The fates of many of Hong Kong’s leading pro-democracy figures are at stake in two ongoing trials that spotlight the impact of the Beijing-imposed national security law on the once outspoken city.

On Monday, hearings began in the closely watched trial of media mogul Jimmy Lai, a major figure in Hong Kong’s press landscape who has been accused of “colluding with foreign forces.”

And last month, lawyers made closing remarks in a separate national security case against dozens of activists and politicians known as the “Hong Kong 47.” The defendants, including former student activist Joshua Wong, were arrested en masse nearly three years ago for holding an unofficial primary election to decide who should contest city lawmaker elections.

The twin trials are among the highest profile to date under the sweeping national security law imposed by Beijing in 2020 in the wake of massive and at times violent pro-democracy protests in 2019.

Authorities in Beijing and Hong Kong say the law “restored stability” and closed loopholes that allowed interference of “foreign forces.” They’ve denied the law has suppressed freedoms.

But rights organizations, media groups, and critics say it has transformed the legal landscape and slashed basic civil and political rights in Hong Kong – a city once known for its robust culture of protest and free press and lauded for its international standard legal system.

What the courts decide in both trials will send a strong signal of how political acts — which many argue were in line with the normal functioning of the city’s vibrant civil society — are now treated.

The trials, whose verdicts are expected next year, also come as Hong Kong plans to expand the number of national security crimes with new legislation. Officials say a new law will plug “gaps” in Beijing’s rules, but critics fear it could further degrade freedoms – and international confidence – in the city.

Here’s what you need to know: 

Who’s on trial and what are the charges?

Lai, 76, was among the first people to be arrested under the national security law after it came into effect on June 30, 2020. He is now on trial for three counts of colluding with foreign forces under the national security law and a separate charge under the city’s colonial-era sedition act. Lai has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

The founder of the pro-democracy, anti-Beijing newspaper Apple Daily had already been jailed for roughly three years and handed other sentences in relation to the protests and business operations at the paper’s premises.

Lai had long been an outspoken critic of China’s ruling Communist Party – a view reflected in the pages of his now-defunct newspaper. During the 2019 protests, he traveled to the United States to meet with politicians to discuss the political situation in Hong Kong – a move seen by Beijing as colluding with foreign forces to undermine China’s security.

The so-called Hong Kong 47 includes seasoned politicians, elected lawmakers and young protest leaders, as well as academics, unionists, journalists and medical workers. They hail from multiple generations and a wide political spectrum – from moderate pro-democracy figures to those who advocate for Hong Kong’s self-determination.

Among some of the more well-known figures are Joshua Wong, 27, who gained international fame as the teenage face of Hong Kong’s years of student-led democracy protests; Benny Tai, 59, a legal scholar and co-founder of the 2014 Occupy Central movement; and Claudia Mo, 66, a former journalist-turned-legislator.

They were charged with “conspiracy to commit subversion” after holding the unofficial primary election in 2020 less than two weeks after security law came into effect. Its goal was to decide who should contest city lawmaker elections and give pro-democracy politicians the best chance of gaining a majority in the legislature. Hundreds of thousands of people cast votes.

Those on trial say that plan was simply part of the pluralistic, oppositional politics that has long been permitted in Hong Kong. Prosecutors argue it amounted to a “massive and well-organized scheme to subvert the Hong Kong government.”

In national security trials, the maximum sentence is life in prison.

How are national security trials different from other proceedings?

The national security law, drafted and approved in Beijing for Hong Kong, criminalizes acts of secession, subversion, terrorism, and collusion with foreign forces.

It also allows for departures from common law in terms of how cases are tried.

So far, no national security cases in the city have been heard by a jury. They’ve instead been presided over by a bench of three high court judges selected by the city’s Beijing-appointed Chief Executive. The judges come from the existing ranks of the city’s judiciary and are chosen based on their “judicial and professional qualities,” the government has said.

The law provides an option for cases to be transferred to mainland China for trial under extreme circumstances – a provision that has yet to be used.

It also places a higher threshold for bail. In the trial of the 47, 32 defendants were denied bail and have been in detention since 2021 – a highly unusual practice for non-murder cases. Two more had bail revoked for breaching conditions.

In another departure, Hong Kong courts must get the approval of the city’s leader before allowing a foreign lawyer without local qualifications to represent defendants in national security cases.

Lai, who is a British citizen, has been blocked from being represented by a British lawyer, a decision undergoing a separate legal challenge that has repeatedly delayed this trial’s start date.

The government in recent months has also issued bounties for overseas-based and self-exiled activists, including some foreign nationals, with police calling in for questioning family members who remain in Hong Kong.

Meanwhile, a colonial-era sedition law, part of a 1938 Crimes Ordinance unused for decades, has been revived as part of the national security law. A conviction carries a maximum two-year sentence.

What are the broader implications of the national security law on media, education and life in the city?

Since the law came into force in July 2020, books with potential to be deemed a national security risk were purged from schools and libraries, school curricula were changed to include national security education, and elections were overhauled to ensure only “patriots” could stand for office. A key protest slogan was also banned, and a succession of civic organizations, unions and activist groups folded.

