Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban told NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg that his government supports Sweden’s membership bid, potentially removing the final hurdle to accession after months of fraught negotiations.

“I reaffirmed that the Hungarian government supports the NATO membership of Sweden,” Orban wrote Wednesday on X.

Orban said he told Stoltenberg in a phone call he would urge Hungary’s National Assembly to vote in favor of Sweden’s bid to join the bloc at the first possible opportunity. The NATO chief said he welcomed Orban’s “clear support” for Sweden’s bid.

Hungary was until this week one of two countries that objected to and obstructed Sweden’s accession to NATO. The Turkish parliament voted Tuesday to approve Sweden’s bid, allowing President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to sign the protocol into law.

Sweden and Finland applied for NATO membership in May 2022, swiftly after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine earlier that year. Finland joined NATO in April 2023 – doubling the alliance’s border with Russia – but Sweden’s bid was mired in challenges.

Erdogan objected to Sweden’s accession, accusing Swedish officials of being too lenient on militant groups, including the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Sweden has since tightened its anti-terror legislation and pledged closer cooperation with Turkey on security concerns.

Another obstacle was Sweden’s approval of a small Quran-burning demonstration outside a mosque in its capital, Stockholm, which coincided with the Muslim holiday of Eid-al-Adha, one of the most significant in the Islamic calendar. Turkey’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan condemned the decision, saying “to turn a blind eye to such heinous acts is to be complicit in them.”

Erdogan’s eventual approval was won in part by a commitment from the United States, with the Turkish president signaling that he won’t sign the protocol into law unless Washington approves the sales of F-16 fighter jets to Ankara. US Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Ben Cardin said Tuesday that Congress is waiting for the completion of accession documents before moving forward on the matter.

Orban, considered to be the European Union leader closest to Russian President Vladimir Putin, initially indicated he was not opposed to Sweden joining the bloc, before working to stall it. Katalin Cseh, a Hungarian Member of the European Parliament, said last year that Orban’s blocking of Sweden’s bid was “quite simply, another favor to Vladimir Putin.”

But, following the Turkish parliament’s decision, Orban on Tuesday said he had invited his Swedish counterpart Ulf Kristersson to visit Hungary to negotiate the terms of Sweden’s accession.

Stoltenberg said he had a “good call” with Orban on Wednesday, adding “I look forward to the ratification as soon as parliament reconvenes.”

A Japanese court on Thursday sentenced a 45-year-old man to death for setting fire to the renowned Kyoto Animation studio in 2019, which left 36 people dead in the country’s worst mass killing in almost 20 years, according to public broadcaster NHK.

The defendant, Shinji Aoba, was charged with murder and arson after telling police his work had been plagiarized and that he used gasoline to set fire to the studio. He was found guilty by the Kyoto District Court on Thursday.

Dozens of people were inside the three-story building at the time of the blaze, which spread so rapidly that many did not have time to escape, police said at the time. All those who died were employees, with at least 32 others injured.

In his ruling, the court’s presiding Judge Keisuke Masuda called Aoba’s crime “truly atrocious and inhumane.” The victims’ deaths were “too serious and tragic,” Masuda said, describing how flames and smoke engulfed the studio.

“The horror and pain of the victims who died in Studio 1, which turned into a hell in an instant, or who died afterward, is beyond description,” the judge said.

In a 2019 news conference, police said Aoba had unspecified mental health issues.

He pleaded not guilty at the trial, which began last September, with his defense lawyers arguing he had a mental disorder and could not be held criminally responsible.

Prosecutors however called for the death penalty, arguing Aoba was fully competent.

Among industrialized democracies, only Japan and parts of the United States retain capital punishment. Rights group including Amnesty International say international law prohibits using the death penalty against people with mental disabilities.

On Thursday, the judge ruled that Aoba could determine right and wrong at the time of the incident, according to NHK. His capacity for responsibility was “determined to have been neither insane nor mentally incompetent at the time of the crime,” NHK reported.

The fire marked the worst mass killing in Japan since a 2001 arson attack on a building in Tokyo’s Kabukicho district, which killed 44 people. The death toll also surpassed the infamous Tokyo sarin gas attack on a subway in 1995, which killed 13.

The Kyoto attack left fans worldwide grieving the loss of life and a studio that claimed to put its employees first and was a major force in the industry.

Founded in 1981, Kyoto Animation – known as KyoAni – made its name producing high quality animations that draw on both the mystical and the mundane.

Its popular works include animated series “Free!,” manga series “K-On!,” the anime TV adaptation of “the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya” and “Violet Evergarden,” which Netflix picked up in 2018.

This story has been updated.

The West’s recent heat-driven megadroughts are unprecedented in at least 500 years, new research shows.

“Hot drought” — when extreme drought and heat occur simultaneously — has increased in severity and frequency over the last century due to human-caused climate change, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances.

“What we’re seeing is that megadrought conditions are being amplified by anthropogenically driven (human caused) temperature increases,” said Karen King, lead author of the study and assistant professor in physical geography at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.

