A Nigerian woman who wrote an online review of a can of tomato puree is facing imprisonment after its manufacturer accused her of making a “malicious allegation” that damaged its business.

Chioma Okoli, a 39-year-old entrepreneur from Lagos, is being prosecuted and sued in civil court for allegedly breaching the country’s cybercrime laws, in a case that has gripped the West African nation and sparked protests by locals who believe she is being persecuted for exercising her right to free speech.

What did she say?

Her post, accompanied by a photo of an opened can of Nagiko Tomato Mix, produced by local company Erisco Foods Limited, sparked varied reactions from commenters, one of whom replied: “Stop spoiling my brother’s product. If (you) don’t like it, use another one than bring it to social media or call the customer service.”

Okoli responded: “Help me advise your brother to stop ki***ing people with his product, yesterday was my first time of using and it’s pure sugar.”

A week later, on September 24, she was arrested.

According to the police, Okoli was charged with “instigating Erisco Foods Limited, knowing the said information to be false under Section 24 (1) (B) of Nigeria’s Cyber Crime Prohibition Act.”

If found guilty, she could face up to three years in jail or a fine of 7 million naira (around $5,000), or both.

Okoli was separately charged with conspiring with two other individuals “with the intention of instigating people against Erisco Foods Limited,” which the charge sheet noted was punishable under Section 27(1)(B) of the same act. She risks a seven-year sentence if convicted of this charge.

Okoli is also being sued in a separate civil case brought by Erisco, which said in a statement issued on January 19 that it was defending its reputation after her comments “resulted in several suppliers deciding to disassociate themselves from us.”

Public apology required

“I was put in the cell around 6 p.m. (on September 24). There were no seats, so I stood all through till the next day. My legs were inside the water (that came in from the leaking roof). Sometimes, I squatted to reduce the pressure on my legs. I was thinking about my children who were at home. I was talking to myself. I would think, I would pray, I was messed up,” she said.

The following day, Okoli was flown to the Nigerian capital, Abuja, and held at a police station until her release on administrative bail was finalized a day later, she said.

The police filed their case against Okoli in an Abuja court on October 5.

The first court hearing took place on December 7. She was represented by her lawyer but did not attend in person.

“They stayed in my building from 6:30 a.m. until 5:30 p.m. My children couldn’t go to school that day and we couldn’t go out to get food because the cooking gas was finished,” she said. Eventually, she said, the police left.

“We will comment on the case when the court decides,” Adejobi said.

Countersuit against police and food company

“In this case, we believe that David is right, and Goliath is wrong,” Effiong said.

In October, he filed a 500 million naira ($361,171) countersuit on behalf of Okoli against both Erisco and the police at a Lagos court, challenging her arrest and detention, which he said violated her constitutional rights to personal liberty and freedom of movement.

In court papers relating to the countersuit, Effiong argued that his client’s arrest was also a breach of her constitutional right to freedom of expression. He said that he would also ask the Abuja court where she is being tried for cybercrime violations to transfer the case to Lagos, where she lives, at the next hearing, set for April 18.

Hard to prove

“No law guarantees absolute freedom,” he said. “While we have our freedom of expression, there are limitations. You can’t defame or malign someone.”

However, he added that “cybercrime is difficult to prove in court. You have to prove actual harm when the post was made. Erisco must prove that the Facebook post (by Okoli) affected its business as at the point it was made.” He noted that in Okoli’s post, she used a word with three asterisks, which could be open to interpretation.

“Harassment and intimidation of Chioma Okoli must end now,” Amnesty International Nigeria said earlier this month, as Nigerians began crowdfunding online to support her legal fees.

Okoli’s case has sparked protests at Erisco’s Lagos facility as many on social media called for a boycott of its products. The company’s founder, Eric Umeofia, refused to budge, however, saying in a recent documentary on the local Arise Television channel that he won’t drop the lawsuit against Okoli and that he would “rather die than allow someone to tarnish my image I worked 40 years to grow.”

Argentina on Tuesday accused Venezuela of cutting the electricity supply to its embassy in Caracas after the diplomatic mission hosted a meeting with the country’s opposition leaders, the latest sign of souring relations between the two South American nations’ ideologically opposed governments.

In a statement, the Office of Argentine President Javier Milei claimed the embassy’s power was turned off Monday in a “deliberate action that endangers the safety of Argentine diplomatic personnel and Venezuelan citizens under protection.”

Argentine diplomats had invited the Venezuelan opposition leaders, who were not named in the statement, to the mission out of concern stemming from “the deterioration of the institutional situation and the acts of harassment and persecution directed against political figures in Venezuela,” it added.

Venezuela’s opposition has accused Maduro’s government of repressing its leaders and stifling any free and fair campaigning ahead of the country’s presidential elections on July 28.

Maduro, who has ruled Venezuela since the death of his mentor President Hugo Chavez in 2013, announced on March 17 that he’s running for re-election for another six-year term. It is unclear whether he will face any real challenge, as his main rival, María Corina Machado, has been barred from standing over corruption allegations, which she denies.

Under Maduro’s rule, Venezuela has suffered hyperinflation and an unprecedented economic collapse, deepened by sanctions imposed by the United States in 2017 against its vital oil and gas sector.