A new national security office was set up with a dedicated police unit and security agents from the mainland have been empowered to operate openly in Hong Kong for the first time.

Press freedom groups have also pointed to a precipitous decline. Between 2021 and 2023, Hong Kong fell 60 places on a ranking of press freedoms. It now ranks 140 out of 180 countries and territories compared with 80 two years prior, according to Reporters without Borders (RSF). Two decades ago, RSF ranked Hong Kong 18th in the world for media freedoms.

Lai’s Apple Daily was forced to shutter after authorities froze the paper’s bank accounts following a June 2021 raid on its office, where they arrested several executives. Other media outlets also closed in the following months, including Stand News, which was also raided by national security police and saw executives arrested on sedition charges.

In Lai’s ongoing trial, the prosecution has alleged that articles published in Apple Daily violated the law.

Amid stringent border restrictions during the Covid-19 pandemic and the transformation of Hong Kong under the national security law, many Hong Kongers left the city, with official data showing the sharpest annual drop in population on record in 2022.

What do governments say about the law?

Hong Kong and mainland Chinese officials have praised the law as advancing “prosperity and stability” in the city following the 2019 protests, which at the time disrupted transport and business in the financial hub for multiple months. They’ve also said the law protects rights, freedoms, and the rule of law.

“The National Security Law is the major turning point in Hong Kong’s transition from chaos to order. Its effect in stabilizing the society is indisputable,” the city’s former Chief Executive Carrie Lam said following the first anniversary of the law in 2021.

Authorities have also regularly defended the law as in line with others internationally, arguing that “no country can or would turn a blind eye to threats to national security like the emergence of local terrorism and separatism seen in Hong Kong in 2019.”

Earlier this year, Hong Kong’s government said while press freedom is “respected and protected in Hong Kong, such freedom is not absolute.” It is “subject to restrictions” provided by law and necessary for “pursuing legitimate aims such as the protection of national security or public order.”

But Western governments say the law has slashed freedoms in Hong Kong and reduced its autonomy from the mainland, where rights groups have long pointed to arbitrary and politically motivated arrests and investigations and a conviction rate above 99%.

Hong Kong was promised 50 years of a high level of political autonomy after being handed over to China in 1997 after decades of British rule.

In response to the national security law’s imposition, the US revoked the special status that had for decades granted Hong Kong differential treatment in relation to mainland China. It also sanctioned dozens of mainland and Hong Kong officials including then-Chief Executive Lam and current leader John Lee, effectively blocking them from the international banking system.

The United Kingdom too decried the national security law, saying it rolled back freedoms and violated the terms of the original handover agreement. As a result, Britain created a new pathway to citizenship for Hong Kongers who hold a British National (Overseas) passport.

Two senior British judges last year resigned from Hong Kong’s highest court over the law. One of them, Robert Reed, who heads Britain’s top judicial body, accused the Hong Kong government of departing “from values of political freedom, and freedom of expression.”

In the wake of its imposition, the US, the UK and other countries also suspended their extradition agreements with Hong Kong over concerns about a decline in rule of law and perceptions of a shift in the territory’s relationship with the mainland.

During a regular review last year, United Nations Human Rights Committee experts wrote they were “deeply concerned” about the “overly broad interpretation of and arbitrary application” of the law and that it “overrides fundamental rights and freedoms.”

Hong Kong slammed the committee as accepting “false information and distorted narratives regardless of the truth.”

What will Hong Kong’s own security law mean for the city?

Even as Beijing’s national security law has had a sweeping impact, Hong Kong officials have said the city will implement its own new legislation in the coming year to plug “gaps.”

The law would cover additional offenses like treason and theft of state secrets and explicitly bar foreign political organizations from conducting political activities in the region and prohibit local political organizations from establishing ties with foreign ones.

Hong Kong is required to enact such rules under its mini constitution put in place in 1997. But doing so has been a contentious issue for decades, with a 2003 proposal bringing hundreds of thousands to the streets in protest.

During an annual address in October, Chief Executive Lee cited an assessment of the city from Xia Baolong, head of Beijing’s agency overseeing Hong Kong affairs, before reiterating his pledge to institute the law.

“’While Hong Kong may appear to be peaceful and calm, there are indeed undercurrents – the root causes for ‘chaos’ have not yet been eliminated, and the foundation of ‘orderly governance’ needs to be fortified,’” Lee said, quoting Xia.

“’We should pay particular attention to those anti‑China and destabilizing activities camouflaged in the name of human rights, freedom, democracy and livelihood,’” he said.

Vice President Kamala Harris announced Wednesday that an international astronaut will be landing on the surface of the moon as part of NASA’s Artemis program.

While the United States had previously committed to flying international astronauts around the moon on future Artemis missions, today’s announcement takes that commitment a step further by allowing one of them to actually walk on the surface of the moon — thereby joining an elite club that thus far has only 12 members.

“Today in recognition of the essential role that our allies and partners play in the Artemis program, I’m proud to announce that, alongside American astronauts, we intend to land an international astronaut on the surface of the moon by the end of the decade,” Harris said Wednesday during a meeting of the White House’s National Space Council in Washington, DC. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security advisor Jake Sullivan also attended the meeting.

