The European Council has decided to enlarge the border-free Schengen area to include Bulgaria and Romania, the council’s Spanish presidency said Saturday.

Controls on air and sea borders will be lifted as of March 2024, and discussions on lifting controls at land borders will continue in the new year, according to a statement by the European Commission.

“An enlarged Schengen area will make the EU stronger as a Union, internally and on the global stage,” the commission said, welcoming both countries.

The Schengen area currently offers unrestricted travel within a territory of 26 countries (of which 22 are EU countries), and includes more than 400 million citizens, making it the largest area of free movement in the world, according to the Commission.

The decision to add Bulgaria and Romania was unanimously approved by the European Council, the commission also said, noting that it had sent multiple “fact-finding missions” in 2022 and 2023 to the countries’ external borders to confirm their readiness to join Schengen.

European Council President Charles Michel sent his congratulations to Romania and Bulgaria via X, calling it “a long awaited step for Romanian and Bulgarian citizens to enjoy easier freedom of movement with the perspective of land transport to come.”

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen described the decision as “a historic moment for Bulgaria and Romania. And a day of great pride for Romanian and Bulgarian citizens… This is a major step forward for both countries and for the Schengen area as a whole.”

Romania and Bulgaria also hailed the decision, with Romanian Foreign Minister Luminita Odobescu writing on X, that it is “an important outcome for Romania’s citizens. Our thanks to all EU partners and institutions for the support. Romania remains committed to a strong and secure Schengen area.”

Romanian President Klaus Iohannis echoed his foreign minister’s comments, saying on X, it “is a an important step for the benefit of the Romanian people.”

Meanwhile Bulgaria’s Foreign Minister Mariya Gabriel posted on X that “today Schengen becomes stronger with Bulgaria and Romania.”

The former leader of a Hong Kong pro-independence group said Thursday he had fled to Britain to seek asylum in breach of a police supervision order, joining a growing list of pro-democracy activists living in self-imposed exile overseas following Beijing’s crackdown on the city.

In a Facebook post, Tony Chung, 22, said he had faced “stringent surveillance” by national security police following his release from prison in June after serving a sentence for secession under a tough security law. He also claimed officers had exploited his poor financial situation in an attempt to induce him to become a paid informant.

“I feared stepping out of my home, feared using the phone in public, and worried about the possibility of being detained again by national security police officers on the streets,” he said. “Every meeting with the national security police officers filled me with dread, fearing that they may accuse me of endangering national security and would demand me to prove my innocence.”

Chung said he traveled to Britain via Japan after obtaining permission from police to go on a Christmas trip to Okinawa.

He joins an exodus of activists that have fled since Beijing imposed a sweeping national security law on Hong Kong more than three years ago, following nearly a year of pro-democracy protests that rocked the city.

Critics of Hong Kong’s national security law – which criminalizes secession, subversion, terrorism, and collusion with foreign powers and carries a maximum punishment of life imprisonment – say it has been used to crush the city’s opposition movement, overhaul its electoral system, silence its outspoken media and cripple its once-vibrant civil society.

But the Hong Kong government and Chinese authorities have repeatedly rejected such criticisms and said the law helped the city “restore stability” following the 2019 protests.

Earlier this month, Agnes Chow, one of the most prominent faces of the pro-democracy movement, revealed she had fled to Canada and would not return to Hong Kong to meet bail conditions as police investigate allegations she endangered national security.

Hong Kong police have recently placed HK$1 million ($128,000) bounties on a number of democracy activists living in self-imposed exile in a move condemned by the United States and United Kingdom.

All of those wanted now live in the US, Canada, Britain and Australia, which have suspended their extradition treaties with Hong Kong due to concerns over the security law.

Teenage activist

Chung was just a teenager when he became involved in politics.

In 2016, he co-founded Studentlocalism, a pro-independence group, which disbanded shortly before Beijing imposed the national security law in 2020.

At the time, those advocating for independence from China were a minority very much on the fringe of Hong Kong’s once broad democracy movement. But during the huge and sometimes violent democracy protests that raged for months in 2019, calls for greater autonomy, and even independence, became more commonplace, alarming Beijing.

Beijing imposed its new national security law on Hong Kong the following year.

A few months after the law was enacted, Chung was detained by Hong Kong police on secession charges under the security law amid reports he planned to claim for asylum at the US consulate.

In 2021, he was sentenced to a total of 43 months in prison for trying to separate the city from China, and for money laundering.

He was released in June and was put under a one-year supervision order by police.

But Chung claimed that national security police have arbitrarily tightened their surveillance, requesting meetings with him every two to four weeks, questioning him on every detail of his activities, including information about the people he was in contact with and the content of their conversations.

He said authorities also imposed restrictions making it difficult for him to find temporary jobs. Chung speculated that authorities learned of his financial struggles and proposed to pay him informant fees.

“In the past six months with no income from any work, the national security police officers kept on coercing and inducing me to join them,” Chung said on Facebook.

Chung said national security police officers in September also suggested taking him on a trip to mainland China. He said he feared being extradited to the mainland and turned down the proposal.

Before she fled to Canada, fellow activist Chow also claimed that as condition to get her passport back from police, she had to travel in August with authorities to the mainland Chinese city of Shenzhen, just across the border from Hong Kong.

