Beijing has lashed out at the United States and the United Kingdom for imposing sanctions over alleged Chinese government-backed cyberattacks, calling the Western allies’ move an act of “political manipulation.”

The US and the UK announced Monday a set of criminal charges and sanctions against seven Chinese hackers for allegedly conducting sweeping attacks on behalf of China’s civilian intelligence agency.

The yearslong campaign allegedly targeted American officials, senators, journalists and companies – including Pentagon contractors – as well as British parliamentarians, the UK’s election watchdog and members of the European Parliament, affecting millions of people.

New Zealand also weighed in on Tuesday, accusing state-sponsored Chinese hackers of launching “malicious cyber activity” against the country’s parliament in 2021.

Accusations of cyber espionage have long been a major point of friction between Beijing and Washington, with the US indicting a series of Chinese hackers in recent years.

The public accusations from three members of the so-called Five Eyes intelligence alliance show key Western democracies are now taking a more concerted – and coordinated – stand against what they view as unacceptable levels of hacking and espionage by Beijing.

At a news conference Tuesday, China’s Foreign Ministry lashed out at the US and the UK, accusing them of “hyping up the so-called cyberattacks by China.”

“This is purely political manipulation. China is strongly dissatisfied with this and firmly opposes it,” ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said, adding China has made solemn representations to both sides.

“We urge the United States and the United Kingdom to stop politicizing cyber security issues, stop slandering and smearing China, impose unilateral sanctions, and stop cyberattacks on China.”

The spokesperson did not mention New Zealand.

Australia and the European Union also expressed solidarity with the UK and voiced concerns over China’s alleged malicious cyber activities, as Beijing comes under growing scrutiny in a big election year for democracies around the world.

The accusations and sanctions come as China is trying to manage tensions and repair frayed relations with major Western powers, as it grapples with a host of economic challenges including an exodus of foreign investment.

Beijing’s frustration was evident on Tuesday, when Lin, the Foreign Ministry spokesperson, blamed the US for encouraging the Five Eyes alliance “to spread all kinds of disinformation about the threats posted by Chinese hackers for geopolitical purpose.”

Liu Dongshu, an assistant professor focusing on Chinese politics at City University of Hong Kong, said the coordinated move by the US and its allies undermines Beijing’s “divide and rule” strategy.

“My observation is that China has always sought to create some distance between the US and other Western countries, such as European nations and Australia. Especially considering the possibility of a reelection of Donald Trump, China feels there may be a chance to separate them a little more,” he said.

“But (the accusations) show that despite their differences, these countries remain united on many issues regarding China.”

‘Sensitive time’

The sanctions against two Chinese nationals and a technology company in the central Chinese city of Wuhan mark the first time Britain has slapped penalties on Chinese state-affiliated entities for alleged cyberattacks, even as Western intelligence agencies have increasingly sounded the alarm in recent years.

“It is an escalation, but perhaps only because the UK has been rather mild in its previous actions,” said Jonathan Sullivan, an associate professor and China specialist at the University of Nottingham.

British cybersecurity officials said a Chinese state-backed hacking group known as APT31 had “conducted reconnaissance activity” against British parliamentarians who were openly critical of Beijing in 2021.

Chinese hackers have also “highly likely” breached the UK’s Electoral Commission in 2021 and 2022 and accessed personal data of 40 million voters, according to British officials.

On Tuesday, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said China had made “technical clarification” in response to the APT31-related information submitted by the UK, calling its evidence “insufficient” and “unprofessional.”

The sanctions come at a sensitive time in the UK, which is facing a general election and bracing itself for a wave of misinformation, said Sullivan, the China expert at the University of Nottingham.

“Our economic relations with China are already undergoing securitization, from investment to data protection,” he said, citing Britain’s bans on Chinese tech giant Huawei from its 5G networks, and on the camera systems of Chinese surveillance company Hikvision from sensitive sites.