Each planned Artemis moon-landing mission will have room for four astronauts, but not every astronaut will walk on the moon. Only two astronauts per mission will descend to the surface of the moon, while the remaining two will only orbit the moon in either the Orion spacecraft or a small space station called Gateway.

The Artemis II mission is set to be the first time humans will orbit the moon since the end of the Apollo program. Slated to launch in November 2024, the crew includes Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, who introduced the vice president on Wednesday.

“NASA could have chosen to do this alone, but they intentionally chose to include Canada and a growing list of international partners.  This extraordinary example of US leadership leverages our collective expertise, and it is not only sincerely appreciated, but it is urgently needed in the world today,” Hansen said.

The first mission to land on the moon — Artemis III — isn’t scheduled to launch until at least the end of 2025. However, that time frame has already been called into question as the space agency is keeping a close eye on the development of a SpaceX vehicle that will serve as the lander for Artemis III, ferrying astronauts down to the lunar surface.

“NASA will make specific crew assignments closer to each mission as the mission parameters and crew criteria are defined,” the NASA official said.

The last meteor shower of 2023 is set to send meteors streaking across the sky just in time for the holidays.

The Ursids will peak Thursday night through the early morning hours of Friday, according to the American Meteor Society. Night owls braving the cold could see around five to 10 meteors per hour, the society said.

This year, the Ursids will be peaking on the same evening as the winter solstice, the longest night of the year for the Northern Hemisphere. On the evening of the solstice, the sun will be at its most southerly position at 10:27 p.m. ET, according to EarthSky.

Weather conditions allowing, the best time to view the meteors will be between 3 a.m. and dawn local time on Friday, after the moon has set, according to Robert Lunsford, fireball report coordinator for the society. The moon will be 74% full on the night of the peak, according to the American Meteor Society, and will interfere with meteor viewing earlier in the evening with its bright light, Lunsford said.

The meteor shower will be visible to sky-gazers in the Northern Hemisphere, and the more northerly the viewer is the better, Lunsford said, since the radiant constellation will be higher in the sky earlier in the night for those in Alaska or Northern Canada.

Unlike the Geminids, which deliver high rates of meteor sightings several days before and after the peak, the Ursids have a relatively short span of maximum activity. The rate of five to 10 meteors per hour will only be seen during the night and early morning hours of the peak, Lunsford said. A few days before and after the peak, the Ursids will produce around one meteor an hour, he said. The Ursids shower began in mid-December and will be active until December 24.

“This shower has produced outbursts of 25 to 30 an hour on occasion. We don’t expect that. … But you never know,” Lunsford said. If you missed the Geminids, “here’s a reprieve to see yourself some meteoric activity before the year ends,” he added.

No special equipment is needed to view a meteor shower. NASA does not recommend the use of a telescope or binoculars because of their small fields of view, since meteors can be seen all over the sky.

Mapping the Ursid meteor shower

The Ursids are an unusual annual meteor shower — its radiant, the point from which the meteors appear to originate, is not a zodiac constellation. Instead, the Ursids appear to originate from the constellation Ursa Minor, otherwise known as the Little Dipper.

By logging the time, magnitude and other characteristics of meteor sightings, researchers can gather more information on the region of space within Earth’s orbital path — such as how dense debris clouds are, as well as the time in which the planet travels through them, Lunsford said.

“If we get enough people to do that (log the time of meteor sightings), it maps out the cosmic dust that’s up there and helps us explain what’s producing them (meteor showers), where they are and what to expect next year,” Lunsford said.

Because the Ursids are not as commonly observed as strong meteor showers like the Geminids are, data on the Ursids could be considered more valuable to researchers, Lunsford said. Even casual sky-gazers can contribute to the data collection by reporting their meteor sightings to the American Meteor Society through its website.

The Ursids are the last annual celestial event for this year, but the first meteor shower of 2024 is not too far off — the Quadrantids will peak during the morning of January 4.

A study of octopus DNA may have solved an enduring mystery about when the rapidly melting West Antarctic ice sheet last collapsed, unlocking valuable information about how much future sea levels may rise in a warming climate.

The innovative research focused on the genetic history of the Turquet’s octopus (Pareledone turqueti), which lives on the seafloor across the Antarctic, and what it could reveal about the geology of the region over time.

Tracing past encounters across the species’ various populations suggested the most recent collapse of the ice sheet occurred more than 100,000 years ago during a period known as the Last Interglacial — something geoscientists suspected but had not been able to confirm definitively, according to the study published Thursday in the journal Science.

“This project was exciting because it offers a brand-new perspective to solve a long-standing question in the geoscience community,” said lead study author Sally Lau, a postdoctoral research fellow at James Cook University in Australia.

“DNA of living animals today contains all the information about their ancestors (in the) past, so it’s like a time capsule,” she said.

The research team arrived at its findings by sequencing the DNA of 96 Turquet’s octopuses that had been collected by institutions around the world and through fishing bycatch over the years. The oldest samples dated to the 1990s, but when sequenced, their genes provided what was essentially a detailed family tree going back millions of years.

Octopus family tree

The DNA analysis enabled researchers to understand whether different populations of Turquet’s octopuses had interbred and at what point that interbreeding had happened.

