Famine is “around the corner” as people in Gaza face the “highest levels of food insecurity ever recorded,” according to UN emergency relief chief Martin Griffiths.

Citing a death toll in the tens of thousands, attacks on medical facilities and a lack of functioning hospitals, Griffiths said in a statement issued Friday that Gaza had become “a place of death and despair.”

“Hope has never been more elusive,” he added.

A public health disaster is unfolding as infectious diseases spread in overcrowded shelters as sewers spill over, Griffiths said, adding that around 180 Palestinian women “are giving birth daily amidst this chaos.”

“Gaza has simply become uninhabitable. Its people are witnessing daily threats to their very existence – while the world watches on,” Griffiths said in the statement issued by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Tens of thousands of Palestinians have died since Israel launched its war on Hamas in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run Ministry of Health, and up to 1.9 million people have been displaced since the beginning of the war, according to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). Israel launched the war in response to Hamas’ murderous rampage on October 7 in which about 1,200 people were killed and more than 200 taken hostage.

“Meanwhile, rocket attacks on Israel continue, more than 120 people are still held hostage in Gaza, tensions in the West Bank are boiling, and the specter of further regional spillover of the war is looming dangerously close,” said Griffiths, the UN’s Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator.

Griffiths went on to urge parties to “meet all their obligations under international law, including to protect civilians and meet their essential needs, and to release all hostages immediately,” adding that the international community should “use all its influence to make this happen.”

“We continue to demand an immediate end to the war, not just for the people of Gaza and its threatened neighbors, but for the generations to come who will never forget these 90 days of hell and of assaults on the most basic precepts of humanity,” he added.

“This war should never have started,” Griffiths said. “It’s long past time for it to end.”

Editor’s Note: This story contains graphic and disturbing accounts of sexual violence.

Five men came out of the van and captured a woman, ripping off her clothes as they formed a circle around her. One raped her and killed her with a knife. Then he raped her again, said Raz Cohen, a survivor of Hamas’ murderous rampage in Israel on October 7.

Israeli police are documenting cases of rape and sexual violence committed as Hamas fighters burst into Israel from Gaza, attacking the music festival and kibbutz communities near the border. About 1,200 people were killed and more than 200 taken hostage in the attacks that were condemned globally and led to a massive Israeli military response. Israel’s subsequent war on Hamas in Gaza has claimed the lives of more than 22,000 Palestinians, according to the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health.

But the United Nations and human rights organizations were slow to denounce the reports of rape and mutilation against Israelis – mostly girls and women but also men. And Hamas has denied its fighters committed sexual violence during the coordinated attacks.

The UN agency UN Women released a statement in December condemning the attacks and saying it was “alarmed by the numerous accounts of gender-based atrocities and sexual violence during those attacks.”

“It’s a fact,” Cohen said. “It’s what happened.”

Cohen said a white van pulled up about 30 meters from his hiding spot and five men in civilian clothes got out.

“They catch a girl and they started to pull her clothes off,” he said. “After they pulled the clothes off, one of them started to rape her. It was something like 40 seconds. After he raped her, he take a knife and kill her, murder her. After he did it, he continued to rape the dead body.”

The other men around the victim did not seem angry, Cohen said.

“They always laugh. I think it was for fun. They murdered a lot of people for fun.”

Along with the sounds of apparent mirth, Cohen previously told The New York Times he could recall the terror of the woman he saw killed. “I still remember her voice, screams without words,” he said.

Cohen, 24, says he ran across the open desert field to escape the mass arrival of attackers. He described  feeling like he was on a firing range – with nowhere to hide and bullets coming from left, right and behind.

“I’ve run in the open field and I was very close to some girl,” he said. “When I passed her … I heard that she fell on the ground. I’m looking back … and I saw that she got shot in the head … I looked at the girl but I can’t help her so I keep running away until I get to the bush.”

Cohen had to wait nine hours in the bush for rescuers to arrive, he said.

In November, Israeli Police Superintendent Dudi Katz said officers had already collected more than 1,000 statements and more than 60,000 video clips related to the attacks that included multiple accounts from people who reported seeing women raped.

He added that investigators did not have firsthand testimony, and it was not clear whether any rape victims survived.

Rami Shmuel, an organizer of the music festival attended by Cohen, previously said he saw female victims with no clothes as he made his escape, and has no doubts about what happened.

“Her pants are pulled down toward her knees and there’s a bullet wound on the back side of her neck near her head,” he recounted. “There’s a puddle of blood around her head and there’s remains of semen on the lower part of her back.”

Cochav Elkayam-Levy, a human rights law expert at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, has formed a civil commission with colleagues to document evidence of the attacks. She was determined that the atrocities should not be overlooked or forgotten, especially because the victims are unable to speak for themselves, she said.

Parts of Europe are experiencing an extreme start to the new year’s weather. As some countries struggle with devastating floods, others have been plunged into extreme cold, causing chaos.

Hundreds of flood warnings are in place in the UK after heavy rainfall battered swaths of the country Thursday.

In the east of the capital, around 70 firefighters were mobilized to deal with flooding after a canal broke its banks Thursday evening.

Elsewhere in the UK, a major incident was declared in the Nottinghamshire region due to rising river levels along the River Trent, with local authorities warning river levels could come close to record highs.

