A far-right Israeli government minister has criticized a decision by the country’s military to withdraw an army division from Gaza, exposing further divides between lawmakers over the military offensive in the Palestinian enclave.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir said a “rocket barrage” launched from Gaza into Israel on Tuesday morning “proves once again that the occupation of the (Gaza) Strip is necessary for the realization of the combat goals.”

The IDF said Monday that the 36th division, which comprises armored, engineering, and infantry companies, withdrew from the Gaza Strip after 80 days, in the most significant sign yet of a shift to a new phase of fighting that some Israeli officials have been promising.

A growing chorus of leaders have condemned the spiraling death toll in Gaza, where Israel’s deadly military offensive since October 7 has decimated swathes of the territory and left more than 2.2 million people facing famine, deadly disease and forcible displacement.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Monday that the “intensive manoeuvring stage” of Israel’s military offensive in northern and southern Gaza would “end soon.”

The Israeli military is working to “eliminate pockets of resistance” in northern Gaza, Gallant said, claiming: “We will achieve this via raids, airstrikes, special operations and additional activities.”

After the October 7 attacks, Gallant said the original plan was for the “intensive manoeuvring stage” of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza to last approximately three months. But, he cautioned the Israeli military adapts its operations “in accordance with the reality on the ground” and “our intelligence.”

“At the end of the period, and according to the assessment of the situation, it will be decided on the continuation of the operational activity of the division’s forces according to the operational need,” the spokesperson added.

The withdrawal means there are now three IDF combat divisions left in Gaza, alongside special forces, according to the spokesperson.

The units still on the ground in Gaza include the 98th division, which is operating in central Gaza and is the biggest division ever created in the history of the IDF. The IDF does not comment on the number of its troops in Gaza, but every division comprises multiple brigades which can each include thousands of soldiers.

Divides within Netanyahu’s cabinet

Ben Gvir’s comments highlight the tensions that exist within the Israeli government, and the wider defense and security establishment, over how much of a presence Israel should retain inside Gaza after the war.

Earlier this month, Israeli cabinet members argued over plans for the post-war future of Gaza and how to handle investigations into the security failings around Hamas’ October 7 attacks.

The public spat on January 4 followed what one source described as a “fight” at a meeting of the the security cabinet. Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said there had been a “stormy discussion,” while former Defense Minister Benny Gantz said a “politically motivated attack” had been launched.

The security cabinet split was over how to handle investigations into the October 7 attack on Israel, including the Israeli military’s failure to anticipate it, as well as how to approach the war from now on.

If the government collapses, Israel would likely face new elections that Netanyahu is widely expected to lose.

Meanwhile, some far-right politicians are pushing for complete re-occupation, along with the possible return of Jewish settlements, in the Gaza Strip. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is under pressure from the United States to ensure a prominent role for the Palestinian Authority, said recently Israel has “no intention of permanently occupying Gaza.”

Israel’s military campaign in Gaza has forcibly displaced at least 1.93 million people, according to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees. Thousands of families have moved multiple times as Israel’s offensive has moved to new areas.

Regional actors in the Middle East have repeatedly likened the mass movement of Palestinians in Gaza to the “Nakba,” or catastrophe, the Arabic term for the expulsion or flight of Palestinians from their towns during the founding of Israel in 1948.

Meet Retro, a cloned rhesus monkey born on July 16, 2020.

He is now more than 3 years old and is “doing well and growing strong,” according to Falong Lu, one of the authors of a study published in the journal Nature Communications Tuesday that describes how Retro came to be.

Retro is only the second species of primate that scientists have been able to clone successfully. The same team of researchers announced in 2018 that they had made two identical cloned cynomolgus monkeys (a type of macaque), which are still alive today.

“We have achieved the first live and healthy cloned rhesus monkey, which is a big step forward that has turned impossible to possible, although the efficiency is very low compared to normal fertilized embryos,” said Lu, an investigator at the State Key Laboratory of Molecular Developmental Biology and Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. “Currently, we haven’t had the second live birth yet.”

The first mammal to be cloned — Dolly the sheep — was created in 1996 using a technique called somatic cell nuclear transfer, or SCNT, where scientists essentially reconstruct an unfertilized egg by fusing a somatic cell nucleus (not from a sperm or egg) with an egg in which the nucleus has been removed.

Since then, scientists have cloned many mammalian species, including pigs, cows, horses and dogs, but the process has been hit or miss, with typically only a tiny percentage of the embryos that are transferred into surrogates resulting in viable offspring.

“In a way we have made much progress in that, after Dolly, many mammalian species were cloned, but the truth is that inefficiency remains a major roadblock,” said Miguel Esteban, principal investigator with the Guangzhou Institute of Biomedicine and Health at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He was not involved in the latest research but has collaborated with some members of the research team on other primate studies.

Cloning a rhesus monkey

The Chinese team, based in Shanghai and Beijing, used a modified version of SCNT in their work on cynomolgus monkeys (Macaca fascicularis) and tweaked the technique further to clone the rhesus monkey (Macaca mulatta).

During hundreds of failed cloning attempts, they realized that, in the early cloned embryos, the outer membrane that forms the placenta did not develop properly. To address this problem, they performed a process called inner cell mass transplantation, which involved putting cloned inner cells into a non-cloned embryo, and that allowed the clone to develop normally, Esteban explained.