“It’s like doing a 23andMe on the octopus,” Lau said, referring to the genetic testing company. “This information gets passed down from parents to children and grandchildren and so on.”

Today, populations of Turquet’s octopus in the Weddell, Amundsen and Ross seas are separated by the continent-size West Antarctic ice shelves and can’t intermingle.

However, the study suggested that there was last genetic connectivity between these populations around 125,000 years ago, during the Last Interglacial, when global temperatures were similar to today’s.

This finding indicated the West Antarctic ice sheet had collapsed during this time — an event that would have inundated coastal regions but opened up ice-bound areas on the seafloor that the octopuses would be able to occupy, ultimately encountering and breeding with members of Turquet’s populations that were once geographically separated from one another.

“What makes the WAIS important is that it is also Antarctica’s current biggest contributor to global sea level rise. A complete collapse could raise global sea levels by somewhere between 3 and 5 metres,” said study author Jan Strugnell, professor and director of the Centre for Sustainable Tropical Fisheries and Aquaculture at James Cook University, in a statement. Strugnell first came up with the idea to use genomic methods to investigate whether the ice sheet had collapsed during the Last Interglacial.

“Understanding how the WAIS was configured in the recent past when global temperatures were similar to today, will help us improve future sea level rise projections,” she said.

Why octopuses?

The team chose this species of octopus for the study because the animals are relatively immobile — they can only crawl along the seafloor, which means they’re more likely to breed within their genetically distinct local populations. By contrast, a fast-moving marine species such as krill would have more homogenous DNA, blurring out historical genetic connections, Lau said.

Plus, the biology of the Turquet’s octopus was relatively well-studied, and scientists understand its DNA mutation rate and generation time, which are crucial for accurate molecular dating, Lau added.

Previous studies involving species of crustacean and marine mollusk had detected a biological signature of ice shelf collapse with direct connectivity between the Ross and Weddell seas, Lau noted. But the new Turquet octopus study was the first with enough high-resolution data and an adequate sample size to understand whether that genetic connectivity was driven by the collapse of the ice sheet or a much more gradual movement of octopuses around its edges.

Lau said that her team’s genetic approach couldn’t reveal exactly when the ice sheet collapsed or how long that event took. However, with fresh octopus samples and more advanced DNA analysis techniques, it might be possible to resolve those questions in the future.

“We’d love to continue using DNA as a proxy to explore other parts of Antarctica with poorly understood climate history,” she said. “We’re constantly looking for new species to test these science questions.”

‘Pioneering’ study

In a commentary published alongside the study, Andrea Dutton, a professor in the department of geoscience at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Robert M.
DeConto, a professor at the School of Earth and Sustainability at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, called the new research “pioneering.”

They noted that while geological evidence had been mounting that the icy expanse of the West Antarctic ice sheet may have collapsed during the Last Interglacial period, “each study’s findings have come with caveats.”

Bringing an entirely different data set to bear on this urgent issue “posed some intriguing questions, including whether this history will be repeated, given Earth’s current temperature trajectory,” they added.

Using octopus genomics was “an innovative and exciting way” to address an important question about historical climate change, said Douglas Crawford, a professor of marine biology and ecology at the University of Miami who wasn’t involved in the research.

“This is a careful study with sufficient sample size and carefully vetted set of genetic markers,” he added.

“It takes a challenging hypothesis and uses a totally independent data set that (ultimately) supports WAIS collapsed,” he said via email.

A shooter killed at least 14 people and wounded 25 others at a university in Prague on Thursday in the deadliest mass shooting the Czech Republic has seen in decades.

Authorities believe the gunman, a 24-year-old man, died by suicide, Czech Police Chief Martin Vondrášek said Thursday evening, but added it had not yet been confirmed. The gunman, who police said was a student of the Faculty of Arts at Charles University, has not been formally identified because of the severity of his injuries, the chief said. Police have not named him.

Authorities are still investigating a motive in the rampage, which took place at the Faculty of Arts building of Charles University, in the center of the capital city. The area is popular with tourists and close to major attractions, just across the Vltava River from Prague Castle.

The shooter traveled to Prague from his hometown village of Hostouň, the police chief said.

As the violence broke out, some students locked themselves in classrooms to avoid the gunfire, police said. A picture shared on social media showed several people hiding on an outside ledge high up in a building.

The university was holding classes on Thursday and was due to go on Christmas break on December 23, according to a schedule on the university’s website.

“After I made the barricade and locked the door, I hid under the desk and I was preparing myself for anything that could happen,” Weizman said. “I did not know if (the shooter) was going to come through the door or from the window.”

In a later news conference Thursday night, Vondrášek revised the number of people killed to 14, after previously saying 15 people had died. Of the 25 people injured, 10 were in serious condition, the police chief said.

The next update from authorities is expected Friday morning.

Shooter may be linked to other killings

The police chief said authorities had information about the shooter before the university killings, saying police received a tip he was traveling to Prague with the intention to take his own life.

Shortly afterward, they received information a deceased man was found in Hostouň, a town around 13 miles (21 km) west of Prague. The man is believed to be the shooter’s father.