Thursday’s heavy rainfall came on the heels of Storm Henk, which swept southern parts of the country earlier this week, bringing strong winds and rain.

The storm claimed at least one life after a man died Tuesday when a tree fell onto the car he was driving in Gloucestershire, southwest England, according to local police.

The same storm also brought intense flooding to northern parts of France, leaving hundreds without power, forcing more than 370 evacuations and causing one death.

The Pas-de-Calais department of northern France was under “red alert” for flooding on Thursday, according to the country’s national weather service Météo France, but was moved to orange alert, the next level down, Friday.

Local authorities warned people in affected areas not to go into their basements, to avoid travel and stay away from waterways.

Germany, too, has been badly affected in regions that have seen persistent flooding over the past two weeks.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz visited a heavily affected flood zone in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt Thursday.

Around 200 soldiers will start their deployment Friday in Mansfeld-Südharz, a district in the state, where they will distribute 600,000 sandbags, according to a spokesperson for the country’s armed forces.

The full extent of flood damage in Germany is not yet clear but more rain is expected Friday, according to Helge Tuschy from Germany’s Weather Service.

Many of the same parts of northwestern Europe that have been flooded this month were also battered by Storm Ciarán, which brought hurricane-strength winds and claimed several lives in November.

Climate change, driven primarily from the burning of fossil fuels, is causing extreme weather events, such as heavy rainfall, to become more frequent and more intense.

As the Earth’s atmosphere warms, it is able to hold more water vapor — so when it rains, it rains much more intensely, increasing the likelihood of destructive flooding.

Last year was the hottest on record globally.

Arctic blast

It’s a tale of different extremes in Europe this week, as heavy rainfall and milder temperatures in some parts contrast starkly with an intense cold snap further north.

An Arctic blast has brought some record-low temperatures to parts of Scandinavia including northern Sweden and Finland along with heavy snow, causing chaos on the roads.

Kvikkjokk-Årrenjarka, in northern Sweden, recorded -43.6 degrees Celsius (-46.4 Fahrenheit) Wednesday, the lowest temperature in that location since records began in 1887, said Sverker Hellström, a meteorologist at the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute.

On Thursday, rescue services evacuated hundreds of people who had been trapped overnight in their cars due to heavy snow, according to a Reuters report.

In the far northwest of Finland, temperatures in the municipality of Enontekiö dropped to -42.4 degrees Celsius (-44.3 Fahrenheit), marking country’s lowest temperature for 18 years.

A woman was found dead Tuesday after going skiing in a blizzard in northern Finland with her child, whose body was found Thursday, according to Reuters.

Scandinavia has been grappling with biting cold since December. Norway’s average temperature in December was 2.3 degrees below average, with Sweden and Finland seeing temperatures as low as 6 degrees below average across certain regions.

Temperatures in the region are predicted to remain well below average through Friday and the weekend before returning to closer to average next week.

Rifts in the Israeli government emerged publicly on Friday as members of the cabinet 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 sniping followed what one source described as a “fight” at a meeting of the the security cabinet on Thursday. 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 developments illustrate the fault lines emerging in the governing coalition of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after three months of war with Hamas. If the government collapses, Israel would likely face new elections that Netanyahu is widely expected to lose.

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

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant outlined plans for the next phase of the war in Gaza, and provided details of what might follow that, in a three-page document entitled the “Day After.”

He described a “new combat approach” with a sustained focus on targeting Hamas leaders in southern parts of the strip. In northern Gaza, he said the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) campaign would encompass “raids, the destruction of terror tunnels, aerial and ground activities, and special operations.”

After the war, the Israeli military would maintain “operational freedom of action in the Gaza Strip” and Israel would continue to “carry out the inspection of goods entering” the territory.

Gallant, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s center-right Likud party, said that once the goals of the war have been achieved there would be “no Israeli civilian presence in the Gaza Strip,” appearing to rule out the re-establishment of Israeli settlements in Gaza that Israel unilaterally removed in 2005.

The defense minister also unveiled the concept of a US-led multinational task force charged with “the rehabilitation of the Gaza Strip.”

But the minister’s plan provided scant detail on the future governance of the enclave, merely saying that the Palestinian “entity controlling the territory” would “build on the capabilities” of “local non-hostile actors” already present in Gaza.

The plan prompted a fiery discussion, according to a source. After a break in the meeting, the source said, Transportation Minister Miri Regev went on the attack. “After the break Miri Regev came back and launched this fight that was leaked,” said the official, who asked not to be named discussing internal political discussions.

Gantz, who joined the government from opposition after October 7, said: “What happened yesterday was a politically motivated attack in the middle of a war. I participated in many cabinet meetings – such conduct has never occurred and must not occur.”

He did not say who had launched the attack, but he criticized Netanyahu. “The cabinet should have discussed strategic processes that will affect the continuation of the campaign and our security in the future. It did not happen, and the prime minister is responsible for that,” Gantz said, urging Netanyahu to choose between unity and security on the one hand and politics on the other.

Netanyahu’s Likud party then lashed out at Gantz. “During a war, when the people are united, Gantz is expected to act responsibly and stop looking for excuses to break his promise to remain in the unity government until the end of the war,” it said in a statement.

Gantz is widely considered a likely successor to Netanyahu when an election is called.