The team then tested the new technique using 113 reconstructed embryos, 11 of which were transferred to seven surrogates, resulting in only one live birth, according to the study.

“We think that there might be additional…. abnormalities to be fixed. Strategies to further enhance the success rate of SCNT in primates remains …our main focus in the future,” Lu said

The first two cloned monkeys, Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua, are now more than 6 years old and live a “happy and healthy life” with others of the same species. Lu said thus far the researchers have not identified any potential limits on the cloned monkeys’ lifespan.

Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua are usually described as the first cloned monkeys. However, a rhesus monkey was cloned in 1999 using what researchers consider a simpler cloning method. In that case, scientists split the embryos, much like what happens naturally when identical twins develop, rather than using an adult cell like with the SCNT technique.

The implications of cloning monkeys

The researchers said that being able to successfully clone monkeys might help accelerate biomedical research given that there are limitations on what scientists can learn from lab mice. Research on nonhuman primates, which are closer to humans, has been pivotal to lifesaving medical advances, including the creation of vaccines against Covid-19, according to a report by a panel of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine released in May.

The use of monkeys in scientific research is a contentious issue because of ethical concerns about animal welfare. The team said it followed Chinese laws and guidelines governing the use of nonhuman primates in scientific research.

The UK’s Royal Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals said it has “serious ethical and welfare concerns around the application of cloning technology to animals. Cloning animals requires procedures that can cause pain and distress, and there can be high failure and mortality rates.”

Being able to produce genetically identical monkeys could be useful, Esteban said.

“This research is proof of principle that cloning can be done in different non-human primate species and opens the door to new ways of enhancing the efficiency. Cloned monkeys can be genetically engineered in complex ways that wild-type monkeys cannot; this has many implications for disease modeling. There is also a species conservation perspective,” he added.

Dr Lluís Montoliu, research scientist at the National Center for Biotechnology (CNB-CSIC) in Spain who wasn’t involved in the research, said that cloning both species of monkey demonstrated two things.

“First, it is possible to clone primates. And second, no less important, it is extremely difficult to succeed with these experiments, with such low efficiencies,” he said in a statement.

He added that the low success rate of the process showed that “not only was human cloning unnecessary and debatable, but if attempted, it would be extraordinarily difficult and ethically unjustifiable.”

“Reproductive cloning a human being is completely unacceptable,” Lu said.

After a summer of record-breaking heat, vast swaths of the United States are now grappling with extreme cold as a brutal Arctic blast brings snow squalls, deadly ice and life-threatening wind chills.

As unprecedented heat makes way for cold, it can provide fuel for climate-change deniers who point to freezing temperatures as evidence that global warming is overstated.

But scientists are clear: cold extremes will still occur even as winters warm overall.

Global heat records outpace cold records — 2023 was the hottest year on record by a huge margin. And even as the US struggles to cope with intense bursts of heavy snow now, over the long term, the human-caused climate crisis has led to an alarming trend of disappearing snow in the Northern Hemisphere.

Some scientists say that climate change may even be playing a role in these icy blasts, as warming in the Arctic increases the likelihood that frigid, polar air can sweep southwards.

What explains the cold?

Our weather is heavily influenced by the jet stream, a wavy river of fast-moving air high in the atmosphere.

When the jet stream swings south, it can push cold Arctic air into North America, Europe and Asia. When it retreats north, warm air will also push further north.  A big high-pressure swing over Europe last January led to record warm winter temperatures.

There’s also another factor to consider: the polar vortex, a belt of strong winds which sits extremely high in the stratosphere – above the level of the jet stream – around the North Pole.

The polar vortex is like a spinning top. In its normal state it rotates very fast, keeping blisteringly cold air locked in the Arctic region. But it can get disrupted and knocked off course, becoming stretched and distorted, spilling out cold air and influencing the path of the jet stream.

It happened in 2021, bringing fierce cold to Texas, leading to nearly 250 deaths and knocking out power to large parts of the state.

This is where the link to climate change comes in. Some scientists believe polar vortex disruptions and changes to the jet stream are being driven by warming in the Arctic, which is heating up around four times faster than the rest of the planet.

The idea has been gaining traction since a 2012 paper by Jennifer Francis, a senior scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center in Massachusetts. It found that as the Arctic warms, the difference between the cold temperatures in the north and warm temperatures in the south is leading to a weaker, wavier jet stream, which pushes very cold air southwards.

Her much-debated paper kicked off more research into this developing area of science.

In 2021, Judah Cohen, a climatologist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, published research which found rapid heating in parts of the Arctic, combined with high snowfall in Siberia, was making the jet stream more wavy and knocked the polar vortex off course.

The area of science remains very unsettled, however, and others have said the links between Arctic warming and cold snaps are far from clear.

While there have been a number of very cold Northern Hemisphere winters coinciding with warm Arctic winters, the difficulty is unpicking cause from effect, said James Screen, professor in climate science at Exeter University, whose own research concluded Arctic warming is not a trigger for colder winters.

Extreme cold snaps can be explained by normal climate variability, said Screen. In other words, even as winters get warmer, cold extremes will still occur.

And climate change can also influence the severity of winter storms, as a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture leading to more intense rain or snow when it falls.

As scientists work to unravel complex links between climate change and periods of intense cold, all agree on one thing: the trend is for warmer winters.