Wednesday’s study builds on previous research, including one study that found the last two decades in the West have been the driest in 1,200 years, and the human-caused climate crisis made the yearslong dry spell 72% worse.

Both studies used tree ring data, which can serve as scientific time capsules as they are affected by sunlight, rainfall and temperature, allowing researchers to reconstruct the past.

While the previous study measured the length and width of the tree rings to gauge drought conditions, King’s research analyzed the density of the rings to measure how temperatures changed over time.

“More dense rings mean warmer temperatures, and less dense rings mean cooler temperatures, typically,” King explained.

She spent the last few years driving around the Pacific Northwest and the Interior Mountain West, including parts of Utah, Arizona and Colorado, to measure different tree species.

After collecting tree ring data to analyze summer maximum temperatures across the region from 1553 to 2020 as well as existing historical drought records, King and her team were able to corroborate that the last two decades have been among the hottest years on record in at least five centuries across much of the western US.

“It wasn’t that surprising, but when you put the two (studies) together, it paints a very cohesive picture that this anthropogenic influence on increased hot drought, particularly in the Southwest, is unprecedented over the last several centuries.”

While droughts have frequented the West in the past, researchers say the effects are much more pronounced today due to alarmingly high temperatures. And the water supply has taken a large hit.

According to the study, the regions most affected by hot droughts include the Great Plains, which contain the Ogallala aquifer — one of the country’s largest that supports nearly 25% of the region’s agriculture — and portions of the Colorado River Basin, which has been plagued by extreme drought and overuse in recent decades.

“Water security and wildfire will become bigger problems until climate change is stopped,” said Overpeck, who was not involved with the study but has done research on hot droughts. “These impacts were predicted long ago and are now becoming clear.”

Igor Girkin, a prominent Russian pro-war blogger who criticized President Vladimir Putin’s handling of the war on Ukraine, has been found guilty on extremism charges and sentenced to four years in prison by a Moscow court.

Moscow City Court convicted Girkin, also known under his pseudonym, Strelkov, of inciting extremism – a charge he denied.

A former officer of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) and an ex-military commander, Girkin played a crucial role in Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the early stages of invading Donbas, before becoming a prominent Russian military blogger with over half a million followers on Telegram.

Girkin was also closely linked to the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 in July 2014 and was convicted in absentia of mass murder for his role in the tragedy.

As part of his Thursday sentence he was also barred from accessing the internet, a move that essentially shuts off his ability to publicly lambast Putin’s leadership.

Call for harsher approach

Girkin was arrested in July and charged with calling for extremist activities after he became increasingly critical of Putin and his military’s mishaps in Ukraine.

His detention came weeks after the failed rebellion by Wagner mercenaries in Russia, a period in which Putin’s grasp on power appeared to be more fragile than ever.

A group of around 100 of his supporters gathered outside the Moscow court on Thursday to show opposition to his sentencing.

Girkin is among the best-known of Russia’s “milbloggers,” a group of war correspondents who support the invasion but have grown increasingly critical of the military’s faltering operations in Ukraine, and pushed for a harsher approach.

He co-founded an ultra-nationalist political group called the Angry Patriots Club last spring, and told Reuters that Russia was “on the cusp of very grave internal political changes of a catastrophic character.”

But just days before his arrest Girkin intensified his criticisms of Putin, calling the president a “lowlife” and a “cowardly bum” in a blistering post on his Telegram channel.

“For 23 years, the country was led by a lowlife who managed to ‘blow dust in the eyes’ of a significant part of the population. Now he is the last island of legitimacy and stability of the state,” the post read. “But the country will not be able to withstand another six years of this cowardly bum in power.”

Girkin is a former colonel in Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) and served as defense minister in the separatist so-called Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) in eastern Ukraine, territory captured by pro-Russian forces in 2014.

It was during his time in the DPR that he contributed to the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine in 2014, a court in the Netherlands found. All 298 people onboard were killed. The court in 2022 found Girkin guilty of mass murder for his role in the incident and he was sentenced in absentia to life in prison.

According to the court, Girkin participated in the conflicts in Chechnya, Transnistria and Bosnia.

This is story was updated with further developments.

It’s still unclear why a Russian military transport aircraft crashed in the Belgorod region near the Ukraine border on Wednesday, whether because it was brought down by a missile or suffered some catastrophic technical failure. But all 74 people on board were killed, according to Russian authorities.

The first images of the wreckage on the ground are inconclusive; one video shows the last seconds of the plane as it hurtles towards earth before a large fireball erupts.

But the Russian authorities have claimed that Ukrainian missiles were responsible – and that they killed 65 of their own prisoners of war, along with six crew members and three Russian personnel, who were on board the Ilyushin Il-76.

The Russian Defense Ministry said the plane was destroyed by an anti-aircraft missile system deployed in the area of Liptsy in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, some 50 miles (80 kilometers) from where the plane came down. It said radar equipment had detected the launches.

The Defense Ministry also claimed that “the Ukrainian leadership knew very well that, according to established practice, today Ukrainian military personnel would be transported by military transport aircraft to the Belgorod airfield for exchange” at the Kolotilovka checkpoint on the Russian border with the Ukrainian region of Sumy.

