China’s top diplomat hit out at Washington’s “bewildering” trade policy during a news conference Thursday on the sidelines of a political gathering in Beijing, where Chinese leaders have been championing high-tech development in the face of mounting curbs from Washington.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi accused the US of “devising various tactics to suppress China” and said Washington’s “lengthening” unilateral sanctions list had reached “bewildering levels of unfathomable absurdity.”

“If it gets jittery whenever it hears the word China, where is its confidence as a major country?” Wang said in a response to a question about trade with the US and technological restrictions.

“If it only wants itself to prosper, but denies other countries legitimate development, where is international fairness? If it persistently monopolizes the high end of the value chain and keeps China at the low end, where is fairness and competition?”

Wang made the comments during an annual Foreign Minister’s briefing held during each “two sessions” gathering of China’s rubber stamp legislature and its top political advisory body. Though highly choreographed, the more than hour-long engagement is a key opportunity for China’s top diplomat to express the country’s foreign policy vision directly to reporters from media around the world.

In a stark contrast to his comments on the US, Wang praised China’s burgeoning relationship and record trade with Russia – highlighting this near the top of his press conference when a Russian state media reporter was the first question taken from a foreign reporter.

Wang’s comments on the US come as Washington continues its drive to narrow the kinds of high-end technology that can be accessed by China. In October, the White House further reduced the types of semiconductors that US companies can sell in China as it aims to ensure American tech won’t be used to bolster the Chinese military.

The US has also enacted sanctions against Chinese actors over a host of issues in recent years, including allegations of human rights abuses in Xinjiang, the illicit fentanyl trade and providing support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Wang spoke during what has been a period of relative stability between the China and the US. Adopting a softer tone at times, Wang noted that there had been “some improvements” in the US-China relationship since a summit between US President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in San Francisco last November.

He called on Washington to work with Beijing “to bring the relationship back on the track of stable, sound and sustainable development.”

What has been on the agenda at the meetings this week is China’s drive to bolster its “self-reliance and strength in science and technology,” with Beijing sending a message that it will boost its self-reliance rather than sit back and wait for tech frictions with the US to improve.

The government announced plans to increase its annual budget for science and technology by 10% to an unprecedented 370.8 billion yuan ($51.6 billion) — the biggest jump since 2019 after years of minimal growth.

Russian relations

Wang also praised robust trade ties between China and Russia, which have deepened following the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine and Moscow’s subsequent economic isolation on the global stage.

Bilateral trade between China and Russia hit a historic $240 billion last year, surpassing a target of $200 billion set by Xi and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in 2019 ahead of schedule.

“Russian natural gas is fueling numerous Chinese households and Chinese-made automobiles are running on Russian roads,” Wang said. “All this shows the strong resilience and broad prospects of China-Russia mutually beneficial cooperation.”

Beijing’s ties to Moscow have sparked deep suspicion in the West, including over concerns about China’s position as the Kremlin’s key economic lifeline. While China claims neutrality in the Ukraine conflict it has appeared unwilling to use its significant economic leverage to curb Russia’s aggression and has not condemned the invasion.

During the briefing, Wang repeated China’s call for peace talks to avoid an “unthinkable” escalation and deterioration of the conflict. He also reiterated past rhetoric framing China’s relationship with Russia as a responsible one.

Maintaining and growing the China-Russia relationship is a “strategic choice” by the two sides based on their fundamental interests and is also “what we must do to keep pace with the trend of the world,” Wang said.

“China and Russia have forged a new paradigm of major country relations that differs entirely from the obsolete Cold War approach on the basis of non-alliance, non-confrontation and not targeting any third party,” he added.

Tensions in Asia

The diplomat also addressed simmering tensions in the disputed South China Sea where non-lethal but increasingly tense clashes between Chinese and Philippine vessels in recent months have raised concerns about the risk of conflict, which could then embroil the United States, a Philippine mutual defense ally.

Those flared again Tuesday when the Philippines Coast Guard accused Chinese vessels of executing “dangerous maneuvers” to impede and obstruct a resupply mission in contested waters in the South China Sea.