Tensions spill out in public

Gallant’s plan was criticized Friday by Smotrich, who along with far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir has advocated for resettling Gazans outside the enclave. Their comments have drawn condemnation from the United States, United Nations officials and several Arab states.

Smotrich wrote on Facebook that “‘The Day After’ is a rerun of ‘The Day Before’ on October 7,” referring to the date of the Hamas terror attack in which 1,200 people were killed and more than 200 taken hostage.

“The solution in Gaza requires thinking outside the box and changing the concept by encouraging voluntary migration and full security control including the renewal of settlement,” Smotrich added.

Israel’s deadly bombardment and besiegement of Gaza has turned swathes of the Palestinian enclave into a wasteland, leaving more than 2.2 million people at risk of severe dehydration, starvation and disease. At least 1.93 million Palestinians have been displaced, according to the United Nations.

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.

Since October 7, Israeli attacks on Gaza have killed at least 22,600 people, 70% of whom are women and children, the Haman-run health ministry said on Friday.

International criticism

Smotrich previously said the removal of Gazans from the strip could pave the way for Israelis to “make the desert bloom” while Ben Gvir had suggested that the current war represented an “opportunity to concentrate on encouraging the migration of the residents of Gaza.”

Smotrich, a Jewish nationalist, has denied the existence of a Palestinian people or nationhood. Ben Gvir was previously convicted of inciting racism against Arabs and supporting a terrorist organization.

Earlier this week, State Department spokesperson Matt Miller roundly condemned the “inflammatory and irresponsible” comments made by Smotrich and Ben Gvir, saying the US had been “told repeatedly and consistently” by Israel “that such statements do not reflect the policy of the Israeli government.

Responding to the US statement, Ben Gvir on Tuesday called the US a “good friend” but said the “emigration of hundreds of thousands from Gaza” would allow Israeli settlers to return and “live in security.”

Smotrich also responded to the US State Department’s rebuke, posting on X: “More than 70% of the Israeli public today supports a humanitarian solution of encouraging the voluntary immigration of Gaza Arabs and their absorption in other countries.”

Other foreign officials, from Europe to Saudi Arabia, have fiercely condemned the rhetoric pushed by Israeli far-right cabinet ministers, while a UN official warned the forced displacement of Palestinians outside Gaza “is an act of genocide.”

“Forcible transfer of Gazan population is an act of genocide especially given the high number of children,” Balakrishnan Rajagopal, the UN’s special rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, posted on X on Friday.

On Thursday, the UN’s human rights chief Volker Turk said he was “very disturbed by high-level Israeli officials’ statements on plans to transfer civilians from Gaza to third countries.”

The EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on Wednesday, “Forced displacements are strictly prohibited as a grave violation of IHL (International Humanitarian Law) & words matter.”

US officials have previously said they ultimately envision both Gaza and the occupied West Bank being ruled by a unified government led by a “revitalized” Palestinian Authority. At present, the Palestinian Authority exercises limited self-rule in the West Bank, having lost control of the Gaza Strip to Hamas in 2007.

An Arab delegation comprising officials from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, Turkey and the Palestinian Authority emphasized in a meeting with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in December that Arab states will need assurances that there is a path toward a Palestinian state if they are going are to play a role in the reconstruction of Gaza.

Long before the first sharks appeared, large predator worms were the “terror beasts” of the seas more than 500 million years ago, according to new research.

Scientists discovered fossils of the previously unknown worm species during expeditions in North Greenland, uncovering what they believe to be some of the earliest carnivorous animals.

The worms reached nearly 1 foot (30 centimeters) in length and were some of the largest swimming animals at the time, known as the early Cambrian Period.

The researchers named the worms Timorebestia, Latin for “terror beasts.” Fins marched down the sides of their bodies, and their distinctive heads had long antennae and massive jaws.

Previously, it was believed that primitive arthropods, including strange-looking distant relatives of crabs and lobsters called Anomalocaris, were at the top of the marine food chain during the Cambrian Period, which lasted from 485 million to 541 million years ago.

But the predator worms were a key part of the ecosystem 518 million years ago that scientists didn’t even know existed until they found the fossils. A study describing the findings published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances.

“Timorebestia were giants of their day and would have been close to the top of the food chain,” said senior study author Dr. Jakob Vinther, associate professor in macroevolution at the University of Bristol’s Schools of Earth Sciences and Biological Sciences, in a statement.

“That makes it equivalent in importance to some of the top carnivores in modern oceans, such as sharks and seals back in the Cambrian period,” Vinther said. “Our research shows that these ancient ocean ecosystems were fairly complex with a food chain that allowed for several tiers of predators.”

During the Cambrian Period when carnivorous predators appeared, “animals explosively evolved for the first time,” Vinther said. “It had a tremendous impact on the carbon and nutrient cycles as well as the pace of evolution.”

Tracing an evolutionary path

These predator worms are distant relatives of the much smaller modern arrow worms, or chaetognaths, that feed on zooplankton, Vinther said.

Arrow worms are considered to be among the oldest animals that originated in the Cambrian Period. Arthropods first appeared between 521 and 529 million years ago, while evidence of arrow worms suggests they existed as early as 538 million years ago.