The US partially rolled back punitive measures on Caracas in late 2023 but in January reinstated economic sanctions against a Venezuelan state-owned mining company following the barring of Machado from the election.

Colombia and Brazil issued statements Tuesday expressing concern over the opposition’s ability to fairly compete in the upcoming presidential contest.

Maduro on Tuesday criticized foreign governments which he claimed, “seek to intervene in the internal affairs of Venezuela.”

“Peggy and Molly” were a match made for the internet.

Peggy is a stout and muscular Staffordshire bull terrier, and Molly is a magpie, an Australian bird best known for swooping on humans during breeding season, not for befriending dogs.

In the four years since their unlikely bond was posted online, the odd couple has attracted almost two million followers on Instagram and Facebook.

But in an emotional video posted online Tuesday, Peggy’s owners, Juliette Wells and Reece Mortensen, announced that the animals had been separated.

“It breaks our heart to make this announcement today,” said Wells. “We had to surrender Molly to the DES – Department of Science and Innovation – as we had a small group of people constantly complaining to them.”

Fans online were quick to demand justice.

“This is a classic example of bureaucracy over common sense and humanity,” one user wrote on Instagram. “Our tax-payer funded departments should be using their resources to help out the community and save mis-treated wildlife, not harm them!!” said the comment, which attracted more than 1,000 likes.

However, a spokesman for the Department of Science and Innovation (DESI) said in a statement the bird had been “illegally” taken from the wild and been kept with “no permit, licence or authority.”

“Animals in rehabilitation must not associate with domestic animals due to the potential for them to be subjected to stress and the risks of behavioural imprinting and transmission of diseases,” the statement added. “Animals from the wild, must stay wild.”

An abandoned baby bird

Wells found Molly in a local park, apparently abandoned as a chick, according to a long post on Facebook.

“We were very concerned because the park was an off-leash dog park in the afternoons and up to 30 dogs of all breeds run around crazily we knew this little bird would not stand a chance. So, we did what any animal lovers would do and made the decision to bring him home and care for him,” the post said.

“Over the next few months we nurtured this magpie, taught him how to feed, fly and put him outside as much as possible because our goal was to get him back out into the wild.”

But Molly didn’t leave, and bonded with their dog Peggy.

During the pandemic, Wells posted images of the animals together to social media with motivational slogans – “Days spent with you are my favourite days” and “You are my Happy Place.”

The animals attracted a huge online following.

T-shirts were printed, calendars sold, then a deal was signed with one of the country’s biggest publishers.

The resulting book, “Peggy and Molly,” was marketed as “heart-warming photos and simple life lessons about what it means to be a true friend and how we can all learn to be kind, humble and happy.”

But not everyone was happy about the development.

Wildlife officials worried that others would follow their lead of domesticating wild animals in the hope of profiting online.

Online campaign

Wells and Mortensen are now mobilizing an internet campaign to pressure authorities to give back the bird, a protected species in Australia.

Followers are being urged to write to their local member of parliament and the director general of the department.

“We are asking why a wild Magpie can’t decide for himself where he wants to live and who he wants to spend his time with,” the couple said in their online post.

In its statement, the DESI said there was no option to release the bird to the wild as it had become “highly habituated to human contact.”

It would be placed in a facility, the statement said, which could be a long stay – magpies are known to live up to 30 years.

Jones, from Griffith University, who has written a book about his own experience raising a magpie, said taking the chick home was “the worst possible thing that [the couple] could have done.”

He said feeding birds is not uncommon in Australia – “every second person you meet is feeding a magpie somewhere” – but there was a difference between allowing them to roam in your garden and taking them into your home.

“It’s not a good thing to take animals from the wild and turn them into pets. It’s not something to be recommended, and that’s why there are strong rules about that sort of thing,” Jones said.

But now that Molly has become a family pet, the best thing would be for the DESI to return it, he said.

“The authorities could say on reflection, with the welfare of the individual magpie in mind, we have decided that the best thing to do for that magpie is to return it to the family,” he said.

Bernard Ashcroft, CEO of Wildlife Rescue Australia, said the law prohibits people from taking wild animals as pets, for good reason.

“It’s not appropriate that people have a magpie simply because it appeals to them. If they don’t know what they’re doing they can cause a bit of harm,” he said.

“Different birds have different nutritional needs.”

Late Wednesday, the department released a statement that suggested the campaign to reunite Peggy and Molly may be gaining some traction.

“The department shares the community’s desire to ensure Molly is cared for in the most appropriate way going forward,” the statement said, without providing further detail.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko appears to have cast doubt on Russia’s claims that Ukraine was involved in the brutal attack at a Moscow concert hall last week.

ISIS claimed responsibility for the massacre, which killed at least 139 people, and released graphic footage of the incident, but Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly suggested, without evidence, that Ukraine had helped orchestrate it.

Putin on Saturday claimed that a “window” had been prepared for the attackers to escape to Ukraine, which Kyiv has denied.

But Lukashenko, one of Putin’s most loyal allies, on Tuesday appeared to contradict the Kremlin’s claims, saying that the attackers initially intended to enter Belarus rather than Ukraine.

“They could not enter Belarus. Their handlers… knew that it would be a very bad idea to try to enter Belarus, because Belarus immediately reinforced security measures,” Lukashenko said, according to Belarusian news agency Belta.