A Hong Kong police statement earlier this month confirmed they had returned Chow’s passport to allow her to study overseas and prolonged her bail. It did not address her account of the trip to Shenzhen.

If 2023 was the year British politics got stuck in traffic, 2024 should be the year it gets moving again.

At some point in the next 12 months, it is expected that the United Kingdom will hold an election some would argue is long overdue.

Not constitutionally overdue: Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is not obliged to call an election until 17 December 2024, exactly five years since the last one took place.

Overdue in the sense that the incumbent Conservative government’s mandate – won in 2019 on Boris Johnson’s optimistic, pre-Covid, post-Brexit platform – belongs to a different decade.

The UK is going through a difficult patch.

There is a cost-of-living crisis. Inflation and interest rates are very high by comparison with any period of time in the past decade. Public services, already struggling to keep up with demand, have been stretched further by rising costs and strike action, leading to longer waits for hospital treatment.

There is a shortage of affordable housing and frequent strikes disrupt rail services. And all of this is happening at a time when the tax burden is historically high.

Many of these problems were inherited by Sunak when he took over from Liz Truss in October 2022. Since coming into office, Sunak’s primary objective has been to steady the ship after his two predecessors, Truss and Johnson before her, oversaw such chaotic governments that they were both forced from office as Conservative polling numbers fell through the floor.

Sunak has since done his best to patch the hole in his sinking ship. But, more often than not, he and his government look stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Politically, Sunak is in an undesirable position. The biggest threat to his authority comes from the right of his own base – both within the party and among right-wing voters. Their key concerns include immigration (net migration for 2022 was upgraded by the Office for National Statistics to a record high of 745,000 in November), so-called culture wars issues and any perceived betrayal of the Brexit vote in 2016.

He is blamed by many in his party for the political assassination of Johnson. Sunak served as Johnson’s chancellor (finance minister) from February 2020 to July 2022. During the Covid-19 pandemic, he was a key part of Johnson’s crisis government and was at times lauded for the financial support he provided businesses and individuals during the toughest periods of lockdown.

However, the overlapping scandals of Johnson’s government – ranging from breaking his own Covid rules to appointing a key ally known for sexual harassment – made Johnson too toxic for Sunak, leading him to step down in July 2022.

Sunak’s resignation – which was followed by a string of others – was seen by ultra-committed Johnson allies as the defining moment in his downfall. They have never forgiven Sunak for his betrayal.

Johnson’s exit from office created an acute division in the Conservative Party. Johnson is widely seen as both the architect and deliverer of Brexit, making him the champion of the Conservative right.

Even though Sunak is, in many ways, to the right of Johnson, his perceived treachery means loyal Johnsonites will never trust him.

This has created a headache for Sunak, who must simultaneously appease the right of the party with red-meat policy while also presenting to the wider public as the anti-Johnson: a sensible, calm, technocratic leader stabilizing the country during difficult times.

Balancing act

Sunak has refused to cut taxes and fostered friendlier relations with the European Union – unpopular with the right of his party – while also pushing back green policies and making lots of noise on culture war issues like immigration and trans rights.

His impossible balancing act is perhaps best illustrated by two decisions he made this autumn. In October, Sunak junked HS2, a high-speed rail project connecting the north and south of England that was signed off under former Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron. This decision was taken to appease some on the right of the party who saw it as an unnecessary waste of money that Cameron should have never introduced.

Weeks later, Cameron – a liberal reformer who led the campaign against Brexit – was appointed as Sunak’s new foreign secretary, to the dismay of many on the party’s right. An unfriendly headline in the Conservative-supporting Daily Telegraph newspaper recently read: “David Cameron’s return has put the pro-EU, anti-Israel blob back in charge.”

It isn’t just right-wing media commentators who are publicly laying into Sunak and his government.

Johnson himself has recently started a weekly column in the Daily Mail newspaper, from which he has lobbed grenades at his successor. The firebrand Brexiteer Nigel Farage has a daily TV show in which he rages about immigration and Brexit. One of Johnson’s biggest allies, former cabinet minister Nadine Dorries, has written a book all about the apparent plot to remove Johnson from office, in which she claims Sunak had a starring role.

It’s here that we come back to the election and the fact that it is overdue.

All the issues described above can in some way be filed under “party management.” So much of what Sunak and his government spend their time talking about seems to be aimed at a very small audience of Conservative MPs and party members. It often feels that niche issues are driving the political narrative in a country that has bigger and more important things to be worrying about.

And for all the energy – and even moderate successes of Sunak’s premiership to date – the polls have barely budged, with the Conservatives still trailing the opposition Labour Party by double digits. Which raises the question: Why is Sunak, the third Conservative prime minister since the last election, ­waiting to give the public a say?

Biding time

Allies of the prime minister point out that the UK does not elect leaders, but MPs whose parties can form governments. Parliaments are then typically given five years to get on with governing. But a lot has happened in the past five years and, with the best will in the world, it is hard to argue that Johnson’s election manifesto of 2019 is the basis on which Sunak is currently governing.

One likely reason for the delay is that Sunak is waiting to see if his polling numbers improve. Pro-Sunak moderate Conservatives support this even if they think they are ultimately fated to lose the next election.

Sunak is quite within his rights to hang on until the last minute. Who knows, he might even turn around those polling numbers and pull off an improbable win.

