At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, Taiwanese citizen Nancy Hsieh received a message from her relatives online: To stop the virus from entering your lungs, all you need to do is drink lots of water with salt and vinegar.

But she knew immediately this was false information.

Right beneath the original message on Line, Taiwan’s most popular messaging app, a chatbot replied that the claim was not supported by science, with a link to an article that fact-checked this erroneous information.

The chatbot, Auntie Meiyu, is one of multiple Taiwanese fact-checking applications that have increasingly gained prominence, as the island democracy of 23.5 million people steps up its readiness to combat the rising flow of false information from circulating within society.

Besides unscientific methods of treating Covid, Hsieh recalled “Auntie” debunked other rumors such as a fake speech attributed to an official from the Ministry of Economic Affairs, misrepresentation of polling results, and fraudulent food safety reports.

Experts say fact-checking mechanisms like this are becoming more important, especially as Taiwan is set to choose a new president in a highly consequential election next month.

The vote comes at a moment of high tensions as Beijing ramps up military, political and economic pressure on the island that China’s ruling Communist Party claims as its own territory, despite having never controlled it.

Like many places in the world, Taiwan often sees an uptick in disinformation during elections. But it is also uniquely targeted outside of voting season because of the precarious geopolitical space it lives in.

According to a report by Stockholm University’s Varieties of Democracy Project, published in March this year, Taiwan for the 10th consecutive year received the greatest amount of disinformation from outside its borders, highlighting the need for effective fact-checking mechanisms on the island.

A growing security risk

Disinformation is something Taiwan’s security agencies are particularly alert to.

According to Taiwanese intelligence, Wang Huning, the fourth-ranking leader in th Chinese Communist Party, recently convened a meeting to coordinate efforts to influence the election, while reducing the likelihood that external parties could find evidence of such interference.

“They hope that the party they dislike will lose the election,” a senior Taiwanese security official, referring to the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which views Taiwan as a de facto sovereign nation and has prioritized elevating Taipei’s ties with Western powers since taking office in 2016.

The candidate for DPP, Vice President Lai Ching-te, is currently leading in the polls, and is openly loathed by Chinese officials.

Lai is ahead of two other candidates – Hou Yu-ih from the Kuomintang party and Ko Wen-je from the Taiwan People’s Party – who are seen as favoring closer relations with Beijing.

Besides operating content farms and fake accounts on social media, the officials alleged that China’s information operations are multifaceted.

Other tactics used by Beijing included working with private companies to impersonate genuine news websites, handpicking soundbites that fit Beijing’s narratives from Taiwanese television programs and repackaging them into short social media videos, and illicitly funding small news organizations in Taiwan that mostly report on local livelihood issues but also occasionally post content that cast doubts toward candidates unfavorable to Beijing.

One piece of disinformation highlighted by officials was a recent rumor that Hsiao Bi-khim – the DPP’s vice-presidential candidate and until recently Taiwan’s top representative in Washington — is a US citizen.

Fact-checking reports, including from the Taiwan FactCheck Center – one of the most prominent news verification groups on the island – indicated that while Hsiao used to hold US citizenship, she had renounced it in 2002.

Besides spreading rumors, Beijing has also been exerting pressure on Taiwanese businesses with investments in mainland China to toe the partyline, and luring Taiwanese politicians with discounted trips to mainland cities in an attempt to generate support for candidates lobbying for closer ties to Beijing, the officials claimed.

False flag warnings

China’s attempts to sway Taiwanese voters haven’t always been successful.

Ahead of Taiwan’s first direct presidential election in 1996, Beijing fired missiles toward the island to intimidate voters not to support a candidate championing Taiwan’s separate identity from China. That move backfired spectacularly and the candidate, Lee Teng-hui, swept to a landslide victory.

Outgoing Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, who is from the DPP and cannot run again because of term limits, was frequently the target of angry warnings from Chinese officials. But Taiwanese voters handed her two consecutive terms in 2016 and 2020.

News literacy experts say China’s cognitive warfare operations against Taiwan have long been happening beyond election seasons.

Puma Shen, an associate professor at National Taipei University who specializes in researching disinformation, said researchers can often establish a link between a disinformation campaign and the Chinese authorities by analyzing IP addresses of the accounts that propagate the rumors and whether they are automated.

“China’s public opinion war is often aimed at influencing independent and young voters,” said Shen, who is running to become a legislator with the DPP.