Last September, a British parliamentary researcher was arrested on suspicion of spying for China.

The sanctions could risk disrupting the upward trajectory of UK-China ties, which have stabilized in the past year after years of deterioration following British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s “robust pragmatism” approach to foreign policy, Sullivan said.

“I would be astonished if (Beijing) does not respond in kind. China does not tend to receive such actions without retaliation.”

This story has been updated with additional developments.

Microplastics have been found in historic soil samples for the first time, according to a new study, potentially upending the way archaeological remains are preserved.

Researchers found microplastics in soil deposits more than seven meters (23 feet) underground, which were deposited in the first or second century CE and excavated in the 1980s, a team led by researchers from the University of York in the United Kingdom said in a statement published Friday.

In total, the study identified 16 different microplastic polymer types in contemporary and archived soil samples, the statement adds.

Microplastics are tiny pieces of plastic that are no larger than five millimeters (0.2 inches)—about the size of a single sesame seed—and form when larger plastics break down, either by chemically degrading or physically wearing down into smaller pieces.

They were also commonly used in some beauty products until around 2020, say researchers, and conversations about their proliferation in the world around us have spiked in recent years.

There are concerns about the impact of microplastics on the environment and on human health, but this latest study also suggests they could force a change in the entire field of archaeology.

While preserving archaeological remains in situ has been the favored approach in recent years, the new findings could trigger a change in approach, as microplastic contamination could compromise the remains’ scientific value.

“This feels like an important moment, confirming what we should have expected: that what were previously thought to be pristine archaeological deposits, ripe for investigation, are in fact contaminated with plastics, and that this includes deposits sampled and stored in the late 1980s,” John Schofield, a professor and director of studies in the University of York’s Department of Archaeology, said in the statement.

“We are familiar with plastics in the oceans and in rivers. But here we see our historic heritage incorporating toxic elements. To what extent this contamination compromises the evidential value of these deposits, and their national importance is what we’ll try to find out next.”

David Jennings, chief executive of York Archaeology, explained why microplastic contamination is such a concern.

“Our best-preserved remains—for example, the Viking finds at Coppergate (in the city of York)— were in a consistent anaerobic waterlogged environment for over 1000 years, which preserved organic materials incredibly well,” he said in the statement.

“The presence of microplastics can and will change the chemistry of the soil, potentially introducing elements which will cause the organic remains to decay. If that is the case, preserving archaeology in situ may no longer be appropriate.”

The study was published in Science of the Total Environment.

The headlines from Russia over recent weeks have been bleak: The death of opposition leader Alexey Navalny; a rigged election; and a ruthless insistence by President Vladimir Putin in pressing ahead with his war on Ukraine.

Now comes another shock to the system, with the appalling murder of at least 139 people in a terror attack at a concert hall just outside Moscow. And with its brutal official response to the attack, Russia seems to have taken an even darker turn.

While terror group ISIS has claimed responsibility for the massacre, releasing appalling footage of the carnage, the Kremlin has obfuscated. Putin first insinuated – implausibly, and without evidence – that a “window” had been opened by Ukraine for the terrorists to escape across an active front line. On Monday, he said the crime had been ”committed by radical Islamists” but again alleged that the perpetrators planned to flee to Ukraine. Kyiv has vehemently denied involvement and called the Kremlin’s claims “absurd.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov meanwhile has dismissed questions about warnings from the United States about the risk of terror attacks in Russia. “Intelligence is never provided to the Kremlin,” he said in a call with reporters Monday. “It is provided through channels from one intelligence agency to another intelligence agency. This is classified as sensitive information that is not disclosed.”

Peskov added: “There are currently no contacts with Westerners now.”

Putin rose to power on a promise to get tough on terrorists: The former KGB officer was a relative political unknown when he pledged in 1999 to “waste” Chechen separatists.