Despite an international tribunal rejecting China’s claim of historic rights to the bulk of the sea, it has continued to militarize islands and maintains a large presence of coast guard and fishing vessels to enforce its claims.

“In the face of deliberate infringement, we will take justified actions to defend our rights in accordance with the law. In the face of unwarranted provocation, we will respond with prompt and legitimate countermeasures,” Wang said Thursday.

“We also urge certain countries outside the region, not to make provocations, excite or stir up troubles,” he said, in an apparent jab at the US presence in the region.

The foreign minister’s comments on Taiwan also caught the notice of those closely watching for any evolution of Chinese policy on Taiwan during the “two sessions” meeting.

China’s ruling Communist Party claims the self-governing democracy as its territory, despite never having controlled it. It has not ruled out the use of force to retake the island, which maintains close unofficial ties with the US.

Some observers had noted that a line in a report delivered by Premier Li Qiang on Tuesday proclaimed that China would advance the cause of “China’s reunification” instead of saying “peaceful reunification” as it has been written at times in the past.

On Thursday, when responding to a question about Taiwan’s recent election of Lai Ching-te, whose party views Taiwan as a de facto sovereign nation under threat from China, Wang specifically called for the support of “peaceful reunification.”

He also reiterated staid language that “whoever in the world” supports Taiwan independence will get “burned for playing with fire.”

This story has been updated.

Senegalese President Macky Sall has scheduled the country’s presidential election for March 24, the government said in a statement on Wednesday.

“The President of the Republic informed the Council of Ministers that the date of the presidential election has been set for Sunday, March 24, 2024,” the statement read.

The election was initially slated for February 25 but was postponed by Sall, sparking protests across the West African nation, with angry youths burning tires in the streets in protest.

However, Senegal’s Constitutional Council barred his attempts to delay the election, ruling that it must be held before April 2, when Sall’s second and final term expires.

Earlier on Wednesday, Sall dissolved the government and announced that sitting Prime Minister Amadou Ba would be replaced with Interior Minister Sidiki Kaba.

In a communique from the council of ministers, Ba “reaffirmed his support” for Sall’s decisions and “reiterated his thanks and gratitude” for the president.

Nineteen candidates are registered to run in the election, according to the Constitutional Council.

A Russian missile exploded close to a convoy carrying Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis during a deadly attack on the Black Sea port city of Odesa on Wednesday.

The group felt the impact of the strike and saw a “mushroom cloud” of smoke, according to a source familiar with the situation, who put the location of the strike around 500 meters from the convoy.

Zelensky frequently makes high-risk trips to the front lines and has welcomed dozens of world leaders to Ukraine over more than two years of war with Russia, but Wednesday’s attack may represent one of the closest calls for the president. The strike’s proximity to Mitsotakis – the leader of a NATO member state – also underlines the dangers of such visits and potential global repercussions of the conflict.

Zelensky said he was close enough to see and hear the strike.

“We saw this strike today. You can see who we are dealing with, they don’t care where they strike. I know that there were victims today, I don’t know all the details yet, but I know that there are dead and wounded,” Zelensky said from Odesa on Wednesday.

“We need to defend ourselves first and foremost. The best way to do that is with an air defense system,” he added.

Mitsotakis said Zelensky had given him a tour of the southern city, which has sustained huge damage from months of Russian strikes, before they heard air raid sirens.

“Shortly after, as we were getting into our cars, we heard a big explosion,” Mitsotakis told reporters later Wednesday. “I think that for us is the best, most vivid reminder that there is a real war going on here. Every day there is a war, which not only affects the front, the soldiers, it affects our innocent fellow citizens.”

Odesa lies at the mouth of the Danube River and is crucial for Ukraine’s grain exports, which Russia has repeatedly tried to stem since launching its invasion. It is also the main base of Ukraine’s navy.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said its military had conducted the strike at 11.40 a.m. Moscow time (3.40 a.m. ET).

