A historic ruling by the United Nations’ top court in a genocide case against Israel on Friday was welcomed by the three main parties it involved: Israel, South Africa and the Palestinians. But at the same time, no one got what they asked for.

The International Court of Justice in The Hague, the Netherlands, ordered Israel to “take all measures” to prevent genocide in Gaza after South Africa accused Israel of violating international laws on genocide in its war in the territory.

It rejected Israel’s request for the case to be thrown out, but it also stopped short of ordering Israel to halt the war as South Africa has asked.

“I would have wanted a ceasefire,” said South African foreign minister Naledi Pandor after the ruling in The Hague. She said that she was still satisfied with the outcome.

Israel went to war with Hamas in Gaza after the Palestinian militant group launched a brutal attack on the country on October 7, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 people hostage.

The war has resulted in the death of more than 26,000 people in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, and left much of the enclave in ruins. Israel has pledged not to stop its campaign until all the remaining hostages are released and Hamas is destroyed.

The case at the ICJ marks the first time Israel has been brought before the court on accusations of violating the 1948 UN Genocide Convention, which was drafted in part due to the mass killings of Jewish people in the Holocaust during the Second World War.

Still, many Israelis hailed the ruling on Friday as a win for the Jewish state. Eylon Levi, an Israeli government spokesperson, said the court “dismissed (South Africa’s) ridiculous demand to tell Israel to stop defending its people and fighting for the hostages.” Avi Mayer, the former editor in chief of the Jerusalem Post called it “a devastating blow to those accusing the Jewish state of ‘genocide’.”

The discourse in Israel has so far focused on only ending the war once the hostages are freed, she said, adding that Israel would have “struggled to live” with a ceasefire order that doesn’t guarantee the return of the captives.

“So, I think this is quite (an) expected outcome, and something that Israel will be able to comply with,” she said, adding that the court’s order for Israel to deliver humanitarian aid and report back to the ICJ on its actions is “doable.”

A ‘dark day’ in Israel’s history

Despite the outcome being perceived by some as being in Israel’s favor, experts warned of the reputational damage faced by the Jewish state.

Friday’s measure was an interim measure by the ICJ as the court considers a full ruling on whether Israel is guilty of violating the Genocide Convention. That ruling could take years.

Sabel said that while he is “absolutely convinced” that the ICJ will eventually find Israel not guilty of genocide, he worries that by that time “the public may have forgotten that.”

“If they had asked us to stop defending ourselves, we would have had a problem, and at least we don’t have that problem,” he said.

Yeini said it was nonetheless a “a very dark day” in Israel’s history.

For some Palestinians, however, the court’s ruling didn’t go far enough.

Mohammed el-Kurd, a Palestinian activist from Jerusalem, said the ICJ failed on South Africa’s “most important request” to suspend the military operations. “Not shocking, but stings nonetheless,” he said on X, formerly Twitter.

“Until the Israeli regime’s genocidal assault on Gaza stops, we should keep protesting and disrupting in every way possible. This is today’s lesson,” he said.

A judge in Kenya has barred the East African nation from deploying 1,000 police officers to Haiti to lead a UN-backed multinational force to restore security in the Caribbean nation.

High Court judge Chacha Mwita ruled on Friday that President William Ruto and his National Security Council do not have the authority to send police officers to Haiti or any other country under Kenyan law.
He added that the long-delayed deployment under a deal financed by the United States “contravenes the constitution and the law and is therefore unconstitutional, illegal and invalid.”

In October, the State Department pledged $100 million to support a multinational force in Haiti after the UN Security Council voted to approve it to quell gang violence in the island nation. Kenya volunteered to lead it and got necessary approvals from its cabinet and parliament.

But Kenyan politician Ekuru Aukot led a legal challenge to the planned in deployment in court, terming it unconstitutional. The high court ruling agreed with him.

“There’s no reciprocal arrangement between Kenya and Haiti and there can be no legitimate deployment of police officers to Haiti,” Judge Mwita said when he read his ruling in Nairobi.

The ruling poses a potential setback for Kenya’s peacekeeping mission to the Caribbean nation having previously supported similar initiatives by the UN and the African Union.

It is not immediately clear whether the Kenyan government would appeal the ruling or the extent to which the domestic legal battle could complicate the deployment of the multinational force to Haiti, which it spearheads alongside Haiti’s neighbors – Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, and Jamaica.

Kenya’s UN representative Martin Kimani told the Security Council Thursday that his country “has made substantial progress … including taking legal, administrative steps” in its preparation for the Haiti mission and was awaiting the outomce of today’s ruling. Kimani has yet to react to the verdict.

Gang violence rose by more than 100% in Haiti last year with over 8000 victims documented, according to UN data.

“The Haitian people have had enough of the armed gangs’ savagery,” Haiti’s foreign minister Jean Victor Geneus told the UN council while urging a speedy deployment of the multinational force.

“Every passing day that this long-awaited support has not yet arrived is one day too many,” he added.

One person was killed after two masked gunmen attacked a church in the Sarıyer district of Istanbul, Turkey’s Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya posted in a statement on X, formerly known as Twitter.