“If you look at the data, we see that over the long term, global warming is leading to fewer and less severe cold extremes,” Screen said.

Nouran Salahieh and Allison Chinchar contributed to reporting

Just weeks before Hamas launched its October 7 attack on Israel, Saudi Arabia said it was inching closer to normalizing diplomatic ties with the Jewish state. Despite three months of war that have left more than 23,000 Palestinians dead and the Arab world seething, Riyadh is signaling that a recognition of Israel could still be on the table.

On another tour of shuttle diplomacy across the Middle East, including to Saudi Arabia and Israel, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken last week said that normalization talks continue to take place and “there is a clear interest in the region in pursuing that.”

“With regard to integration, to normalization, yes, we talked about that actually on every stop, including of course here in Saudi Arabia,” Blinken told reporters in Saudi Arabia before heading to Israel.  “And I can tell you this: There’s a clear interest here in pursuing that,” he said. “This interest is there, it’s real, and it could be transformative.”

In an interview with the BBC on Tuesday, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United Kingdom said “absolutely there’s interest” in normalizing relations. “There’s been interest since 1982,” Prince Khalid bin Bandar said.

But experts say the price that Saudi Arabia would demand in exchange for normalization would be higher now than before the Gaza war, as Riyadh may feel compelled to extract more concessions from the United States and Israel.

The steps, Shihabi said, must be “concrete and not empty promises that Israel could forget about after normalization like it did with other countries that normalized (with Israel).”

While Blinken did not call for a ceasefire in Gaza, he added that Israel’s further integration into the Middle East would require that “the conflict end in Gaza,” as well as the paving of a “practical pathway” to a Palestinian state.

The Palestinians seek an independent state in the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza. Most Muslim and Arab countries have refused to recognize Israel until such a state is established.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials have repeatedly shot down the prospect of a Palestinian state. Last month US President Joe Biden said the Israeli government “doesn’t want a two-state solution.”

In 2020, four Arab nations, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan, recognized Israel under a set of treaties known as the Abraham Accords, sidestepping the longstanding Arab demand for a Palestinian state. Since then, the Biden administration has been working to bring Saudi Arabia, widely regarded as the leader of the Muslim world, to follow suit, a move that could have opened the door to other Muslim countries to recognize Israel.

Seen as one of the architects of the accords, UAE ambassador Yousef Al Otaiba at the time stressed the viability of the two-state solution, indicating that it was not being abandoned for the sake of normalization.

The treaty between the UAE and Israel “immediately stops annexation (of the West Bank) and the potential of violent escalation. It maintains the viability of a two-state solution as endorsed by the Arab League and international community,” Otaiba said.

While the establishment of a Palestinian state has been Riyadh’s official stance for two decades, the demand had been absent from official rhetoric in recent years, before the October 7 attack.

When asked about Saudi Arabia’s requirements for normalization with Israel, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) in September told Fox News he hopes the deal will “reach a place that will ease the life of the Palestinians,” stopping short of calling for a state.

At the time, official rhetoric was centered on stronger US security guarantees for Saudi Arabia, as well as US help with the kingdom’s civilian nuclear program.

The October 7 attack on Israel and the devastating war in Gaza that followed prompted Saudi Arabia to pause normalization talks with an Israeli government despised in an Arab world that sees it as responsible for the suffering of Palestinians.

A poll conducted by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, from November 14 to December 6, found that 96% of the 1,000 Saudis surveyed said they believed “Arab countries should immediately break all diplomatic, political, economic, and any other contacts with Israel, in protest against its military action in Gaza.”

Since the war, the US has suggested that sidestepping Palestinian rights, in order to integrate Israel in the region, may not be tenable. Blinken said on Tuesday that it is clear to him from conversations across the region that a normalization deal is “not in substitute for or at the expense of a political horizon for the Palestinians and ultimately a Palestinian state.”

Normalization talks seem once again to be prioritizing Palestinian rights.

“Given how inflamed Saudi public opinion is in light of the war in Gaza, Riyadh will now need much more meaningful Israeli concessions towards the Palestinians, possibly including the creation of a provisional Palestinian state,” said Firas Maksad, senior fellow and director of outreach at the Middle East Institute in Washington, DC.

Israel’s war on Hamas has so far killed more than 23,000 in Gaza, according to the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health in the enclave. Israel launched the war in response to Hamas’ October 7 attack, during which Palestinian militants killed 1,200 people and took more than 240 hostages, according to Israeli authorities. Israel believes 107 hostages seized that day are still being held in Gaza, along with the bodies of 25 who are dead.

“While we still, going forward even after October 7, believe in normalization, it does not come at the cost of the Palestinian people,” Prince Khalid, the Saudi ambassador, told the BBC, describing Palestinians as “the key element” in any normalization deal with Israel. “This is not a Saudi-Israeli peace plan, this is a Palestinian-Israeli peace plan.”

Asked whether Hamas would be part of any future Palestinian state, the ambassador did not rule out the prospect, saying it “requires a lot of thought, a lot of work… there is always room for change if you have optimism and hope.”

Riyadh is not in a hurry

Saudi-Israel normalization has become one of the main US policy objectives in the Middle East. Biden, who during his presidential campaign promised to turn Saudi Arabia into a “pariah” for the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey, put his differences with MBS aside over the past two years as Riyadh signaled its willingness to embrace Israel.