But Taiwanese security officials cautioned that China’s disinformation operations could go beyond undermining trust in the government.

The incident took place in July, when a Beijing-friendly Taiwanese newspaper falsely claimed that Washington had ordered Taipei to develop biological weapons that could be used against China’s People’s Liberation Army.

According to the security document, the rumor initially appeared in fabricated “meeting minutes” that claimed to show discussions between senior Taiwanese officials regarding the fictitious project, which was subsequently passed on to a local reporter.

Both Washington and Taipei have refuted the claim that Taiwan was developing biological weapons, and there is no evidence the discussions took place. The Taipei District Prosecutor’s Office subsequently launched an investigation into the journalist over allegations of forgery.

As the false report generated outrage in mainland China, the Chinese military simultaneously sent more than 100 warplanes into Taiwan’s self-declared air defense identification zone over the next three days – a significantly higher number of incursions than usual.

“We believe this goes beyond just spreading disinformation,” the security official said. “Beijing seems to be practicing how it could use disinformation [to create] an excuse for military action… and target Taiwan [militarily] using a justification that the United States was about to start a war against China.”

The official added that the unusual combination of a disinformation campaign and heightened military activity has raised alarm among Taiwan’s intelligence community that Beijing could be training for a “false flag” operation – and to use the outrage it would generate as justification for a potential future military attack on Taiwan.

News literacy

The growing threat of disinformation – and its potential implications on Taiwan’s democracy – has highlighted the need for effective fact-checking mechanisms in Taiwan to help citizens debunk false information in everyday life.

Chen Pei-huang, a senior journalist at the Taiwan FactCheck Center, said while their newsroom hires about a dozen reporters, they are outnumbered by the vast amount of false rumors circulating online.

“For us, besides simply fact-checking a piece of information, we think it is important to promote media literacy… because if most people have the ability to question the authenticity of a piece of information, then it will be harder for rumors to circulate.”

This is where apps like Auntie Meiyu can help.

Unlike other fact-checking applications, which generally provide an interface for users to manually insert and verify text or a website link, the chatbot can be enabled in group chats or direct messages on Line and has the ability to automatically scan messages and warn of any potentially misleading content.

“A lot of people tell us that it really helps a lot, because sometimes they wouldn’t dare to directly tell their parents or relatives that this kind of information is wrong,” said Cecile Chen, who runs the chatbot under Gogolook, a Taiwanese tech company specializing in call-filtering services. She also emphasized that the chatbot has an apolitical background.

Hsieh, from Taoyuan city, said her elderly relatives now feel embarrassed whenever Auntie Meiyu warns that their messages contain misleading information. As a result, she said, they have learned not to forward every message they get before considering its truthfulness.

“For my elderly relatives… if they can pause and suspect whether a piece of information they received is really accurate, I think this is already great progress for them,” Hsieh said.

As for Chen, the fact-checking journalist, his work goes beyond simply verifying the authenticity of what people see online.

“If we can provide people with accurate information and statistics, the public can learn that while we can disagree on different issues, we must base our opinions on solid evidence,” he said.

A British boy who was found in France after going missing for six years has landed safely back in the UK, according to local police.

“It gives me great pleasure to say Alex has now made his safe return back to the UK after six years,” Assistant Chief Constable Matt Boyle, of Greater Manchester Police, told reporters on Saturday, according to the UK’s national news agency, Press Association.

The teenager met with a family member and UK police officers in the Toulouse airport before beginning his much-belated flight home, Boyle also said.

Batty is expected to be reunited with his grandmother Susan Caruana, who lives in Oldham, Greater Manchester, and is the boy’s legal guardian, PA reported.

In a statement issued through police, Caruana said she “can’t wait” to see her grandson.

“I cannot begin to express my relief and happiness that Alex has been found safe and well,” she said, adding that her family request privacy as they welcome him back.

It is understood that Alex’s grandfather died around six months ago, and that the boy’s mother – who does not have legal parental guardianship – may currently be in Finland, Reuters news agency reported citing Toulouse’s deputy prosecutor Antoine Leroy.

Found by a French motorist

The teenager was recovered this week from the side of the road by a French motorist, Fabien Accidini, who claimed the boy had been living in a “spiritual community” in the country for the last two years.