Whenever it happens and whatever the outcome, it does feel like Groundhog Day in the UK as the Conservative Party once again is embroiled in turmoil. There is an argument that a break from the rollercoaster of Brexit, Covid and Johnson is a good thing.

But 2019 really does feel like a long time ago, and it’s hard to find anyone who can make a coherent argument that the public should be denied a say in how they are governed for very much longer.

One hundred and twenty miles off the coast of Palawan in the Philippines sits the Sierra Madre, a rusting World War II-era landing vessel that hosts a small contingent of Philippine marines and serves as the infrastructural backbone of an atoll called the Second Thomas Shoal.

In 2016, the Permanent Court of Arbitration at the Hague declared that the shoal belonged to the Philippines and that China has no legal basis to claim historic rights to the bulk of the South China Sea.

Beijing subsequently moved aggressively to underscore its public rejection of the court’s ruling, ramping up construction on numerous man-made islands with military facilities to buttress its assertion of control over almost all the South China Sea.

China’s key tool in all of this has been its huge coast guard – the largest such force in the world.

China Coast Guard ships have rammed, attacked with water cannons, or otherwise forcefully confronted Philippine vessels seeking to resupply or repair the Sierra Madre, and so keep it from breaking up in heavy weather and rough seas – a development that would severely undermine Manila’s continuing hold on the Second Thomas Shoal.

This desperate Filipino race against time has attracted the keen attention of the United States, whose increasingly close ties to Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the Philippines new pro-American leader, have included plans for an expansion of American access to military bases on the Philippine mainland.

As President Biden declared on October 26, “The US defense commitment to the Philippines is ironclad. Any attack on Filipino aircraft, vessels, or armed forces” would automatically trigger Washington’s mutual defense treaty with Manila.

But Chinese behavior contains a deeper threat.

As the Philippine case illustrates, Beijing has long used its massive coast guard as a force to project power, not only in the South China Sea but elsewhere, ignoring international norms, creating facts on the ground (or the sea,) pushing the envelope while daring others to push back.

And some analysts believe that China could soon start to deploy the coast guard to ratchet up the pressure on Taiwan, the democratic island that Beijing has vowed to bring under its control, by persuasion if possible, and force if necessary.

This is especially true with the forthcoming January 13 presidential and legislative elections in Taiwan.

If the island’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, which views Taiwan as a de facto sovereign nation and not part of China, should for the third consecutive time win the island’s presidential poll – it enjoys a small lead in public opinion surveys – the odds of a tough Chinese response will increase significantly.

And even if the more China-friendly Kuomintang (KMT) pulls out an upset and prevails on January 13, it is highly unlikely to meet Chinese expectations for rapid movement towards eventual unification with the mainland – heightening the chances for further Chinese muscle-flexing.

This kind of pressure would create an extraordinarily difficult challenge for Taiwan and the US Navy, especially since the coast guard now has the backing of a Chinese law allowing it to use lethal force in waters which China claims.

“If one day Chinese coast guard ships appear around Taiwan – and they can range up to 10,000 tons – what do the US or Taiwan do?” asks former Taiwan Defense Minister Andrew Yang. “They are coast guard, not navy. They aren’t firing a shot. Do the US or Taiwan fire first?”

The coast guard also makes it easier for the Chinese Communist Party to deploy other tools of coercion it has so far not chosen to use, including moves that could directly threaten foreign companies doing business in Taiwan.

Such steps might include insisting that foreign vessels sailing to the island first undergo customs inspections in nearby Chinese ports or demanding that foreign air carriers serving Taiwanese airports first file flight plans with Chinese authorities.

The possibility that Chinese vessels might at some point inspect foreign commercial ships on the high seas to underscore its Taiwan claims could well lead to international insurers linking maritime insurance rates to compliance with evolving Chinese requirements, creating additional legal, political, and financial pressures on foreign companies doing business in Taiwan — all the while steadily undermining Taiwan’s effort to retain political separation from China.

Beijing has already been conducting almost daily air and naval operations in Taiwan’s self-declared Air Defense Identification Zone. In September, a record 103 sorties were staged in a single day.

More recent incursions have included Chinese aircraft circumnavigating Taiwan, as well as increasingly crossing an informal Taiwan Strait “median line” designed to keep the two sides apart and so reduce the danger of an accidental clash.

Beijing has also challenged US ships in the strait, including an incident in June in which a People’s Liberation Army warship cut across the bow and came within 150 yards of a US guided-missile destroyer as it was transiting the strait with a Canadian frigate. In September, China’s first domestically built aircraft carrier, the Shandong, conducted operations south and then north of Taiwan.

These so-called “gray zone activities” have so far succeeded in giving China the upper hand in the South China Sea. The situation may soon reach a point where Taiwan’s friends and allies will have to confront the challenge of whether they will prove equally effective in and around the democratic island.

While it’s not yet possible for humans to venture to the intriguing ocean worlds in our solar system, NASA is sending a cosmic message in a bottle to Jupiter’s moon Europa that will carry more than 2 million names.

And your name can be one of them if you sign up before the year ends.

The launch of NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft is one of the most anticipated missions of 2024. The probe is expected to lift off from Kennedy Space Center in October and set off on a 1.8 billion-mile (2.9 billion-kilometer) journey to Jupiter’s moon Europa.