“Both arrow worms, and the more primitive Timorebestia, were swimming predators,” Vinther said. “We can therefore surmise that in all likelihood they were the predators that dominated the oceans before arthropods took off. Perhaps they had a dynasty of about 10-15 million years before they got superseded by other, and more successful, groups.”

Preserved within the fossilized digestive system of Timorebestia was Isoxys, a swimming arthropod that had long, protective spines pointing forward and backward.

“However, they clearly didn’t completely succeed in avoiding that fate, because Timorebestia munched on them in great quantities,” said study coauthor Morten Lunde Nielsen, a former doctoral student at the University of Bristol, in a statement.

Uncovering details about Timorebestia provides a window into the evolutionary timeline of worms from half a billion years ago to the present day, the researchers said.

“Today, arrow worms have menacing bristles on the outside of their heads for catching prey, whereas Timorebestia has jaws inside its head,” said study coauthor Luke Parry, associate professor of paleobiology at the University of Oxford, in a statement.

“This is what we see in microscopic jaw worms today — organisms that arrow worms shared an ancestor with over half a billion years ago. Timorebestia and other fossils like it provide links between closely related organisms that today look very different.”

Modern arrow worms have a distinct nervous system on their bellies called a ventral ganglion, and it was found preserved in Timorebestia as well, said senior study author Dr. Tae-Yoon Park, a principal research scientist at the Korea Polar Research Institute. The nervous system was also spotted in another fossil called Amiskwia, suggesting that soft-bodied animal is also evolutionarily related to arrow worms.

A remote but rich fossil deposit

Park led a research team on expeditions to Sirius Passet, a well-preserved fossil site in the farthest reaches of North Greenland. The sun shines all day in the remote location, which is 600 miles (966 kilometers) from the North Pole, Vinther said. Researchers have a small window of about six weeks each year when the site is accessible, but it’s worth the trek, he said.

“The fossils are so dense here, compared to any other locality, that every time you split the rock you reveal dozens to hundreds of soft bodied fossil organisms,” Vinther said.

Members of the research team are eager to return to Sirius Passet, where they have discovered fossilized remains of other relatives of Timorebestia, to gain a better understanding of the ocean’s first food chain.

“Thanks to the remarkable, exceptional preservation in Sirius Passet we can also reveal exciting anatomical details including their digestive system, muscle anatomy, and nervous systems,” Park said. “We have many more exciting findings to share in the coming years that will help show how the earliest animal ecosystems looked like and evolved.”

The White House has convened a last-minute meeting to discuss a private mission to the moon — set to launch in days — after the largest group of Native Americans in the United States asked the administration to delay the flight because it will be carrying cremated human remains destined for a lunar burial.

If successful, the commercial mission scheduled to launch Monday — dubbed Peregrine Mission One — will be the first time an American-made spacecraft has landed on the lunar surface since the end of the Apollo program in 1972. But Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren said that allowing the remains to touch down there would be an affront to many indigenous cultures, which revere the moon.

“The moon holds a sacred place in Navajo cosmology,” Nygren said in a Thursday statement.  “The suggestion of transforming it into a resting place for human remains is deeply disturbing and unacceptable to our people and many other tribal nations.”

The private companies providing these lunar burial services, Celestis and Elysium Space, are just two of several paying customers hitching a ride to the moon on Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic Technology’s Peregrine lunar lander. The uncrewed spacecraft is expected to lift off on the inaugural flight of the United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur rocket from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

Celestis’ payload, called Tranquility Flight, includes 66 “memorial capsules” containing “cremated remains and DNA,” which will remain on the lunar surface “as a permanent tribute to the intrepid souls who never stopped reaching for the stars,” according to the company’s website.  

“We reject the assertion that our memorial spaceflight mission desecrates the moon,” Chafer said. “Just as permanent memorials for deceased are present all over planet Earth and not considered desecration, our memorial on the moon is handled with care and reverence, is a permanent monument that does not intentionally eject flight capsules on the moon. It is a touching and fitting celebration for our participants — the exact opposite of desecration, it is a celebration.”

“I’ve been disappointed that this conversation came up so late in the game,” John Thornton, Astrobotic Technology CEO, said. “I would have liked to have had this conversation a long time ago. We announced the first payload manifest of this nature to our mission back in 2015. A second in 2020.  We really are trying to do the right thing and I hope we can find a good path forward with Navajo Nation.”

Dawn of the lunar economy

This isn’t the first time Navajo Nation has expressed concerns about burials on the moon. In a December letter to NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Nygren referred back to NASA’s Lunar Prospector mission, which in 1999 deliberately crashed a spacecraft into the moon carrying the remains of former astronaut Eugene Shoemaker.

“At the time, Navajo Nation President Albert Hale voiced our objections regarding this action. In response, NASA issued a formal apology and promised consultation with tribes before authorizing any further missions carrying human remains to the Moon,” Nygren said.

While NASA is the primary customer on this mission, it’s still one customer among many paying to put technology and cargo on Astrobotic’s lunar lander.

The space agency paid Astrobotic $108 million to develop the lander and carry science experiments to the moon, said Sandra Connelly, deputy associate administrator of NASA’s science mission directorate in a Friday press call. The space agency also developed the Artemis Accords, a document that outlines what should and shouldn’t be allowed on the moon that has been signed by the US and 32 of its allies.