In response, Ukraine’s military command said it regarded Russian military aircraft approaching Belgorod as legitimate targets but stopped short of acknowledging it fired at a Russian transport plane.

The 50-mile distance from Liptsy to the crash site would be beyond most Ukrainian ground-to-air missile systems. A Ukrainian defense intelligence official did confirm that a prisoner exchange had been due to happen on Wednesday, but did not acknowledge knowing the logistical details of the Russian side of the swap. Another Ukrainian military source was quoted as claiming that the plane was carrying Russian missiles, not prisoners.

So one question is whether the Ukrainians were indeed aware of the timing and route of the aircraft that the Russians say was bringing prisoners to the site of the exchange, and additionally whether that information would have been conveyed to front-line units across the border from Belgorod.

The plane’s two flight recorders could, however, provide answers. An emergency services representative told Russian state news agency RIA Novosti on Thursday that “both flight recorders – flight parameter recording device and voice recorder – have been found” in good condition and handed over to investigators.

But there are already other ramifications from this disaster.

Andrey Kartapolov, who is chairman of the Duma Defense Committee in Moscow, made a significant allegation in claiming that the missiles fired were from US-made Patriot or German-made IRIS-T systems that have been supplied to Ukraine, without offering any evidence. Ukraine has pledged not to use foreign-donated weapons to attack Russian territory and this would have been a highly significant departure from that policy. In any case, the IRIS-T would not have had the range to hit the Ilyushin from the nearest Ukrainian-held territory. A Patriot deployed (at considerable risk) so close to the border with Russia would have been within range of the plane.

Some observers are also pointing out that Russian missile defenses in the area were on high alert Wednesday, and that a Ukrainian drone had been brought down shortly before the plane crashed. However, the governor of Belgorod said that had happened in a location to the west of the city, which would put it at least 37 miles (60 kilometers) from the site where the Ilyushin crashed.

Another puzzling element is that according to the Russian version of events, the Ukrainian PoWs were guarded by just three Russian personnel on board the plane (besides the crew.) A former Ukrainian PoW, Maksym Kolesnikov, said Wednesday in a post on X that when he had been transported by plane from Bryansk to Belgorod, there were about 20 military police for 50 prisoners.

So this disaster already has multiple political dimensions and as yet a lot of unanswered questions. It has quickly become another episode in the information war that has been a constant in this conflict.

Dmytro Lubinets, Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman, said Wednesday that “information warfare is no less important than fighting at the front… The enemy is insidious. We all know what terrible methods Russia can use to destabilize Ukrainian society.”

Indeed the Russian Defense Ministry in its statement said that “by committing this terrorist attack, the Ukrainian leadership showed its true colors – it neglected the lives of its citizens.“

It’s worth recalling that Russia alleged that Ukraine killed its own prisoners of war in a strike on a camp in Olenivka in Donetsk 18 months ago, a claim that after extensive forensic investigation looked extremely dubious.

Then, as most likely in this instance, no independent on-the-ground analysis was possible.

But a large Russian military aircraft without anti-missile defenses approaching Belgorod – itself a frequent target of Ukrainian drones – would have been a tempting and valuable target for Ukraine.

It would therefore have been a flight of considerable risk – unless the Ukrainians had been notified of its purpose, as the Russians have claimed. On the whole, Russian Il-76 aircraft stay well beyond the range of Ukrainian missiles; this would be the first time since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine nearly two years ago that one of them has been shot down.

But the Ukrainians have extended the range and frequency of their attacks into Russia, using drones, missiles and sabotage. Earlier this month, the Ukrainian military claimed to have shot down one of the Russians’ most advanced early detection aircraft, the A-50, over the Sea of Azov. There’s been no visual evidence of the wreckage, and the Russian Defense Ministry has not responded to the claim. Some analysts believe that the Ukrainians may have repurposed a Patriot battery to carry out that attack, but there has been no confirmation. Patriot missiles generally have a range of just under 100 miles.

For Ukraine, at a time when the battlefield is in stalemate and there are few victories to celebrate, attacking Russian bases, ships, aircraft and infrastructure well beyond the border has become a different way to disrupt the enemy’s military machine.

But if evidence emerges to confirm the version of events being offered up by the Russian Defense Ministry and others in Moscow, what would have been a coup for Ukrainian air defenses may instead have been a horrendous mistake.

The war between Israel and Hamas has already spilled over to the wider Middle East, with prospects of a confrontation between regional and world powers becoming ever more likely.

Across the region, the fighting has largely been confined to tit-for-tat attacks between Iran-backed militias on one side and the US, Israel and its allies on the other. But the direct intervention of both Iran and the US in recent weeks has heightened fears that the proxy conflict between the two could turn into a direct one.

So far, the US and Iran have avoided directly confronting each other. The US has attacked Iranian-backed groups in Yemen, Syria and Iraq, while Iran-linked groups have targeted American personnel in Iraq and Syria. Tehran has also struck what it said were anti-Iran groups in Iraq, Syria and Pakistan. Pakistan responded with retaliatory strikes.