“The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation launched a high-precision missile attack on a hangar in the industrial port district of Odesa, where preparations were underway for the combat use of unmanned boats of the armed forces of Ukraine. The target of the strike has been achieved. The object is hit,” it said in a statement, without mentioning Zelensky or Mitsotakis.

Russia has stepped up its strikes on the region in recent days, and on Saturday a Russian drone attack on an apartment block in the city killed 12 people, including five children, Ukrainian officials said.

Zelensky said the attack pressed home the need to further strengthen the country’s air defenses.

He has often argued that Western leaders need to visit Ukraine to understand the reality of Russia’s ongoing aggression.

Speaking after Wednesday’s strike, Zelensky said he had welcomed Mitsotakis to “honor the memory” of those killed in Sunday’s attack and urged his allies to provide more support.

“The world has enough air defense systems and the ability to produce weapons for defense,” he said in his daily address. “Weapons are needed here to save lives. Solutions are needed now – not some day, but for the people who endure terrorist attacks every day and night.”

In Washington, where US President Joe Biden’s $60 billion request for aid for Ukraine has stalled, the White House said the strike was another sign the war-torn country needed more military assistance, and used it to pressure House Speaker Mike Johnson to bring up a vote on the package.

“This strike is yet another reminder of how Russia is continuing to attack Ukraine recklessly every single day and of Ukraine’s urgent needs, in particular, for air defense interceptors,” a National Security Council spokesperson said. “We again call on the House of Representatives to take action to support Ukraine so that we can provide the Ukrainian armed forces with the equipment they desperately need to defend against these outrageous Russian attacks.”

European Council President Charles Michel condemned the strike as “another sign of Russia’s cowardly tactics,” which he said were “below even the Kremlin’s playbook.”

In May 2022, Michel was visiting Odesa when Russia fired 10 cruise missiles at the region.

This story has been updated with additional developments.

Suspected Islamist insurgents kidnapped 50 people, mostly women, in northeastern Nigeria this week, local officials and a resident said on Wednesday, the latest mass abduction by fighters who have waged an insurgency for more than a decade.

Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) fighters have mainly operated in Borno state in the northeast, targeting security forces and civilians, in the process killing and displacing tens of thousands of people.

The latest incident took place on Monday in the remote Gamboru area, which shares a border with Chad and Cameroon, said an official of the Civilian Joint Task Force, which helps the army to fight the jihadists.

The official, who declined to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said the group of at least 50 people from a camp for internally displaced persons, went to collect firewood on the shores of Lake Chad, where ISWAP is known to operate.

They were ambushed by gunmen and made to walk across bushy paths into neighboring Chad, the official said, adding that three of the kidnapped women managed to escape.

The Nigerian Army did not respond to a request for comment.

Falmata Bukar, one of the three women who escaped, told Reuters by phone that the gunmen had “surrounded us and we were asked to follow them to the bush.”

She later escaped with two others on Tuesday, she said.

Barkindo Saidu, head of Borno’s emergency agency, said he was traveling to the area to assess the situation but was not yet ready to declare the people missing.

The agency is in charge of camps housing thousands of Nigerians displaced by the insurgency.

Last month was the planet’s hottest February on record, marking the ninth month in a row that global records tumbled, according to new data from Copernicus, the European Union’s climate monitoring service.

February was 1.77 degrees Celsius warmer than the average February in pre-industrial times, Copernicus found, and it capped off the hottest 12-month period in recorded history, at 1.56 degrees above pre-industrial levels.

It’s yet another grim climate change milestone, as the long-term impacts of human-caused global warming are given a boost by El Niño, a natural climate fluctuation.

“February joins the long streak of records of the last few months. As remarkable as this might appear, it is not really surprising as the continuous warming of the climate system inevitably leads to new temperature extremes,” Carlo Buontempo, director of Copernicus, said in a statement.

Even in the context of back-to-back months of unprecedented temperatures, February has been extreme.

Global temperatures in the first half of the month in particular were “exceptionally high,” according to the analysis. Four consecutive days, from February 8 to 11, were 2 degrees warmer than those same days pre-industrial times.