“We recognize that some non-NASA commercial payloads can be a cause for concern to some communities, and those communities may not understand that these missions are commercial. They’re not US government missions,” said Dr. Joel Kearns, NASA deputy associate administrator for exploration.

Peregrine Mission One marks the start of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services, or CLPS, initiative, which allows the US space agency to outsource the launch and transport of its lunar cargo to private companies. The mission is at the dawn of the lunar economy, and the rules are still evolving.

“American companies bringing equipment and cargo and payloads to the moon is a totally new industry — a nascent industry — where everyone is learning,” Kearns said. “We take concerns expressed from the Navajo Nation very, very seriously.

Nygren, who represents the roughly 430,000 enrolled members of the Navajo Nation, says the tribe is “not opposed to scientific progress or space exploration” but continues to hold “profound concerns regarding the lack of oversight and regulation of non-NASA commercial payloads, particularly when such payloads include human remains.

Who controls the moon?

The Federal Aviation Administration’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation is responsible for licensing all private space launches in the US. But by law, the office only has oversight in matters involving “the public health and safety, safety of property, and national security and foreign policy interests of the United States.”

But the executive director for the Navajo Nation’s Washington Office, Justin Ahasteen, calls that argument “absurd.”

The debate raises new questions at the dawn of a race to colonize the moon about who controls Earth’s only natural satellite.

Ahasteen argues that Navajo Nation’s intent isn’t to claim the moon.

“We’re saying be respectful. We’re turning the moon into a graveyard and we’re turning it into a waste site,” Ahasteen said. “At what point are we going to stop and say we need to start protecting the moon as we do the Grand Canyon?”

Friday’s meeting convened by the White House is scheduled to feature representatives from NASA, the FAA, the US Department of Transportation, and the Department of Commerce. But Navajo Nation officials have little hope that they will be able to stop Monday’s launch.

“Based off of what we’re seeing, and NASA are already having their pre-launch briefing, it doesn’t look like they have any intention of stopping the launch or removing the remains,” Ahasteen said.

The elderly woman emerged slowly on a stretcher, wrapped in blankets. Dazed but conscious, she thanked the firefighters, wearing helmets and headlamps, as they lifted her over the rubble of a collapsed house.

She’s a survivor of the deadly 7.5 magnitude quake that struck Japan on Monday, which devastated the formerly idyllic seaside city of Wajima, in hard-hit Ishikawa Prefecture.

In the city, once a popular tourist destination famous for its bustling morning market, firefighters and rescue workers worked through the night to find those still trapped or missing.

And while rescues like that of the woman, aged in her 80s, on Thursday provided glimmers of hope, the search grew increasingly desperate as the clock ticked, with at least 242 people still unaccounted for, according to the prefecture.

“The situation is terribly challenging, but until those 72 hours crucial for saving lives pass, we will do our utmost to save and rescue as many people as possible with everything we have on the ground,” said Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Thursday.

The first 72 hours after a natural disaster are considered the “golden period” for finding survivors, as the condition of people trapped and injured can deteriorate quickly afterward.

In Suzu city, about an hour’s drive from Wajima across the battered Noto peninsula, video from Wednesday showed rescuers digging through the rubble of a collapsed house and carrying out a 79-year-old man covered in dust and dirt.

In the video, medical personnel quickly attended to the man as his daughter watched tearfully from the side, calling out to him. He was conscious and taken to hospital, according to TV Asahi.

But the search has been hindered by the sheer amount of destruction across the prefecture, as well as poor weather and constant aftershocks. Entire communities have been cut off by landslides and impassable roads; telecommunications also posed a problem, with phone lines, mobile masts and the internet down in many areas.

Roads were riven with enormous cracks, and littered with debris such as large boulders while the lack of signal meant no access to navigation apps or outside communication. By evening, it had turned rainy, foggy and dark with poor visibility – posing further challenges for rescue workers scrambling to locate survivors.

After the initial earthquake, a massive fire broke out in Wajima – leaving hundreds of buildings burned and blackened, and the famous morning market mostly reduced to rubble.

The scale of the rescue operation has meant personnel being dispatched from across the nation to Ishikawa – ranging from local officials and police to military troops.

The woman in her 80s rescued Thursday had been pulled out by firefighters sent from Osaka prefecture – hundreds of kilometers from Wajima.

A man had also been retrieved from the collapsed house before the woman, but was declared dead on the scene.

The quake has killed at least 92 people as of Friday morning, according to Ishikawa prefecture. And the little help getting through is far from enough, with water, food and blankets in short supply.

At a brief news conference on Thursday, Wajima city hall officials warned there are reports of people dying in evacuation centers – though they added the lack of communications means there’s no way to confirm the extent of damage or amount of aid needed in some cut-off locations.

Some evacuees are taking shelter in the city hall, sleeping on cardboard and mats. With no running water, sanitation problems are emerging — and the four-story building is running out of space, with families, pets and children huddled together on each floor.

These survivors are now reckoning with the aftermath, grieving those lost and trying to retrieve what they can.

“It’s hell – I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s my first time experiencing something like this,” said Kyoko Izumi, a liquor store owner in Wajima. “The aftershocks are really scary. They happened multiple times throughout the night … it felt like the entire ground was getting pushed up beneath me.”

“Looking at the state of this morning market, I don’t know if they can work or not, and it will take time to rebuild,” she said, gazing around at the scorched ruins.