That threat followed a series of apartment bombings in Russia that claimed hundreds of lives and touched off weeks of nationwide panic. Putin would follow through on his threat with the invasion of breakaway Chechnya, a move that vaulted him to the position of Russia’s tough-guy-in-charge, an image that would help him secure undisputed power.

The second war in Chechnya was a brutal affair, and human-rights activists documented the appearance of so-called “filtration camps” where civilians were routinely subjected to humiliation, torture and sometimes extrajudicial execution. Russian troops repeated the practice in occupied parts of Ukraine.

The ugly conduct of Russian security forces in both Chechnya and Ukraine has often remained out of public view, at least when it came to the narrative promoted through official Russian media. But after Friday’s Crocus City attack, the brutality of Russian security services appeared on naked display.

Video footage and still images that have surfaced on Russian social media appear to show the violent interrogation of several of the men alleged to have taken part in the terror attack. One video appears to show one of the suspects, Saidakrami Rachabalizoda, being pushed face-down to the ground while having part of his ear severed by an interrogator. A pro-Kremlin Telegram channel published a still photograph that appeared to show the electrocution of another.

The response to this? Open gloating on the part of some prominent, Kremlin-connected figures.

Margarita Simonyan, the editor-in-chief of Russian state propaganda network RT, approvingly posted a video on the Russian social network VK that appeared to show a suspect in the Crocus City attack quaking while being questioned by interrogators. And in a separate post on X, Simonyan posted video of a handcuffed suspect being brought into court while bent over by security officials and a video of Rachabalizoda in court with a bandaged ear.

“I never expected this from myself, but when I see how they are brought into court bent over, and even this [severed] ear, I feel nothing but pleasure,” she wrote.

The Kremlin’s silence on the matter has been telling, with Peskov declining to comment when asked about the evidence of abuse of suspects. It sends a message to ordinary Russians – and the world – that Russian state security forces are capable of anything.

Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s former president and placeholder for Putin during a four-year interregnum, was characteristically militant in his comments on the tragedy. “Everyone asks me, what is to be done?” Medvedev said, according to Russian state news agency TASS. “They were caught. Well done to everyone who caught them.

“Should they be killed?” Medvedev continued. “Definitely. And that will happen. But it is even more important to kill everyone involved. Everyone. Who paid, who sympathized, who helped. Kill them all.”

Medvedev is no longer a top political player, but he has emerged since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine as a reliable barometer of far-right sentiment in Russia. And that sort of militant sentiment appears to be on the rise. Russia does not have the death penalty, but in a statement on state channel Rossiya-24, Vladimir Vasiliev, the head of the United Russia faction in the lower house of parliament, said fellow lawmakers might consider the issue of reviving it.

“Many questions are being asked now about the death penalty,” he said, according to state news agency RIA-Novosti. “This topic will certainly be deeply, professionally, and meaningfully addressed. And a decision will be made that will meet the moods and expectations of our society.”

The sentiments of wider society may be hard to gauge, but the mood of Russia’s political class is already clear. It is vengeful, and all options are on the table.

Ecuador’s youngest mayor, 27-year-old Brigitte García, was found shot dead Sunday morning, the country’s national police said.

In a statement posted on X, police said that García, the mayor of San Vicente, a small coastal city, was in what is believed to be a rental car along with her communications director, Jairo Loor, who was also killed from a gunshot wound. Preliminary investigations suggest the shots were fired from inside the car, police said.

Further investigations are underway, police said. In a statement Sunday, the Ecuadorian Ministry of Government called the incident a “criminal action” and referenced a national “fight against terrorism, organized crime and political corruption,” although they did not accuse any person or group of being behind the killings.

“We stand in solidarity with their families and reaffirm our commitment to use all force of the State to not leave these crimes unpunished,” the ministry said.

Garcia was the youngest mayor in the country, according to her X profile. Former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa took to social media to express his disbelief, saying, “enough!”

“My God! Brigitte! She was the youngest mayor of the country,” he added, along with a photo that showed him and García embracing.

