vast alliance, and its diplomatic and economic might, and the US looks quite lonely on the world stage.

In short, the US will almost certainly always spend much more than anyone else on its military, regardless of its allies. NATO gives it a global bedrock of legitimacy, support for the dollar, and the post-Soviet hegemony it thrives upon.

Saturday’s misunderstanding considered, Trump’s comments come at a devastatingly bad time for Europe. The rogue rump of the GOP which supports him is persistently trying to derail vital aid to Ukraine. If the desired $60 billion does not arrive, or is delayed much longer, it will have an irrevocably detrimental impact on Ukraine’s practical defenses at the frontlines, political cohesion in Kyiv, and nationwide morale.

Damage is already being done. And it is Putin who benefits.

It is still a mystery as to why Trump feels so inexplicably bound to Putin, and wedded to his flattery, or even success. It is a riddle we may only understand in the fullness of time. Is it a warped attraction to a “bad guy,” a crush on Russia’s deeply patriarchal culture, or something more darkly tied to Trump’s personal history itself?

Saturday’s incendiary comments feed a narrative of the US being exploited, under-appreciated, and in global decline as a result. Trump’s GOP feeds on this, perhaps unaware it is a self-fulfilling loop of grievance. The more the US bemoans its allies and their miserly neglect of NATO, and withdraw from it, the less powerful it is.

The insufferably softball Putin interview by former Fox News host Tucker Carlson fomented the projection of weakness: it was an easy, open ear for the Kremlin head’s frail arguments of persecution and laughable historical justification for invading a weaker, non-threatening neighbor. The platform signalled parts of America want to listen to Putin’s nonsense, and enabled them to do so. It heralded the likely stark change in relations with Russia of a Trump second term.

While the real-world impact of Trump’s comments are not yet clear, they could be catastrophic. European security hinges on Ukraine’s success, or at the very least its ability to hold back and weaken Russia’s continuing assaults.

If Moscow prevails, it could take years; in the meantime, Putin has now managed to re-focus his economy and society for wartime, and might find it anathema to his grip on power to stop the drums of conflict beating. Russian advances in Zaporizhzhia could lead to movement into Kherson, then Mykolaiv, and Odesa, putting Putin on the doorstep of NATO’s Romania.

But do not expect Moscow to launch a full-on invasion of the largest military alliance in history. Russia will not suddenly bomb France. Putin prefers to needle, to provoke, and test his opponents’ redlines or readiness. Is NATO willing to go to war with Moscow over Russian-speaking parts of the Baltic state of Estonia? Or the tiny, partially Russian-inhabited Norwegian island of Svalbard? Would a minor Russian provocation slowly expose NATO disunity and their reluctance to mobilize their populations for conflict in the same way Russia has?

Europe has for nearly a decade lived with the possibility it might face the Russian threat alone. Trump’s first term sounded a loud klaxon to that effect. But now there is the largest land war to hit Europe since the 1940s, making the danger more acute.

The UK has recently switched its broader rhetoric in recent weeks to suggest the West is no longer in a post-war but a pre-war world. Senior military Britons have even mulled whether conscription is even a possibility. Finland and Sweden have urgently sought to join NATO. Germany’s foreign ministry responded to Trump’s comments with “One for all and All for One”. The European Council President Charles Michel slammed Trump’s “reckless statements”.

But European defense has rarely thrived without the might of US support. Moscow is, after its failed invasion of an unprepared neighbor, still weak comparatively. It is not a behemoth capable of raging across Western Europe. It is far from the potent military it was perceived to be in 2021. Yet make no mistake: the lack of a guarantee of American support massively undermines NATO’s effectiveness. It calls into question the alliance’s cohesion and therefore its existence.

Trump knows that. He is not simply saying the US won’t help NATO allies who haven’t paid. He is saying he would encourage Russia to attack, invade, inflict the horrors of Mariupol upon US allies. It may be noise, it may be aimed at whipping up the faithful in front of his podium. But it was heard loudly, especially in European capitals and Moscow.

Part of Trump’s appeal to his supporters is his lack of presidential poise. But after Ukraine’s invasion two years ago, this is no longer a game of posturing. It is a moment that hopefully the history books will not have to look back and analyze as having been of grave consequence.

After a failed lunar landing mission last month, NASA is pinning its hopes on a second spacecraft — developed by a separate company — to make the first touchdown on the moon for the United States in more than five decades.