South Korea’s military condemned its northern neighbor on Friday after Pyongyang fired artillery rounds that fell within a maritime buffer zone that has long been a flashpoint between the two.

North Korea fired more than 200 rounds between 9 a.m. and 11 a.m off its west coast, near South Korea’s Baengnyeong and Yeonpyeong islands, according to South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS).

The artillery fell north of the Northern Limit Line (NLL), a disputed de facto border drawn up by the United Nations at the end of the Korean War in 1953.

The incoming rounds did not harm any civilians or military, the JCS added, calling the incident a “provocative act that threatens peace and heightens tension on the Korean Peninsula.”

In response South Korea’s military held its own maritime shooting exercise on Friday afternoon, with the defense ministry saying it was to “respond to North Korea’s provocation of shooting artilleries inside the no-hostile act zone this morning.” There were “no unusual movements” by the North Korean military during the exercise, it said.

Photos from the island showed people gathering near designated shelters, some sitting inside and others milling around outside.

Yeonpyeong, a tiny island that only measures 3 square miles, is home to more than 2,100 people, according to its local office website. Baengnyeong island, about 18 square miles, has more than 4,900 residents.

It is not unprecedented for North Korea to fire shells into the maritime buffer zone but such acts do raise tensions.

The hermit nation resumed firing artillery within the buffer zone after scrapping an inter-Korean military agreement last November, the JCS said. Multiple rounds were also fired in the same area in late 2022.

The military agreement was signed in 2018 as part of efforts with the United States to contain the threat of war on the Korean Peninsula, and broaden the buffer zone between the two Koreas.

But relations have deteriorated since, with Seoul pulling back from the agreement, and both sides stepping up military exercises and weapons tests.

The South Korean military is now working with the US to track related movements, and will take “actions corresponding to North Korea’s provocation,” the JCS said Friday.

“It is not unusual for North Korea to fire artillery into the West Sea during its winter exercises,” said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul. “What’s different this year is the two Koreas have recently backed away from a military confidence-building agreement, and Kim Jong Un has publicly disavowed reconciliation and unification with the South.”

On Sunday, North Korean state-run news agency KCNA reported that the hermit nation’s leader Kim Jong Un had said the state will no longer seek reconciliation and reunification with South Korea.

Kim said inter-Korean relations have become “a relationship between two hostile countries and two belligerents at war,” according to the KCNA report. He reportedly added that if the US and South Korea attempt a military confrontation with the North, its “nuclear war deterrent will not hesitate to take serious action.”

Flashpoint maritime border

The Northern Limit Line runs 3 nautical miles from the North Korean coastline and put five islands close to the coast under South Korean control.

North Korea has proposed a different line that would roughly extend the demilitarized zone (DMZ) between the two nations southwest into the Yellow Sea, rather than hug North Korea’s shoreline.

Yeonpyeong Island lies off South Korea’s northwest coast, right by the border with its northern neighbor – and has been the location of hostilities between the two sides before.

In November 2010, Pyongyang launched an attack on the island, killing two marines and two civilians. The attack also injured 15 South Korean soldiers and three civilians, South Korea said. It prompted an island-wide evacuation, and South Korean forces returned fire.

The North blamed the South at the time for provoking that attack by holding an artillery drill in the waters near Yeonpyeong.

The island shelling also came half a year after North Korea torpedoed a South Korean Navy corvette, killing 46 of the 104 sailors aboard, during joint US-South Korea naval exercises. North Korea denied the sinking, which a Seoul-led multinational investigation team concluded had come from a torpedo fired by a North Korean midget submarine.

The 2010 clash was one of the worst flare-ups of violence in years; at the time, the secretary general of the United Nations called North Korea’s attack “one of the gravest incidents since the end of the Korean War.”

The war has technically never ended; an armistice brought hostilities to a halt in 1953 – but there’s never been a peace treaty.

Though diplomats in Seoul and Washington have in recent years discussed an agreement to end the war, those efforts have faltered as tensions in the Korean Peninsula rose again – especially with Pyongyang ramping up its weapons development program and missile testing.

For much of 2023, a storm has been quietly engulfing the world’s largest military – the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of China.

Behind the walled government and military compounds of the Chinese capital, powerful generals have disappeared from public view one after another. Some were subsequently removed from their positions without explanation, even for roles as high-profile as the defense minister.

After months of intense public speculation and evasive non-answers from government spokespersons, the clearest sign of a sweeping purge inside China’s military came last Friday, when nine high-ranking PLA officers were ousted from the country’s top legislature.

While the National People’s Congress (NPC) itself is just a rubber-stamp parliament, its members enjoy a degree of immunity from arrest and criminal prosecution granted by the constitution. Previously, such sudden expulsions often served as a prelude to further disciplinary or legal action.

In keeping with the opacity that shrouds Chinese elite politics, no reason was given for the generals’ sudden ouster from the legislature.

But experts who have long studied China’s military point to a corruption purge as the likely cause – possibly over the procurement and development of advanced equipment that has been a key element in leader Xi Jinping’s efforts to “modernize” the PLA and transform it into a “world class” fighting force.

To some, the scale and depth of the latest purges recalls the graft probes in the early years of Xi’s tenure, which led to the downfall of multiple senior generals and their underlings.