The Islamic Republic, which has long opposed the presence of US forces in what it considers to be its backyard, has spent the past few decades building a network of Islamist, anti-Western and anti-Israel militias that it trains, funds and arms. Those groups have become more belligerent of late, especially Yemen’s Houthi rebels, who have disrupted a vital international waterway, wreaking havoc on global trade and prompting Western states to intervene. And it has built ties with and helped fund Hamas, which launched its war on Israel on October 7.

The US, having been trying to pivot away from the Middle East for years, finds itself drawn back into the region. It already had a sizeable military footprint in the region before the war, with over 30,000 troops.

Since the war began, however, Washington has significantly strengthened its military posture in the region, having moved roughly 1,200 US service members, alongside thousands of others aboard Navy carrier strike groups and a Marine Expeditionary Unit roughly 2,000 people strong.

And in some places, including Iraq and Syria, the US military presence overlaps that of Iran and its allies.

As tensions across the region rise, here is where Iran or its allies are present, where US forces are stationed and where both sides have conducted military operations since the start of the Israel-Hamas war:

Lebanon

Lebanon is home to the most powerful paramilitary force in the Middle East: Iran-backed Hezbollah, one of the Islamic Republic’s most effective regional proxies.

The group has its main base on the Israel-Lebanon border and has been exchanging fire with Israel since the Gaza war began. The movement is close to Hamas in Gaza.

While the exact size of the Shiite Islamist group’s arsenal is unknown, experts have estimated it has between 150,000 and 200,000 missiles, as well as rockets and mortars. Hundreds of those missiles “are of high precision and highly destructive,” according to the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.

Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah claims the group has 100,000 fighters, including active soldiers and reservists. Iran is believed to be Hezbollah’s main arms supplier.

Iraq

Tehran wields significant influence on several Shiite militias closely tied to the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). These include Kataib Hezbollah, Harakat al-Nujaba, and Kata’ib Sayyid al-Shuhada.

Experts say that some of the groups, like Kataib Hezbollah, are more answerable to the authorities in Tehran than to the government in Baghdad. The US Office of the Director of National Intelligence believes it has up to 10,000 members. Iraq is also home to the IRGC-founded Badr Organization as well as Asaib Ahl Al-Haq.

Iran-backed groups have carried out dozens of attacks against US forces in Iraq since the Gaza war started, to which the US has retaliated with airstrikes. Over the weekend, US personnel were injured in a ballistic missile attack on Al-Asad Air Base in Iraq. It appeared to be the second time ballistic missiles were used to target US and coalition forces in the country since October 7.

Until 2008, at the height of the Iraq war, the US had up to 160,000 troops in the country. Today, some 2,500 forces are deployed at several bases, including Erbil AB, Al-Asad AB, and the JOC-I (Union III) base in Baghdad.

Wary of his country becoming a staging ground for a regional war, Iraq’s prime minister this month said that Baghdad is seeking an exit of the US-led coalition. The US has stressed that its military is present in the country at the invitation of the government.

Syria

Iran has a direct presence in Syria, where its Quds Force, an elite unit of the IRGC that handles overseas operations, deployed after the 2011 uprising to back the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Its personnel served as military advisers and fought on the frontlines for Assad, alongside Iranian-backed militias.

Syria also hosts the Zainabiyoun and Fatemiyoun Brigades, Shiite militias linked to the IRGC who are believed to recruit Afghan and Pakistani fighters.

The US has 800 forces in Syria as part of an ongoing mission to defeat ISIS. Most US forces are stationed in what military officials call “the Eastern Syria Security Area,” where the US supports the anti-regime Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the country’s northeast. There is also some US troop presence in Syria’s southeast, where the US supports the Syrian Free Army, which also opposes the Syrian regime. The regime considers the US to be an invader.

US troops in Syria have increasingly come under attack by Iran-backed groups in recent weeks, to which the US has responded with airstrikes.

Yemen

At the heart of today’s proxy conflict between Iran and the US are Yemen’s Houthi rebels, who have been stepping up their strikes on ships in the Red Sea, saying they are revenge against Israel for its war in Gaza.

The group is currently in control of northern Yemen, and was engaged in nearly eight years of fighting with a US-backed and Saudi-led coalition before a halt in fighting last year.

The US military stations warships in the Red Sea, off Yemen’s coast, from which it has been striking Houthi targets. In December, the US assembled a coalition of more than 20 countries to safeguard commercial traffic against Houthi attacks in the Red Sea.

The Gaza Strip and Israel

The besieged Gaza Strip is home to the Hamas militant group, which Israel believes to have had around 30,000 fighters before the war. An Islamist organization with a military wing, Hamas was established in 1987, and on October 7 launched an attack on Israel that killed around 1,200 people and took 253 others hostage, according to Israeli authorities.

Iran has built closer ties with the group in recent years; unlike all of Tehran’s other allies in the region, Hamas is a Sunni Muslim organization, rather than a Shiite one.