Vondrášek said the police were aware the shooter had a lecture at 2 p.m. CET and evacuated the building where the lecture was meant to take place. But authorities then received a call about a shooting in a different building, according to the police chief.

Czech authorities are also working on a theory the gunman is connected to a double homicide in Klanovice, a Prague suburb, last week, Vondrášek said. Authorities are still conducting a thorough investigation in that case, the chief added.

The shooter had a gun permit and owned several weapons, Vondrášek said.

Country declares day of mourning

The Czech Republic will observe a day of mourning Saturday for those killed, country officials announced at a joint news conference late Thursday.

“I want to express my deep sadness and also helpless anger over the loss of so many young lives,” Czech President Petr Pavel said.

The massacre is “the most tragic incident in the history of the Czech Republic,” he added.

Flags will be flown at half-staff during the day of mourning and a minute of silence will be held nationwide at noon Saturday. Bells across the country will also toll for the victims of the attack, Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala said.

Earlier, Fiala said authorities believe the shooting was a lone incident and there was no remaining danger. Interior Minister Vít Rakušan said the shooting was not an act of terrorism.

Charles University said it tightened its security measures “with immediate effect” and canceled events at the university on Thursday and Friday. In a statement posted on X, it also “called for an adequate and sensitive approach to [Friday’s] possible exams or credit examinations.”

“We now ask everyone to try to remain calm and composed, and we again extend our condolences to all those whose hearts have been broken by the loss of loved ones,” the university said.

The Czech Republic has relatively liberal gun laws compared to the rest of the European Union, but gun attacks are rare. To obtain a gun legally, a person needs an official firearm license, which requires a medical examination, a weapon proficiency exam and no previous criminal record.

According to official police statistics, more than 300,000 people have a legal permit to own a gun. As of 2022, almost 1 million legally owned weapons were officially registered in the Czech Republic.

In December 2019, a 42-year-old man killed six people at a hospital waiting room in Ostrava in the east of the country before shooting himself.

And in 2015 a man killed eight people in a shooting at a restaurant in Uhersky Brod before killing himself.

On December 1, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) released a map of Gaza – divided into 623 numbered blocks – indicating areas the military would imminently strike, and areas to which civilians should flee. It was made accessible online via a QR code printed on leaflets dropped over the strip.

The map, a vestige of the short-lived plan from the 1970s to rebuild Gaza in the early years of Israel’s occupation of the coastal strip, was described by the IDF as “a safe way to preserve your security, your lives, and the lives of your families.”

Residents of Gaza are told to “please pay attention and check this map,” while following “instructions of the IDF through various media outlets.”

The IDF also claimed that they struck the areas identified in this report after “intelligence indication that these places were safehouses for commanders of the Rafah Brigade of the Hamas terror organization.”

“The IDF continues to operate against Hamas infrastructure and terrorists wherever they are located in the Gaza Strip,” the statement continued.

Strikes in areas civilians directed to

On December 2, the IDF’s spokesperson for Arab media, Avichay Adraee posted evacuation orders on social media for citizens in parts of the Gaza Strip, which the IDF had dubbed a “safe zone” in the first month and a half of the war, prior to the truce.

Multiple images of the same location were shared – each with different locations highlighted. On the map, areas to the north and east of the city of Khan Younis are highlighted orange, and arrows instruct residents to evacuate from these areas to Al-Mawasi – a 5.22 square mile coastal strip designated a safe zone by the IDF – or to Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city.

Aid organizations have raised concerns regarding the Al-Mawasi “humanitarian zone,” with the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Director-General calling it “a recipe for disaster” due to cramped conditions and lack of infrastructure or services.

Meanwhile, analysis shows, strikes continued to hit Rafah.

On the afternoon of December 3, a strike took place in Rafah’s El-Geneina neighborhood. Footage, filmed moments after the attack, shows a large smoke plume rising from a location close to Saddam Street in Rafah.

Photographs and videos shared on social media, and geolocated to a position matching the plume, show a large crater and multiple buildings that have been damaged or destroyed.

Local media reported at least 17 people were killed and dozens injured in the attack, which struck the home of the al-Bawab family.

Later that night, another airstrike hit the home of the Al-Jazzar family in the Al-Tanour neighborhood of Rafah. Footage captured in the aftermath of the attack shows individuals desperately searching for survivors in the wreckage. One video shows a man, his legs trapped under rubble, being rescued by Civil Defense teams.

Confusing messaging about safe zones

On December 2, Adraee posted evacuation orders on social media for citizens in the northern Gaza Strip, highlighting a number of blocks to the north of Gaza City, including large parts of Jabalia Refugee Camp. The graphic instructed people in these areas to “evacuate your homes immediately through the Haifa and Khalil al-Wazir axes and go to the known shelter centers and schools in the Al-Daraj and Tuffah neighborhoods and west of Gaza City.”

Adraee attached two inconsistent images to the instructions. Both showed the same area, but the second image had a larger number of blocks deemed unsafe.

This created confusing messaging where certain “blocks” were simultaneously presented as “safe” and “unsafe.” For example, block 720 is not highlighted in the first image, but appears in the orange area in the second image. Block 717, which is partly highlighted in the first image, appears squarely in the orange zone in the second image.