For the Biden administration, brokering a normalization deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia would be a major foreign policy victory ahead of this year’s presidential elections.

“Congressional delegations, composed of both Democrats and Republicans, now visit this kingdom frequently, and relations with the Biden administration have rebounded after a bumpy start,” Maksad said, adding that until Saudi Arabia sees the change it wants, it has the luxury of time.

Riyadh is however wary of striking a deal with the current Israeli cabinet, the most right-wing government in Israel’s history, and one seen in the Arab world as responsible for the carnage in Gaza.

Prince Khalid described the current Israeli attitude as one that is “extreme,” “absolutist” and uncompromising.

“The problem is not the occupied land, occupied by settlers. It is that the settlers have now occupied the Israeli government, and by that I mean the extremist settlers, the extremist settler mentality which is absolutist,” Prince Khalid told the BBC, adding that the main obstacle to finding a resolution to the conflict is now Israel.

Already, there are some strains between Israel and the UAE, the main Arab party to the Abraham Accords. The Gulf state, which held the rotating United Nations Security Council presidency twice over the past two years, introduced a draft resolution that was critical of Israel in December. A significantly watered-down version eventually passed.

Abu Dhabi is pressing for an end to the war and a return to the two-state solution as a pathway for peace. The war in Gaza is “a turning point moment” for the UAE, Lana Nusseibeh, its ambassador to the UN told The Wall Street Journal last month.

Without a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the UAE will not be “as fully invested in the rebuild” of Gaza, she said. “That’s not the trajectory we signed the Abraham Accords on,” she said.

Abu Dhabi has, however, indicated that it doesn’t want the war to jeopardize relations with Israel.

Anwar Gargash, the UAE president’s diplomatic adviser, told a conference in Dubai this month that in recognizing Israel, “the UAE has taken a strategic decision, and strategic decisions are long-term.”

“There is no doubt that any strategic decision will face multiple obstacles, and we’re facing a major obstacle that must be dealt with,” Gargash said, according to Saudi-owned Al Arabiya.

Shihabi, the Saudi analyst, said that his country’s government “is not interested in cosmetics,” adding that a normalization deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel is “the only card the US or anybody else has with Israel to encourage them to make concessions.”

“The kingdom is aware of that and wants to try and push for a final settlement of this conflict.”

Across much of northern New England, winter has been painfully late – and rainy.

Though the weather is about to turn more solidly cold, hardy New Englanders are bemoaning a start to the winter that’s so far been characterized by fog, rain and warmer temperatures – conditions that have dealt a blow to the region’s recreational lifeblood, including snowmobiling, ice fishing and skiing.

When Vermont state fisheries biologist Shawn Good looks out at popular lakes that should be frozen solid by early January, he’s seen open water and winter anglers fishing in boats. The ice just hasn’t been there.

“On January 12, it’s absolutely crazy to have some of our most popular lakes for ice fishing have open water, but that’s the situation right now,” Good said in a Friday interview. “We get these freeze-thaw cycles continuing to come around. We are seeing more people out fishing in boats right now than we’re seeing people fishing on the ice.”

The warmer temperatures mean precipitation that could be snow is falling as rain. After enduring a historically wet summer last year, New Englanders got only more record-breaking rain in December. A massive coastal storm walloped the region, turning rivers into raging torrents and cutting power to over 800,000 people.

That storm wreaked havoc on the Maine Snowmobile Association’s 14,000-mile network of trails, which it had just finished rebuilding from spring and summer washouts.

That storm brought down trees and washed out bridges, Swett said, severe enough damage that repairs won’t be able to start in earnest until this summer.

On top of the hit to the trail system, there has been very little snow, save for a few corners of the state. Although some snowmobile clubs in Maine are starting to get enough snow to get back out on the trails, Swett said he fears that will lead to crowded trails with more people riding in fewer areas – a concern for rider safety.

Swett says winter in New England has changed significantly over his lifetime.

“It’s not cold like it used to be in my day,” Swett said. “Back in the day we had a couple days of a January thaw, then it went back into winter, but that hasn’t happened. Global warming, I don’t know what else it would be. It’s pretty sad.”

A rainy start to the ski season

There is a certain kind of pride to East Coast skiing – being not only able, but eager, to navigate icy patches, tight turns and steep vertical drops on bitterly cold days.

Skiing in wet snow is significantly less fun.

“We’ve gotten too much rain, way too much rain,” said Ry Young, marketing and events manager at Mad River Glen – a cooperative ski resort in Vermont. “The temperature swings, the amount of moisture that’s coming with them, they’re all increasing. It wasn’t a huge surprise this year to see these storms come through and continue to drop these massive amounts of water on us.”

Smaller amounts of rain or wet snow can actually be beneficial to help build up a solid base on mountains, Young said. But too much rain can be a disaster.

“If you put a groomer on wet snow and it freezes, then you’re just going to end up with solidified corduroy,” Young said. In other words: “It’s going to be a solid frozen sheet of ice.”

“It can’t be understated that it’s been a bit of a roller coaster of a weather pattern,” said Brandon Swartz, general manager of Attitash Mountain in New Hampshire. Swartz said his teams try to “strike while the cold is here” and maximize “every window of opportunity we have” to make snow.