The lunar lander, nicknamed Odysseus, or Odie for short, is set to take flight atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 12:57 a.m. ET on Wednesday.

The rocket will propel the spacecraft into an oval-shaped orbit extending out to 380,000 kilometers (236,100 miles) around Earth. It will amount to “a high-energy fastball pitch towards the moon,” as Intuitive Machines CEO Stephen Altemus put it. His Houston-based company developed Odysseus.

Once in Earth’s orbit, the lunar lander will separate from the rocket and begin venturing on its own, using an onboard engine to boost itself on a direct trajectory toward the lunar surface.

Odysseus is expected to spend a little more than a week free flying through space, with an attempt to touch down on the lunar surface expected February 22.

If successful, Odysseus would become the first US spacecraft to make a soft landing on the moon since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.

Why the Odysseus mission matters

The launch of this lunar lander comes one month after Peregrine, a vehicle that Astrobotic Technology developed with NASA funding, failed on its mission. The Pittsburgh-based company revealed a goal-shattering fuel leak just hours after Peregrine launched on January 8. The spacecraft burned up in the atmosphere as it careened back toward Earth 10 days later.

But NASA has sponsored the creation of a small fleet of privately developed lunar landers as part of a program the space agency calls CLPS, or Commercial Lunar Payload Services.

“In CLPS, American companies used their own engineering and manufacturing practices instead of adherence to formal and traditional NASA procedures and NASA oversight,” explained Joel Kearns, the space agency’s deputy associate administrator for exploration in NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. “CLPS is a test of that philosophy.”

The program’s aim is to develop lunar landers under relatively cheap, fixed-price contracts, in the hopes of using the spacecraft to give the US a presence on the moon as a new international space race heats up.

China, India and Japan are the only nations to have soft-landed vehicles on the moon in the 21st century. And while NASA remains confident the US will be the first country to return humans to the lunar surface, the global rush to plant robotic spacecraft on the moon is reaching a fever pitch.

What separates NASA’s approach from others is the way it has embraced commercialization — the idea that multiple spacecraft can be developed more cheaply and quickly with private industry competing for contracts than if the space agency were to develop its own.

Intuitive Machines’ Altemus calls this strategy “forced innovation.”

All told, Intuitive Machines could receive up to $118 million from NASA for this mission.

A stable of lunar landers

The NASA CLPS program does not hinge on every mission making a safe touchdown, but these first landing attempts could set the tone and pace for the space agency’s renewed efforts to explore the moon robotically before trying to return astronauts to the lunar surface later this decade.

Founded in 2013, Intuitive Machines will be the second of the CLPS program participants — after Astrobotic — to attempt a moon landing. (Two additional CLPS missions are planned for later in 2024.)

Of the four companies slated to deliver lunar landers to the moon under the CLPS program, Intuitive Machines has the most orders from NASA — with three moon missions on the books.

What’s on board

The Odysseus lander is a model called Nova-C, which Intuitive Machines describes as roughly the size of a British telephone booth with legs attached.

The company aims to land the spacecraft near the moon’s south pole, an area of high interest in the space race. This region is suspected to be home to water ice that could one day be converted into drinking water for astronauts or even rocket fuel.

The south pole is also the same lunar region where NASA is seeking to land astronauts later this decade.

The lander will be equipped with six NASA payloads — an array of scientific instruments designed to test new technology or evaluate the lunar environment, such as a study of how the moon’s soil behaves during landing.

Also on board will be commemorative objects — including a sculpture representing the moon phases designed in consultation with Jeff Koons — and technology from private-sector companies, including Columbia Sportswear, which developed insulation material for the lander.

If all goes according to plan, Odysseus will spend seven days operating on the moon as the lunar lander basks in the sun. But as the landing zone moves into Earth’s shadow, experiencing lunar night, the spacecraft will be put to sleep.

The odds of success

The past year has brought a couple successful lunar touchdowns — pulled off by India and Japan — as well as brutal setbacks, with Russia and the United States losing spacecraft in recent attempts.

Altemus estimates that Intuitive Machines has about an 80% chance of safely landing Odysseus on the moon.

“We’ve stood on the shoulders of everybody who’s tried before us,” he said, adding that Intuitive Machines attempted to analyze the propulsion issue that plagued the Peregrine lander last month and ensured the same problem would not arise during Odysseus’ mission.

“We just have a fundamentally different architecture,” Altemus added.

But a successful attempt would mark only a starting point, he said.