After arriving in orbit in 2030, Europa Clipper will spend the next few years flying by the ice-covered moon to see if the ocean beneath it could support life. Europa is among several ocean world moons considered to be one of the best places to search for life beyond Earth.

In addition to a suite of nine science instruments, Europa Clipper will carry a poem written by Ada Limón, the US poet laureate.

As part of her laureateship, Limón wrote “In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa.” The original poem will be engraved in Limón’s handwriting on a tantalum metal plate sealing the spacecraft’s sensitive electronics inside a vault to protect them from Jupiter’s harsh radiation.

The poem will face the inside of the vault, along with microchips stenciled with the names of people who submit to NASA’s Message in a Bottle campaign.

Once all the names have been collected, they will be added to the spacecraft, which is being assembled at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

The space agency offers a continuous live view of Europa Clipper’s assembly on its website.

Technicians will use electron beams to stencil the names on the dime-size silicon chips at JPL’s Microdevices Laboratory. Each name will be smaller than 1/1000th the width of a human hair.

NASA has a long history of sending names to space aboard missions, including Artemis I, the Perseverance rover and Parker Solar Probe.

Europa Clipper is the largest spacecraft NASA has developed for a planetary mission. With its massive solar arrays deployed, Europa Clipper will be more than 100 feet (30.5 meters) across and stand 16 feet (about 5 meters) tall.

After arriving in orbit in April 2030, Europa Clipper is set to make nearly 50 flybys of Europa, eventually coming within 16 miles (25.7 kilometers) above its thick ice crust to survey almost the entirety of that moon.

The spacecraft will use cameras, spectrometers, ice-penetrating radar and a thermal instrument to understand how the moon formed and if it’s possible for life to exist on icy ocean worlds.

Nearly 1,000 new species were discovered in 2023 by scientists at London’s Natural History Museum and the California Academy of Sciences, proving that Earth is still home to many unexplored wonders.

The discoveries were made during a year that marks the 50th anniversary of the US Endangered Species Act, which offers protections for threatened plants and animals and has helped save hundreds of species, according to Scott Sampson, California Academy of Sciences executive director.

“Yet a million more species remain imperiled due to human-driven activities like habitat destruction, climate change, and pollution,” Sampson said in a statement. “We must document the Earth’s living diversity so that we can work to protect it, and the California Academy of Sciences is honored to take part in this critical global effort.”

The diverse list of 968 new species includes previously unknown dinosaurs and extinct creatures, beetles, moths, sea slugs, geckos, fish, frogs, spiders, plants, fungi, worms and a legless skink.

Pest controlling-wasps

Scientists will likely recall 2023 as the year of the wasp. Of the 815 new species described by Natural History Museum researchers this year, 619 of them were different types of pollinating, predatory and parasitic wasps.

The extraordinary number of discoveries was boosted by the work of Dr. John Noyes and Christer Hansson, scientific associates at the Natural History Museum, who are conducting ongoing research to uncover bees, ants and wasps in Costa Rica.

“It is important to keep describing new species because many will have a profound influence on their environment and without knowing what to call them, we cannot convey any information about them,” Noyes said.

Some of the new wasp species showcase a variety of metallic hues, including blue, purple and orange. As a fan of “Doctor Who” and a nod to the British television series marking its 60th year in 2023, Noyes named a genus of wasp after the show’s fictional mutant villains called the Daleks and their creator.

And while wasps may seem like nuisances armed with stingers, the insects help control populations of pests that can plague agricultural crops.

“In the past 60 years or so, three species have been incredibly important. One in preventing the possible starvation of up to 300 million people in Africa, a second preventing the rainforest from destruction in Thailand, and another the collapse of the economy of Togo,” Noyes said.

A legless lizard

A new species of legless lizard was found slithering along the slopes of Serra da Neve, the second-tallest mountain in Angola. Legless lizards, known as skinks, resemble snakes, hiding among leaves on the forest floor to hunt for insects and other small prey.

Skinks differ from snakes in that they have external ear openings and movable eyelids, according to the Virginia Zoo.

While most skinks are uniform in color, the newly described Acontias mukwando has a pink ring around its neck.

Serra da Neve provides a unique ecosystem to the unusual plants and animals that only are found living on the isolated peak. The mountain is on the northern edge of the Namib Desert and has a cool, humid environment.

“Each new species we describe from this mountain — and others like it — is evidence that places like these deserve some sort of conservation consideration,” Academy of Sciences research associate Aaron Bauer said in a statement. “We’re still finding new species on these isolated ‘islands,’ which tells us it’s not too late for protection.”

Puzzling plants

Scientists from the National Polytechnic Institute in Durango, Mexico, worked with Academy of Sciences researchers to study a rare succulent in the Sierra Madre Occidental mountain range.

The plant, which grows out of the side of cliffs, has long been known to the local O’dam Indigenous community. The O’dam people refer to the plant with bald leaves and stems as da’npakal, which means bald, naked or slippery in their language.

Researchers have named the succulent Pachyphytum odam to maintain the connection between the plant and the community living on the land where it grows.

Meanwhile, scientists solved a case of mistaken identity for a flowering plant in Costa Rica. For more than 150 years, the plant was thought to belong to a similar but separate species in Mexico.