There is no evidence that Iran knew in advance about the October 7 attacks and Iran is not believed to have as much influence on Hamas as its other allies in the region. But the US believes that Iran has historically provided up to $100 million annually in combined support to Palestinian militant groups, including Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), another Gaza-based militant group.

On the other side of the border, Israel is the largest recipient of US military aid, with Washington having contributed more than $130 billion in assistance since the Jewish state’s founding in 1948.

Gulf Arab states and Turkey

While the Israel-Hamas war has not yet spilled into the Gulf Arab states, some of those nations feel vulnerable as they have been targeted by Iran-linked groups before. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were attacked by the Houthis in 2019 and 2022, respectively.

The US-allied Gulf states are also home to some of the biggest deployments of US troops in the world.

The US has around 13,500 US forces in Kuwait, the largest American military presence in the region. Only Germany, Japan, and South Korea host more US forces than Kuwait.

The US’ second-largest military presence in the region is in Qatar, which hosts around 10,000 US forces at Al-Udeid Air Base, the largest US military base in the Middle East that is also home to the US Central Command’s Forward Headquarters and the Combined Air Operations Centre. The US this month quietly reached an agreement that extends its military presence for another 10 years at the base.

Qatar maintains relations with Hamas, having hosted its political office in the capital Doha since 2012.

More than 2,700 US forces are stationed at the Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, while the UAE hosts 3,500 US military personnel at Al Dhafra Air Base, which is home to the Gulf Air Warfare Center.

Other hubs for US military presence include Bahrain, which hosts the US Naval Forces Central Command and is home to the Navy’s Fifth Fleet, and Jordan, which hosts around 3,000 US troops. Turkey hosts 1,465 military members at Incirlik airbase.

The English, Germans and Italians called it the French disease. Polish people dubbed it the German disease, while Russians blamed it on Poles. In France, it was named the “Neapolitan disease” after the French army got infected during its invasion of Naples, Italy, in the first documented syphilis epidemic.

The origins of syphilis — a sexually transmitted infection that devastated 15th century Europe and is still prevalent today — have remained murky, difficult to study and the subject of some debate.

One long-standing theory is that the disease emerged in the Americas and migrated to Europe after the expeditions led by Christopher Columbus returned from the New World, but a new study suggests the true story is more complicated.

Genetic information about ancient pathogens can be preserved in bones, dental plaque, mummified bodies and historical medical specimens, extracted and studied — a field known as paleopathology.

Research published Wednesday in the journal Nature used paleopathology techniques on 2,000-year-old bones unearthed in Brazil in an attempt to shed more light on when and where syphilis originated. The study resulted in scientists recovering the earliest known genomic evidence of Treponema pallidum, the bacterium that causes syphilis and two other related diseases, which is reliably dated to long before the first trans-Atlantic contacts.

“This study is incredibly exciting because it is the first truly ancient treponemal DNA that has been recovered from archaeological human remains that are more than a few hundred years old,” said Brenda J. Baker, a professor of anthropology at Arizona State University, who wasn’t involved with the study.

A complex disease caused by a complex bacterium

Without treatment, syphilis can cause physical disfigurement, blindness and mental impairment. As a sexually transmitted disease, it has long carried a stigma — hence the past attempts by different populations to blame outbreaks on neighboring groups or countries.

It’s particularly complex to study both the disease and the pathogen responsible for it, said Molly Zuckerman, a professor and codirector of the Bioarchaeology Laboratories, New and Old World, at Mississippi State University, who wasn’t involved in the research.

“It was only in 2017 that researchers were able to culture T. p pallidum for the first time, even though we’ve known it’s the cause of syphilis for over one hundred years,” Zuckerman said in an email. “It’s still costly and cumbersome to study in the lab. There are many reasons that, despite our best efforts, it’s one of the least well understood common bacterial infections.”

The timing and sudden onset of the first documented syphilis epidemic in the late 15th century is what led many historians to conclude that it arrived in Europe after the Columbus expeditions. Others believe T. pallidum bacteria always had a global distribution but perhaps grew in virulence after initially manifesting as a mild disease.

“It is very clear that Europeans took a number of diseases (including smallpox) to the New World, decimating the native populations, so the hypothesis that the New World ‘gave syphilis to Europe’ was attractive to some,” noted Sheila A. Lukehart, professor emeritus in the department of medicine, infectious disease and global health at the University of Washington, who didn’t take part in the study.

Syphilis is closely related but distinct from two other subspecies or lineages of treponemal disease, nonsexually transmitted illnesses that have similar symptoms that are known as bejel and yaws and were also a focus of the new research.

The team behind the new study examined 99 bones from the archaeological site known as Jabuticabeira II from the Laguna region of Santa Catarina on the Brazilian coast. Some bones had marks characteristic of infection with T. pallidum — the bacteria effectively eat away at bones, leaving concave lesions.

Bone samples from four people yielded sufficient genetic data for the team to analyze, with one producing what study author Verena Schünemann, an assistant professor at the University of Zurich’s Institute of Evolutionary Medicine, described as a high-coverage genome, detailed enough for fine-grained analysis.