“It’s not a one-and-done operation at all,” Altemus said. “We built a lunar program for the purpose of flying regularly to the moon.”

Establishing programs that can make regular robotic trips to the moon could facilitate a future in which lunar travel is common, inexpensive and fuels grander projects, such as a functioning lunar base with astronauts living and working there, according to vision laid out by NASA and its partners.

Two Israeli-Argentinian men taken captive by Hamas on October 7 were rescued on Monday in an early morning raid in which the Israeli military carried out airstrikes that local officials said killed around 100 people in the southern Gaza city of Rafah.

The hostages, 60-year-old Fernando Simon Marman and 70-year-old Louis Har, had spent 128 days in captivity. Both men are in relatively good condition and have since reunited with their families.

Israel Defense Forces spokesman Daniel Hagari told reporters on Monday the complex rescue operation was conducted after receiving “highly sensitive and valuable intelligence.” It involved Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, police special forces and an IDF tank brigade.

The operation began at 1:49 a.m. local time, when Israeli special forces entered the building where the hostages were held. The duo were found on the second floor “in the hands of Hamas terrorists.” Hamas militants were also stationed in adjacent buildings, Hagari said.

Israel’s ground forces encountered resistance throughout the operation. Once the hostages were recovered, they were protectively hugged by members of the police special forces as they were escorted out under fire from Hamas, according to Hagari, who said they were taken to a safe place within Rafah for medical attention and then airlifted out of Gaza by helicopter.

Har and Marman’s rescue marks just the second time since last year’s terror attack that the Israeli military has successfully retrieved hostages in Gaza. A previous attempt in December went awry when Israeli soldiers shot and killed three Israeli hostages in Gaza after misidentifying them as threats.

While the operation to free the two men will be celebrated in Israel, significant loss of life was reported inside Gaza as a result of the Israeli Air Force providing “aerial cover” for the ground operation.

Airstrikes began 1:50 a.m., a minute after the raid began, the IDF said.

The Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said that more than 100 people were killed in strikes in Rafah overnight, while the Hamas-controlled health ministry in Gaza said 94 people lost their lives. Neither group specified how many of those who died were militants.

The director of Abu Yousef Al-Najjar Hospital said medical facilities in Rafah “cannot handle the large number of injuries due to the Israeli occupation’s bombardment.”

A second video showed a girl wiping tears from her eyes as she described the airstrikes. “I was going to the bathroom and the strikes were ongoing. Suddenly I found fire in our house,” the girl says in the video. “Then I went to the bathroom and all the walls collapsed on me.”

The Rafah municipality said on Monday at least two mosques and around a dozen homes were struck.

A spokesman for the US State Department said Monday that the US does not view the strikes as “the launch of a full-scale offensive” in Rafah.

A potential incursion into Rafah has prompted concern in the international community, as the city has become a last refuge for Palestinians fleeing south to avoid Israel’s air and ground campaigns. More than 1.3 million people are believed to be in Rafah, the majority displaced from other parts of Gaza, according to the United Nations.

There are severe shortages of food, water, medicine and shelter, and the city has been described as a “pressure cooker of despair” by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

A military campaign in Rafah would likely result in a bloodbath, as people there have no remaining escape route; the city borders Egypt, and the sole crossing into that country has been closed for months, along with the rest of Gaza’s borders.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has brushed off criticism of plans for the ground assault – saying calls not to enter Rafah are like telling Israel to lose the war. He pledged to provide safe passage for civilians, but offered few details.

According to the Gazan health ministry, more than 28,100 people have been killed in the enclave since October 7.

Hostages in good condition

The IDF later released a pair of videos of what it said showed the moments the two hostages were rescued from Rafah. One aerial video showed an exchange of fire during the rescue and a voice of an unknown person saying, “the hostages are in our hands.”

In the second video, soldiers are seen comforting the rescued hostages in a vehicle shortly after the operation. When asked how they were feeling, one of the hostages said: “Shocked, shocked, all right.”

The pair, Har and Marman, were transferred early Monday to Sheba Medical Center at Tel HaShomer, according to the IDF, and were in good medical condition.

Marman’s niece, Geffen Sigal Ilan, said the reunion was “very emotional.”

“I couldn’t believe I was hugging him, I was so happy,” she said.

The families said they were surprised by the news of the release, which they received in the middle of the night. Both men appeared to be doing well, but months of captivity had taken a physical toll.

“They’re a little thin, a little different, they lost a little weight,” Illan said. “They were in an inhumane situation.”