Lukashenko said he received reports from Russian authorities “minutes” after the attack began and put Belarusian units on combat alert, setting up checkpoints on roads to prevent the attackers entering the country.

“That’s why there was no chance they could enter Belarus. They realized it. So they took a turn and headed to the Ukraine-Russia border,” he said.

The attackers stormed Crocus City Hall in a Moscow suburb on Friday, shooting civilians at point blank before setting the building on fire, causing the roof to collapse while concert-goers were still inside.

Four suspects, who are from the Central Asian republic of Tajikistan but worked in Russia on temporary or expired visas, were detained later Friday night in Russia’s Bryansk region, near the border with Ukraine and Belarus.

In his first national address after the attack, Putin on Saturday alleged that the men “tried to hide and move towards Ukraine, where, according to preliminary data, a window was prepared for them on the Ukrainian side to cross the border.”

Putin on Monday conceded the attack had been carried out by “radical Islamists,” but still tried to pin ultimate responsibility on Ukraine.

Other Kremlin officials have doubled down on the claims. Alexander Bortnikov, director of Russia’s Federal Security Services (FSB), alleged on Tuesday that Ukraine was involved in the “training of militants in the Middle East.”

Ukraine has vehemently denied involvement in the attack and called the Kremlin’s claims “absurd.” Others have speculated why the attackers would try to flee through a heavily militarized section of the border, with a large Russian troop presence.

And Lukashenko, in attempting to promote Belarus’ standing as a reliable ally of Russia, may have inadvertently further weakened Putin’s allegations.

Belta reported that Lukashenko agreed to “seal off its section of the road that could be used by the criminals” when he received intelligence from Russian officials, including Bortnikov, that the attackers were “moving in the direction of Bryansk.”

Lukashenko said he and Putin exchanged phone calls, claiming he accepted Putin’s request to help seal off the roads into Belarus. “Absolutely. We are doing everything,” Lukashenko replied.

He said he shared the information because he was aware that Putin had been reproached for his response to the tragedy. Putin had been criticized for not addressing the nation until more than 19 hours after the attack began.

Instead, Lukashenko said, he and Putin “did not sleep for 24 hours,” as they worked to address the threat.

A total of 11 people have been arrested in connection with the attack on the concert hall, Russian officials said. Four appeared in a Moscow court on Sunday and three on Monday. It’s not clear if the remaining four are still in detention or have appeared before a judge.

Three of the Tajik suspects were bent double as they were marched into a Moscow courtroom on Sunday, while the fourth was in a wheelchair and appeared unresponsive. They were charged with terrorism and face a maximum sentence of life in prison.

The men looked battered and bruised as they were brought into the courtroom. Videos circulated widely on Russian social media appeared to show some of them being violently interrogated, including one that appeared to show the use of electrocution. In another video, a suspect had part of his ear cut off and stuffed in his mouth.

Around 16 million years ago, a dolphin giant cruised the depths of its watery domain. But unlike most modern dolphins, its home wasn’t an ocean; it lived in a freshwater lake in the Peruvian Amazon. And though there are Amazonian freshwater dolphin species alive today, they aren’t close kin to that ancient cetacean. Its closest living relatives are river dolphins living more than 6,000 miles (10,000 kilometers) away in South Asia, according to researchers who recently described the previously unknown extinct mammal.

Analysis of the newly identified ancient dolphin’s skull told paleontologists that its body would have measured at least 11 feet (3.5 meters) long — making it about 20% to 25% bigger than modern river dolphins and the biggest known freshwater dolphin.

But the skull, which measured about 27 inches (70 centimeters) long, was incomplete, so the ancient dolphin may have been even larger than that, the scientists reported March 20 in the journal Science Advances, published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

What makes the find even more exceptional the insight it offers into the evolutionary history freshwater dolphins, as these creatures are extremely rare in the fossil record, the study authors wrote. This is because there tend to be fewer individual dolphins in freshwater ecosystems, and strong water currents typically prevent fossils from preserving well.

They called the newfound species Pebanista yacuruna; the genus references Peru’s Pebas Formation, where the fossil was found, and “yacuruna” is a term for mythical aquatic people of local legend, in the Indigenous Kichua language.

“I think this is a remarkable discovery, particularly given that South America has one species of river dolphin that belongs to a completely different group of odontocetes (toothed whales),” said Jorge Velez-Juarbe, an associate curator of marine mammals at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, in an email.

‘Everybody freaked out’: Fossil features reveal rare find

Modern freshwater dolphins are known for their highly elongated noses, compared with marine dolphins’ stubbier snouts. There’s the South Asian river dolphin (Platanista genus) and the Amazon river dolphin (Inia genus), also known as the pink river dolphin, and the two groups include several species and subspecies.

China’s Yangtze river dolphin (Lipotes vexillifer) represents a third genus, but the species hasn’t been seen in the wild in 40 years and may be extinct, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). In fact, all extant river dolphin species are endangered or critically endangered, the IUCN says.

“I said: ‘Hey, John, does this connect to this piece that I have in my hand?’” Benites-Palomino recalled. What he held turned out to be a rostrum — the rounded tip of a nose — from the embedded skull. As they cleaned it up enough to see the shapes of tooth sockets, Benites-Palomino realized that they were looking at something unusual.