The incident occurred in the district’s Büyükdere neighborhood around 11:40am local time (3:40aET) while the Santa Maria Church was holding a Sunday service, Yerlikaya said.

A “large-scale investigation” has been launched and authorities are trying to find the two attackers, he added.

“We strongly condemn this vile attack,” the minister said.

The motive of the attack is unknown.

Turkey’s Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc condemned the attack and said the Deputy Chief Public Prosecutor and two other public prosecutors had been assigned to investigate the incident.

“Efforts continue to identify and capture the suspects who carried out the attack. The investigation is being carried out in a multifaceted and meticulous manner,” Tunc added.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Protesters hurled soup at the Mona Lisa painting in Paris on Sunday, but did not seem hit directly as it is protected by a clear casing.

An environmental group has said two protesters involved with their campaign were behind the vandalism.

On X, formerly Twitter, Riposte Alimentaire, which roughly translates to “Food Response,” wrote that “2 citizens involved with the new Riposte Alimentaire campaign sprayed soup on the world-famous ‘Mona Lisa’ painting on display at the Louvre Museum.”

Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece hangs in the Louvre museum and is arguably the most famous painting in the world, drawing millions of visitors each year who line up to pose with the small artwork, which is just over 2.5 feet tall and under 2 feet wide.

The enigmatic portrait is no stranger to both vandalism and thievery.

It was stolen in 1911 by a Louvre employee, raising its international profile, and the bottom of the canvas suffered an acid attack in the 1950s, leading the museum to beef up protective measures surrounding the work, including bulletproof glass.

In 2009, a woman angrily threw a ceramic cup at the painting, breaking the cup but leaving the painting unharmed.

Then in 2022, a visitor smeared frosting all over the Renaissance-era painting’s protective glass.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

With previous reporting by Jacqui Palumbo

As Israel battles Hamas in Gaza, European authorities have been tightening the net on the militants, with high-profile raids, financial curbs and a crackdown of its online activities. But no country has gone further in targeting an already-banned group and its supporters than Germany.

In Berlin, pro-Palestinian marches have been limited and schools have been granted the power to place bans on Palestinian flags and keffiyeh scarves.

Across the country, using the pro-Palestinian slogan “From the river to the sea” is now a criminal offense. The chant, used frequently at demonstrations, demands equal rights and the independence of Palestinians, although in some cases it is intended to call for the abolishment of Israel.

German politicians have repeatedly stated that Israel’s security is Germany’s “reason of state.” This term is a reference to Germany’s special relationship with Israel due to its Nazi past, which saw the German state systematically murder 6 million Jews in the Holocaust. This genocide profoundly shaped the country’s policymaking.

Friedrich Merz, the leader of the Christian Democratic Union, last year called for a signed statement confirming “Israel’s right to exist” as a prerequisite for German citizenship.

But Germans themselves are divided. In a January poll carried out by German public broadcaster ZDF, 61% of respondents did not consider Israel’s military campaign in Gaza to be justified.

Adding to a complex picture, Germany has the largest Palestinian diaspora in Europe, estimated at 300,000.

There are thought to be around 450 Hamas members in Germany and, like the rest of the European Union, Germany considers Hamas a terrorist organization.

The figure comes from The Federal Office for Protection of the Constitution (BfV), which in 2022 warned that “Hamas sees Western countries such as Germany as refuge in which the organization can concentrate on collecting donations, recruiting new supporters, and spreading its propaganda.”

But at the same time, Germany is facing questions over what its crackdown on a small number of Hamas members means for legitimate expressions of Palestinian solidarity and opposition to the war in Gaza. More than 26,000 people have died in the enclave since October 7, according to the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry.

Arrests and raids

An early warning of the risks the new conflict brought came in October, when Molotov cocktails were thrown at a Berlin synagogue. In line with other European countries, Germany stepped up security amid fears of further attacks. There were also reports of people celebrating the Hamas attacks on the streets of Berlin.

Then in December came the biggest flashpoint yet, as four alleged members of Hamas were arrested and accused of planning attacks against Jewish institutions in Europe. Three of the suspects were detained in Berlin and another in Rotterdam.

According to Germany’s top prosecutor, all four are longstanding members of Hamas with close links to the leadership of its military branch.

German media showed images of authorities retrieving ice packs from a Berlin apartment, which contained ammonium nitrate.

Hans-Jacob Schindler, senior director at the Counter Extremism Project (CEP), said ammonium nitrate – which is also used as a fertilizer – is the “explosive of choice” for making quick and cheap improvised explosive devices.

Overall, Schindler believes there are around 10,000 people in Germany who “broadly agree with what Hamas does and are willing to take part in demonstrations, raise funds and share propaganda.”

Asked if Hamas’ presence would expand in the wake of the October 7 attacks, Schindler said: “Yes, it has grown already.”

Germany and the Netherlands are not the only European countries to see raids on Hamas suspects.

But while such incidents grab headlines, more low-key efforts are also underway.

Police in the German city of Potsdam seized donation boxes from two fast food restaurants in November.