Xi has made rooting out corruption and disloyalty a hallmark of his rule since coming to power in 2012, and the latest shake-ups suggest that campaign is far from over within the military.

At the center of the latest purge is the PLA’s Rocket Force, an elite branch Xi has built up to oversee China’s fast-expanding arsenal of nuclear and ballistic missiles.

The Chinese leader has described the force as a “core of strategic deterrence, a strategic buttress to the country’s position as a major power, and a cornerstone on which to build national security.”

“Right now, it’s obvious to Xi Jinping and the Chinese high command that the Rocket Force leadership has been compromised,” said James Char, a longtime PLA-watcher and research fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.

“If this were allowed to fester over the longer term it would definitely have repercussions on the PLA’s overall combat capabilities,” Char said.

Hotbed for corruption

Among the nine PLA officials expelled from the legislature, five are linked to the Rocket Force.

The most notable was Gen. Li Yuchao, who was abruptly replaced as commander in July along with his political commissar. Li’s predecessor and two former deputy commanders were also on the list, as well as an official in charge of the force’s equipment procurement.

Three more of the ousted were also involved in arms procurement – two hailed from the PLA’s Equipment Development Department, while the other oversaw equipment for the PLA Navy’s South Sea Fleet before becoming its commander.

The remaining general dismissed from the legislature was a former commander of the PLA Air Force.

“By the affiliation of these nine personnel … we can more or less presume that corruption is the main cause behind the investigations into their wrongdoing,” Char said.

The ouster of the nine came just two days after three aerospace executives from China’s military-industrial complex were stripped of their roles in the country’s top political advisory body.

The move against the three executives, who hailed from state-owned defense contractors that manufacture arms and missiles, is seen by some analysts as further indication of a corruption probe into military procurement for the Rocket Force – a highly secretive and lucrative field flushed with billions of dollars of funding that makes a fertile ground for graft.

“The PLA Rocket Force has been invested with a lot of expensive equipment since 2016,” Char said, referring to the time of Xi’s wide-ranging reforms of the military.

As part of that ambitious overhaul, the Rocket Force was upgraded into a full armed service from the former Second Artillery Corps. Since then, it has rolled out an unprecedented expansion, adding powerful new intercontinental and intermediate-range ballistic missiles to its arsenal and boosting the number of missile brigades from 29 to 40.

“Clearly, with this increase in the size of the PLA Rocket Force, the amount of equipment and investment that the PLA has poured into the service is immense,” Char said.

In the past few years, satellite photos have shown the construction of what appears to be hundreds of silos for intercontinental ballistic missiles in Chinese deserts, and the US Defense Department predicts China could have some 1,500 nuclear warheads by 2035 if it continues to expand the stockpile at its current exponential pace.

“Xi has placed great importance on those developments and that attention may have exposed the level of corruption that generated a clean-up effort that had the added benefit of undermining patronage networks that may infringe on Xi’s plans and power,” said Carl Schuster, a former director of operations at the US Pacific Command’s Joint Intelligence Center.

“Xi wants qualified people whose loyalty and judgement he trusts.”

Implications on combat

The Rocket Force will play a key role in any conflict over Taiwan or the South China Sea – two potential flashpoints between the US and China – by leading the first strikes on enemy forces and deterring US intervention, according to Schuster.

Given the strategic importance of the force, a key question is whether the far-reaching purge would gut its operations or combat readiness.

So far, Xi has left the operational-level commanders and staff untouched, Schuster noted.

“The senior leaders were involved in building the force but, at this point, not likely to have been involved in operations and planning,” he said.

While the wide-scale purge is sure to dent morale in the Rocket Force and bring it under tighter scrutiny, Char said overall “the PLA’s combat capabilities have unlikely been compromised to any substantial extent.”

As part of Xi’s military overhaul, “the Rocket force assets have in fact become more and more integrated into the PLA’s joint theater command system. So, that means the PLA’s ability to conduct missile strikes, as part of a larger joint campaign, will unlikely be compromised,” he added.

Amid flaring geopolitical tensions, experts say in the long run, it’s crucial for Xi to clean up the rot within the PLA, especially around its weapon systems.

If the purges result in a more disciplined, effective and personally loyal fighting force  – it could prove a win for Xi.

The poor performance of Russia’s military in its war with Ukraine – from substandard equipment to expired ration packs and deadly tank weaknesses – has served as a stark lesson for Xi and his top generals about the perils of corruption.

“The cleaning up is important because going forward, he would want to ensure the PLA Rocket Force has functioning lethal equipment that works on a battlefield,” Char said.

‘Tip of the iceberg’

Signs of problems around arms procurement were already apparent in July.

Days before the Rocket Force’s surprise leadership shakeup, the Equipment Development Department ordered a fresh crackdown on corrupt procurement practices, calling on the public to report tips on questionable activities dating back to October 2017.

The probe overlapped with the period when the department was headed by Li Shangfu, the former defense minister who was removed from his post in October after vanishing from public view for months without explanation.

One of Li’s deputies in the equipment department, Zhang Yulin, was among the nine dismissed from the legislature last week.

“(Now) that they have been stripped of their NPC membership, their cases can move on to the next stage, which is the military indictment process,” Char said, adding that the purge is far from over.