A memorial for García is planned for Monday afternoon, according to the San Vicente municipality. Her burial is scheduled for Tuesday.

Ecuador has been grappling with a surge in violence at the hands of armed gangs.

In January, Ecuador declared a state of emergency after notorious gang leader José Adolfo Macías, also known as ‘Fito’, escaped from prison in Guayaquil. Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa declared an “internal armed conflict” in the nation the following day and ordered armed forces to execute “military operations to neutralize” the violence across the country. More than 2,000 people were detained less than two weeks after the decree, according to the president’s office.

García was elected last year as a member of the left-wing Citizen Revolution Party, which is aligned with Correa, the former president.

According to her social media feed, she had worked in recent weeks to help bring clean drinking water to San Vicente, meeting recently with the country’s development bank on the project.

The four men suspected of carrying out a brutal attack at a Moscow concert hall that killed at least 139 people have appeared in court on terror charges, as the Kremlin defended its security services criticized for failing to prevent the massacre.

Three of the suspects were bent double as they were marched into the Moscow courtroom late on Sunday night, while the fourth was in a wheelchair and appeared unresponsive.

The suspects, who are from the Central Asian republic of Tajikistan but worked in Russia on temporary or expired visas, were named by Moscow City Court as Dalerdzhon Mirzoyev, Saidakrami Rachabalizoda, Shamsidin Fariduni and Mukhammadsobir Faizov. They face a maximum sentence of life in prison.

They are accused of storming 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.

ISIS claimed responsibility for the massacre and released graphic footage showing the incident – but Moscow has insinuated, without evidence, that the perpetrators planned to flee to Ukraine. Kyiv has vehemently denied involvement and called the Kremlin’s claims “absurd.”

At a meeting with other government officials on Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the attack had been carried out by “radical Islamists.”

“We know that the crime was committed by radical Islamists, whose ideology the Islamic world itself has been fighting for centuries,” Putin said.

The first suspect charged, Mirzoyev, had a black eye, bruises over his face and a plastic bag wrapped around his neck. Mirzoyev, 32, had a temporary resident permit for three months in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, but it had expired, Russian state media RIA Novosti reported.

Rachabalizoda, born in 1994, told the court through an interpreter that he has Russian registration documents but could not remember where they are. He appeared in court with a swollen eye and a bandaged ear.

The third defendant, Fariduni, born in 1998, was employed at a factory in the industrial city of Podolsk and registered in Krasnogorsk, both near Moscow.

The three men pleaded guilty to the terrorism charges, Russian media reported. It was unclear what the fourth man, Faizov, born in 2004, pled. He was pictured lying limp in a wheelchair inside a glass cage.

The men looked beaten and injured as they were brought into the courtroom. Videos and still images that appeared to show some of them being violently interrogated, including one apparent use of electrocution, circulated widely on Russian social media.

One video appears to show Rachabalizoda being held on the ground while having part of his ear cut off and stuffed in his mouth by a camouflage-wearing interpreter.

Margarita Simonyan, the editor-in-chief of Russian state propaganda network RT, posted a video of Rachabalizoda appearing in court with a heavily bandaged ear, which she wrote made her “feel nothing but pleasure.”

The four have been remanded into pre-trial detention until May 2022, the court said.

Later Monday, Russia’s Investigative Committee asked the court to detain three other men – two brothers and their father – in connection with the attack, Russian state media TASS reported.

On Monday, three days after the attack, rescuers were still searching among the ruins of the collapsed concert hall and trying to clear rubble. Russia’s Ministry of Emergency Situations said more than 300 “specialists” were working at the site.

The attack, the deadliest on Russian soil in almost two decades, was met with outrage and disbelief in Russia, prompting calls for the harshest of punishments to be meted out.

While the concert hall roof was still burning, ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack and shared a video taken by the men as they stormed the building, where thousands of Russians had arrived to watch the rock group Picnic.