Manmade snow “can take more of a beating” from rain, Swartz said, because it is denser than natural snow and water can flow through it more easily. That has meant that even strong rainstorms haven’t washed all the snowpack away, letting crews at Attitash and other resorts not have to start their snowmaking operations completely from scratch.

“It’s really come down to the improvements of the technology to help us navigate challenging times,” said JD Crichton, general manager at Wildcat Mountain in northern New Hampshire (Wildcat and Attitash are both owned by Vail Resorts).

But some skiing operations in northern New England can’t take advantage of snowmaking. In Littleton, New Hampshire, a small rope-tow operation called the Mt. Eustis ski hill has been sitting dormant – waiting for enough natural snow to open.

Skiing is an expensive sport, and unlike most resorts in the area, Mt. Eustis costs $5 per day – a suggested donation. After being closed for years, it reopened in 2016 to try to make skiing more cost-effective and accessible for locals. But its volunteers say its season is getting shorter, entirely dependent on the whims of warming winters.

“We’re trying to be hopeful but there’s nothing we can do,” said John Tully, vice president of the operation’s board of directors. “It’s just a waiting game. Last week it was [forecasted] that we were going to get this huge storm and it just ended up being rain.”

Attitash recently donated one of its grooming machines to Mt. Eustis, but it has just been sitting unused as everyone waits for consistent snow. And the ski hill’s board of directors has started talking about how they could diversify their operations in warmer seasons – trying to sustain it in the spring and summer for lack of winter snow.

In New England, people often make small talk about the weather, and there’s been no shortage of grumbling about the winter rain, Tully said.

“There is this sort of feeling that we got a lot of rain, if this was only snow,” he said. “With the hottest year being this past year, things are definitely changing. We see it, we feel it.”

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards on Monday launched ballistic missiles at what it said was a spy base for Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad in northern Iraq, and at “anti-Iran terror groups” in Syria, in the latest escalation of hostilities that further risks spiraling into a wider regional conflict.

The strikes were condemned by the United States as “reckless” and imprecise.

Iranian forces said the midnight missile strike in Iraq destroyed “one of the main espionage headquarters” of Israel in Erbil, capital of the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region, in response to what they said were Israeli attacks that killed Iranian Revolutionary Guard commanders and members of the Iranian resistance front.

“This headquarters has been the center for developing espionage operations and planning terrorist acts” in the region and Iran, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said in a statement Monday.

The IRGC also said it struck several locations in Erbil and claimed to target “sites of Iranian opposition groups.”

At least four civilians were killed and six others injured in the attack, according to a statement early Tuesday by the Security Council of the Kurdistan region.

“This blatant violation undermines the sovereignty of the Kurdistan Region and Iraq,” the Security Council said in its statement, which accused Iran of employing baseless pretexts to attack Erbil, a historically stable region that it said had never posed a threat to any party.

Also on Monday, the IRGC said it fired ballistic missiles at bases of “anti-Iran terror groups in occupied territories of Syria.”

It claimed the targets were involved in the recent dual bombings in the city of Kerman during a memorial for the slain Quds Force Commander Qasem Soleimani that left scores dead and wounded.

ISIS claimed responsibility for the deadly twin blasts near Soleimani’s burial site, in what was the deadliest attack in Iran since its 1979 revolution.

In its statement, the IRGC said it “identified and destroyed a number of key terror commanders and elements, especially Daesh (ISIS), in the occupied territories of Syria by firing a number of ballistic missiles.”

A US official said Monday initial indications of Iran’s missile attacks showed “this was a reckless and imprecise set of strikes.”

“We have seen the reports, and we tracked the missiles, which impacted in northern Iraq and northern Syria. No US personnel or facilities were targeted,” the official said.

“Iran is claiming this is in response to the terrorist attacks in Kerman, Iran, and Rask, Iran, with a focus on ISIS. We will continue to assess the situation.”

“No American personnel were injured,” they said.

Kurdistan region Prime Minister Masrour Barzani called on “our partners in the international community not to remain silent in the face of repeated attacks against the people of Kurdistan.”

“Earlier this evening, Erbil was once again attacked by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps. Sadly, during tonight’s unjustifiable attack, several civilians have been martyred and wounded,” Barzani said in a statement.

“I condemn this cowardly attack on the people of the Kurdistan region in the strongest terms.”

Concerns of an escalating war

Iran’s attacks will further raise fears that Israel’s war in Gaza could widen into a full-scale war in the Middle East with grave humanitarian, political and economic consequences.

Israel’s relentless bombing of Gaza in response to Hamas’ October 7 terror attacks has killed more than 24,000 people, according to the Hamas-run Ministry of Health, and wrought widespread devastation, as civilians live with the threat of imminent death – either by an airstrike, starvation or disease.

The UN emergency relief chief said the war has brought famine to Gaza “with such incredible speed,” and South Africa has brought allegations of genocide at the United Nations’ top court – claims strenuously denied by Israel.

The conflict has escalated hostilities across the region, with Iran’s allies and proxies – the so-called axis of resistance – launching attacks on Israeli forces and its allies.

US forces last week sank three boats belonging to Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels in the Red Sea, and the US and UK launched strikes against Houthi targets in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen aimed at halting a series of attacks on commercial shipping.