Adraee published updated advice on December 3 in which only the image showing the wider shaded area was included.

On the evening of December 3, a video appeared online which appeared to show a petrol station engulfed in flames. It was released alongside reports that a petrol station in the Al-Tuffah neighborhood of Gaza City had been hit by an Israeli airstrike.

Satellite imagery of the area – provided by Planet Labs on December 4 – reveals destruction and clear signs of fire at the location of the petrol station, located in block 720, an area that was not highlighted in one of the posted maps. The Palestinian Civil Defense later released a statement saying that three members of its civilian team had been killed, and a number of others injured by the bombing.

On the same day, local reports claimed that the Al-Salam Mosque in the Al-Tuffah neighborhood had been targeted by Israeli strikes.

Satellite imagery of the area does not reveal clear damage to the mosque, but there are signs of bombing in the surrounding area.

Although it has not been possible to confirm the exact date of this attack – which hit block 717 – satellite imagery analysis reveals the strike took place between December 2 and 9, in the days following Adraee’s post correcting initial map.

The IDF says that the maps are reflective of a commitment to ensuring “all possible precautions to avoid causing loss of civilian life or injury, adopting all available means.”

But rights groups and international organizations have cast doubt on those claims. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has raised concerns over  the accessibility of the map for residents of Gaza, given power outages and telecommunications cuts.

Data from the global internet monitor, NetBlocks, reveals that at times when the IDF was providing evacuation orders for numbered blocks around Gaza, network connectivity in the Rafah governorate was less than a fifth of peak levels. In the Khan Younis governorate, there were times when connectivity was recorded as zero.

“It is unclear how those residing in Gaza would access the map without electricity and amid recurrent telecommunications cuts,” an OCHA briefing said.

The European Union has reached a provisional agreement to “thoroughly overhaul” its laws on asylum and migration, a move being hailed as a landmark but which could face challenges when each member state comes to approve it.

The deal covers the political elements of five EU laws that “touch upon all stages of asylum and migration management,” the European Council said in a statement, adding that all five are components of the pact on migration and asylum proposed by the European Commission in 2020.

The five EU laws agreed upon address issues including the screening of irregular migrants, procedures for handling asylum applications, rules on determining which member state is responsible for handling an asylum application, and how to handle crisis situations, according to the European Council statement.

“The new rules, once adopted, will make the European asylum system more effective and will increase the solidarity between member states by enabling to lighten the load on those member states where most migrants arrive,” the statement added.

There have long been complaints that some EU members receive far more migrants than others. Under the proposals, countries not at the border will have to choose between accepting their share of 30,000 asylum applicants or paying at least 20,000 euros ($21,870) per person into an EU fund, Reuters reported.

The agreement was made between the current Spanish presidency of the European Council, which rotates between member states every six months, and the European Parliament.

While the agreement was hailed as historic by Roberta Metsola, president of the European Parliament, a formal deal will still need to be approved by all 27 members of the European Union and ratified by the Parliament, where multiple blocs of parliamentarians oppose the deal.

The European Council noted that the next step of the process will be submitting the provisional agreement to member states for confirmation.

Metsola said in a post on social media that “20th December 2023 will go down in history. The day the EU reached a landmark agreement on a new set of rules to manage migration and asylum.”

Refugee charities have criticized the deal, along with members of the European Parliament.

The European Council on Refugees and Exiles, an alliance of 117 NGOs working to protect asylum seekers, said on social media that the deal marked a “dark day for Europe.”

Amnesty International reacted to the agreement on Wednesday, saying that it “will lead to a surge in suffering for asylum seekers, refugees and migrants on every step of their journeys.”

The politics of migration

Migration, particularly the question of how to deal with the large influx of refugees that Europe has seen in recent years, has come to dominate European politics, particularly on the right.

Europe’s geographical location and comparatively friendly record on human rights and support for refugees has made it an attractive destination for those fleeing conflict.

The EU has a vast external border, ranging from the Mediterranean Sea – close to parts of North Africa and the Middle East – to land borders with Russia in the east. Conflicts in these parts of the world over the past couple of decades have naturally led to many people seeking entry to Europe.

The EU faces other unique challenges when it comes to irregular migration, not least because 22 of the 27 EU member states are part of the borderless Schengen area, which makes tracking movement across the bloc somewhat trickier.

The frictionless movement is something that most Europeans don’t want to give up for economic reasons, but a lack of control on migration is the other side of the coin.

Unsurprisingly, this creates ample opportunity for anti-EU politicians to whack Brussels, a tried and tested political strategy for politicians across the bloc. For opposition parties, it means you can hold your government’s feet to the fire on domestic migration policy.

The day before the EU reached its deal on migration, the French parliament passed a controversial immigration bill, which France’s leading far-right politician Marine Le Pen called an “unquestionable ideological victory” for her party.

China and Russia wrapped up a bumper year of cooperation with an annual year-end meeting in which the two vowed to deepen ties across a range of issues as record trade between them surged past a symbolic target.

Bilateral trade between China and Russia surpassed $200 billion in the first 11 months of the year, Chinese leader Xi Jinping said at a sitdown with Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin on Wednesday – marking the achievement ahead of schedule of a goal set by Xi and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in 2019.