Despite ISIS appearing to provide evidence that its fighters had carried out the attack, Putin and other senior officials have been keen to associate Ukraine with the terror attack.

In a national following the attack – more than 19 hours after it began – Putin on Saturday claimed that a “window” had been prepared for the attackers to escape to Ukraine. He did not provide evidence. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova also said: “Now we know in which country these bloody bastards planned to hide from persecution – Ukraine.”

Ukraine has vehemently denied any involvement and called the allegations a “planned provocation by the Kremlin to further fuel anti-Ukrainian hysteria in Russia society” and further mobilize Russian citizens to participate in Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

Despite relations between Washington and Moscow being at historic lows, the United States warned Russia that ISIS militants were planning to stage an attack in the country. The US embassy in Moscow said earlier this month it was “monitoring reports that extremists have imminent plans to target large gatherings in Moscow,” including concerts.

US National Security Council spokesperson Adrienna Watson said the US had shared this information with Russian authorities under the “duty to warn” policy. The US also warned American citizens to avoid places like theaters and concert halls.

But in a speech Tuesday – just days before the attack – Putin dismissed the American warnings as “provocative,” saying “these actions resemble outright blackmail and the intention to intimidate and destabilize our society.”

Answering questions from reporters on Monday, Peskov refused to comment on whether Moscow had received warnings from Washington, and defended the “tireless work” of Russia’s security services.

“Because he would have no qualms about issuing a fake intelligence warning in order to meddle with another country’s elections, I believe he may well have thought that in fact that’s what the Americans are doing,” Galeotti said.

“He said they were trying to escape to Ukraine. This makes sense. They just found some halfwits who were eager for money,” Matveev said.

Tensions between the United States and Israel were exposed on Monday when Washington stood aside and allowed the UN Security Council to pass a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

The US decision to abstain on the vote prompted Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to cancel a scheduled trip to the US by two of his top advisers, two Israeli officials said.

The US had previously vetoed similar resolutions calling for a ceasefire. Its position evolved last week when on Friday, it put forward a ceasefire resolution tied tied to the release of hostages. That resolution fell when it was vetoed by Russia and China. The US abstention on Monday’s vote allowed the latest resolution to pass, when the other 14 members of the 15-strong council voted yes.

The US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said that while the latest resolution included edits requested by the US, Washington could not vote yes because it “did not agree with everything.”

“A ceasefire could have come about months ago if Hamas had been willing to release hostages,” the ambassador said, calling on member states and the Security Council to demand that Hamas “accepts the deal on the table.”

“Any ceasefire must come with the release of all hostages,” she added.

The resolution, put forward 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.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres said a failure to implement the resolution would be “unforgivable.”

“The Security Council just approved a long-awaited resolution on Gaza, demanding an immediate ceasefire, and the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages. This resolution must be implemented. Failure would be unforgivable,” Guterres wrote on X, previously known as Twitter.

Both Hamas and the Palestinian authority welcomed the resolution, while 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.

Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said on X 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.”

The Biden administration made the choice to abstain rather than veto the UN Security Council resolution over the weekend when they were able to work on changing certain parts of the resolution’s text, according to a senior administration official.

Another source familiar with the matter said that the US had planned to veto, but there were intensive diplomatic efforts to find a compromise that put them in a position to abstain.

Initially the text demanded a permanent ceasefire and did not mention negotiations to release hostages, and the US was able to push for the text to change so that it referenced a lasting ceasefire and included language about the ongoing hostage release efforts, the official said. For those reasons, the US believed that the resolution was consistent with US policy, the official said, a sentiment echoed by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

“Because the final text does not have key language we view as essential, notably a condemnation of Hamas, we could not support it. This failure to condemn Hamas is particularly difficult to understand coming days after the world once again witnessed the horrific acts terrorist groups commit,” Blinken said in a statement.