“We started screaming: ‘It’s a dolphin! It’s a dolphin!’” Benites-Palomino said.

At first, they thought it would turn out to be an ancient relative of modern Amazonian river dolphins. But further cleaning revealed that the size and shape of the eye socket resembled that of South Asian river dolphins, which have much smaller eyes than their South American cousins.

“That was a moment where everybody freaked out, because it wasn’t an Amazonian river dolphin,” Benites-Palomino said. This told the scientists that two types of dolphins had independently and at different times moved inland in the region.

Digging up dolphin diversity

Platanistoids — the group that includes P. yacuruna and South Asia’s modern river dolphins — were widespread about 20 million years ago. The ancestors of modern Amazonian river dolphins were common in oceans about 10 million to 6 million years ago, Benites-Palomino said.

Because both groups of cetaceans were so diverse, some species likely ventured into river and lake ecosystems, seeking less competition for food. This Amazonian freshwater environment was nutrient-rich and teeming with life, home to crocodilians, turtles and fish, as well as mammals such as sloths, rodents, ungulates and primates.

“Overall, in these ecosystems ‘river dolphins’ can be considered as apex predators,” Velez-Juarbe said.

P. yacuruna was among the first wave of dolphins to test the waters in Amazonian rivers and lakes; a lack of predators in its new home could explain how the species evolved to become so large, according to the study. But environmental changes like drought may have later doomed P. yacuruna and driven it to extinction, opening the freshwater habitat to the ancestors of extant pink river dolphins.

“We now know that this species was living there in the past, but also the Amazonia is important for our extant Inia geoffrensis,” Benites-Palomino said. “[The discovery] highlights that this is a tremendously important environment for the evolution of freshwater cetaceans.”

P. yacuruna’s disappearance is a grim reminder that this important environment is all too easily disrupted. Today, modern Amazonian river dolphins face an uncertain future, mostly due to mercury pollution from gold mining invading the food chain, according to the World Wildlife Fund. The newfound fossil hints at the fragility of freshwater ecosystems and the vulnerability of their inhabitants — past and present — to environmental changes, whether such changes are natural or human-made, Velez-Juarbe added.

“Pebanista adds another layer to the intricate evolutionary history of cetaceans and particularly ‘river dolphins,’ the few species that survive to present day are but the last remnants of groups that were once more diverse.”

Mindy Weisberger is a science writer and media producer whose work has appeared in Live Science, Scientific American and How It Works magazine.

At least 12 Palestinians drowned off the northern Gaza coast near Beit Lahia on Monday while trying to reach airdropped parcels that had landed in the sea, according to local paramedics.

“There were strong currents and all the parachutes fell in the water. People want to eat and are hungry,” he said. “I haven’t been able to receive anything. The youth can run and get these aid (drops), but for us it’s a different story.

“We call for the opening of the crossings in a proper fashion, but these humiliating methods are not acceptable,” added Abu Mohammad.

Earlier this month, at least five people were killed and 10 others injured when airdropped aid packages fell on them in Al Shati camp west of Gaza City, according to a journalist on the scene. Human rights groups have repeatedly criticized airdrops as an inefficient and degrading way of getting aid to Gazans, instead urging Israeli authorities to lift controls on land crossings into the enclave.

Hamas has called on Western countries to end airdrops of aid into Gaza, warning that the humanitarian delivery method is “offensive, wrong, inappropriate and useless.” Hamas has from the outset been critical of airdrops, describing them as “useless” and “not the best way to bring aid in.”

Israel’s severe restrictions on aid entering the Gaza Strip have drained essential supplies, condemning the entire population of more than 2.2 million people to the risk of famine, according to a UN-backed report. Humanitarian bodies including Oxfam and Human Rights Watch have warned Israel is “using starvation of civilians as a weapon of war in Gaza, which is a war crime.” Israel insists there is “no limit” on the amount of aid that can enter Gaza, but its inspection regime means relief is barely trickling in.

Still, a senior US defense official said Tuesday there had been a “significant increase” in the amount of aid flowing into Gaza through various crossings, resulting in nearly 200 trucks coming in a day, up from about 100 trucks a day in February.

The deaths came a day after Washington stepped aside and allowed the UN Security Council to pass a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. The resolution, proposed by the 10 non-permanent members of the Security Council, demands an immediate ceasefire for the month of Ramadan, the immediate and unconditional release of hostages and “the urgent need to expand the flow” of aid into Gaza.

Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz pushed back against the demand, saying his country would not abide by the resolution. Following the UN vote on Monday, Amnesty International said Israeli authorities “must immediately halt their brutal bombing campaign in Gaza and facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid.” It added that, “Civilian hostages must be immediately released.”

The Pentagon said Tuesday that three bundles of aid out of the 80 delivered during the US airdrop over Gaza Monday had landed in the sea after a parachute malfunction.

“During yesterday’s humanitarian air drop, which included approximately 80 bundles, three bundles were reported to have had parachute malfunctions and landed in the water,” Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh said. “It is important to note that drop zones are chosen to mitigate potential failures of parachutes to deploy. These humanitarian aid drops occur over water and the wind causes the bundles to drift over to land. In the event of a parachute malfunction the bundles land in the water.”