Netanyahu has been under mounting pressure from the Israeli public to secure the release of captives in Gaza, with some families of those held hostage being openly critical of the government’s tactics.

The duo had been kidnapped from the Nir Yitzhak kibbutz, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said. Nir Yitzhak was one of multiple kibbutzim close to the border with Gaza that came under attack by Hamas militants during their October 7 rampage which saw some 1,200 people killed and more than 240 taken hostage.

The office of Argentina’s President Javier Milei praised Israel for the rescue, and thanked the Israeli forces behind the operation.

Gallant hailed what he called an “impressive release operation” in a statement on X, formerly Twitter, saying he had followed the operation in the Command Center along with Netanyahu and senior commanders.

Netanyahu released a statement Monday welcoming the two hostages back, and praising the Israeli forces. “Only the continuation of military pressure, until complete victory, will result in the release of all our hostages,” he said.

After Monday’s rescue, the total number of hostages left in Gaza is 134, Hagari said. Of that number, 130 hostages are from the October 7 attack – with 29 dead and 101 believed to be alive. The other four had been held in Gaza prior to the attack.

Most hostages are being held by Hamas, though some are also reportedly held by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Israel and Hamas have been unable to reach an agreement to release more hostages since one in November collapsed. That agreement resulted in a weeklong pause in fighting in exchange for the release of more than 100 hostages, mostly elderly women and children.

Hamas condemned the strikes on Monday, calling them “forced displacement attempts” and “horrific massacres against defenseless civilians and displaced children, women, and the elderly.”

It also accused US President Joe Biden and his administration of bearing “full responsibility” for the civilian deaths.

The high Palestinian death toll connected to the operation caused deep concern for the Biden administration, a senior US administration official said Monday. The US is still gathering information on the details of the rescue operation, including how exactly the operation unfolded and how many civilians may have been killed, the official added.

On Sunday, Biden and Netanyahu discussed a deal to secure the release of hostages in Gaza, according to a senior administration official, as well as Israel’s anticipated ground assault on Rafah.

According to the White House, Biden “reaffirmed his view that a military operation in Rafah should not proceed without a credible and executable plan for ensuring the safety of and support for the more than one million people sheltering there.”

Matthew Miller, the US State Department spokesman, reiterated Monday that the US does not support “any military campaign in Rafah.”

Correction: This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Daniel Hagari’s name.

A megastructure found in the Baltic Sea may represent one of the oldest known hunting structures used in the Stone Age — and could change what’s known about how hunter-gatherers lived around 11,000 years ago.

Researchers and students from Kiel University in Germany first came across the surprising row of stones located about 69 feet (21 meters) underwater during a marine geophysical survey along the seafloor of the Bay of Mecklenburg, about 6 miles (9.7 kilometers) off the coast of Rerik, Germany.

The discovery, made in the fall of 2021 while aboard the research vessel RV Alkor, revealed a wall made of 1,670 stones that stretched for more than half a mile (1 kilometer). The stones, which connected several large boulders, were almost perfectly aligned, making it seem unlikely that nature had shaped the structure.

After the researchers alerted the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern State Office for Culture and Monument Preservation to their find, an investigation began to determine what the structure might be and how it ended up at the bottom of the Baltic Sea. Diving teams and an autonomous underwater vehicle were used to study the site.

The team determined that the wall was likely built by Stone Age communities to hunt reindeer more than 10,000 years ago.

A study describing the structure was published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“Our investigations indicate that a natural origin of the underwater stonewall as well as a construction in modern times, for instance in connection with submarine cable laying or stone harvesting are not very likely. The methodical arrangement of the many small stones that connect the large, non-moveable boulders, speaks against this,” said lead study author Dr. Jacob Geersen, senior scientist at the Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research in Germany, in a statement.

Turning back time

The wall was likely built more than 10,000 years ago along the shoreline of a lake or a bog, according to the study. Rocks were plentiful in the area at the time, left behind by glaciers that had moved across the landscape.

But studying and dating submerged structures is incredibly difficult, so the research team had to analyze how the region has evolved to determine the approximate age of the wall. They collected sediment samples, created a 3D model of the wall and virtually reconstructed the landscape where it was originally built.

Sea levels rose significantly after the end of the last ice age about 8,500 years ago, which would have led to the wall and large parts of the landscape being flooded, according to the study authors.

But things were different nearly 11,000 years ago.