Then, the two leaders pledged to reach the $200 billion mark by 2024. Trade between their countries has continued to expand in the wake of the Kremlin’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, growing roughly 30% in 2022 to reach a record $190 billion.

The latest trade figures showed the “strong resilience and broad prospects” for cooperation, Xi said Wednesday.

The two sides should “give full play to the advantages of political mutual trust,” and “deepen cooperation on economy, trade, energy and connectivity,” Xi said during the meeting, according to Chinese state news agency Xinhua.

China, the world’s second largest economy, emerged as a key economic lifeline for Russia after the United States and its allies cut trade and imposed sanctions following Moscow’s invasion of its neighbor – sparking criticism that Beijing is propping up Russia’s war effort, despite its claims of neutrality in the conflict and calls for peace.

Chinese leaders see Moscow as a key counterweight against a hostile West and have criticized Western sanctions. It has not supported efforts in the United Nations to censure Russia, while ramping up energy purchases from its northern neighbor and becoming a critical supplier of consumer goods for its isolated market.

Chinese customs data released earlier this month showed China-Russia trade reached a record nearly $218.2 billion for the first 11 months of 2023. But the figure represents just 4% of China’s $5.41 trillion in global trade over the same period.

The two countries also bolstered their cooperation across a raft of issues during Mishustin’s two-day visit, which included an annual high-level, year-end meeting co-chaired with Chinese Premier Li Qiang on Tuesday.

Agreements inked included strengthening trade, transport, ecommerce and customs procedures, and enhancing cooperation on developing Arctic shipping routes, aircraft manufacturing, space exploration, and satellite navigation, according to a readout from China’s Foreign Ministry.

Separately, the Chinese and Russian militaries held regular consultations Wednesday and agreed to “improve the level of strategic coordination” between them and “make new contributions to promoting peace and security in the region and the world,” China’s Ministry of Defense said.

During his engagements, Mishustin hailed the “centuries-old friendship between the Russian and Chinese peoples” and said relations between the neighbors had reached “the highest level ever,” according to Russian state media Tass.

The last year has seen two face-to-face meetings between Xi and Putin, both of whom have made limited overseas trips over the past two years.

Xi chose Moscow for his first overseas visit days after entering his norm-breaking third term as China’s President earlier this year. Putin made a rare overseas visit to Beijing in October, where he was treated as the guest of honor at a forum celebrating Xi’s Belt and Road infrastructure drive.

During a year-end live broadcast last week, Putin hailed the relationship with China, calling the level of cooperation “unprecedented” and predicting a 30% increase in trade on the previous year.

“The governments of Russia and China are deeply involved in achieving the goals that we set together, my friend President Xi Jinping  – also Russia’s friend – and I. The work is progressing rapidly, steadily and confidently,” Putin said, according to a Kremlin transcript.

The voices of three Israeli hostages who were accidentally killed by Israeli troops in Gaza were captured on a GoPro camera mounted on a military dog five days before they were shot, a spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said on Wednesday.

The video, located by the IDF on Tuesday, shows the recording took place during a military exchange between Israeli forces and Hamas militants at a site where the hostages were being held, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari told a daily news briefing. The dog was killed in the exchange.

“You can hear voices, and when we analyzed the clip, we understood that in the audio we can hear the three hostages, fully vocally identified,” Hagari said.

He did not provide details about what the three hostages – Yotam Haim, Alon Shamriz and Samer Talalka – could be heard saying.

The militants who held the three men were killed during the fighting, which appears to have allowed the captives to flee, Hagari said, citing an initial IDF analysis of the GoPro video.

Israel is reeling from the IDF’s admission that it killed the hostages on Friday. The three men had been taken captured by Hamas during the group’s October 7 terror attack.

On Saturday, an IDF official said the trio had emerged from a building tens of meters away from a group of Israeli troops. They were shirtless and were waving a white flag, according to the official, who spoke to journalists on the condition of anonymity to speak freely about an ongoing investigation.

At least one soldier felt threatened and opened fire, killing two of the men immediately, the official said. The third was wounded and ran back inside the building. The Israeli unit overheard a cry for help in Hebrew, at which time the brigade commander ordered his troops to stop shooting. However, there was another burst of gunfire, according to the official. The third hostage died later.

The news has been met with mixed reactions from the families of the killed hostages, with some expressing fury and others forgiveness.

Avi Shimriz, father of slain 26-year-old hostage Alon, accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of cowardice in failing to call him or visit him to express his condolences.

Speaking to Israel’s Channel 13 News, Shimriz said: “The Prime Minister doesn’t dare to make a call – he hasn’t called – and he wouldn’t come here,” drawing a contrast with Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who he said had called him twice.

He expressed deep frustration over learning that Israeli soldiers had managed to kill the Hamas fighters holding the three hostages and get so close to gathering intelligence that could possibly have saved them.

“It demonstrates how big the miss is […] There is a screw-up here, a serious one,” he said. “The shooter should not have opened fire, and if he is a proper fighter, he should have known that you only pull the trigger once you are certain it is a terrorist.”