Another eyewitness to the mass drowning in Beit Lahia urged regional leaders to “look at us and have mercy on us.”

Following several failed attempts over five months of Israel’s devastating war in Gaza, the United Nations Security Council on Monday finally passed a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire. The United States, which had been the only remaining hurdle to such a call, decided not to strike down the resolution.

The vote came as a shock to Israel, which saw its decades-old US ally abstain rather than veto the move, as it has consistently done over the years in its diplomatic backing of the Jewish state. Israeli officials lambasted the resolution, saying they have no intention of ceasing fire.

More than 32,000 people have been killed in Gaza in operations Israel launched after Hamas-led militants attacked the country on October 7, killing 1,200 people and taking 250 hostages.

Israel criticized the language of the resolution, saying it doesn’t firmly tie a ceasefire to the freeing of the hostages held in Gaza. The resolution demands “an immediate ceasefire… and also demands the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages.” A failed resolution proposed by the US last week demanded a ceasefire that was directly tied to releasing the hostages.

While the US says the latest resolution is non-binding, experts differ on whether that is the case. The key is in the language of the document, they say.

Here’s what we know:

Will the resolution have an impact on the ground in Gaza?

Israel has reacted angrily to the resolution, saying it has no intention of abiding by it. On Tuesday, Israeli attacks on Gaza continued.

Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Gilad Erdan criticized the Security Council for passing a measure that called for a ceasefire “without conditioning it on the release of the hostages.”

“It undermines the efforts to secure their release,” he said at the United Nations.

Foreign Minister Israel Katz meanwhile said on X that his country would not abide by the resolution.

“The state of Israel will not cease fire,” Katz said. “We will destroy Hamas and continue to fight until the last of the hostages returns home.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu retaliated for the US abstention by canceling a scheduled trip to the US by two of his top advisers. Israeli national security adviser Tzachi Hanegbi and Ron Dermer, a member of the war cabinet, had been scheduled to travel to Washington Monday night to discuss alternatives to a planned Israeli offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah. The meeting had been requested by US President Joe Biden.

“On the ground right now… I think there is no immediate effect,” said Gabriela Shalev, a former Israeli ambassador to the UN and an emeritus professor at the Hebrew University’s faculty of law. “But of course it has a moral and a general effect.”

Is the resolution binding on Israel?

After the resolution passed, US officials went to great lengths to say that the resolution isn’t binding. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller repeatedly said during a news conference that the resolution is non-binding, before conceding that the technical details of are for international lawyers to determine.

Similarly, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby and US ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield separately insisted that the resolution is non-binding.

After the resolution passed, China’s UN ambassador Zhang Jun countered that such resolutions are indeed binding. Deputy UN spokesperson Farhan Haq said Security Council resolutions are international law, “so to that extent they are as binding as international law is.”

Experts say whether a resolution is binding depends on the language used, as ambiguous language leaves room for interpretation. In this case, there have been differing opinions on whether the resolution falls under Chapter VI of the UN charter (deeming it non-binding) or Chapter VII (binding). This resolution “demands” a ceasefire.

“The US – ascribing to a legal tradition that takes a narrower interpretation – argues that without the use of the word “decides” or evocation of Chapter VII within the text, the resolution is non-binding,” said Maya Ungar, an analyst monitoring UN Security Council developments at the International Crisis Group (ICG), a Brussels-based think tank. “Other member states and international legal scholars are arguing that there is legal precedence to the idea that a demand is implicitly a decision of the council.”

“The crux of the issue is language of the resolution and the way that member states are interpreting the charter differently,” she added.

“The US is attempting to walk a fine line between criticizing and supporting Israel,” Ungar said. “By arguing that the resolution is non-binding, it seems that the US made a calculation that they could make a public statement by not vetoing without facing too much Israeli backlash.”

Even if legal experts decide the resolution is binding, a question remains on how and who can enforce it, said Yossi Mekelberg, an associate fellow with the Middle East and North Africa program at the Chatham House think tank in London.

Does the resolution leave Israel isolated on the world stage?

Israel’s Western allies, particularly the US, have long protected it from censure at the UN. Their support was in full display soon after the October 7 Hamas-led massacre, when many countries stood by Israel at the Security Council and the UN General Assembly. But as the war in Gaza dragged on and the death toll there mounted, that backing began to dwindle, even from some of Israel’s most committed allies, leaving the US as its sole backer at the UN for the past few months. Until Monday’s vote.

“They are not fully isolating Israel – their arguments about the non-binding nature makes that clear,” said Ungar of the ICG. “But this is the farthest from Israeli policy that the US has been willing to go thus far at the United Nations.”

Shalev, the former Israeli ambassador, said that by abstaining, the US took a “middle way,” but one that shows the extent to which the White House is “very worried and concerned about what is happening.”

Biden administration officials have come to believe that Israel risks becoming an international pariah if the humanitarian crisis in Gaza worsens or persists for an extended period of time.

Israel has faced intense criticism internationally, with calls from US politicians and European officials to reconsider arms sales to it in the face of the enormous civilian death toll in Gaza.