“At this time, the entire population across northern Europe was likely below 5,000 people. One of their main food sources were herds of reindeer, which migrated seasonally through the sparsely vegetated post-glacial landscape,” said study coauthor Dr. Marcel Bradtmöller, research assistant in prehistory and early history at the University of Rostock in Germany, in a statement. “The wall was probably used to guide the reindeer into a bottleneck between the adjacent lakeshore and the wall, or even into the lake, where the Stone Age hunters could kill them more easily with their weapons.”

The hunter-gatherers used spears, bows and arrows to catch their prey, Bradtmöller said.

A secondary structure may have been used to create the bottleneck, but the research team hasn’t found any evidence of it yet, Geersen said. However, it’s likely that the hunters guided the reindeer into the lake because the animals were slow swimmers, he said.

And the hunter-gatherer community seemed to recognize that the deer would follow the path created by the wall, the researchers said.

“It seems that the animals are attracted by such linear structures and that they would rather follow the structure instead of trying to cross it, even if it is only 0.5 meters (1.6 feet) high,” Geersen said.

The discovery changes the way researchers think about highly mobile groups like hunter-gatherers, Bradtmöller said. Building a massive permanent structure like the wall implies that these regional groups may have been more location-focused and territorial than previously believed, he said.

Hunting sites around the world

The discovery marks the first Stone Age hunting structure in the Baltic Sea region. But other comparable prehistoric hunting structures have been found elsewhere around the globe, including the United States and Greenland, as well as Saudi Arabia and Jordan, where researchers have discovered traps known as “desert kites.”

Stonewalls and hunting blinds built for hunting caribou were previously found at the bottom of Lake Huron in Michigan and discovered at a depth of 98 feet (30 meters). The Lake Huron wall’s construction and location, which includes a lakeshore to one side, is most similar to the Baltic Sea wall’s, the study authors said.

Meanwhile, the scientists continue their investigation in the Baltic using sonar and sounding devices, as well as planning future dives to search for archaeological finds. Only by combining the expertise from those in fields like marine geology, geophysics and archaeology are such discoveries possible, Geersen said.

Understanding the location of lost structures and artifacts on the seafloor is key as demand for offshore areas increases due to tourism and fishing and the construction of pipelines and wind farms, he said. And other undiscovered treasures at the bottom of the Baltic could potentially shed more light on ancient hunter-gatherer communities.

“We have evidence for the existence of comparable stonewalls at other locations in the (Bay of Mecklenburg). These will be systematically investigated as well,” said study coauthor Dr. Jens Schneider von Deimling, researcher in the Marine Geophysics and Hydroacoustics group at Kiel University, in a statement.

A megastructure found in the Baltic Sea may represent one of the oldest known hunting structures used in the Stone Age — and could change what’s known about how hunter-gatherers lived around 11,000 years ago.

Researchers and students from Kiel University in Germany first came across the surprising row of stones located about 69 feet (21 meters) underwater during a marine geophysical survey along the seafloor of the Bay of Mecklenburg, about 6 miles (9.7 kilometers) off the coast of Rerik, Germany.

The discovery, made in the fall of 2021 while aboard the research vessel RV Alkor, revealed a wall made of 1,670 stones that stretched for more than half a mile (1 kilometer). The stones, which connected several large boulders, were almost perfectly aligned, making it seem unlikely that nature had shaped the structure.

After the researchers alerted the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern State Office for Culture and Monument Preservation to their find, an investigation began to determine what the structure might be and how it ended up at the bottom of the Baltic Sea. Diving teams and an autonomous underwater vehicle were used to study the site.

The team determined that the wall was likely built by Stone Age communities to hunt reindeer more than 10,000 years ago.

A study describing the structure was published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“Our investigations indicate that a natural origin of the underwater stonewall as well as a construction in modern times, for instance in connection with submarine cable laying or stone harvesting are not very likely. The methodical arrangement of the many small stones that connect the large, non-moveable boulders, speaks against this,” said lead study author Dr. Jacob Geersen, senior scientist at the Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research in Germany, in a statement.

Turning back time

The wall was likely built more than 10,000 years ago along the shoreline of a lake or a bog, according to the study. Rocks were plentiful in the area at the time, left behind by glaciers that had moved across the landscape.

But studying and dating submerged structures is incredibly difficult, so the research team had to analyze how the region has evolved to determine the approximate age of the wall. They collected sediment samples, created a 3D model of the wall and virtually reconstructed the landscape where it was originally built.