Restricting global heating to well below 2 degrees was a centerpiece of the Paris Agreement that almost every country signed up to in 2015. While scientists are much more concerned with longer-term warming, these temporary breaches are a clear and alarming sign of accelerating heating.

Global ocean temperatures were also off the charts last month, hitting 21.06 degrees — the highest average for any month on record, according to the Copernicus data, beating the previous record of 20.98 degrees set in August 2023.

Experts have expressed shock at just how hot the oceans have been, especially the North Atlantic, which has set a new daily temperature record every day since March 5 last year, according to Brian McNoldy, a senior research associate at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School.

Record ocean heat has significant global impacts. Not only is it dangerous for marine life but it also fuels extreme weather, including scorching heat waves, intense rainfall and ferocious hurricanes.

It provides yet more evidence that the world needs to reduce emissions drastically and immediately, Cloke said.

If this evidence is ignored, Cloke added, “our children’s generation, and all those that follow, will be justified in pointing to the people who lived in 2024 and cursing our reckless stupidity.”

Archaeologists say they have discovered what may be the largest mass grave ever excavated in Europe at a site in southern Germany.

Roughly 1,000 skeletons of plague victims have so far been found in mass graves in the center of the city of Nuremberg, which experts believe may contain a total of more than 1,500 people, according to a press release published Tuesday.

The remains were discovered during an archaeological survey prior to the construction of new residential buildings in the city.

“Those people were not interred in a regular cemetery although we have designated plague cemeteries in Nuremberg,” said Langbein.

“This means a large number of dead people who needed to be buried in a short time frame without regard to Christian burial practices,” she said.

Because of this, an epidemic such as the plague is “more than likely” the explanation for the mass graves, according to Langbein.

Nuremberg suffered plague outbreaks roughly every 10 years from the 14th century onward, she said, making it a challenge to date the remains.

Archaeologists used radiocarbon dating to date one mass grave to between the late 1400s and early 1600s, and found shards of pottery and coins dating from the later end of that range at the site.

They also discovered a note from 1634 detailing a plague outbreak that killed more than 15,000 people in 1632-1633, which says almost 2,000 people were buried near St. Sebastian Spital, the site of the current excavation, Langbein said.

This evidence led the team to conclude that the older group of remains probably dates from the 1632-1633 epidemic.

“There was no indication to assume that there were burials on this field,” he said, adding that when the first remains were discovered he thought they could have been from World War II bombing raids.

Decker now believes the site may contain more than 1,500 bodies.

“I personally expect the number to be at 2,000 or even above, making it the biggest mass grave in Europe,” he said.

“Nuremberg was surrounded by different troops and the population was living in quite dire circumstances,” she said.

The graves contain a representative sample of society at the time, the researchers say, allowing them to examine the characteristics of the population.

“We can with statistical means explore the size and demographic of the city with the same tools that a modern census team would with a recent population,” said Decker, including the percentage of children and adults, women and men and general health.

“Technically we could find out what percentage were left handed,” he added.

There will also be collaborations with institutions interested in certain aspects of the findings, including analyzing the plague genome and investigating parasite eggs in the soil, she added.

“We’re also planning an exhibition, but this will take some time, so fall 2025 would be the earliest we could be ready,” said Langbein.

Speculation over when Catherine, Princess of Wales will return to official royal duties continues this week after expectations were raised by an unlikely source: the British Army.

The UK Ministry of Defence put tickets for its annual Trooping the Colour parades on sale on its website on Tuesday.

Trooping the Colour is the military spectacle performed by hundreds between Buckingham Palace and Horse Guards Parade each summer.

Tickets were advertised to the public with appearances from both 42-year-old Kate and King Charles III on June 8 and 15, respectively. Cue delight from royal-watchers over confirmation of the royals’ first public appearances since their health scares, followed by a wave of concern that the princess would take that long to return.

Except it seems the Army didn’t get sign-off from Kensington Palace over Kate’s appearance.