Relations with the Biden administration have been going downhill as Israel vows to press on with a potential invasion of Rafah, where 1.4 million Palestinians are sheltering. The US has warned against such a move, even as officials insist on Washington’s commitment to Israel’s security.

Vice President Kamala Harris said last weekend that the invasion would be a “mistake” and refused to rule out consequences for Israel should it go ahead.

Netanyahu’s decision to cancel official meetings in Washington in protest of the US’ abstention has left American officials perplexed. Kirby said the US was “very disappointed that they will not be coming” but insisted that the abstention was not a shift in US policy towards Israel.

“He is picking a fight with Washington, at the worst time that any Israeli prime minister can pick a fight with Washington,” Mekelberg said.

Despite the Israeli snub elsewhere, Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant flew to Washington on Tuesday to present US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin with a wishlist of US weapons and equipment that Israel wants to buy and have delivered in an expedited manner.

Shalev said Israel was facing “a very low point in our relations with the US,” noting that while tension exists on a governmental level, most of the people of Israel want ties to improve.

In the past, the US wouldn’t even let such resolutions come to a vote, she said. “(This time) the US wanted to confirm its view regarding the humanitarian aspects of Israel’s actions on the ground in Gaza, as well as regarding the unconditional release of all hostages.”

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has fended off the threat of immediate extradition to the United States after the High Court in London said the US needed to provide more assurances.

US authorities say Assange, 52, put lives at risk by publishing secret military documents and have for years been seeking his extradition on espionage charges.

At a two-day hearing last month, Assange sought permission to review the UK’s 2022 approval of his extradition to the US, arguing the case against him was politically motivated and that he would not face a fair trial.

In a ruling Tuesday, a panel of two judges said Assange, an Australian citizen, would not be extradited immediately and gave the US three weeks to give a series of assurances around Assange’s First Amendment rights and that he would not receive the death penalty.

If the US fails to give these assurances, Assange would be allowed to appeal his extradition at a further hearing in May.

Assange has fought extradition for the last five years from London’s Belmarsh prison and for seven years before that was holed up as a political refugee at the Ecuadorian embassy in the UK capital.

His case has sparked condemnation from free speech advocates who say if the extradition is allowed to go ahead it will have a chilling effect on press freedoms.

The court said on Tuesday that Assange had a “real prospect of success” on three of the nine grounds of appeal: that his extradition is incompatible with freedom of expression; that, if extradited, Assange might be prejudiced at trial due to his nationality; and that, if extradited, he would not enjoy adequate death penalty protection.

But the court refused to grant him leave to appeal on the ground that the prosecution is politically motivated.

“The judge found, on the evidence, that Mr Assange had not shown that the request was made for the purpose of prosecuting him on account of his political opinions,” it said.

It said the judge had taken account of the evidence that the CIA had planned to kidnap Assange from the Ecuadorian Embassy, but the judge “concluded that this was not related to the extradition proceedings.”

Assange is being pursued by US authorities for endangering lives by publishing confidential military records supplied by former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning in 2010 and 2011.

In 2019, prosecutors in Virginia charged Assange with 18 offences including one charge of conspiracy to attempt to hack a computer in connection with the 2010 release of classified military material obtained through Manning and 17 additional counts under the Espionage Act.

The prosecution alleges that Assange goaded Manning into obtaining thousands of pages of unfiltered US diplomatic cables that potentially endangered confidential sources, Iraq war-related significant activity reports and information related to Guantanamo Bay detainees.

Each of those counts carries a potential sentence of 10 years, meaning that if convicted, Assange could be sentenced to up to 175 years in prison.

He has been fighting the request for his extradition ever since.

Assange was not present at the crucial last-ditch hearing in February as he was too “unwell” to attend, according to one of his lawyers.

His legal team had argued that the US request was in breach of their client’s human rights, politically motivated and that his work was “ordinary journalistic practice” which he shouldn’t be punished for.

They also claimed Assange was the subject of an alleged CIA assassination plot while he lived at his Ecuadorian safe haven between 2012 and 2019. “There is compelling evidence now in existence… that senior CIA and [US] administration officials requested detailed plans and drawings of [the plot],” lawyer Edward Fitzgerald said.

The allegation has never been tested evidentially but his legal team had argued that it should be considered and made part of the case.

ISIS claimed responsibly for Friday’s deadly assault on a concert venue in Moscow, releasing graphic footage purporting to show its gunmen carrying out what was Russia’s worst terror attack in decades.

Russian authorities have accused four men from the former Soviet republic of Tajikistan of being behind the attack, which left at least 137 people dead and more than 100 injured. The suspects, who are charged with committing a terrorist act and face possible life imprisonment, have been remanded into pre-trial detention through May 22 after appearing in court in Moscow on Sunday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Monday that “radical Islamists” carried out the assault, but also claimed without proof that a “window” had been prepared for the attackers to escape to Ukraine. Kyiv has denied the allegations.

US officials have tied the attack to ISIS-K, an affiliate that operates in central Asia, which has become one of the region’s most brutal and feared terror groups.

Here’s what we know about ISIS-K.

Who are ISIS-K?

ISIS-K was formed in 2015 and has been active in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. It is a branch of ISIS, the terror group that emerged in Syria and Iraq and, at its peak, controlled a huge stretch of territory.