The newly identified plant, Stenostephanus purpureus, is different from a plant called Stenostephanus silvaticus found in Mexico. The flowers are different colors, and the Costa Rican plant is missing a flat petal often called a landing pad for butterflies and other insects as they collect pollen. Instead, hummingbirds likely pollinated Stenostephanus purpureus.

“I never questioned the identification of the Costa Rican specimens, not until I did a side-by-side comparison with images of living plants from Mexico,” said Academy of Sciences researcher Ricardo Kriebel in a statement. “The differences between the two are subtle when you’re working with dead, dry specimens from collections.”

A new look into the past

Natural History Museum researchers identified four new species of extinct birds by studying fossils, including those that lived during the time of dinosaurs. One of the most intriguing discoveries of the year was Kumimanu fordycei, the largest penguin that ever existed on Earth. The flightless birds lived 60 million years ago and weighed an estimated 330 pounds (150 kilograms).

A previously unknown type of armored dinosaur species was also found on the Isle of Wight. Known as Dinosaur Island, the Isle of Wight is considered one of the best places to find dinosaur fossils in the United Kingdom.

The ankylosaur, which lived on the island 140 million years ago, was named Vectipelta barretti in honor of Natural History Museum professor Paul Barrett.

“Paul is incredibly influential in our discipline,” said Dr. Susannah Maidment, a paleontologist at the museum who studied the new species, in a statement. “He is incredibly high profile and has contributed an enormous amount to the field. But he’s also had an absolutely enormous influence on all of our careers, and we wanted to thank him for that. So we decided to name a small, slow-moving, spikey organism after him.”

Researchers also named an ancient fungus after beloved children’s book author and illustrator Beatrix Potter. The 400-million-year-old Potteromyces asteroxylicola, found infecting the roots of fossilized plants, is the earliest known disease-causing fungus. In addition to writing the Peter Rabbit books, Potter was an avid mycologist who studied and created detailed depictions of fungi.

South Africa has filed an application at the International Court of Justice to begin proceedings over allegations of genocide against Israel for its war against Hamas in Gaza, the court said on Friday.

South Africa accuses Israel of being “in violation of its obligations under the Genocide Convention” in its application, and argues that “acts and omissions by Israel … are genocidal in character, as they are committed with the requisite specific intent … to destroy Palestinians in Gaza,” according to the ICJ.

Over 21,507 people have been killed in Gaza since October 7, according to the enclave’s Hamas-controlled Health Ministry. Among the dead are at least 308 people who were sheltering in United Nations shelters, per the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees.

Israel has rejected South Africa’s claims and application to the world court, saying through its Ministry of Foreign Affairs that South Africa “is calling for the destruction of the State of Israel, and that its “claim lacks both a factual and a legal basis.”

“Israel is committed to international law and acts in accordance with it, and directs its military efforts only against the Hamas terrorist organization and the other terrorist organizations cooperating with Hamas,” its statement said, adding that it has made “every effort to limit harm to the non-involved and to allow humanitarian aid to enter the Gaza Strip.”

Israel’s aerial bombardment and ground invasion of Gaza, in response to Hamas’ deadly terror attacks and kidnapping rampage on October 7, have caused widespread devastation in the densely-inhabited coastal strip, prompting outcry from aid groups and the international community.

US President Joe Biden said earlier this month that that Israel is engaged in “indiscriminate bombing” in Gaza. US intelligence assessment suggests that nearly half of the air-to-ground munitions that Israel has used in Gaza in its war with Hamas have been unguided, otherwise known as “dumb bombs.” Unguided munitions are typically less precise and can pose a greater threat to civilians.

“South Africa is gravely concerned with the plight of civilians caught in the present Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip due to the indiscriminate use of force and forcible removal of inhabitants,” a statement released by South Africa’s Department of International Relations and Cooperation said on Friday.

“Furthermore, there are ongoing reports of international crimes, such as crimes against humanity and war crimes, being committed as well as reports that acts meeting the threshold of genocide or related crimes as defined in the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, have been and may still be committed in the context of the ongoing massacres in Gaza,” it says.

“As a State Party to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, South Africa is under a treaty obligation to prevent genocide from occurring.”

South Africa and Israel are both parties to the Genocide Convention, according to the ICJ, which is also known as the World Court and is the principal judicial organ of the United Nations.

Actor Lee Sun-kyun’s sudden death this week is the latest in a string of shock celebrity losses in South Korea, a country with one of the world’s highest suicide rates and where public figures are often expected to be paragons.

Lee, who received acclaim for his role as Park Dong-ik, the father of the wealthy Park family in the Academy Award-winning “Parasite,” was found dead in his car on Wednesday morning in what police said was a suspected suicide. His funeral was expected to be held later on Friday.

At the time of his death the 48-year-old father of two was being investigated by police over allegations of illegal drug use and had recently been through multiple rounds of lengthy questioning.

Lee’s death comes as South Korea has seen a spate of suspected suicides among its celebrities in recent years, especially young K-pop stars.

Each time these deaths have reignited conversations about the mental well-being of South Korean celebrities and public figures, casting a spotlight on the pressures they face in the competitive and stressful Korean entertainment industry and the pitfalls for those deemed to have made transgressions.

In December 2017, superstar Kim Jong-hyun, better known as Jonghyun, took his own life at the age of 27. Two years later K-pop singer Sulli, formerly of the band f(x), was found dead at her home at the age of 25 in an apparent suicide.