“I’m sure there are more generals whose actions have been investigated. It seems to be just the tip of the iceberg.”

Some officers placed under investigation may not be senior enough to hold seats in the legislature, while others may have already retired.

High on analysts’ watchlist is former Defense Minister Wei Fenghe, who has not been heard from since last March, when he retired and handed the baton to Li Shangfu. Wei was the inaugural commander of the Rocket Force when it was revamped at the end of 2015.

When asked about Wei’s whereabouts in August, a spokesman for China’s Defense Ministry said the military has “zero tolerance for corruption” and vowed to “investigate every case and crack down on every corrupt official.”

Gen. Ju Qiansheng, the commander of the PLA’s Strategic Support Force responsible for space and cyber warfare, has also not been seen since the summer.

Ju raised eyebrows after missing a reception in late July to celebrate the 96th anniversary of the PLA’s founding and a reward ceremony for Chinese astronauts in September.

More than a decade since Xi assumed office, China’s most powerful and authoritarian leader in decades is still battling corrupt and disloyal generals and officers – some of them handpicked and promoted by him.

“I think he can remove anyone he wants. But the very fact that he is still removing people says a lot about his poor judgment previously with regards to these personnel appointments,” Char said.

“Everything that we’re seeing right now, all the purges, is really all down to China’s one-party centralized system and the fact that there’s no public scrutiny that the PLA is subjected to.”

Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center think tank in Washington, said the purges show that corruption cannot be completely eradicated from the system despite Xi’s relentless efforts.

“Power tends to corrupt. Absolute power corrupts absolutely,” she said. “Xi’s determined to fight corruption, but corruption is a product of the system he is defending. It is a Catch-22.”

Oscar Pistorius, the double-amputee Paralympic and Olympic sprinter, was released from prison on parole on Friday, more than a decade after shooting his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, in a killing that shocked the world.

A parole board granted Pistorius’ petition in November on the grounds that he had served half of his 13-year sentence for murdering Steenkamp, making him eligible according to South African law.

In a statement Friday, Steenkamp’s mother said her only desire following Pistorius’ release is that she would be allowed to live her remaining years “in peace”.

“There can never be justice if your loved one is never coming back, and no amount of time served will bring Reeva back,” June Steenkamp said. “We, who remain behind, are the ones serving a life sentence.”

Pistorius shot Steenkamp four times through a locked bathroom door in his home in Pretoria on February 14, 2013. He has maintained that he did not kill her in a fit of anger during a Valentine’s Day argument, as prosecutors argued, and said instead he had mistaken her for an intruder.

During the trial, which garnered global attention, Pistorius pleaded not guilty to one charge of murder and a firearms charge associated with Steenkamp’s killing.

He was initially convicted of manslaughter in 2014 and sentenced to five years. But a higher court overturned the conviction and upgraded it to murder a year later, increasing his sentence to six years in prison.

The ruling was appealed by prosecutors who claimed the sentence was too lenient. Pistorius’ sentence was increased to 13 years and five months by South Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeal in 2017.

Pistorius became eligible for parole in March 2023, due to a law for inmates who have served half of their sentence and met conditions such as good behavior. The legislation is part of the country’s “Restorative Justice” process, which gives offenders the opportunity to “acknowledge and take responsibility for their actions.”

According to the DCS, Pistorius will complete the remainder of his sentence in the country’s community corrections system.

He will have to attend programs on gender-based violence and continue therapy sessions on anger management, Reuters reported, citing a lawyer for the Steenkamp family.

The DCS said in a statement Wednesday that “general parole conditions” will apply, including Pistorius being required to be home at particular hours of the day. He will not be allowed to consume alcohol or prohibited substances and will be required to participate in programs identified by the Correctional Supervision and Parole Board.

“Just like other parolees, Pistorius is restricted from conducting media interviews,” the statement added.

‘Pain is still raw and real’

Steenkamp’s mother has been vocal in her criticism of his release. In a victim impact statement in November, she said that while she had forgiven Pistorius, she did not believe his version of events.

“At this time, I am not convinced that Oscar has been rehabilitated,” she said.

“Rehabilitation requires someone to engage honestly with the full truth of his crime and the consequences thereof. Nobody can claim to have remorse if they are not able to engage fully with the truth.

“If someone does not show remorse, they cannot be considered to be rehabilitated. If they are not rehabilitated, their risk of recidivism is high.”

She also raised concerns for the safety of other women once he was released on parole.

“I do not know to what extent this behavior still exists or was evident during his time of incarceration, but I am concerned for the safety of any woman should this not have been addressed in his rehabilitation.”

In her statement Friday, June Steenkamp described February 14, 2013, as “the day life changed forever”.

“Now, almost 11 years later, the pain is still raw and real, and my dear late husband Barry and I have never been able to come to terms with Reeva’s death, or the way she died,” she said.

She said the conditions imposed by the parole board on Pistorius include anger management courses and programs on gender-based violence.

The athlete – known as the “Blade Runner” for his carbon-fiber prosthetic legs – was once feted as an inspirational figure, having competed against able-bodied athletes in the Olympics in 2012.

He failed to win a medal, but Pistorius’ presence on the track was hailed as a triumph over adversity and a victory over critics who claimed his blades gave him an unfair advantage over others.

At his second court sentencing in 2016, the judge described him as a “fallen hero.”