The boxes were labelled “Die Barmherzigen Hände e.V.” or “Merciful Hands” – a charitable association which states on its website that it has now dissolved.

Brandenburg’s Office for the Protection of the Constitution has launched an investigation, but previously named “Merciful Hands” as a “contact point for Hamas supporters”.

According to The George Washington University, charitable organizations are one of the most common vehicles used by Hamas networks in the West to collect funds.

“Hamas is pretty good at laundering funds and masking what it is doing,” he said.

“The majority of people who are donating to these charities don’t know [they are supporting Hamas] because they present themselves as charities that are just helping Palestinians.”

Germany’s neighbor Austria has also grappled with the issue of Hamas fundraising, suspending aid to Palestinians in the wake of Hamas’ attack pending a review into what the funds were being used for.

The suspension was lifted on December 7, since the review found no indication funds were being used for terrorism.

This hints at the dilemma facing international donors keen to help ease the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Germany itself stepped up its assistance earlier this year.

Spreading propaganda

On November 2, Germany took the step of banning Hamas and all activities linked to the group. Although Hamas was already a proscribed terror group, the move gave authorities greater power to target supporters, including on social media.

The EU has put pressure on social media giants to combat disinformation related to the Gaza conflict, while US intelligence agencies have warned Hamas is boosting its influence, in part due to viral propaganda videos.

According to the Atlantic Council, a research group focusing on international relations, Telegram channels run by Hamas have experienced significant growth since the start of the conflict. A Hamas-aligned channel called “Gaza Now” has also drastically increased its number of subscribers, nearly doubling in size within the first 24 hours of the conflict.

Schindler believes that Hamas has been increasing its propaganda efforts in Europe because it knows it cannot win a conflict by conventional means.

“Hamas understands that there’s no way militarily that they can prevail against the IDF [Israel Defensce Forces]. So they have to have a couple of building blocks in place in order to make sure that Hamas as an organization has a chance to survive,” he said.

As part of this strategy, according to Schindler, Hamas is pumping propaganda into Germany over its social media channels daily to try and build a following.

Professor Yossi Mekelberg, an associate fellow of the Middle East and Africa Programme at Chatham House, believes the largest security threat comes from “general radicalization as a result of what is happening in Gaza and the West Bank.”

“There might be some [Hamas] cells in different places in Europe, but the main concern is how certain already-radicalized groups might react to [the war in Gaza] and decide to act through terrorism.

“The radicalization happens at home, but it’s affected by events abroad. The war in Gaza will have great influence because there are double standards in the killing of Israelis compared to the killing of Palestinians.”

‘Muslims in Germany are not Hamas’

Berlin’s refusal to authorize many pro-Palestinian demonstrations since October 7 has been criticized as infringing on the right to freedom of assembly.

Germany, though, has the legal capacity to crack down on anything that could be considered antisemitic due to what it calls its “special responsibility” to the Jewish people because of the Holocaust.

At the same time, this has triggered warnings that the actions could alienate a significant proportion of Germany’s population. The bulk of the anti-war protests have been peaceful.

One protester at an unauthorized march in Berlin last year told Reuters: “I feel that in Germany we’re not allowed to speak our mind.”

Human Rights Watch (HRW) said authorities “should avoid restrictions on protests unless they are absolutely necessary.” Criminalizing or banning general Palestinian symbols is a discriminatory and disproportionate response, the organization added.

However, she added that we must be careful not to equate pro-Palestinian supporters with Hamas sympathizers in Europe.

“Not every expression of solidarity with Palestine is support for Hamas; the desire for the Palestinians to have their own state and for peace is not antisemitic; a Palestinian flag is not a criminal offense.”

She emphasized that Muslim communities in Germany have felt ostracized in light of the events in the Middle East, with many talking of a “cold social atmosphere” which has placed Muslims “under general suspicion.”

“Despite the need to safeguard Jewish life in Germany and to resolutely combat the extremism of Hamas and other groups, we must always make it clear that Muslims in Germany are not Hamas and that their concerns, fears and opinions must be taken seriously and given space.”

Nadine Schmidt reported from Berlin and Sophie Tanno reported from and wrote in London.

Unidentified gunmen killed nine Pakistani workers in the restive southeastern border region of Iran, Pakistani officials say, just over a week after Iran and Pakistan carried out military strikes on each other’s territory.

No group or individuals have taken responsibility for the attack, in the city of Saravan, according to Iran’s semi-official Mehr News Agency.

Pakistan’s Ambassador to Iran confirmed the incident in a post on social media.

“Deeply shocked by horrifying killing of 9 Pakistanis in Saravan,” said Muhammad Mudassir Tipi. “Embassy will extend full support to bereaved families.”

“We called upon [Iran] to extend full cooperation in the matter,” he added.

The Pakistani Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned the attack, calling it “a horrifying and despicable incident.”

“We are in touch with Iranian authorities and have underscored the need to immediately investigate the incident and hold to account those involved in this heinous crime,” Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch said in a statement.

“Such cowardly attacks cannot deter Pakistan from its determination to fight terrorism.”

Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs “strongly condemned” the shooting attack, spokesman Nasser Kanani wrote in a Telegram post on Saturday.

Investigations are being carried out by relevant Iranian authorities, Kanani wrote, adding that Iran and Pakistan “will not allow the enemies to harm the fraternal relations of the two countries.”

No group or individual has taken responsibility for the attack, according to Iran’s semi-official Mehr News Agency.

Last week, Pakistan and Iran carried out tit-for-tat strikes on militants on each other’s soil in a major escalation of tension between the two sides.

The two countries share a volatile border, stretching about 900 kilometers (560 miles), with Pakistan’s Balochistan province on one side and Iran’s Sistan and Baluchestan province on the other.

Both nations have long fought militants in the restive Baloch region along the border.

Since the attacks the two side have made efforts to de-escalate with the foreign ministers from each country holding a call, in which Pakistan emphasised their “the close brotherly relations”.

The journey of “Moon Sniper,” the robotic explorer that has made Japan only the fifth country to put a spacecraft safely on the lunar surface, hasn’t gone quite as expected.

Though the mission — officially known as the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon, or SLIM — reached its destination last week, an “anomaly” experienced during descent resulted in the vehicle landing with its solar panels facing the wrong direction, forcing it to operate on limited battery power, according to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.

Now, with Moon Sniper’s battery turned off to maintain spacecraft functionality, JAXA officials are in wait-and-see mode, hoping the changing angle of the sun will restore power to the vehicle and allow the mission to resume. If the lander turns on again, it could make good on its objectives to collect unprecedented information about a region called the Sea of Nectar.

The spacecraft touched down near a crater called Shioli — a Japanese female first name pronounced “she-oh-lee” — which sits about 200 miles (322 kilometers) south of the Sea of Tranquility, the region near the lunar equator where Apollo 11 first landed humans on the moon.

At around 880 feet (268 meters) in diameter, it’s a small crater, but it’s close to a much bigger one called Theophilus that’s more than 60 miles (97 kilometers) across. This detail makes it particularly interesting for exploration.

“When I was reading up about this a month or so ago, I was super excited to see they had chosen this site,” said Dr. Gordon Osinski, a professor of planetary geology at Western University in Ontario, who’s also part of the upcoming Artemis III moon mission’s geology team.

“One of the great things about craters is that they excavate rocks from the depth and essentially give us a window into what’s under the surface of a planetary body,” Osinski added. He noted that Shioli stands on ground ejected by the larger nearby crater, which probably comes from a depth of over 1 mile (1.6 kilometers), giving researchers a chance to study lunar rock without any drilling.

“I think they chose this particular crater because the mineral olivine has been found — and anytime you mention olivine, people’s eyes light up because we think it probably originates from the mantle of the moon, which we’ve never really sampled on site before,” Osinski said.

Space weathering

In November, NASA published photographs of Shioli taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, a spacecraft currently orbiting the moon and mapping it to aid future missions. In the black-and-white photo, the crater looks like a splotch of light.

“The moon doesn’t have an atmosphere like the Earth, so it isn’t protected and it’s constantly bombarded with micrometeorites and radiation that damage the surface layers,” said Sara Russell, a professor of planetary sciences and senior research lead at the Planetary Materials Group of London’s Natural History Museum.

The crater is lighter in color because radiation and micrometeorites haven’t had enough time to darken it yet: “When a crater happens, it throws up material that was buried and that might be more pristine, because it hasn’t experienced this damage, which we call space weathering. It gives us fresh rock to look at that, and potentially learn more about the moon,” she said.

Opportunities to study these rare rock samples make the moon a brilliant geology laboratory, Russell added.

“Whatever the moon has experienced, the Earth has also experienced. Looking at craters can also tell us something about the Earth’s own history, because rocks form there without any of the complicating factors that we have on Earth, like water and life and the wind,” she said. “It’s a beautiful experiment in the sky.”

After landing in the crater, the spacecraft captured 257 low-resolution images of its surroundings, and the mission team later gave nicknames to some of the rocks in the pictures. More images will be taken if the lander manages to regain power.

Pinpoint accuracy

Another reason for choosing the vicinity of Shioli as the landing site for Japan’s SLIM mission is that its small size was an ideal training ground for the lander’s pinpoint accuracy, which allowed it to target an area spanning just 328 feet (100 meters) across for touchdown. Living up to its nickname, the Moon Sniper actually landed just 180 feet (55 meters) shy of its target, which JAXA deemed a “significant achievement.”

“They’re really using the technology to show that they can land in very small landing circles, which would be quite a step forward for capabilities to land on different planets,” said Dr. John Pernet-Fisher, a research fellow in geochemistry and cosmochemistry at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom, in an interview before the landing.

Traditionally, moon missions target areas a few kilometers wide for touchdown: “But that really limits where you can land, because you have to make sure that within the whole landing area every point it is safe to land on,” he added. “That makes things a lot more difficult if you want to land in more challenging or rugged terrain, so this can really open the doors to being able to land in areas that are topographically a bit more varied and therefore might tell us something different about the moon and its formation.”