Around six weeks later, fellow K-pop artist Goo Hara, formerly a member of girl band Kara, was found dead at 28. Police would not comment on a cause of death, but Goo previously revealed she was suffering from depression.

And in April this year, K-pop fans around the world were left heartbroken by the loss of Moon Bin, a member of the popular boy band Astro, at the age of 25.

K-pop idols in particular are known to be subject to intense scrutiny and high expectations from their strict management, which has been linked to a mental health crisis in the industry.

For years it was not uncommon for K-pop stars to be expected not to have relationships, with some even having a “no dating” clause in their contracts.

Attitudes toward dating have slowly begun to change, in part because fans have become more willing to accept relationships between stars. But South Korea’s entertainment industry remains a high-pressure environment with intense training regimens and expectations from fans and industry power brokers alike.

Teacher protests

South Korea’s mental health crisis stretches across class divides and touches all parts of society.

In 2021, the suicide rate in South Korea was 26 out of every 100,000 people, according to the country’s Health and Welfare Ministry. South Korea also has the highest rate of youth suicide among the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) nations. In Japan, the OECD’s figure is 15.7 per 100,000 people while in the United States it is 14.1 per 100,000.

In September, hundreds of thousands of teachers across the country held mass protests after the suspected suicide of a teacher that was widely blamed on South Korea’s high-pressure education system and the burden it places on teachers.

Government data shows 100 public school teachers in South Korea – mostly elementary school teachers – took their own lives from January 2018 to June 2023.

South Korean politics has also seen high-profile cases. In 2009, former president Roh Moo-hyun took his own life amid an investigation into a bribery scandal that had tarnished his reputation.

Following Sulli and Goo’s deaths, Paik Jong-woo, a psychiatrist and the director of the Korea Suicide Prevention Center, attributed part of the high suicide rate to social stigma. Fewer South Koreans who suffer from depression seek help than in other developed countries, studies show.

Those in the entertainment industry might be especially at risk, according to Paik.

“Artists tend to experience emotions more vividly and because their job is being loved by the public, they cannot help but be more sensitive to public views,” he said.

Paik explained that celebrities often cannot access mental health professionals due to fear of public shame and lack of time in their schedules. An average day for a K-pop star can be 16 hours or longer, filled with everything from dance practice to singing lessons, language class and camera training.

“There needs to be special attention to prevent celebrity suicides,” Paik said.

Lee Gyu-tag, a professor of cultural studies at George Mason University Korea in Incheon, thinks South Korea’s intesely online culture also plays a role.

“Whether they did drugs or committed illegal crimes, if it is not a serious mistake, they should be punished by law, and that’s it. But the public seem to think that people in the entertainment business deserve criticism or shameful comments on the internet.”

Questions over police probe

Lee’s death came while he was being investigated for illegal drug use at time when South Korea’s conservative government has been pushing a crackdown on drugs and the police are under pressure to deliver results.

Like many places in East and Southeast Asia, South Korea has some of the world’s strictest drug laws with lengthy prison sentences and an intense social stigma attached to drug use.

According to South Korean police, Lee had claimed he was tricked into using drugs and subsequently blackmailed by an individual. Lee filed a lawsuit against the alleged blackmailer, according to police, who added they had received a tip about his alleged drug use before he filed suit.

But throughout the investigation, Lee’s drug tests had all come back negative, police added. Police have since closed the drug investigation following’s Lee’s death.

A lawyer for Lee, who did not want to be named due to the sensitive nature of the case, said his client was upset that the police investigation was built on the word of people he accused of blackmailing him, rather than on scientific evidence. He had repeatedly denied intentionally taking illegal drugs.

There “was a dispute between Lee’s testimonies and the blackmailers’ testimonies,” the lawyer said, adding that details of the investigation being leaked to the media also caused Lee pain.

Incheon police offered their condolences to Lee’s family on Wednesday, expressing regret that details of his drug investigation had been prematurely made public before its completion, despite their efforts to prevent it.

“It’s difficult to say that the details came from the police, as there are other agencies in the legal system that have access to such information,” police added.

South Korean law prohibits those involved in a criminal investigation from releasing facts about the suspect before a public indictment is released.

How to get help: In the US, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255. The International Association for Suicide Prevention and Befrienders Worldwide also can provide contact information for crisis centers around the world.

Israel’s army chief said troops failed in their mission to rescue three hostages mistakenly killed in Gaza earlier this month as the military on Thursday published its report into the incident.

Herzi Halevi, chief of the General Staff of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), said the shootings “could have been prevented,” but he determined there was “no malice in the event and the soldiers carried out the right action to the best of their understanding of the event at that moment.”

Yotam Haim, Alon Shamriz and Samer Talalka were captured by Hamas on October 7 and taken to Gaza. The three men were accidentally killed during an IDF operation around the Gaza City neighborhood of Shejaiya on December 15 in an incident that shocked Israeli society.

The report into their deaths concluded that Israeli command ranks had information about the presence of hostages in the area where they were killed and “even took actions to prevent strikes on locations suspected of having hostages.”

But the investigation also found that Israeli forces in the field had “insufficient awareness” of the possibility that hostages would approach them or that they would encounter them other than as part of a special operation to free the Israelis held.