On Monday, a Houthi missile hit a US-owned cargo ship in the Red Sea, marking what appears to be the first time the militants have successfully struck a US-owned or operated ship.

Last week, the US carried out a strike in Baghdad that killed a leader from an Iran-backed proxy group that Washington blamed for attacks against US personnel in the region. US troops in Iraq and Syria have repeatedly come under rocket and drone attacks from Tehran’s proxies.

Fighting has intensified between Israel and the powerful Iran-backed group Hezbollah, across the Lebanon border. On Sunday, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah vowed to press on with confrontations with Israeli forces on the Lebanon border until the end of the Israeli offensive in Gaza.

Israel is also suspected of carrying out an attack on high-ranking Hamas leader, Saleh Al-Arouri, in Beirut, sparking fury among Hezbollah leaders who control the area where he was killed.

“It’s been an extraordinary and wholly unwelcome aspect of the Gazan war,” he said. “It has brought famine with such incredible speed to the front of the lines.”

Aid has been trickling into Gaza slowly from two border crossings in the south but agencies have been warning it is a fraction of what is needed.

Last week, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said Israel had denied critical supplies from entering northern Gaza. But Israel has accused the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency of not doing enough and “stalling” the progress.

“It’s not a matter of the number of trucks that can get in,” he said after listing a series of roadblocks stopping aid including unreliable “deconfliction of access routes”, and civilians having to move “from one place of insecurity to another place of insecurity.”

“If you cannot rely on deconfliction of access routes of people in need, if you cannot rely on hospitals not being attacked … if you cannot rely on people having to move from one place of insecurity to another place of insecurity, those are the issues that make humanitarian aid deliveries,” he said. “It’s not a matter of the number of trucks that can get in.”

More than 24,000 people have been killed in Gaza and more than 60,000 others injured since October 7, the Hamas-run Ministry of Health said Monday. Meanwhile, nearly 90% of Gaza’s pre-war population has been displaced, according to the UN.

That campaign began after the October 7 murder and kidnapping rampage by Hamas gunmen that saw some 1,200 people killed in Israel and more than 240 taken hostage, more than 130 of whom are still in captivity, alive or dead.

Israel’s relentless bombing has wrought widespread devastation, as civilians live with the threat of imminent death – either by an airstrike, starvation or disease.

Griffiths warned Monday that the dire humanitarian situation in the enclave could create “generational hatred.”

“We worry for the security of Israel as much as the security of Gaza,” he said.

‘Screaming from hunger’

On Monday, UN agencies issued a joint appeal for greater aid access to Gaza, saying “a fundamental step change in the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza is urgently needed.”

The heads of the World Food Programme (WFP), UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health Organization said that getting enough supplies into and across Gaza depends on the opening of new entry routes; more trucks being allowed through border checks each day; fewer restrictions on the movement of humanitarian workers; and guarantees of safety for people accessing and distributing aid.

“People in Gaza risk dying of hunger just miles from trucks filled with food,” said WFP head Cindy McCain. “Every hour lost puts countless lives at risk. We can keep famine at bay but only if we can deliver sufficient supplies and have safe access to everyone in need, wherever they are.”

The WFP warned in early December that the “catastrophic hunger crisis” in Gaza which “already threatens to overwhelm the civilian population” will only intensify.

“I felt bad for the kids, they had nothing to keep them warm and we were dying from the cold at night,” Tibi said.

Adults ration their meals so that children do not go hungry. “I see people starving, literally starving,” said Shadi Bleha, a 20-year-old student, displaced from northern Gaza to Rafah, who eats one meal a day.

Lives ‘hanging in the balance’

The Integrated Food Security and Nutrition Phase Classification (IPC) has confirmed that the entire population of Gaza – about 2.2 million people – is facing high levels of acute food insecurity or worse, with one in four households facing catastrophic conditions.

The IPC said it is the highest share of people facing high levels of acute food insecurity the initiative has ever classified for any given area or country.

“Children at high risk of dying from malnutrition and disease desperately need medical treatment, clean water and sanitation services, but the conditions on the ground do not allow us to safely reach children and families in need,” said UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell.

Gaza’s 350,000 children under the age of 5 are especially vulnerable, UNICEF said. The agency warned that in the next few weeks, child wasting, which is the most life-threatening form of malnutrition in children, could affect up to 10,000 children.

“Some of the material we desperately need to repair and increase water supply remain restricted from entering Gaza. The lives of children and their families are hanging in the balance. Every minute counts,” Russell said.

But the agencies echoed relief chief Griffiths’ warning that humanitarian aid alone cannot reverse the worsening hunger among Gaza’s population.

Phillipe Lazzarini, Commissioner General for the UN’s Palestine Refugee Agency (UNRWA), said “commercial supplies are a must to allow the markets and private sector to re-open and provide an alternative to food accessibility.”

If you’ve been on YouTube lately, you might have come across someone claiming wind and solar energy don’t work, that rising sea levels will help coral reefs flourish, or that climate scientists are corrupt and alarmist.

These are all false and misleading statements taken from a handful of thousands of YouTube videos analyzed by the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), which has identified a stark change in the tactics of climate deniers over the past few years.

Where once climate deniers would outright reject climate change as a hoax or scam, or claim that humans were not responsible for it, many are now shifting to a different approach, one which attempts to undermine climate science, cast doubt on climate solutions and even claim global warming will be beneficial at best, harmless at worst.