The UN vote on Monday came as tensions grow over a looming Israeli military operation in Gaza’s southern city of Rafah. The US has been calling on Israel to explain how it will protect the 1.4 million Palestinians seeking refuge there ahead of the expected incursion, which the US said “would be a mistake.”

The UN Ambassador of the Palestinian Territories, Riyad Mansour, said the decision was a vote “for life to prevail.”

It has taken six months for the Security Council to demand an immediate ceasefire, and “over 100,000 killed and maimed, two million displaced, and famine for this council to immediately demand an immediate ceasefire,” Riyad said.

A visit canceled

Israel’s national security adviser Tzachi Hanegbi and Ron Dermer, a member of the war cabinet and close adviser to Netanyahu, had been scheduled to travel to Washington on Monday night to discuss the offensive and US alternatives, but the visit was canceled after the vote.

National Security spokesman John Kirby offered a fuller response to Netanyahu’s decision to cancel the delegation, saying the US was disappointed by the decision to cancel the trip.

“We’re very disappointed that they will not be coming to Washington, DC, to allow us to have a fulsome conversation with them about viable alternatives to going in on the ground in Rafah,” he said.

State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller called the cancelation “surprising and unfortunate.”

“For us, the negotiations are not only centric around the prisoner exchange deal,” he said.

“Israel has not agreed to any of (Hamas) requests related to a complete ceasefire, the withdrawal of all forces from the Gaza Strip, even in stages, and the return of all displaced people to their homes,” Naeim said.

At least 137 school children who were kidnapped by armed gunmen in Nigeria earlier this month have been released, the governor of Nigeria’s Kaduna state Uba Sani confirmed in a TV interview aired on Sunday.

In the interview broadcast on Nigeria’s Channels Television, Sani said he had met with the children’s families.

“I am happy, the families are happy, we are all happy the children have been rescued,” he told the broadcaster.

However, Sani said that a teacher had died after developing “some complications” while in captivity, without providing further detail.

But according to Sani, all children who were kidnapped in the incident have now been released. He dismissed earlier reports of a greater number of missing children as “a figment of people’s imagination.”

Kaduna state, which borders the Nigerian capital Abuja to the southwest, has grappled with recurring incidents of kidnappings for ransom by bandits and has witnessed several mass abductions in recent years.

In an earlier post on X, Sani was seen addressing dozens of children and wrote that he was “glad to see our released children in high spirits on Sunday evening.”

He wrote that they would continue to “undergo psychosocial counseling” and receive “proper medical supervision.”

The gunmen previously demanded a ransom of 1 billion naira ($620,000) and threatened to kill all of the students if their demands were not met, according to a member of the community.

Nigeria’s National Security Adviser Nuhu Ribadu had coordinated the “operations of the security agencies, which eventually resulted in this successful outcome,” Sani said.

“The Nigerian Army also deserves special commendation for showing that with courage, determination and commitment, criminal elements can be degraded and security restored in our communities,” Sani said.

He also thanked Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu for “working round the clock” to ensure the children’s safe return.

A glowing worm moon will light up the sky on Monday with a celestial performance in store for people venturing out in the early morning hours — a penumbral lunar eclipse.

March’s full moon, referred to as the worm moon by the Farmers’ Almanac due to its proximity to the spring equinox, will be at its fullest at 3 a.m. ET.

A few hours earlier, starting at 12:53 a.m. ET, according to EarthSky, the moon will be almost perfectly aligned with the sun and Earth, causing the outer edge of Earth’s shadow, known as the penumbra, to be cast onto the glowing orb.

The greatest eclipse will be at 3:12 a.m. ET, when the moon will appear to be slightly darker than usual, said Dr. Shannon Schmoll, director of the Abrams Planetarium at Michigan State University.

“It’ll be almost a gradient of darkening happening from one side of the moon to the other. It’s not going to be a super dramatic change in what we see in the moon,” Schmoll said. “But if you’re sitting there watching it, you might notice some slight variations in brightness.”