The analysis revealed that the pathogen responsible for the lesions was most closely related to the modern subspecies of T. pallidium that causes bejel, a disease found today in arid regions of Africa and the Middle East that has similar symptoms to syphilis.

The finding adds strength to previous suggestions that civilizations in the Americas experienced treponemal infections in pre-Columbian times, and that treponemal disease was already present in the New World at least 500 years before Columbus set sail.

Revelations from a bacterial family tree

Schünemann said the new findings do not mean the venereal syphilis that caused the 15th century epidemic came to Europe from the Americas at the time of Columbus. A similar study conducted previously by her team found T. pallidum bacteria in human remains in Finland, Estonia and the Netherlands from the early modern period (early 1400s onward), suggesting that some forms of treponemal disease, if not syphilis, were already in circulation on the continent at the time of Columbus’ expeditions to the New World.

What’s more, the genome recovered from the Brazilian sample provided a bacterial family tree going back thousands of years, suggesting that T. pallidum bacteria first evolved to infect humans as far back as 12,000 years ago. It was possible, Schünemann said, that the bacteria could have been brought to the Americas by its first inhabitants who crossed into the continent from Asia.

“I think that the story is way more complex than the Columbian hypothesis could have ever imagined,” she said.

Mathew Beale, a senior scientist in bacterial evolutionary genomics at the Wellcome Sanger Institute near Cambridge, England, agreed with Schünemann’s assessment, saying in an email that the study did not “prove or disprove the central tenet of the Columbian hypothesis itself — that Columbus’s voyage led to the importation of Treponema and led to the outbreaks of the 1500s and then to modern day syphilis.”

“This is mainly because the bacteria sequenced is not a direct ancestor of the strain that causes modern syphilis. … (I)t is a sister species. This could mean the various treponematoses were already very widely spread around the world, and could even predate the ancient migration and population of the Americas,” said Beale, who wasn’t involved in the research.

“It could alternatively mean that lots of different treponematoses were present in the New World, and one of those, only distantly related to the ancient genomes from this paper, was indeed imported by Columbus and his peers,” he added.

Further research on ancient genomes from across the world might be able to solve the mystery, illuminating which subspecies of the bacteria were present in Europe and the New World before the voyages of Columbus, according to Lukehart.

“The bigger scientific question now is not about syphilis, but is about the distribution of the three subspecies around the globe, particularly in pre-Columbian samples,” Lukehart said.

“The modern tools available for extracting DNA from ancient samples, for enriching the treponemal DNA, and obtaining deep sequencing from samples has rapidly increased our understanding of the Treponema.”

Russia accused Ukraine of downing a Russian military plane near the Ukrainian border Wednesday, saying all 74 people on board were killed including dozens of Ukrainian servicemen being transported for a prisoner swap.

The Ilyushin-76 cargo plane crashed inside Russian airspace, 5 to 6 kilometers (about 3 to 3.7 miles) from the village of Yablonovo in the Belgorod region. Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and its Defense Ministry called it an act of terrorism.

“The plane was destroyed by the Ukrainian Armed Forces from the area of Liptsy, Kharkiv region, using an anti-aircraft missile system,” the ministry said in a statement.

“The radar equipment of the Russian Aerospace Forces observed the launch of two Ukrainian missiles.”

Air defense systems in the Belgorod region were active shortly before the crash, according to the region’s governor Vyacheslav Gladkov.

Ukraine’s military command said it regarded Russian military aircraft approaching Belgorod as legitimate targets but stopped short of acknowledging it fired at the plane.

In a carefully worded statement, the General Staff of Ukraine’s armed forces said recent attacks on the city of Kharkiv, which lies just 18 miles (30 km) from Russia, are being facilitated by Russian cargo planes bringing weapons close to the border.

“The recorded intensity of the shelling is directly related to the increase in the number of military transport aircraft that have recently been heading to the Belgorod airfield,” the statement said.

“With this in mind, the Armed Forces of Ukraine will continue to take measures to destroy delivery means and control the airspace to eliminate the terrorist threat, including on the Belgorod-Kharkiv direction.”

Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov told reporters on Wednesday that he had requested an emergency United Nations Security Council meeting following the crash.

Loud, thunderous claps

The video was filmed in Yablonovo, which lies about 40 kilometers (25 miles) northeast of the city of Belgorod, and begins with the plane already in a steep fall. Just before it disappears behind a passing truck and trees, what appears to be a part of the plane can be seen falling from the front of the fuselage.

Two seconds later, after the plane has disappeared from view, a huge fireball and black smoke can be seen emerging from the point of impact – which is not visible – with the ground.

The camera then pans sharply to the left to show what appears to be a small cloud of smoke. This could be an indication of a possible explosion on the plane, though the flight path of the plane cannot be established with certainty from the video.

Several eyewitness described hearing loud, thunderous claps at the time of the crash, followed by an air raid alert in the Russian city.

“We heard one or two loud bangs. With an interval of a minute or less. The second bang was much louder. We all ran out to see if someone needs help, but the crash was further away after the village. It was very loud and scary,” one woman told Russian state media RIA Novosti.