Sea levels rose significantly after the end of the last ice age about 8,500 years ago, which would have led to the wall and large parts of the landscape being flooded, according to the study authors.

But things were different nearly 11,000 years ago.

“At this time, the entire population across northern Europe was likely below 5,000 people. One of their main food sources were herds of reindeer, which migrated seasonally through the sparsely vegetated post-glacial landscape,” said study coauthor Dr. Marcel Bradtmöller, research assistant in prehistory and early history at the University of Rostock in Germany, in a statement. “The wall was probably used to guide the reindeer into a bottleneck between the adjacent lakeshore and the wall, or even into the lake, where the Stone Age hunters could kill them more easily with their weapons.”

The hunter-gatherers used spears, bows and arrows to catch their prey, Bradtmöller said.

A secondary structure may have been used to create the bottleneck, but the research team hasn’t found any evidence of it yet, Geersen said. However, it’s likely that the hunters guided the reindeer into the lake because the animals were slow swimmers, he said.

And the hunter-gatherer community seemed to recognize that the deer would follow the path created by the wall, the researchers said.

“It seems that the animals are attracted by such linear structures and that they would rather follow the structure instead of trying to cross it, even if it is only 0.5 meters (1.6 feet) high,” Geersen said.

The discovery changes the way researchers think about highly mobile groups like hunter-gatherers, Bradtmöller said. Building a massive permanent structure like the wall implies that these regional groups may have been more location-focused and territorial than previously believed, he said.

Hunting sites around the world

The discovery marks the first Stone Age hunting structure in the Baltic Sea region. But other comparable prehistoric hunting structures have been found elsewhere around the globe, including the United States and Greenland, as well as Saudi Arabia and Jordan, where researchers have discovered traps known as “desert kites.”

Stonewalls and hunting blinds built for hunting caribou were previously found at the bottom of Lake Huron in Michigan and discovered at a depth of 98 feet (30 meters). The Lake Huron wall’s construction and location, which includes a lakeshore to one side, is most similar to the Baltic Sea wall’s, the study authors said.

Meanwhile, the scientists continue their investigation in the Baltic using sonar and sounding devices, as well as planning future dives to search for archaeological finds. Only by combining the expertise from those in fields like marine geology, geophysics and archaeology are such discoveries possible, Geersen said.

Understanding the location of lost structures and artifacts on the seafloor is key as demand for offshore areas increases due to tourism and fishing and the construction of pipelines and wind farms, he said. And other undiscovered treasures at the bottom of the Baltic could potentially shed more light on ancient hunter-gatherer communities.

“We have evidence for the existence of comparable stonewalls at other locations in the (Bay of Mecklenburg). These will be systematically investigated as well,” said study coauthor Dr. Jens Schneider von Deimling, researcher in the Marine Geophysics and Hydroacoustics group at Kiel University, in a statement.

King Charles III has made his first public outing since his cancer diagnosis, attending church alongside Queen Camilla.

The King waved to onlookers as he walked to St Mary Magdalene’s church on the monarch’s Sandringham estate in eastern England on Sunday morning.

Earlier this week he was photographed in the back of a car on his Sandringham Estate.

On Monday, Buckingham Palace announced Charles, 75, had been diagnosed with an undisclosed form of cancer and will step back from public-facing duties while he undergoes treatment.

He was advised by doctors to step away from public-facing duties, but the palace stressed he would continue state duties and paperwork.

Prince William, Charles’ son and the heir to the throne, and Queen Camilla are expected to take on more public engagements to account for Charles’ absence.

Meanwhile, his son Prince Harry made a brief visit to the UK earlier this week after Charles’ diagnosis.

Harry then appeared at the NFL Honors award ceremony in Las Vegas on Thursday, presenting the Man of the Year award.

In his first public comments since his diagnosis, Charles expressed gratitude to the public for their support, saying it brought him “the greatest comfort and encouragement,” according to a statement on Saturday.

Three soldiers from the United Arab Emirates Armed Forces and an officer from the Bahrain Defense Force were killed in an attack at a military base in Somalia’s capital, the UAE’s defense ministry said Sunday.

The attack took place at the General Gordon military base in Mogadishu on Saturday night, the ministry said.

UAE personnel had been training soldiers from the Somali Armed Forces as part of an agreement between the UAE and Somalia, the ministry said. Two others were injured during the attack, it added.

An army officer told Reuters that the gunman was a newly trained Somali soldier. “The soldier opened fire on UAE trainers and Somali military officials when they started praying,” the official said.