The past five years have seen a “startling” rise in this “new denial,” according to a CCDH analysis published Tuesday, which also suggests this shift in narrative could also be helping YouTube video creators circumvent the social media company’s ban on monetizing climate denial.

Researchers gathered transcripts from more than 12,000 videos posted between 2018 and 2023 across 96 YouTube channels that have promoted climate denial and misinformation. Transcripts were analyzed by artificial intelligence to categorize the climate denial narratives used as either “old denial” or “new denial.”

“New denial” content — attacks on solutions, the science and the climate movement — now makes up 70% of all climate denial claims posted on YouTube, according to the report, up from 35% in 2018.

Classic “old denial” claims that global warming isn’t happening declined from 48% of all denial claims in 2018 to 14% in 2023, the report found. Claims that climate solutions won’t work, however, soared from 9% to 30% over the same period.

Imran Ahmed, chief executive officer and founder of CCDH, said the report in some ways is a story of success.

But, he added, it’s also a huge warning. “Now that the majority of people recognize old climate denial as counterfactual and discredited, climate deniers have cynically concluded that the only way to derail climate action is to tell people the solutions don’t work.”

“This new climate denial is no less insidious,” Ahmed said, “and it could hold enormous influence over public opinion on climate action for decades to come.”

It’s particularly worrying because of the young demographic attracted to YouTube, according to the CCDH. A December survey from Pew Research Center found YouTube to be the most widely used social media platform it analyzed among 13- to 17-year olds, used by roughly nine in 10 of them.

“Climate deniers now have access to vast global audiences through digital platforms,” Charlie Cray, senior strategist at Greenpeace, said in a statement. “Allowing them to steadily chip away at public support for climate action — especially among younger viewers — could have devastating consequences for the future of our planet.”

The shift in tactics to undermine climate action could also help creators get around YouTube’s policy banning them from making money on climate denial content, the report suggests. In 2021, the company prohibited advertising against content that “contradicts well-established scientific consensus around the existence and causes of climate change.”

Yet YouTube is potentially making up to $13.4 million a year from ads on videos the report found to contain climate denial, according to the CCDH’s calculations, including ads from prominent sportswear companies, hotels and international nonprofits.

“There aren’t many companies that would be happy about seeing their advertising appear next to clear climate denial content,” Ahmed said. “And I imagine they will be furious to find out that they are inadvertently funding climate denial content.”

However, the spokesperson added, “when content crosses the line to climate change denial, we stop showing ads on those videos. We also display information panels under relevant videos to provide additional information on climate change and context from third parties.”

YouTube said its enforcement teams work quickly to review videos that may potentially violate policies, then act on them.

The company said that after reviewing the CCDH report, it found some of the videos included did violate existing climate change policies and has since removed ads from them. However, it also said the majority of the videos in the analysis did not breach their policies.

Michael Mann, a leading climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania who has studied the narrative shift in climate denial, said the findings were “disturbing.”

Ahmed called on Google to boost its policies to deal with “new denial” content. “We’re asking Google to extend their ban on monetization and amplification of ‘old denial’ content to include ‘new denial’ as well,” Ahmed said, adding that other social media companies should also take note of the report’s findings.

“We’re asking other platforms that claim to be green in one breath not to profit from, to revenue share, and therefore, reward or to amplify clear climate denial content that contradicts scientific consensus,” Ahmed added. “You can’t claim to be green but then be the world’s biggest megaphone for climate change-related disinformation.”

North Korea on Monday claimed to have again tested a missile that could become one of the world’s fastest and most accurate weapons – with the potential to ultimately be fitted with a nuclear warhead.

Kim Jong Un’s regime successfully tested a hypersonic glide vehicle that was fired aloft using solid-fueled engines on Sunday, the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said, marking the fourth such test claimed by Pyongyang and the first with a potentially game-changing method of propulsion.

The test was aimed at “verifying the gliding and maneuvering characteristics of intermediate-range hypersonic maneuverable controlled warhead and the reliability of newly developed multi-stage high-thrust solid-fuel engines,” KCNA said.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said the missile flew about 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) before landing in the waters off the east coast of the Korean Peninsula on Sunday afternoon.

The launch was a clear provocation that “seriously threatens the peace and security of the Korean Peninsula,” JCS said.

Missiles with hypersonic glide vehicles can theoretically fly at many multiples of the speed of sound and can be very maneuverable in flight, making them almost impossible to shoot down, according to experts.

North Korea first tested a hypersonic missile on September 28, 2021, followed by two further tests in early January 2022. But Sunday’s test showed a jump in North Korean technology, according to the South Korean military.

“The ones tested in 2022 were launched using liquid fuel. This time, the difference between the previous ones and this one would be that North Korea is claiming that it used solid fuel,” Lee Sung-joon, spokesperson for the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a news briefing Monday.

Compared to their liquid-fueled counterparts, solid-fueled missiles are more stable and can be moved more easily to avoid detection before a launch that can be initiated in a matter of minutes, experts say.

If North Korea can successfully produce and deploy a hypersonic weapon, analysts say it could even change the military equation in the region.

Expert assessments were even more stark following North Korea’s previous claimed hypersonic glide vehicle tests.