“We heard three claps. The claps were loud enough, and we thought that either something had fallen somewhere here, or that missiles had been shot down in the air. Then right after that, the guys in my class began to say that air raid alert went off in Belgorod, the sound of a siren,” said one young man.

Another man said there was a “strong vibration” in the room after the loud noises.

The pilots of the Il-76 managed to steer the plane away from the village of Yablonovo, sacrificing their lives, the rector of the local church, Priest Georgy Borovikov said.

Claims of Ukrainian troops on board

Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov said 65 Ukrainian servicemen were on board the plane and being flown to Belgorod ahead of a prisoner swap.

“It was supposed to transport from the Moscow region to Belgorod 65 military servicemen of Ukraine. They were accompanied by three Russian officers plus the crew of six people. All of them died,” Lavrov said. “The Ukrainian side launched an air defense missile from the Kharkiv region. It targeted the aeroplane and was a fatal strike.”

A Ukrainian government agency for prisoners of war said it was investigating claims that the plane was carrying Ukrainian servicemen.

Ukraine appears to be unclear, at least publicly, on whether Ukrainian prisoners were actually on board but has suggested Moscow might have deliberately put the Ukrainian servicemen’s lives at danger.

A statement from the “Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War of Ukraine” provided no further details but did warn Russia was “actively conducting information special operations against Ukraine aimed at destabilizing Ukrainian society.”

Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence arm said in a subsequent statement that it had fulfilled its side of that agreement, bringing captured Russian servicemen to an agreed location. However, it said Ukraine had not received details from Russia about how Ukrainian servicemen were to be brought forward to the exchange – whether they would be moved by air, rail, or road.

Crucially, it said it had not been warned against challenging the security of Belgorod’s airspace at an appointed time – something it had been warned against doing “many times in the past.” Russia has a duty to ensure the safety of prisoners of war, the statement added.

“This may indicate deliberate actions by Russia aimed at endangering the lives and safety of prisoners. Landing a transport plane in a 30-kilometer combat zone cannot be safe and in any case should be discussed by both sides, because otherwise it jeopardizes the entire exchange process.”

Six Russian crew members and three “accompanying personnel” were also on board the plane, Russian officials said. Russian Parliament’s defense committee member Andrey Kartapolov said a second military plane, also an IL-76, was carrying an additional 80 prisoners of war, which was diverted.

Kartapolov said the “Ukrainian leadership was well aware of the impending exchange and was informed of how the prisoners would be delivered. But the IL-76 plane was shot down by three missiles, either with anti-aircraft missile systems or Patriot, or with German-made IRIS.”

Belgorod Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said the cause of the crash was being investigated. “A transport airplane crashed in the Korochansky district. It went down in a field near a settlement. All those on board died,” Gladkov said. “Now the crash site is cordoned off. All operational services are on site, investigative measures are being carried out,” he added.

The Ilyushin Il-76 is a Soviet-era military transport aircraft with a payload of more than 50 tons, according to Europe’s air safety body, Eurocontrol. It has been in service since 1975.

The border city of Belgorod was the site of one of the deadliest Ukrainian attacks on Russian soil late last year. At least 24 people, including three children, were killed and 108 others wounded in the attacks, which sparked retaliatory Russian strikes on the Kharkiv region of Ukraine.

The plane crash comes as Russia’s war in Ukraine is set to enter its third year, with little battlefield progress made by either side in recent months. Western intelligence assessments warn that battlefield movement could further stagnate this year.

Kyiv and Moscow have exchanged prisoners of war throughout the conflict. The largest swap came earlier in January, when the two sides each exchanged over 200 prisoners.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Argentina’s labor unions began a nationwide general strike on Wednesday against austerity measures and reforms by the country’s libertarian President Javier Milei.

Thousands of people marched toward Congress in the capital of Buenos Aires on Wednesday amid the strike, which began at 10 a.m. ET and is set to last 12 hours.

Since taking office, Milei has announced a raft of public spending cuts and asked lawmakers to sign off on a sweeping program of deregulation that scraps protections for businesses and consumers and makes it easier to privatize public companies.

The General Confederation of Labor (CGT) and a group of social movements called the strike in opposition to a decree signed by Milei to deregulate the economy and an omnibus bill he has sent to lawmakers. Part of the decree has been temporarily suspended by an appeals court after a challenge by the CGT.

The strike has led to transport disruptions with flag carrier Aerolíneas Argentinas saying that it canceled all its operations on Wednesday. A total of “295 flights were canceled” and more than 20,000 passengers have been affected, it said, adding that “the total cost for the company of this measure will exceed $2.5 million.”

The Ministry of Security said the country’s “protocol for maintaining public order in the event of road closures,” also known as the anti-picketing or anti-blockade protocol, would remain in force during the protests.

Asked whether it was OK for protesters to block streets, he said: “Yes, it is a conflict of rights, and society will have to resolve it. I think it’s fine.”