Reuters reported the al Qaeda-linked terror group al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for the attack via a statement on its Radio al Andalus.

“We understand the soldier had defected from al-Shabaab before he was recruited as a soldier by Somalia and UAE,” the army official said.

Al-Shabaab was designated as a terrorist group by the US in 2008 and by a UN Security Council committee in 2010.

Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud condemned the attack and instructed Somalia’s security agencies to conduct a “thorough and urgent investigation.”

The UAE said it would cooperate with the Somali government in investigating what it called a terrorist attack, and reiterated its resolve to combat terrorism and maintain peace and stability in the region.

Correction: This story has been updated to remove an errant description of the army officer who spoke to Reuters.

Ukraine’s Defence Intelligence claims it has confirmed the use of Starlink satellite communications by Russian forces in occupied areas.

It says it has intercepted conversations which indicate the Starlink terminals are being used to provide internet access to Russia’s 83rd Air Assault Brigade operating in the Donetsk region.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX company, which owns Starlink, says it does not do business of any kind with the Russian government or its military.

“If SpaceX obtains knowledge that a Starlink terminal is being used by a sanctioned or unauthorized party, we investigate the claim and take actions to deactivate the terminal if confirmed,” the company said in a statement.

Starlink, which uses a network of satellites to provide broadband, says its service will not work in Russia, although the statement didn’t address whether it would work in occupied Ukraine.

The service plays a crucial role in Ukrainian battlefield communications. Last year, Kyrylo Budanov, head of the Main Ukrainian Intelligence Directorate, said “absolutely all front lines are using them.”

Ukraine’s claim follows revelations about the satellite system’s use in the war made in a biography of Starlink’s owner Elon Musk, written by Walter Isaacson.

According to an excerpt from the book, Musk secretly ordered his engineers to turn off his company’s Starlink satellite communications network near the Crimean coast last year to disrupt a Ukrainian sneak attack on the Russian naval fleet.

As Ukrainian submarine drones strapped with explosives approached the Russian fleet, they “lost connectivity and washed ashore harmlessly,” Isaacson writes.

Musk’s decision, which left Ukrainian officials begging him to turn the satellites back on, was driven by an acute fear that Russia would respond to a Ukrainian attack on Crimea with nuclear weapons, a fear driven home by Musk’s conversations with senior Russian officials, according to Isaacson.

His political party is effectively banned, his speeches are barred from television, and he faces at least 14 years in prison. But as the Pakistan election results show, Imran Khan cannot be suppressed.

Independent candidates affiliated with the former prime minister’s Pakistan Tehereek-e-Insaf (PTI) party secured the most parliamentary seats in last week’s nationwide election, the election commission announced Sunday.

It is a stunning victory for an incarcerated Khan who, two years ago faced a dramatic ouster as prime minister and most recently faced a military-led crackdown analysts say was designed to thwart the cricket icon’s return to power.

“You kept my trust, and your massive turnout has stunned everyone,” an AI-generated video of Khan shared by the PTI that mimicked his voice, said to his millions of followers shortly after his victory. “Now show the strength of protecting your vote.” Khan’s team has previously used AI to deliver his speeches from behind bars.

The continued success of Khan aligned candidates marks a seismic moment in the country’s recent history: It has delivered a stinging rebuke to the powerful military, a usually untouchable force that has long sat at the apex of power in Pakistan and – according to Khan’s aides and many supporters – cracked down on his party.

“As a Pakistani, it was profoundly empowering to witness the collective outcry against injustice manifested through the ballot,” said Hashim Ali Dogar, 20, from the city of Lahore.

“We have demonstrated our resilience in the face of injustice against political victimization, and we stand ready to do so again.”

Forming a government in a political vacuum

Despite the PTI backed independents winning the most seats in parliament, questions loom over what the next government of Pakistan will look like.

None of the three major parties have won the necessary seats to declare a majority in parliament and, therefore, will be unable to form government on their own, leaving it unclear who will be picked as the country’s next prime minister.

The results were also announced more than three days after polls closed, prompting accusations of electoral fraud from the PTI.

Shayan Bashir Nawaz, the PTI’s information secretary from the province of Punjab, alleged an analysis conducted by the party suggested “significant discrepancies” in some national assembly seats and called for peaceful protest against the delayed results.

“We will take all options that we have to correct this wrong, we will pursue all legal options, and we will pursue all constitutional options,” said Raoof Hassam, a senior leader of the PTI.