Those systems are designed for defense against ballistic missiles, which descend on their targets from much higher altitudes than hypersonics.

“A hypersonic missile that can defeat advanced missile-defense systems is a game changer if a nuclear warhead is mated to it,” said Drew Thompson, a former US Defense Department official and a visiting senior research fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, in 2021.

KCNA said after the 2021 launch that developing the “strategic” weapon was one of the five “top-priority tasks of the five-year plan” for North Korea’s defense.

How a hypersonic glide weapon works

Like ballistic missiles, hypersonic glide weapons are launched by rockets high into the atmosphere. But while a ballistic missile warhead is largely powered by gravity once it begins its descent to its target from as high as 1,000 kilometers, hypersonics dive back to Earth sooner before flattening out their flight path – flying just tens of kilometers above the ground, according to a report from the Union of Concerned Scientists.

The weapon then uses internal navigation devices to make course corrections and keep it on target while traveling up to 12 times the speed of sound, the report said.

Roderick Lee, director of research at the American Air University’s China Aerospace Studies Institute, said in 2021 that the lower altitude flight paths of hypersonics mean they stay below radars for longer periods.

“That makes things really complicated for the defender,” Lee added.

Only two countries are thought to have deployable hypersonic missiles: China and Russia.

In December 2019, Russia said its hypersonic missile system – known as Avangard – had entered service. In a speech to the Russian Parliament in 2018, President Vladimir Putin called the Avangard system “practically invulnerable” to Western air defenses.

At a 2019 military parade, China showed off its DF-17 missile, which it can use to deploy a hypersonic glide vehicle.

A report from the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, citing US defense officials, said the DF-17 can deliver a warhead to within meters of its intended target at a range of up to 2,500 kilometers (1,553 miles).

The US has its own hypersonics program. The US Navy said in November that in cooperation with NASA and Sandia National Laboratories it has conducted tests that “demonstrated advanced hypersonic technologies, capabilities, and prototype systems.”

According to a 2021 report from the Arms Control Association (ACA) in Washington, hypersonics are contributing to “a burgeoning arms race with all sides rushing the deployment of the new weapons lest they be perceived as falling behind the others in mastery of the new technologies involved.”

Extending North Korea’s threat

International concerns about weapons proliferation have increased in recent months with the appearance of North Korean missiles on the battlefields of Ukraine.

The US said earlier this month that Russia fired North Korean-supplied short-range ballistic missiles into Ukraine on December 30 and January 2.

“This is a significant and concerning escalation in the DPRK’s support for Russia,” White House National Security spokesperson John Kirby said, referring to North Korea by the acronym for its official name.

“We expect Russia and North Korea to learn from these launches,” he said.

Analysts echoed that sentiment, saying the use of North Korean missiles in Ukraine can give Pyongyang data it can’t get from a testing program that has seen dozens of the weapons fired over the past few years.

“It will be interesting to see how these missiles perform in a more operational environment and outside of North Korea’s propaganda machine, particularly any indication of accuracy and indeed the guidance systems utilized,” said Joseph Dempsey, research associate for defense and military analysis at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Fears are growing that Moscow’s cooperation with Pyongyang will increase further as North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui will make an official visit to Russia this week.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry said Sunday that Choe will hold “negotiations” with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

Besides adding North Korean missiles to its arsenal, Russia has also imported more than 1 million artillery shells from Pyongyang, according to South Korea’s National Intelligence Service.

Ukraine claimed it destroyed a Russian spy plane over the Sea of Azov on Monday, in what would be a significant strike against Moscow’s aerial capabilities.

Ukraine’s Commander-in-Chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi initially said on Telegram on Monday that two aircraft had been destroyed, writing: “Warriors of the Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine destroyed an enemy A-50 long-range radar detection aircraft and an enemy IL-22 air control center.”

He also thanked the Air Force for “the perfectly planned and executed operation” in southern Ukraine.

In a statement, the Ukrainian Air Forces called the special operation in the Azov Sea region “successful.”

Information about the downing of two Russian military aircraft by Ukrainian forces over the Sea of Azov appeared in social media late on Sunday.

Yuriy Ihnat, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Air Force, later said in a post on Facebook that one of the Russian planes targeted was able to make a landing, but said it appeared “beyond repair.”

“So, no matter how you slice it, the target is destroyed, and resuscitation will not help!” he wrote.

“The long-range radar detection aircraft A-50 was and is a priority target for us,” he added. “And until today, the destruction of this aircraft seemed an impossible task for the Air Force.”

The Sea of Azov separates Ukraine and Russia at the northeastern point of the Black Sea, north of Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula occupied by Russia since 2014.

The Institute for the Study of War wrote earlier this month, citing Russian military bloggers, that Russia had “begun constant sorties of A-50 long-range radar detection aircraft due to the threat of Ukrainian strikes against Russian military infrastructure in Crimea.”

The A-50 is a Soviet-era spy plane designed to detect and report back the coordinates and movements of enemy objects.

A Ukrainian intelligence source provided an audio recording of the incident alleged to be an intercept from a nearby Russian fighter jet relaying an assistance call from the damaged IL-22 to ground control for an emergency landing.

“The aircraft asked to pass on information immediately. It was hit, plans to land in Anapa. An ambulance and fire fighters are urgently needed,” the nearby Russian jet allegedly radioed down to ground control.