Shimriz said commanders had failed to tell soldiers there could be hostages in the area and that photographs of the captives should have been circulated so soldiers might recognize them.

But he acknowledged that troops in the field faced difficult circumstances. “I cannot complain to our troops because they have encountered different situations where [Hamas] tried to ambush them and they suffered losses. I don’t want another such incident on my conscience,” he said.

Netanyahu did visit Wednesday with the mother of another of the slain hostages, Iris Haim, who lost her son Yotam in the same incident.

She sent a message to the unit involved in the shooting, saying: “Everything that happened is completely not your fault.”

In an audio message to the battalion, she said: “I wanted to tell you that I love you very much and I embrace you from afar. I know that everything that happened is completely not your fault, it’s nobody’s fault – except the Hamas, may their name and memory be wiped off the face of the Earth.”

Haim told the soldiers to stay safe, adding: “What you’re doing is the best possible thing in the world to help us, as the Jewish people, and we all need you to be safe and sound.”

“Don’t hesitate for a single moment – if you see a terrorist, don’t think that you have deliberately killed a hostage, you need to protect yourselves because that’s the only way you would be able to protect us,” she said, and invited the soldiers to visit her family.

“We want to see you with our own eyes and embrace you and tell you that what you have done – as painful as it is to say, and as sad as it is – was likely the right thing to do at that moment, and none of us are judging you or angry with you.”

The IDF has said the shooting was against its rules of engagement and that the soldiers involved would face disciplinary procedures.

The Gaza City neighborhood of Shejaiya, where the killings took place, has seen fierce fighting in recent days. The IDF says it has confronted ambush attempts and attacks that involved suicide bombers or assailants dressed in civilian clothes.

Before news of the three hostages’ deaths was announced, Israel had said Friday that they believe 132 captives remained in Gaza, of whom 112 were thought to still be alive.

Scientists in California shooting nearly 200 lasers at a cylinder holding a fuel capsule the size of a peppercorn have taken another step in the quest for fusion energy, which, if mastered, could provide the world with a near-limitless source of clean power.

Last year on a December morning, scientists at the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California (LLNL) managed, in a world first, to produce a nuclear fusion reaction that released more energy than it used, in a process called “ignition.”

Now they say they have successfully replicated ignition at least three times this year, according to a December report from the LLNL. This marks another significant step in what could one day be an important solution to the global climate crisis, driven primarily by the burning of fossil fuels.

For decades, scientists have attempted to harness fusion energy, essentially recreating the power of the sun on Earth.

After making their historic net energy gain last year, the next important step was to prove the process could be replicated.

Brian Appelbe, a research fellow from the Centre for Inertial Fusion Studies at Imperial College London, said the ability to replicate demonstrates the “robustness” of the process, showing it can be achieved even when conditions such as the laser or fuel pellet are varied.

Unlike nuclear fission — the process used in the world’s nuclear plants today, which is generated by the division of atoms — nuclear fusion leaves no legacy of long-lived radioactive waste. As the climate crisis accelerates, and the urgency of ditching planet-heating fossil fuels increases, the prospect of an abundant source of safe, clean energy is tantalizing.

Nuclear fusion, the reaction that powers the sun and other stars, involves smashing two or more atoms together to form a denser one, in a process that releases huge amounts of energy.

There are different ways of creating energy from fusion, but at NIF, scientists fire an array of nearly 200 lasers at a pellet of hydrogen fuel inside a diamond capsule the size of a peppercorn, itself inside a gold cylinder. The lasers heat up the cylinder’s outside, creating a series of very fast explosions, generating large amounts of energy collected as heat.

The energy produced in December 2022 was small — it took around 2 megajoules to power the reaction, which released a total of 3.15 megajoules, enough to boil around 10 kettles of water. But it was sufficient to make it a successful ignition and to prove that laser fusion could create energy.

Since then, the scientists have done it several more times. On July 30, the NIF laser delivered a little over 2 megajoules to the target, which resulted in 3.88 megajoules of energy — their highest yield achieved to date, according to the report. Two subsequent experiments in October also delivered net gains.

“These results demonstrated NIF’s ability to consistently produce fusion energy at multi-megajoule levels,” the report said.

There is still a very long way to go, however, until nuclear fusion reaches the scale needed to power electric grids and heating systems. The focus now is on building on the progress made and figuring out how to dramatically scale up fusion projects and significantly bring down costs.

At the COP28 climate summit in Dubai, US climate envoy John Kerry launched an international engagement plan involving more than 30 countries with the aim of boosting nuclear fusion to help tackle the climate crisis.

“There is potential in fusion to revolutionize our world, and to change all of the options that are in front of us, and provide the world with abundant and clean energy without the harmful emissions of traditional energy sources,” Kerry told the climate gathering.

In December, the US Department of Energy announced a $42 million investment in a program bringing together multiple institutions, including LLNL, to establish “hubs” focused on advancing fusion.

“Harnessing fusion energy is one of the greatest scientific and technological challenges of the 21st Century,” said US Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm in a statement. “We now have the confidence that it’s not only possible, but probable, that fusion energy can be a reality.”

Ella Nilsen and René Marsh contributed to reporting