The palace, which handles the princess’ diary, had not yet confirmed if she would be reviewing the Irish Guards. The regiment is trooping its color – presenting its regimental flags – this year and it would appear the army jumped the gun in assuming Kate would be attending in her honorary capacity as colonel of the Irish Guards.

Uncertainty persisted for hours until the claim was pulled down from the army’s website on Tuesday evening. The King’s attendance for the event on June 15 – which is also known as the sovereign’s birthday parade – remains listed on the website where the public can enter an online ballot for tickets.

Both royals have temporarily suspended public engagements. Kate is out of action until after Easter, while Charles has stepped back as he receives treatment for cancer. The King is continuing his constitutional responsibilities and was pictured this week with Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt at Buckingham Palace ahead of the UK government’s budget statement on Wednesday.

The public also got the first sighting of Kate since her January operation after she was spotted in Windsor, just outside London, this week.

The princess was seen wearing dark sunglasses and sitting in the front passenger seat of a vehicle driven by her mother, Carole Middleton.

The other consideration is that while we know Kate’s operation was not cancer-related, we don’t know how serious her condition is or what stage of recovery she is at.

The existence of the photograph did, however, quash some of the wilder rumors and conspiracy theories circulating recently on social media about the princess’ health and whereabouts.

The palace is facing mounting public pressure to share more information about the future Queen, but it has taken a firm line on protecting her privacy. For the family, it’s a deeply personal question around how much of their individual freedoms to give up in the public interest.

Anwar Abdul Nabi perches on the edge of a bed at the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza. Her eyes are sunken with grief.

The young mother tenderly holds the fingers of her daughter, Mila. Just minutes ago, the 7-year-old girl died of starvation.

Israel launched its military offensive in Gaza after the militant group Hamas killed at least 1,200 people and kidnapped more than 250 others in southern Israel on October 7.

Since then, Israel’s attacks on Gaza have killed at least 30,717 Palestinians and wounded another 72,156 people, according to the Ministry of Health in the enclave, while its siege has drastically diminished vital supplies and left the enclave’s population of some 2.2 million people exposed to high levels of acute food insecurity or worse, according to the Integrated Food Security and Nutrition Phase Classification (IPC), which assesses global food insecurity and malnutrition.

At least 20 Palestinians have starved to death in Gaza, Dr. Ashraf Al-Qudra, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Health, said on Wednesday. The youngest baby who died of starvation in the enclave was one day old, according to Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan hospital. The true number could be even higher, as limited access to northern Gaza has hindered the ability of aid agencies to fully assess the situation there. UN experts accused Israel of “intentionally starving” Palestinians in Gaza. Israel insists there is “no limit” on the amount of aid that can enter Gaza, but its inspection regime on aid trucks has meant that only a tiny fraction of the amount of food and other supplies that used to enter Gaza daily before the war is getting in now.

Children, mothers at risk

One-year-old Watin, in northern Gaza, has grown tired and weak from dehydration. Instead of drinking baby formula, she is surviving on one to two dates a day.

The babies of thousands of women “who are due to give birth in the next month in the Gaza Strip are at risk of dying,” the UNICEF State of Palestine Humanitarian Situation report said on Tuesday. At least 5,500 pregnant women “do not have access to prenatal or postnatal check-ups because of bombings and need to flee for safety,” the report said.

“Anxiety is also leading to premature births,” the report added, citing the United Nations Population Fund (UNPF.) The report also said over 90% of children “aged 6-23 months and pregnant, breastfeeding women face severe food poverty with access to two or fewer food groups per day.”

Food shortages are reportedly the worst in northern Gaza, where Israel concentrated its military offensive in the early days of the war. Child malnutrition in the region is about three times higher than in southern Gaza, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Screenings at health facilities there have previously found at least one in six children under the age of two are acutely malnourished, said Richard Peeperkorn, WHO representative for the territory. He warned those figures are “likely to be greater today.” Pregnant and breastfeeding women also face “grave threats to their health” caused by malnutrition, the Global Nutrition Cluster, an alliance of NGOs, reported in February.