Five years since the fall of ISIS’ self-proclaimed caliphate across Iraq and Syria, the group has morphed into a terror network with cells spread around the world, including in Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia and Southeast Asia.

The connection between ISIS-K and its apparent parent group is not entirely clear. The affiliates share an ideology and tactics, but the depth of their relationship – such as the chain of command and control – has never been fully established.

By 2018, ISIS-K was ranked the world’s fourth-deadliest terror group, according to the Institute for Economics and Peace, which monitors global terrorism.

The Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021, and the withdrawal of US troops from the country, thrust ISIS-K into the global spotlight – especially after the group orchestrated a deadly bombing outside Kabul airport that killed 13 US military personnel and 170 Afghans.

It was ISIS-K’s most globally consequential action to date and drew a promise of retribution from US President Joe Biden.

The United Nations estimated in 2021 that the group has up to 2,200 core fighters based in Afghanistan’s Kunar and Nangarhar provinces.

What do they want?

Like its parent organization, ISIS-K aims to create a “pure Islamic state,” according to CSIS – describing the group’s vision of a “global, transnational caliphate” governed by Sharia law.

ISIS-K has a mutual hatred of the Taliban and attracts those with views even more radical than the Islamist group that rules Afghanistan. It refuses to acknowledge the Taliban as a legitimate Islamic leader because it relies on a narrow base “instead of committing to a universal Islamic jihad,” according to CSIS.

As such, ISIS-K’s recent attacks have largely been aimed at the Taliban and other symbolic targets, as well as at Afghanistan’s Shia Muslim minorities, in particular the ethnic Hazaras.

The group’s hatred of the West, including the United States, Britain and Europe, also features prominently in their agenda – as does its enmity toward Russia.

Why did they attack Russia?

“Russia has been at the top or near the top of the list of ISIS for many years,” said Daniel Byman, director of Georgetown University’s security studies program. He pointed to Moscow’s crucial role in the Syrian civil war, when it intervened in support of the Syrian government and against ISIS.

ISIS-K has also criticized the Taliban for being “too close to Russia,” Byman added.

In 2022, ISIS-K claimed responsibility for a suicide blast near Russia’s embassy in Kabul, which killed six people, including two consular staff.

Over the past month, Russia has thwarted several ISIS-related incidents, according to state-run news agency RIA Novosti. At least four incidents in March alone have been reported across Russia that local authorities said involved people connected to ISIS, RIA reported.

Russian state media reported on March 7 that the FSB, Russia’s security service, prevented an ISIS attack on a synagogue in Moscow, according to Reuters. The ISIS attackers were killed in a gunfight, the reports said.

What other attacks are they responsible for?

To date, the majority of ISIS-K’s most devastating attacks have been in Afghanistan and Pakistan – the Kabul airport blast being a prominent example.

Others include a May 2020 attack on a Kabul maternity ward that killed 24 people and an attack on Kabul University in November 2020 that killed 22, according to CSIS. ISIS-K was also believed to be behind a horrific car bombing outside a girls’ high school in May 2021 that killed at least 85 people.

The group was particularly active during its peak around 2018 – when an ISIS-K suicide bomber killed 128 people at an election rally in Mastung, Pakistan, one of the bloodiest attacks anywhere in the world that year.

While it’s no longer as strong as it was in 2018, ISIS-K continues to plan attacks in Afghanistan. It is the most active terror group in the country, responsible for 73 deaths in 2023, according to the Institute for Economics and Peace.

Could they pose a broader global threat?

The Kabul airport attack had raised global concerns that ISIS-K could pose a major threat across the region and beyond.

In March 2023, the head of the US Central Command told lawmakers that ISIS-K was becoming more emboldened, and that Europe or Asia were more likely targets for terrorist attacks originating in Afghanistan than the US.

In a 2023 threat assessment report by US intelligence agencies, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said ISIS-K “almost certainly retains the intent to conduct operations in the West and will continue efforts to attack outside Afghanistan.”

And earlier this year, the UN Security Council warned in a report that ISIS-K was planning or conducting “operational plots” in Europe. Seven people linked to the group were arrested in Germany last year while planning for “high-impact terrorist attacks,” including obtaining weapons and possible targets, the council said.

It is not the first time that ISIS has struck a concert venue. In November 2015, ISIS gunmen attacked the Bataclan theater in Paris – part of an assault that hit other targets in the city – killing at least 130 people. In May 2017, the group claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester Arena, England, that killed 22 people. ISIS has also inspired terrorists in the US, including the gunman who killed 49 people at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, in 2016 in what was then the most lethal terrorist attack in the US since 9/11.

Earlier this month, the US government had information about a planned terrorist attack in Moscow – potentially targeting large gatherings, to include concerts – which prompted the State Department to issue a public advisory to Americans in Russia. The US also shared this information with Russian authorities.

The intelligence that Washington had been getting since November was “fairly specific” and the US intelligence community warned Russia, but it’s not clear if this is directly tied to the March 7 warning by the US embassy in Moscow.

Putin rejected the US embassy warnings about terror attacks as “provocative” in a speech to the FSB, saying they “resemble outright blackmail and the intention to intimidate and destabilize our society.”