The worm moon — named by Native American tribes in reference to the beetle larvae and other creatures that emerge from hibernation in the spring — will be visible to everyone across the world, since the moon will appear to be full for a couple of days.

However, the penumbral eclipse will only be visible to those who are on the night side of Earth when the event occurs, including Europe, North and East Asia, Australia, Africa, North America and South America. The lunar eclipse will finish at 5:33 a.m. ET, according to EarthSky.

The penumbral eclipse comes about two weeks before a total solar eclipse that will cross Mexico, the United States and Canada on April 8. Lunar and solar eclipses always come in pairs due to the period when the sun, Earth and moon stay aligned, Schmoll said. While the full moon will be caught in Earth’s shadow during this penumbral eclipse, the moon’s next new moon phase will allow for the conditions needed for a solar eclipse, when the moon will be in between the sun and Earth and thus block the face of the sun from view.

Eclipse season

An “eclipse season” is the approximate 35-day period that occurs every six months, near the equinoxes, when the near-perfect alignment of the three celestial bodies needed for eclipses occurs, according to NASA.

A lunar eclipse does not happen monthly during each full moon because the moon’s orbital plane is tilted by about 5 degrees, so for most full moons, the shadow of the Earth will be just below or above the moon, Schmoll said.

While a penumbral eclipse is not as dramatic as a total lunar eclipse with the moon appearing an eerie red, there is no special equipment required to view a lunar eclipse such as the viewing glasses needed for a solar eclipse, Schmoll said, allowing for lunar eclipses to be viewed with the naked eye.

“You pretty much just need to be outside with a clear view of the moon when it’s happening,” Schmoll added. “(Eclipses are) always a good excuse to go outside and try to look at the sky and appreciate where we are in the universe, and what we are able to observe from our planet.”

Solar and lunar eclipses

While the most highly anticipated of the four eclipse events occurring in 2024 is the total solar eclipse on April 8, an annular solar eclipse will occur on October 2 over parts of South America. This type of eclipse is similar to a total solar eclipse, except the moon is at the farthest point in its orbit from Earth, so it can’t completely block the sun. Instead, annular solar eclipses create a “ring of fire” in the sky as the sun’s fiery light surrounds the moon’s shadow.

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

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

More full moons this year

Of the 12 full moons in 2024, the September and October lunar events will be considered supermoons, according to EarthSky.

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

Here are the remaining full moons of 2024:

• April 23: Pink moon

• May 23: Flower moon

• June 21: Strawberry moon

• July 21: Buck moon

• August 19: Sturgeon moon

• September 17: Harvest moon

• October 17: Hunter’s moon

• November 15: Beaver moon

• December 15: Cold moon

Meteor showers of 2024

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

• Lyrids: April 21-22

• Eta Aquariids: May 4-5

• Southern delta Aquariids: July 29-30

• Alpha Capricornids: July 30-31

• Perseids: August 11-12

• Draconids: October 7-8

• Orionids: October 20-21

• Southern Taurids: November 4-5

• Northern Taurids: November 11-12

• Leonids: November 17-18

• Geminids: December 13-14

• Ursids: December 21-22

A court in India’s most populous state has effectively banned Islamic schools by striking down a law governing madrasas, weeks before a nationwide election that could further polarize the world’s largest democracy along religious lines.

“We hold that the Madarsa (sic) Act, 2004, is violative of the principle of Secularism, which is a part of the basic structure of the Constitution of India,” the high court said in its order.

“Since providing education is one of the primary duties of the State, it is bound to remain secular while exercising its powers in the said field. It cannot provide for education of a particular religion, its instructions, prescriptions and philosophies or create separate education systems for separate religions.”

Madrasas provide a system of education in which students are taught about the Quran and Islamic history alongside general subjects like math and science.

Some Hindus also send their children to an equivalent system known as Gurukuls, residential education institutions where students learn about ancient Vedic scriptures alongside general subjects under a “guru” or teacher.