“There are babies who died in their mothers’ wombs, and surgeries were performed to remove the dead fetuses,” he said on Monday. “Mothers are not eating because of the conditions we are living in, and this affects the infants … There are causes of many children suffering from dehydration and malnutrition, leading to death.”

Israel’s bombardment has forcibly displaced at least 1.7 million Palestinians, according to the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Many of those who fled the fighting are crammed into overwhelmed shelters without basic sanitation, leading to the spread of infections. Malnourished children, especially those with severe malnutrition, are at greater risk of dying from illnesses like diarrhea and pneumonia, according to the World Health Organization.

‘We have become like dogs’

On Tuesday, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt sent 42 tons of medical supplies and food via airplanes in the region, the Emirati Ministry of Defense said. The US military said it had, alongside the Royal Jordanian Air Force, parachuted more than 36,800 meals into northern Gaza that day.

But human rights groups criticized the drops as inefficient and a degrading way of getting aid to Gazans, urging Israeli authorities to lift controls on land crossings into the enclave. Melanie Ward, the CEO of the UK-based NGO, Medical Aid for Palestinians, urged Israel to “immediately open all crossings into Gaza for aid workers to assist those in need.”

“Only safe and unfettered access for aid and aid workers, the lifting of the siege, and an immediate ceasefire can end starvation in Gaza,” she said in a statement on Saturday.

Even when aid does make it into the strip, collecting it can be dangerous.

“We thank God that there is humanitarian aid being dropped from Jordanian and Emirati planes,” he said on Tuesday. “I try as much as possible to obtain milk from the planes that drop aid so that we can provide milk for my nieces for as long as possible.

“Planes are dropping aid on northern Gaza, and we have become like dogs, running after a bone.”

The war in Sudan is “triggering the world’s largest hunger crisis,” with more than 25 million people “trapped in a spiral” of food insecurity, a United Nations agency has warned.

Nine in 10 people across the country face “emergency levels of hunger” and are “stuck” in areas “largely inaccessible” due to “relentless violence and interference by the warring parties,” the UN’s World Food Program (WFP) said Wednesday.

The war, which has also created the world’s largest displacement crisis, according to the UN, has left 18 million people “acutely food insecure” in Sudan and millions more in neighboring South Sudan and Chad.

“Twenty years ago, Darfur was the world’s largest hunger crisis, and the world rallied to respond. But today, the people of Sudan have been forgotten. Millions of lives and the peace and stability of an entire region are at stake,” said Cindy McCain, Executive Director of the WFP.

Thousands of people have been killed and eight million displaced since fighting broke out in April between forces loyal to two rival generals – army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, who leads Sudan’s Armed Forces (SAF), and the head of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.

Both forces and their allied militias have been accused of killing civilians, ransacking houses and ethnic cleansing, leading to accusations of crimes against humanity and fueling the exodus from the East African country.

The WFP said it was now “struggling to keep pace with the significant level of need” and described the humanitarian response in the two neighboring states as “at breaking point.”

The crisis has deepened since the program was forced to halt its operations transporting aid from Chad to Sudan’s western Darfur region after local authorities revoked permission for cross-border truck convoys, according to the WFP. Since August, more than one million people had received WFP aid via the route.

One in five children at transit centers at the main border crossing between Sudan and South Sudan are malnourished, according to the WFP

“Newly arrived displaced people in South Sudan make up 35 percent of those facing catastrophic levels of hunger – the highest possible level – despite accounting for less than 3 percent of the population,” the WFP added.

‘Stomach-churning findings’

The warning from the WFP came as US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said the UN had found evidence that girls as young as 14 had been raped by “elements” of the Rapid Support Forces in WFP storage facilities controlled by the paramilitary faction.

Thomas-Greenfield on Wednesday read out sections from the UN Panel of Experts’ final report on Sudan, a report she described as “52 pages of stomach-churning findings.”

She said the report claimed that RSF snipers “indiscriminately targeted civilians, including women, pregnant women and young people,” and “schools, hospitals, markets, government buildings and humanitarian assets were looted mostly by RSF and allied militias and destroyed by shelling and bombing by the two warring parties.”