The Moon Sniper’s landing site is not far from the point where Apollo 16 touched down in 1972. That older mission’s crew collected 731 individual rock and soil samples for a total mass of 95.7 kilograms (210 pounds), according to the Lunar and Planetary Institute. That’s a sizable chunk of the 382 kilograms (842 pounds) that NASA brought back from the moon during the entire program.

“If you think about it, we’re trying to interpret the geological history of this whole body based on a collection of rocks from quite a geographically small area,” Pernet-Fisher said. “And so it’s really important for us to gather as much data as possible from a huge diversity of different geographic locations. Even though this is still relatively near some of the Apollo missions, it’s really important data that we’ll be gathering.”

A sea of lava

The largest lunar feature in the vicinity of Shioli is the Sea of Nectar, a basin 210 miles (339 kilometers) in diameter that is one of the oldest on the near side of the moon, the hemisphere that always faces Earth. The lunar plain is visible with binoculars or a small telescope, and was formed when the moon’s surface was created about 3.9 billion years ago.

The Sea of Nectar is much smaller than its neighbor the Sea of Tranquility, which is over 540 miles (875 kilometers) across and is similarly smooth and flat.

“Tranquillity was chosen for the Apollo 11 landing not for any scientific reasons, but because it was one of the flattest, smoothest parts for the moon and therefore considered safest to land on,” Western University’s Osinski said.

“That is also applicable for most robotic missions,” he added. “I’m the principal investigator for Canada’s first ever moon rover and we’re looking at landing sites now. We’re being driven towards smooth areas, away from craters or boulders, which actually may sound less scientifically interesting.”

The reason scientists call these basins “seas,” or “maria” in the original Latin, is that ancient astronomers who first looked up at the moon believed they were filled with water, due to the darker hue.

“After the Apollo missions, we brought back samples and learned they were essentially massive lava planes,” Osinski said. “It’s not like there was a massive volcano with lava pouring out, but rather fissure eruptions, so the lava was just literally coming up through fractures. We can think of them as lava seas.”

Water does come into play when looking at another area of the moon that will be targeted by upcoming landings, including NASA’s first crewed Artemis mission, expected as soon as 2026: “The south polar region,” Osinski said, “an area that is geologically interesting, and also rich with what we call volatiles — think water ice but also frozen carbon dioxide or ammonia.”

If humans can find a good, sizable source of water ice in the moon’s south pole region and it’s possible to extract it, the result could be a game changer for lunar exploration, according to Osinski.

“We’d have water for the astronauts to drink, we can extract the oxygen, and it can be broken down to get the hydrogen for rocket fuel. It also reduces costs, because water is one of the most expensive things to launch from Earth because it’s so heavy,” he said.

“If we want to build lunar bases, which we all hope we do, we are going to have to find a source of water to use on the moon.”

When Donald Tusk first won power in Poland in 2007, the country’s media coined a tender moniker to describe his approach towards his political rivals: the “politics of love.”

His second stint as the country’s prime minister is proving far less amorous.

The returning veteran of Polish centrism, who formed a coalition government after an impressive election result last year, has surprised critics and even many supporters with a confrontational approach towards Law and Justice (PiS), the populist group he defeated.

“His attitude (in 2007) was extremely conciliatory towards the defeated enemy. I think he later regretted that,” said Jacek Kucharczyk, the president of the Warsaw-based Institute of Public Affairs think tank.

This time, Tusk has moved “as quickly and decisively as possible” in tackling the gargantuan task of undoing PiS’ illiberal and far-reaching changes to the Polish state – an agenda he and his supporters say will restore Poland’s democratic institutions.

“He wanted to do the most difficult – politically, legally – things first, in order to clean the slate,” Kucharczyk said.

But cleaning the slate is painful business, and Tusk’s early moves as prime minister have caused fissures in Polish society to explode into outright hostility.

The country’s public television channel, TVP, which essentially became a mouthpiece for the previous government, has been ripped off the air. Two senior ex-ministers in PiS governments have been arrested inside the Presidential Palace. And those on the right of Polish politics have taken to the streets in an effort to drum up pressure on the new leader.

It has delighted many of those who voted for Tusk’s alliance of parties, and satisfied a blood lust among much of Poland’s population after eight divisive years of PiS rule. “There’s a sense of justice being seen to be done,” said Stanley Bill, a professor of Polish Studies at the University of Cambridge.

But there are concerns too that Tusk is doing too much, too fast.

“No plan has been presented for how the institutions will be restored in the medium or long term,” Bill argued. “It’s been done in a hurry.”

“We’re in an ad hoc state of exception,” he added. “We’re seeing an escalation of a genuine political and legal crisis in Poland.”

An aggressive first move

The central question facing Tusk is how to restore the independence of Poland’s media and judiciary, which has been degraded by eight years of authoritarian PiS reforms.

It is a question with no right answer. PiS protected its changes to the state by stuffing legal and decision-making bodies with loyalists, and the PiS-aligned President Andrzej Duda is expected to block legislative attempts to undo those reforms.

“(PiS’s) philosophy was to create as much legal ambiguity as possible,” explained Kucharczyk.