According to the findings, on December 15, an Israeli soldier fired toward three hostages “identified as threats,” killing two of them. The third hostage fled, and the battalion commander gave an order to hold fire to identify the third person.

After the commander heard someone screaming “help” in Hebrew, he called on the person to come toward the soldiers; the hostage emerged from a building and moved toward the troops, the report said. Two soldiers didn’t hear the commander’s orders to hold fire “due to noise from a nearby tank” and fatally shot the third hostage, according to the investigation.

The probe also concluded that the “hostages were walking shirtless, and one of them was waving a white flag, standing at a point with limited visibility relative to the position of the soldier that fired the shot.”

In the days before the killing of the hostages, the report said Israeli soldiers heard cries for help in Hebrew coming from a building while troops fought Hamas gunmen, adding that the soldiers thought it was an attempt to trap them. Also, a camera that was mounted on a military dog during the fight captured the voices of the hostages crying for help.

That same day, a note reading “Help” in Hebrew was found at the exit of a tunnel, the report claimed, which Israeli soldiers interpreted as an attempt by Hamas to lure them.

On December 14, Israeli drone footage identified signs reading “SOS” and “Help, 3 hostages” on a building 200 meters (656 feet) from where the hostages were killed the next day, the report said, claiming the Israeli military suspected this was a trap after blue barrels that it says are commonly found in rigged areas were spotted nearby.

Halevi, the military IDF chief, concluded that the killing of the hostages shouldn’t have happened and didn’t match up to the risk of the situation.

“The standard operating procedures are necessary, and they are also intended to protect us, so that we do not kill our own forces,” he said. “They set and impact fateful decisions, as happened in this event.”

“What we have told our troops is to be extra vigilant and do one more safety check before dealing with kinetics with any threat that they face on the battlefield,” Conricus said, “but it is a very challenging environment that our troops are in.”

Who were the hostages?

All three hostages were young men. Haim and Shimriz were kidnapped from Kibbutz Kfar Aza, while Talalka was taken near Kibbutz Nir Am.

Talalka, 25, was a member of Israel’s Bedouin community and the eldest of 10 children. He lived in the town of Hura and worked with his father and brothers at a chicken hatchery near Kibbutz Nir Am.

On October 7, he was with his father at the chicken hatchery and told his sister in a phone call that he had been injured by terrorist gunfire, until the call disconnected, according to the Israeli Hostages and Missing Persons Families Forum.

Haim, 28, was a gifted musician and heavy metal fan. He had played the drums for 20 years and was supposed to perform at a Metal Music Festival in Tel Aviv on October 7 with his band, Persephore. Yotam last spoke with his family that morning. He told them his house had burned down before losing contact with them at 10:44 a.m., soon after which he was kidnapped by Hamas, according to the family forum.

Less is known about Shimriz, but his family, like those of Talalka and Haim, had spoken publicly about their ordeal

Haim’s mother, Iris, had told Israel’s Channel 11 that she had faith her son would return even without raising her voice at the government.

“Some people think that if they don’t shout, no one will bring their children back. I tell them: we can do it peacefully and through a respectful dialogue. The children will come back, I have no doubt,” she said.

Negotiations to release the more than 100 hostages still held in Gaza by Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups have yielded little results in recent weeks.

“We’re holding talks even during these very moments,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday at a meeting with hostages’ families. “I can’t elaborate on the status – we’re operating in order to return everyone.”

A year ago, a resolute President Volodymyr Zelensky traveled direct from the battlefield of Bakhmut to address the US Congress and meet with President Joe Biden. He was feted as a hero; Ukraine’s determination to resist Russian aggression met with strong bipartisan backing in Washington.

One year on, the outlook looks much grimmer. A long-anticipated Ukrainian offensive in the south has made scant progress. Russia appears to have weathered international sanctions, for now, and has converted its economy into a war machine.

The Russian way of war, absorbing hideous losses of men and materiel but throwing yet more into the fight, has blunted the Ukrainian military’s tactical and technological edge, as its top general admitted in a candid essay last month.

The mood in Moscow seems grimly determined: the goals of the “special military operation” will be achieved, and the fighting will continue until they are.

As the long frontline becomes ever more calcified, the Kremlin senses greater skepticism among Kyiv’s Western backers that Ukraine can recover the 17% of its territory still occupied by Russian forces.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is relishing the much more partisan atmosphere in Washington, where many in the Republican Party are questioning the purpose of sending Ukraine another $61 billion worth of aid as requested by the Biden administration, assessing that it will achieve little on the battlefield.

At his first year-end news conference since the conflict began, Putin scoffed: “Ukraine produces almost nothing today, everything is coming from the West, but the free stuff is going to run out some day, and it seems it already is.”

At the same time, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban blocked a $55 billion EU package of financial aid for Ukraine, prompting one German politician to say that it was like having Putin himself sitting at the table.

That jeopardizes government spending on everything from salaries to hospitals.

Zelensky, who by his own recent admission is tired, has an ever-harder job as Ukraine’s chief salesman, with events in the Middle East diverting attention from Ukraine as the number-one international crisis.

On the first anniversary of the invasion, he predicted that “2023 will be the year of our victory!” He’s unlikely to make the same optimistic forecast for the coming year.

Russia is not without its own vulnerabilities, but they are more long-term. The conflict has exacerbated its demographic crisis through emigration and battlefield losses. Nearly 750,000 people left Russia in 2022; analysts expect an even higher number will have voted with their feet this year.