The ruling can be appealed in the country’s Supreme Court.

Uttar Pradesh is home to some 200 million people, about 20% of whom are Muslim, according to the country’s most recent census data from 2011.

It is governed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and has over the past decade made headlines for passing some of the country’s most controversial laws that critics say discriminate against Muslims and marginalize them in the secular republic.

Friday’s court order affects 2.7 million students and 10,000 teachers in 25,000 madrasas, Reuters reported, citing Iftikhar Ahmed Javed, the head of the board of madrasa education in the state.

It comes weeks before a nationwide election – the world’s largest – during which an estimated 960 million people are eligible to vote.

Modi’s BJP is expected to secure another five years in power, ruling an India that has become increasingly polarized along religious lines.

While the Allahabad High Court order cited India’s constitutional separation of religion and state in its reasoning for ruling against madrasas, it is Modi who has been frequently accused by critics of dismantling India’s secular traditions.

At the start of the year, for example, Modi presided over a landmark inauguration ceremony of a controversial Hindu temple built on the ruins of a centuries-old mosque that was destroyed by right-wing groups in 1992.

The temple’s opening, which was broadcast live by the government and hailed as a new era, was the conclusion of a decades-long campaign by Modi and his BJP party to pull India away from the secular roots upon which the country was founded following independence.

Many Muslims and critics of the BJP have raised concerns that India’s secular fabric is also being eroded as anti-Muslim hate speech make frequent headlines and Muslim-owned properties face demolitions.

The BJP denies it discriminates against Muslims and says it treats all citizens equally.

In December 2020, the northeastern state of Assam passed a law to convert all Islamic schools to regular education institutions.

The state’s then Education Minister, Himanta Biswa Sarma, who is now Assam’s chief minister, said it would ensure “a right to equal education for all children and eases the path to higher education.”

Opposition politicians criticized the move, claiming it was reflective of hardening anti-Muslim attitudes in the Hindu-majority country.

Senior state opposition leader Debabrata Saikia at the time said the law was passed by the BJP to “consolidate more Hindu votes.”

Pope Francis unexpectedly skipped delivering his homily during the Palm Sunday Mass service at the Vatican on Sunday, although was able to preside over the service and was later driven around in the popemobile.

The service marks the beginning of Holy Week, the most sacred week in the church’s calendar as Christians around the world prepare to celebrate Easter, and his decision to skip the homily (reflection) was a surprise.

The 87-year-old has in recent weeks had aides read out several of his speeches after suffering from a bout of ill health, which on 28 February saw him go to hospital for tests.

Over the winter months, Francis has battled with bouts of bronchitis, cold and flu.

While the pope has occasionally skipped homilies on Easter Sunday, it is the first time he has not given a homily on Palm Sunday.

Francis did speak during the Mass, reading prayers and giving his blessing. He also prayed the Angelus at the conclusion of the liturgy, beforehand recalling the “martyred people of Ukraine” and those suffering from war.

At the end of the liturgy, he greeted cardinals individually from his wheelchair, which he has been using for several months. He then got into the popemobile to greet some of the thousands of people gathered in the square.

Following the service, he also condemned the “vile” concert hall shooting in Moscow. Francis told the crowd at St. Peter’s Square that he was praying for the “victims of the vile terrorist attack,” the worst that Russia has suffered in recent decades.

On Saturday, the pope met with employees from Italian state broadcaster RAI where he delivered a speech and on 8 March spoke at length at a parish in Rome.

Holy Week and Easter is an intense schedule for the pope. He is to travel to a prison outside of Rome on Thursday to celebrate the foot washing ritual with female prisoners, and on Good Friday be present at services in St Peter’s and the Colosseum.

On Easter Saturday evening he’s due to preside at a long evening liturgy and on Easter Sunday offer his “Urbi et Orbi” blessing to the city of Rome and the world.