Artificial intelligence is energy-hungry and as companies race to make it bigger, smarter and more complex, its thirst for electricity will increase even further. This sets up a thorny problem for an industry pitching itself as a powerful tool to save the planet: a huge carbon footprint.

Yet according to Sam Altman, head of ChatGPT creator OpenAI, there is a clear solution to this tricky dilemma: nuclear fusion.

Altman himself has invested hundreds of millions in fusion and in recent interviews has suggested the futuristic technology, widely seen as the holy grail of clean energy, will eventually provide the enormous amounts of power demanded by next-gen AI.

“There’s no way to get there without a breakthrough, we need fusion,” alongside scaling up other renewable energy sources, Altman said in a January interview. Then in March, when podcaster and computer scientist Lex Fridman asked how to solve AI’s “energy puzzle,” Altman again pointed to fusion.

Nuclear fusion — the process that powers the sun and other stars — is likely still decades away from being mastered and commercialized on Earth. For some experts, Altman’s emphasis on a future energy breakthrough is illustrative of a wider failure of the AI industry to answer the question of how they are going to satiate AI’s soaring energy needs in the near-term.

The appeal of nuclear fusion for the AI industry is clear. Fusion involves smashing two or more atoms together to form a denser one, in a process that releases huge amounts of energy.

It doesn’t pump carbon pollution into the atmosphere and leaves no legacy of long-lived nuclear waste, offering a tantalizing vision of a clean, safe, abundant energy source.

But “recreating the conditions in the center of the sun on Earth is a huge challenge” and the technology is not likely to be ready until the latter half of the century, said Aneeqa Khan, a research fellow in nuclear fusion at the University of Manchester in the UK.

Fission is the process widely used to generate nuclear energy today.

The problem is finding enough renewable energy to meet AI’s rising needs in the near term, instead of turning to planet-heating fossil fuels. It’s a a particular challenge as the global push to electrify everything from cars to heating systems increases demand for clean energy.

A recent analysis by the International Energy Agency calculated electricity consumption from data centers, cryptocurrencies and AI could double over the next two years. The sector was responsible for around 2% of global electricity demand in 2022, according to the IEA.

The analysis predicted demand from AI will grow exponentially, increasing at least 10 times between 2023 and 2026.

As well as the energy required to make chips and other hardware, AI requires large amounts of computing power to “train” models — feeding them enormous datasets —and then again to use its training to generate a response to a user query.

As the technology develops, companies are rushing to integrate it into apps and online searches, ramping up computing power requirements. An online search using AI could require at least 10 times more energy than a standard search, de Vries calculated in a recent report on AI’s energy footprint.

The dynamic is one of “bigger is better when it comes to AI,” de Vries said, pushing companies toward huge, energy-hungry models. “That is the key problem with AI, because bigger is better is just fundamentally incompatible with sustainability,” he added.

In part, demand is being driven by a surge in data centers. Data center electricity consumption is expected to triple by 2030, equivalent to the amount needed to power around 40 million US homes, according to a Boston Consulting Group analysis.

“We’re going to have to make hard decisions” about who gets the energy, said Khoo, whether that’s thousands of homes, or a data center powering next-gen AI. “It can’t simply be the richest people who get the energy first,” he added.

For many AI companies, concerns about their energy use overlook two important points: The first is that AI itself can help tackle the climate crisis.

“AI will be a powerful tool for advancing sustainability solutions,” said a spokesperson for Microsoft, which has a partnership with OpenAI.

The technology is already being used to predict weather, track pollution, map deforestation and monitor melting ice. A recent report published by Boston Consulting Group, commissioned by Google, claimed AI could help mitigate up to 10% of planet-heating pollution.

AI could also have a role to play in advancing nuclear fusion. In February, scientists at Princeton announced they found a way to use the technology to forecast potential instabilities in nuclear fusion reactions — a step forward in the long road to commercialization.

AI companies also say they are working hard to increase efficiency. Google says its data centers are 1.5 times more efficient than a typical enterprise data center.

A spokesperson for Microsoft said the company is “investing in research to measure the energy use and carbon impact of AI while working on ways to make large systems more efficient, in both training and application.”

There has been a “tremendous” increase in AI’s efficiency, de Vries said. But, he cautioned, this doesn’t necessarily mean AI’s electricity demand will fall.

In fact, the history of technology and automation suggests it could well be the opposite, de Vries added. He pointed to cryptocurrency. “Efficiency gains have never reduced the energy consumption of cryptocurrency mining,” he said. “When we make certain goods and services more efficient, we see increases in demand.”

In the US, there is some political push to scrutinize the climate consequences of AI more closely. In February, Sen. Ed Markey introduced legislation aimed at requiring AI companies to be more transparent about their environmental impacts, including soaring data center electricity demand.

“The development of the next generation of AI tools cannot come at the expense of the health of our planet,” Markey said in a statement at the time. But few expect the bill would get the bipartisan support needed to become law.

In the meantime, the development of increasingly complex and energy-hungry AI is being treated as an inevitability, Khoo said, with companies in an “arms race to produce the next thing.” That means bigger and bigger models and higher and higher electricity use, he added.

“So I would say anytime someone says they’re solving the problem of climate change, we have to ask exactly how are you doing that today?” Khoo said. “Are you making every next day less energy intensive? Or are you using that as a smokescreen?”