But Tusk – a politician with a reputation for pragmatism and restraint – showed his intentions within days of taking office.

He dismissed the heads of public broadcaster TVP, replacing them with new executives, in an effort to rapidly remove the pro-PiS bias that had turned the national broadcaster into a partisan outlet.

That move outraged PiS, causing a weeks-long sit-in protest inside TVP’s headquarters and forcing its news channel off the air over Christmas. A subsequent spat with Duda over funding for the broadcaster ended with the government putting it into liquidation, alongside news agency PAP.

But it fulfilled a promise Tusk made during the election to remove PiS’s influence on the channel “in 24 hours.” And it brought relief to millions of voters – including even some PiS supporters – who had become increasingly embarrassed and tired of the broadcaster’s slant.

“It became symbolic of the excesses of the PiS government,” Bill said of TVP’s transformation into a Hungarian-style state-captured medium. “Even his more moderate voters didn’t want to watch the propaganda on TVP for a day longer.”

“People who support this government considered the status quo in public media as not only a political scandal, but a moral scandal,” Kucharczyk added. “(They) are relieved that the people who ran the media are gone, and they’re thankful that this happened so quickly… many people didn’t think this would be possible.”

There was a personal motive for Tusk, too. “You couldn’t be in the situation that Tusk has been in for eight years – totally demonized, and presented as the root of all evil – and not have it affect you,” Bill said.

“The political and personal motives here are very strongly connected,” added Kucharczyk.

A trade-off between two evils

Tusk fanned the flames of Poland’s societal divide with his early moves on public television – an “egg-breaking” approach to restoring democracy that critics say mirrors the methods of his populist rivals.

His initial move to dismiss the PiS-appointed executives of TVP was ruled unlawful by the PiS-filled Constitutional Tribunal – a body whose authority the government dismisses – and it caused an early first standoff with Duda.

Then, soon after, Polish police dramatically entered the Presidential Palace to arrest on corruption charges two PiS politicians who had seemingly taken refuge in Duda’s place of work. Duda and PiS had maintained they were legally pardoned years ago, a stance the courts disagreed with, and the party has since made the two politicians martyrs of their wounded populist movement. Duda issued a second pardon on Tuesday.

The timing of the saga coincidentally fell in Tusk’s first weeks, and in the wake of the clash over TVP, intensifying the dogfight between Tusk and his predecessors in power.

“Just as the PiS occupation of Poland ended, the PiS occupation of state offices will end,” Tusk wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, last week, in a comment indicative of his pugnacious attitude towards the party’s leaders. “The occupiers’ reputation will stay with them for a long time.”

His moves have heightened a tense political environment inside Poland, which had been simmering since long before October’s election and increased during a drawn-out transfer of power.

Central to the problem is that PiS built many of its reforms into law, and created a sympathetic legal apparatus to further protect its changes.

The result is that Poles effectively live in two separate realities depending on their political leanings, with each universe containing courts and institutions that question the authority of the other.

“It’s extremely difficult to find any way to undo (PiS reforms), without resorting to the same sorts of decisionist, legally dubious means that PiS used to capture the institutions in the first place” as a result, Bill argued.

To force changes at TVP, for example, Tusk had to bypass the National Media Council – a body that PiS created in 2016 to oversee public media, and promptly filled with loyalists. The agency is widely dismissed as an effort by PiS to cement its influence over public media while creating the semblance of independence in how it is governed; but its creation was nonetheless codified in law, so to dismantle it would require Duda’s sign-off.

But Bill added that Tusk’s dilemma is “a tradeoff between different evils.”

“The alternative would have been to work more slowly, more deliberately, which could take years,” he said. “Taking the more delicate approach (would) mean, in practice, having to leave degenerated, captured institutions as they are for some period of time.”

‘No clear plan for what’s next’

Early signs suggest Poles have not been turned off by Tusk’s politically aggressive first weeks.

Opinion polls indicate his coalition would win another election with a slightly increased vote share. PiS’ share of the vote has meanwhile slumped amid the party’s angry backlash to Tusk’s moves, with less than a third of Poles supporting the group in most surveys.

And his appointment has been celebrated in Brussels. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told reporters at a joint news conference with Tusk last month: “I welcome your commitment to put the rule of law at the top of your government’s agenda… we will need to make up for lost time.”

But the road ahead could be difficult to navigate.

“There is no clear plan for what happens next,” Bill said. He pointed to the liquidation of TVP as a short-term measure; currently, Tusk’s re-capturing of public media is being debated in duelling courts, neither of which accepts the authority of the other.

Tusk enjoys universal support across his coalition for his mission to “de-PiSify” Poland. But he must also turn soon to his own agenda – and he will hope that such moves do not become entangled with or complicated by the effects of his fight with the former ruling party.

Tusk recently reiterated a campaign promise to loosen Poland’s abortion rules, which were changed by PiS and currently make the procedure virtually impossible to access. He has been pushed to make progress on that issue by the left-wing party in his alliance, but he will need also to keep more conservative, center-right lawmakers onside.