Thomas-Greenfield said the latest report included “gruesome photos” taken in West Darfur “where the RSF has targeted members of the Masalit community.”

“This is just a snapshot of the death, destruction, depravity that has defined this conflict. A conflict that, as this report details, is being fueled by arms transfers from a handful of regional powers. Armed transfers that must stop,” she said, remarking that the international community “is not doing nearly enough” to address the crisis.

“It is my hope that this sobering report will, at long last, shake the world from its indifference to the horrors playing out before our eyes,” she added.

Astronomers have spotted the oldest “dead” galaxy ever observed while studying the cosmos with the James Webb Space Telescope, and it’s one of the deepest views into the distant universe made with the observatory to date.

The galaxy existed when the universe was only about 700 million years into its current age of about 13.8 billion years. But something made the galaxy suddenly halt star formation almost as quickly as star birth had begun more than 13 billion years ago, and the researchers have yet to uncover the cause.

A report describing the discovery appeared Wednesday in the journal Nature. Studying the galaxy could reveal new insights about the early universe and the factors that affect star formation within galaxies, according to the authors.

“The first few hundred million years of the universe was a very active phase, with lots of gas clouds collapsing to form new stars,” said lead study author Tobias Looser, doctoral student in extragalactic astrophysics at the University of Cambridge’s Kavli Institute for Cosmology, in a statement. “Galaxies need a rich supply of gas to form new stars, and the early universe was like an all-you-can-eat buffet.”

The research team was surprised to find a so-called dead galaxy that essentially lived fast and died young so soon after the big bang that created the universe.

“It’s (usually) only later in the universe that we start to see galaxies stop forming stars, whether that’s due to a black hole or something else,” said study coauthor Dr. Francesco D’Eugenio, astrophysicist and postdoctoral research associate at the Kavli Institute for Cosmology, in a statement.

What causes galaxies to die

Star formation ceases when environmental factors starve a galaxy of the gas needed to seed the birth of new stars.

Supermassive black holes or the violent interactions of stars can be the culprits that eject gas from galaxies, bringing star formation to a quick halt. Or, the act of star birth can consume so much gas that there isn’t time for enough to be replenished to ensure the process will continue in the future.

“We’re not sure if any of those scenarios can explain what we’ve now seen with Webb,” said study coauthor Roberto Maiolino, professor of experimental astrophysics at the Cavendish Laboratory and the Kavli Institute for Cosmology at the University of Cambridge, in a statement.

“Until now, to understand the early universe, we’ve used models based on the modern universe. But now that we can see so much further back in time, and observe that the star formation was quenched so rapidly in this galaxy, models based on the modern universe may need to be revisited,” Maiolino added.

The Webb observations revealed that the newly discovered galaxy, named JADES-GS-z7-01-QU, experienced a short, energetic burst of star formation that lasted between 30 million and 90 million years before star birth suddenly stopped.

“Everything seems to happen faster and more dramatically in the early universe, and that might include galaxies moving from a star-forming phase to dormant or quenched,” Looser said.

An unusual observation

The dead galaxy revealed by the study is not the first astronomers have come across, but it is the oldest one observed thus far.

What’s more, the galaxy also had a low mass, similar to a dwarf galaxy near the Milky Way known as the Small Magellanic Cloud — which is still forming new stars. Previously observed dead galaxies have been much larger, adding another quirk to the Webb discovery.

The newly found galaxy is billions of light-years away from Earth, and a light-year is how far a beam of light travels in a year, or over 5.88 trillion miles (9.46 trillion kilometers). So Webb is essentially observing the galaxy as it existed in the past — and astronomers have not ruled out the possibility that it may have essentially resurrected and begun star formation anew.

“We’re looking for other galaxies like this one in the early universe, which will help us place some constraints on how and why galaxies stop forming new stars,” D’Eugenio said. “It could be the case that galaxies in the early universe ‘die’ and then burst back to life — we’ll need more observations to help us figure that out.”