The military has said it remains “dedicated to upholding peace and security in the country and stand ready to provide unwavering support in safeguarding the democratic traditions of our state.”

If the PTI-backed candidates succeed in forming a government, it will usher Pakistan into an unprecedented era – one in which the ruling party is seemingly at odds with the military, while its leader remains behind bars.

But the “chances for a PTI-led government currently appear slim,” according to Madiha Afzal, fellow in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “They would need to join a parliamentary party, and also seek a coalition… They will also need to ensure that their candidates don’t switch over.”

The rise of Imran Khan

Pakistan, a nuclear-armed nation of 220 million has, since its inception in 1947, struggled with political and social instability following a traumatic partition that hastily divided British India along religious lines into two independent countries.

It’s a country where militant attacks are frequent, poverty is rampant, and violence against women is widespread. Ruled for much of its 76 years by political dynasties or military establishments, analysts say decades of perceived corruption and nepotism disenfranchised swathes of its population, who were clamoring for a clean break from Pakistan’s past.

Faced with a lingering economic crisis, many young voters in Pakistan, where the median age is just 22.7, viewed Khan’s PTI as a change from the elite political dynasties who they perceive as being out of touch with the issues facing the country’s people.

When he rose to power in 2018, it was, according to analysts, with the backing of the military. But when he fell out of favor with the generals just a few years later, and was dramatically ousted from power in a parliamentary no-confidence vote in 2022 for economic mismanagement, rather than backing down, Khan led an unprecedented revolt.

He drew tens of thousands to nationwide rallies in the streets, where he criticized the military and accused them of orchestrating his removal with the help of the United States – accusations both the military and the US deny. Millions tuned into Khan’s emotive online speeches, where he spoke of wiping out corruption and bringing change to Pakistan’s turbulent politics.

His message, and his skillful use of social media, inspired many young Pakistanis.

“Everyone can see where the preference lies. I wanted to give my first vote to Imran Khan,” said Rabiya Arooj, a 22-year-old first-time voter from the capital, Islamabad.

Yet, as Khan’s popularity grew, so too did his enemies, including, his supporters claim, powerful members of the military-backed establishment.

He was slapped with dozens of charges, arrested and sentenced to prison in three different cases, sending shockwaves through the country. His party’s cricket bat symbol was barred from appearing on the ballot, prompting accusations of “pre-poll rigging.”

The scale of suppression had many analysts believe Khan’s longtime rival, Nawaz Sharif, a former three-time prime minister and scion of the elite Sharif dynasty, would take the top job once again.

“The election result shows disenchantment of young Pakistanis with the military establishment and politics as usual,” said Husain Haqqani, a former Pakistani ambassador and scholar at the Hudson Institute in Washington D.C. and Anwar Gargash Diplomatic Academy in Abu Dhabi.

First time voter Manahil Ahmed said the “youth have made their voices heard.”

“Pakistan have come to the one realization it previously had always struggled with, which is that all power truly only rests in their will,” he said.

“The sense of emerging victorious despite all the odds stacked against us now runs deep. Deep enough for people to come to the conviction that they will now put in twice as much commitment to protect that victory.”

Uncertain future

Much of what lies ahead remains uncertain, with the clock ticking to establish a coalition government.

Sharif and Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, the other main candidate in the race and the scion of another political dynasty, have said their parties will work together to bring stability to Pakistan.

The unknown has many Pakistanis feeling a mix of emotions.

“On one hand, it’s empowering to see the youth actively participating and making their voices heard,” said Sundas Kalsoom from the city of Peshawar. “However, the delay in election results is frustrating and can lead to uncertainty and skepticism about the fairness of the process.”

Haqqani, the former ambassador said it would be in Pakistan’s best interest if “the people’s mandate was respected.”

“The worst-case scenario would be violence, crackdown, and backlash like Egypt in the aftermath of the so-called Arab Spring,” he said, referring to the anti-government protests that spread across much of the Middle East in the early 2010s.

Despite the uncertainty, analysts say one thing is clear.

“The decisiveness with which the Pakistani public has voted for the underdog says something about the health of democracy,” according to Fahd Humayun, assistant professor of Political Science & Neubauer Faculty Fellow at Tufts University.

“While public confidence in the country’s institutions has clearly fluctuated in the past few years, these elections, for all their flaws, have proven that there was considerable political mobilization around the issue of representation, and that should inspire hope for Pakistan’s future.”