And on the European stage, Tusk will hope to soon unfreeze funds for Poland that were blocked by the European Union over PiS’ degradation of the rule of law.

It is a hefty in-tray, and his every move will continue to be criticized by the opposition, who remain a formidable force even without the control of the national broadcaster.

“One of the unifying forces of PiS supporters is distrust, or even hatred, of Donald Tusk,” Kucharczyk said. “That hasn’t changed.”

The politics of love feel like a relic from a different world. And Tusk’s gameplan makes clear that things will get messier before they get better.

Nonetheless, after eight years of populist rule that hardened the battle lines of Polish politics, much of the public is spoiling for a fight.

Tusk’s approach “can only further damage Poland’s institutions, legal order, and perhaps most importantly the set of conventions in which those institutions are practiced,” Bill said. “(But) from a political point of view, it’s simple: this is what the voters want.”

“Australia Day is Dead!” Indigenous activist Gwenda Stanley chants into the loudspeaker, as a crowd of thousands breaks into applause.

It’s Australia’s national day, but the crowd in central Sydney seethes in anger and cheers in solidarity with Indigenous Australians, many of whom view January 26 as nothing but the anniversary of their colonial dispossession, 236 years ago this Friday.

The Sydney crowd is diverse, and it’s replicated in Australian cities nationwide.

Each year an increasing number of non-Indigenous Australians find it impossible to celebrate Australia Day, in the knowledge that many of their Indigenous fellow citizens treat it as a day of mourning.

“I think it’s important to show up for the First Nations people in this country,” says Grace, from the crowd on a hot, humid morning in Belmore Park near Sydney’s Central Station.

“I think that there are plenty of other times that you can party if you want to celebrate the lots of good things about this country,” she says.

Elise wears the black, red and yellow of the Aboriginal flag on her earrings, as her friends hold a sign saying said: “Put down ya beer, pick up a banner. This is not a day to celebrate.”

Nearby, Kevin Shaw-Taylor agrees January 26 is “absolutely not” an appropriate day for national celebrations.

On the other side of the city, the Australia Day party was in full swing. The public holiday gives Australians a three-day weekend in the height of summer just a month after Christmas. Millions took full advantage.

Nowhere are the celebrations more colorful than Sydney Harbor. The city’s iconic yellow and green ferries were decked out in Australia Day regalia to take part in the annual race across the very same water that British Royal Navy officer Arthur Phillip crossed in 1788, planting the British flag at Sydney Cove to proclaim the new colony on January 26.

Frank Bongiorno, a history professor at the Australian National University (ANU), says its “pretty creative” to connect that colonial date to the modern state of Australia – which was founded on January 1, 1901.

That’s why many of Australia’s Indigenous peoples, and an increasing number of the non-Indigenous or “settler” population, have long dubbed the national holiday “Invasion Day” or “Survival Day” – acknowledging British settlement as first and foremost an act of Indigenous dispossession.

This year, the often toxic argument over the colonial past and continued disadvantage for Indigenous people has taken on a new dimension – it’s the first Australia Day since voters rejected a proposal to acknowledge the nation’s first people in its constitution.

Last October, Australians were asked in a referendum whether the country’s constitution should be amended to recognize Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders through the creation of an Indigenous advisory body – the Voice to Parliament – to advise on matters directly impacting Indigenous people.

Supporters said the Voice to Parliament would give First Nations people a say in efforts to remedy issues such as the eight-to-nine year life expectancy gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians or disproportionately high Indigenous incarceration rates.

But more than 60% of voters said no.

A study by the ANU found that most voted against the proposal because they didn’t want division and were wary of giving some Australians rights not held by others – arguments promoted by the referendum’s most vocal critics.

Professor Chelsea Watego, executive director of Queensland University of Technology’s Curumba Institute for Indigenous research, says the result reflected the Australian public’s attitude toward Indigenous people, who make up just under 3% of the population.

“It was a test for the Australian people to finally come clean and maybe have an honest conversation about racism in this country. But they can’t and they won’t. They will never let go of it because it enables them to occupy stolen land and not feel guilty about it,” says Watego, a Munanjahli and South Sea Islander woman.

Instead of guilt on Australia Day, a vast number of Australians “associate it with summer fun,” says Bongiorno, from the ANU. “Its particular cultural and political implications for many people are rather muted.”

But that is changing, according to both professors, who see an increasing number of non-Indigenous Australians choosing to use the day to mourn Indigenous loss and advocate for better outcomes.

Bongiorno says one ramification of a bitterly fought debate over the Indigenous Voice to Parliament, which descended into a swirl of misinformation and ugly rhetoric, is a sense that political capital can be won by stoking the culture war.

“The main impact has been on the domestic politics,” he said.

“Clearly the (center-right) Coalition parties (led by) Peter Dutton believes they got an advantage from their opposition to the Voice and now they are attempting to squeeze further advantage out of controversies around Australia Day.”

Dutton, who serves as federal opposition leader, this month called on Australians to boycott the country’s largest supermarket chain, Woolworths, over its decision not to sell cheap Australia Day paraphernalia ahead of the holiday. Dutton labeled the firm’s decision an “outrage” and “against the national interest.”