Milei, a political outsider and self-declared “anarcho-capitalist,” won Argentina’s presidential election in November, following an unconventional campaign full of big promises to overhaul the country’s beleaguered economy. He famously brandished a chainsaw at several of his rallies as an illustration of his plans to slash public spending.

Milei has made stamping out hyperinflation his top priority. Year-on-year inflation in Argentina topped 211% in December, the highest level in more than three decades.

A building sheltering hundreds of displaced people in the city of Khan Younis was hit on Wednesday, according to the UN, as Israeli forces ramped up attacks on southern Gaza, forcing streams of Palestinians to flee the neighborhood.

“Buildings ablaze and mass casualties. Safe access to and from the center has been denied for two days. People are trapped,” Thomas White, the director of UNRWA Affairs, said on X.

At least nine people were killed and another 75 injured, White said, adding that a team from his agency and the World Health Organization were trying to reach the site. He said the building shelters 800 people and had been hit by Israeli tank fire.

However, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement that it has “currently” ruled out that the incident was “the result of an aerial or artillery strike by the IDF.”

It said a “thorough review of the operations of the forces in the vicinity is underway,” adding that it is “examining the possibility that the strike was a result of Hamas fire.”

In the past week, the IDF has intensified its offensive on Khan Younis, where medical facilities sheltering displaced civilians and health workers have been battered. The IDF maintains there are Hamas militants located in hospitals in the area. Relief agencies say the siege has blocked critical humanitarian operations.

The Israeli military launched its campaign in Gaza with the stated aim of eliminating Hamas, after more than 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 kidnapped during the militant group’s October 7 attacks on Israel, according to Israeli authorities.

Since then its bombardment and besiegement of the enclave has decimated swathes of the territory, diminishing food, fuel and water supplies and exposing more than 2.2 million civilians to starvation, dehydration and disease.

On Tuesday, UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned that Palestinians in Gaza “face inhumane, squalid conditions, struggling to simply make it through another day without proper shelter, heating, sanitary facilities, food and drinkable water.”

Hospitals surrounded

Palestinian health officials and paramedics have also reported Israeli tanks and attack drones firing at people trying to flee the vicinity of the Amal and Nasser hospitals in Khan Younis.

The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza said Israeli forces have surrounded the Nasser Medical Complex, cutting off crucial medical, food, and fuel supplies.

“Hundreds of patients with infections and pregnant women are facing serious complications,” health ministry spokesperson Ashraf Al-Qudra said.

The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said Israeli forces are “surrounding” their headquarters and the Al-Amal Hospital and have enforced “restrictions on movement around both the building and the hospital”.

Six people were killed in attacks on Khan Younis on Wednesday, PRCS added, three of which had been “targeted” at the entrance of their headquarters.

Israeli tanks also surrounded the compound of the Al-Aqsa University in the city where thousands have been sheltering, Palestinian state news agency WAFA said. It said civilians had been targeted elsewhere in southern Gaza in the last 24 hours.

Four civilians, including a child, were killed in an Israeli attack on a “rest stop” in the coastal town of Al-Mawasi, and a man fleeing fighting in Khan Younis was struck in his car, reported WAFA.

Israeli forces conducted “numerous intense air raids, described as ‘fire belts’ to accompany its ground incursion, which has extended all the way to the west of Khan Younis,” a Geneva-based NGO advocating for human rights in the region, Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, said on Wednesday

Euro-Med HR reported that shelters housing “tens of thousands” of displaced people in the western part of Khan Younis, and in Al-Mawasi, are under siege by the Israeli military.

The IDF said they continue to operate in Khan Younis, where they are pursuing “military targets, outposts, infrastructure and command and control centers,” and said the operation there will continue for “several days.”

“The brigade combat team is located around the [Khan Younis] camp, in the western part, and have begun to operate within it.  The manoeuvre will continue against military targets that are in the area, outposts, infrastructure, and command and control centers,” the IDF said.

“There is an area with shelters, there are several hospitals, several sensitive sites. We have seen terrorists use these sites. Almost a week ago we saw a launch from the Nasser Hospital, there are terrorists located in these hospitals.

“This operation will continue for several days until we maximize the achievements: dismantling Hamas’ military framework and Hamas strongholds, which we are required to thoroughly dismantle,” added the IDF.

Thousands displaced

As the IDF surrounded the city of Khan Younis, thousands of Palestinians moved south towards Rafah, near the border with Egypt, where 1.3 million people have been displaced, according to the UN.

The video shows cars, trucks, and tractors transporting families and their essential belongings, such as blankets, mattresses and food. Many, however, were walking.

Hisham Sayegh said he saw four people killed, which forced him to leave with his family as shelling in the area intensifies.

“There are dead people on the ground. We left them behind. There are people killed inside the houses,” Sayegh said. “We were expecting to die at any minute.”

Jamal al Rozzi, an aid worker displaced near Khan Younis, said he was forced to flee to Rafah on Wednesday after heavy bombardment in the area.

“We had to evacuate again … because the area where we were was under bombardment,” he said. “It was heavy bombardment and we were hardly safe there.”