Labor shortages are stoking rising wages and therefore inflation. Evading sanctions and maintaining industrial production comes at a price, with much of that production now devoted to replacing the stunning battlefield losses and the budget deficit exploding accordingly.

The long-term prognosis for the Russian economy is grim – and that may be Putin’s most fundamental legacy.

But as the economist John Maynard Keynes once said, “In the long run we are all dead.” In the short-term Putin appears unassailable. Reelection in March is a formality (the Kremlin has already acknowledged as much.) Contrast that with the US, where a febrile year of campaigning might end with Donald Trump preparing for his second term. That is Kyiv’s nightmare and Moscow’s dream.

The deeply partisan mood in Congress has scuppered the Biden’s administration’s request for further aid for Kyiv. Currently allocated funds for military equipment are nearly drained. One Democratic senator, Chris Murphy, said starkly: “We are about to abandon Ukraine.”

The mantra in Western capitals on supporting Ukraine has been “as long as it takes.” But standing next to Zelensky this month, Biden said the US would support Ukraine “as long as we can.”

Battlefield slog

While the global metrics for Ukraine deteriorate, so the frontlines offer little cheer.

The much-anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive launched in June was meant to display the superiority of NATO’s strategy of combined arms warfare, drilled into newly-minted Ukrainian brigades who were trained in muddy fields in Germany. But it was alien to Ukrainian military culture and was not matched by superiority in the skies.

What should have been a dash south to the Black Sea became a quagmire in dense minefields, with Western armor picked off from the air by Russian drones and aviation.

Ukrainian units took at most 200 square kilometers of territory over six months. The goals of reaching the coastline, Crimea and splitting Russian forces in the south remained a distant dream.

With the frontlines frozen, Kyiv’s intelligence agencies have turned to more spectacular attacks: sinking a Russian landing ship in Crimea this week and even sabotaging railway lines as far as the Russian Far East. Success in the Black Sea has allowed for relatively safe passage for merchant ships, despite Moscow abandoning a UN-brokered deal last summer.

However, despite their audacity, such operations won’t alter the fundamental balance of the conflict.

Zaluzhny put it bluntly: “The level of our technological development today has put both us and our enemies in a stupor.” The use of surveillance and strike drones deprives both sides of the element of surprise within the confines of the battlefield.

“The simple fact is that we see everything the enemy is doing, and they see everything we are doing.”

But the Russians’ vast reserves of manpower and hardware (Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu boasted that he could raise 25 million men if necessary) mean they can continue bludgeoning the smaller Ukrainian military, making incremental gains at enormous cost.

So it was around Bakhmut last winter; perhaps the same will apply to the ruined Donetsk town of Avdiivka in the next few weeks.

The pool of military recruits in Ukraine has substantially shrunk; battlefield losses have deprived the military of tens of thousands of experienced soldiers and mid-rank officers. “Sooner or later we are going to find that we simply don’t have enough people to fight,” Zaluzhny told the Economist in November.

The arrival of F-16s fighter jets in the spring will undoubtedly help the Ukrainian air force challenge Russian combat planes and support their own ground forces, but they will be no silver bullet. Basic training is one thing; flying into the teeth of Russian air defenses another.

The same would apply even if the US agreed to supply longer-range Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) to Ukraine. (UK-supplied Storm Shadow missiles have helped target the Russian rear.)

In any event, the paralysis over funding has blocked the pipeline of US weaponry and Europe does not have the capacity to fill the gap.

Some leading analysts conclude it’s time for a clear-eyed reassessment.

“Ukraine and the West are on an unsustainable trajectory, one characterized by a glaring mismatch between ends and the available means,” write Richard Haass and Charles Kupchan in Foreign Affairs.

Ukraine’s goal of recovering all its territory is “out of reach,” they say bluntly. “Where we are looks at best like a costly deadlock.”

They recommend that Ukraine shifts to a defensive posture in 2024 to stem losses, which would “shore up Western support by demonstrating that Kyiv has a workable strategy aimed at attainable goals.”

The Russian military, which has by and large proved inept in offensive operations, would thereby find it even more difficult to take ground.

To others, such a shift would essentially reward aggression, enabling Russia to pause and regroup, with potentially dangerous consequences for others in Russia’s near-abroad. It would also send the wrong message about US commitment to other allies, such as Taiwan. And it’s a non-starter, politically, in Kyiv.

Biden said during Zelensky’s visit that “Putin is banking on the United States failing to deliver for Ukraine. We must, we must, we must prove him wrong.”

It smacked of desperation. Haass and Kupchan say, “Ukraine would be wise to devote incoming resources to its long-term security and prosperity instead of expending it on the battlefield for little gain.”

There are certainly signs of tensions within Ukrainian society as the conflict nears its second anniversary and the economy struggles to start growing again, after shrinking by one-third. The longer several million Ukrainians live elsewhere in Europe, the less likely they are to come back.

For now Zelensky and his inner circle show no sign of compromise. Zelensky won’t countenance a truce or negotiations. “For us it would mean leaving this wound open for future generations,” he told TIME in November.

Instead, barring some unlikely collapse in morale on either side, the same towns and villages destroyed over the last two years will still be fought over in the next. Ukraine will have the means to survive, but not to win.