A Woolworths store in Queensland was vandalized in the wake of Dutton’s comments – spray-painted with curses and the nationalistic sporting catchphrase: “Aussie Oi Oi Oi.”

Woolworths CEO Brad Banducci took out full-page advertisements in national newspapers explaining the decision was a commercial one and appealing for the company’s staff to be kept safe.

One prominent commercial television breakfast host goaded Banducci for serving up “wokeness on aisle 3.”

“They are proud, hardworking Australians,” Banducci said of the Woolworths workforce. “For them to be seen as anti-Australian or woke is fundamentally unfair. Fair to address it to me but not to them.”

As emotions run high, vandalism has gone both ways. A century-old statue of Captain Cook was found face down in the grass in Melbourne on Thursday, his severed feet still attached to the plinth that celebrates his charting of Australia’s east coast and his proclamation of the land as British in 1770, almost two decades before the colony was established. Red paint was also splashed over a monument to Queen Victoria.

With all the toxic rhetoric, the hurt feelings and damaged pride – there has been little room in the mainstream post-referendum debate for new initiatives to remedy the tangible problem of Indigenous disadvantage.

Instead, the notion of the Blak Sovereign Movement has gained traction among Indigenous people who do not want to have to ask the settler population for their rights, instead vowing to empower themselves to control their own affairs.

Many proponents of Blak Sovereignty voted no in the referendum for that reason.

“I’m always excited about the way in which Blakfullas clap back, often under the most oppressive circumstances,” said Watego, using a term by which many Indigenous Australians self identify.

“The 26th of January is when we come together each year, to remember not just what we’ve lost, but to make a powerful statement to settlers that we’re not going anywhere, we’re not a dying race and we’re not going to be absorbed into the general population.”

A satellite designed to study Venus from top to bottom and a trio of gravitational wave-surfing spacecraft are two of the latest missions that the European Space Agency has adopted.

The agency previously had selected the missions, but the official adoption process means that contractors will be chosen so construction can begin to bring the mission designs to life.

ESA will partner with NASA for both missions, which will launch from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana in the 2030s.

“These trailblazing missions will take us to the next level in two extraordinarily exciting areas of space science and keep European researchers at the forefront of these domains,” said Carole Mundell, ESA director of science, in a statement.

A new voyage to Venus

The EnVision Venus explorer will study that planet in unprecedented detail, from inner core to the top of its atmosphere, to help astronomers understand why the hot, toxic world didn’t turn out like Earth. Venus is similar in size and distance from the sun when compared with Earth, and some researchers believe the planet might have even had an Earth-like climate at some point.

But “Earth’s twin” is now an inhospitable world, with surface temperatures capable of melting lead and intense, crushing pressure as a result of a runaway greenhouse effect.

Scientists hope the mission will answer key questions about Venus, including how the world evolved over time and if it ever had oceans, how geologically active it is and why the runaway greenhouse effect began.

EnVision is expected to launch in 2031 and will be the first mission to gather data on how the Venusian atmosphere, surface and interior interact. The mission builds on ESA’s first spacecraft sent to map the planet’s atmosphere, Venus Express, which orbited Venus from 2005 to 2014.

After a 15-month journey to Venus, EnVision will spend 15 more months orbiting the planet and flying through its atmosphere.

The satellite will have two deployable solar arrays and will carry a suite of instruments that can observe the Venusian surface and atmosphere as well as probe beneath the planet’s thick, obscuring clouds with radar and radio wavelengths.

It’s one of several missions in development to study Venus, including NASA’s DAVINCI and VERITAS expeditions set to launch within the next decade.

Unraveling the history of the universe

When massive celestial objects such as black holes collide, they send out ripples called gravitational waves that spread across the universe and reveal information about its history.

These waves have been detected with ground-based observatories, but the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna, or LISA, will be the first space-based observatory to study the cosmic phenomenon. Ground-based observatories are limited in what they’re able to detect based on size and sensitivity, so they can only pick up on high-frequency gravitational waves.

But a space-based observatory can be much larger, and LISA will be able to detect waves that range from tiny to giant as well as low-frequency ones emitted by supermassive black holes that merge at the centers of massive galaxies.

The LISA mission includes three spacecraft that will fly 2.5 million kilometers (about 1.6 million miles) apart in a triangle-shaped formation. Free-floating gold cubes within each spacecraft will be used to detect gravitational waves.

The mission was born from the success of LISA Pathfinder, which ESA launched in 2015 to demonstrate the technology that the LISA mission will rely on to search the universe for cosmic ripples.

The new mission will look for evidence of black hole mergers across the universe, study the formation of thousands of pairs of stars called binary systems, peer inside dense star clusters within galaxies and try to measure the rate at which the universe is expanding. And LISA will be used to study the history of the universe by locating the first black holes ever formed after the big bang.

Together, the three spacecraft will fly behind Earth as it orbits the sun, about 50 million kilometers (31 million miles) from our planet. The agency expects the mission to last four years, with the possibility of extending it.