Accidini, a chiropractic student, had been delivering medicines to pharmacies overnight when he first came across Batty. After initially giving him a false name, Batty spoke to Accidini for three hours in English and French.

Accidini said the boy described his mother as “a bit crazy.”

Speaking to the BBC, a local from Quillan – the town where Alex was found – described how the area was home to a community of international nomads who have shunned a “normal life.”

“A lot of people here think they’re wrongdoers, high on drugs, but you find drugs everywhere. They just want an alternative life,” she told the outlet.

The major gas leak from the sabotaged Nord Stream pipeline last year pushed Sweden’s annual planet-heating emissions up by 7%, the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency reported Thursday.

The agency’s estimates show the largest part of the 2022 leak occurred within Denmark’s economic zone, but a whopping 5.8 million tons of climate pollution spilled within Sweden’s economic zone.

Without the Nord Stream leak, Sweden’s climate emissions would have actually been down 5% from 2021 levels.

The pollution was in the form of methane, the main component of the fossil-fuel gas people use to fuel stoves and heat homes, which has more than 80 times more warming power in the short-term than carbon dioxide. This gas can seep into the atmosphere from landfills, livestock and the oil and gas industry, particularly with pipeline leaks.

The September 2022 sabotage of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, which pumped methane gas from Russia to Germany, was a major flashpoint in the energy war between Europe and Russia. Amid its invasion of Ukraine, Russia halted all gas supplies to Europe via the Nord Stream 1 at the time, blaming Western sanctions for causing technical difficulties. Authorities have yet to determine who was behind the sabotage.

At the time of the leak, UN Environment Programme detected on satellite a massive plume of concentrated methane. It later reported the ruptures were likely the largest single release of methane ever recorded.

Slashing methane emissions was a sharp focus in the early days of the recent UN COP28 climate summit in Dubai. Scientists have said that curtailing methane is the easiest and fastest way to change the path of rising global temperatures in the coming years due to its intense warming power.

Clarification: This story has been updated to note the leak spilled methane in Sweden’s economic zone.

Nimer Abu Ras’ wrists are bruised and lacerated. His hands are swollen.

He is one of hundreds of Palestinian men and boys who have been detained, many of them stripped and blindfolded, in recent weeks by Israeli forces conducting clearing operations in northern Gaza. Many of those detained have already been identified as civilians by relatives and employers after images of the mass detentions circulated on social media.

“They would tie your hands behind your back and drag you like a dog – plastic handcuff scars on your arms. Depending on the mood of one of them, they would come kick you with their boots,” said 14-year-old Mahmoud Zendah, a recent wound marking the bridge of his nose.

Zendah said an Israeli soldier had kicked him in the face.

“I didn’t do anything to him. He just decided to come and kick me,” Zendah said. “He came to me and asked me, ‘Are you Hamas?’ I told him, I don’t know Hamas or the resistance. I’m only a child that goes to school and back home. I eat, I play with my friends and go back home. I don’t do anything else in life.”

Another 14-year-old, Ahmad Nimer Salman Abu Ras, was initially too afraid to even describe his detention.

“I’m afraid,” he said. “I’m scared of the Israelis. I don’t want them to do something to us.”

Like the others being treated at Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central Gazan city of Deir Al-Balah, they were detained as Israeli forces moved through the Al-Zaytoun neighborhood of Gaza City.

“Suddenly, we heard people screaming and soldiers yelling and bulldozers destroying the houses,” Zendah’s father, Nader, said. “[The soldiers] opened the door of the house and separated women from men, they made us take off our pants and raise our shirts and lined us up against the wall…Then they put us outside of the house and blindfolded us.”

They were then loaded into trucks and taken from one location to another.

“They put us on the floor and put their feet on our heads, they would ask, ‘Are you Hamas?’ and beat [us]. When we wanted to sleep, we couldn’t because it was so cold. And when we asked for something to wear or cover ourselves with, they would beat us,” 16-year-old Mohammad Odeh said.

Forty-year-old Mahmood Esleem, a diabetic, was weak when he arrived at the hospital. His son, Mohammad, who was detained with him, said his father was denied insulin during his detention.

The next day, Esleem appeared to be in even worse shape – barely able to stand, complaining about pain in his foot and slipping in and out of consciousness, according to a cousin who was at his bedside.

“All arrived physically and psychologically exhausted. They came to the hospital halfway walking on foot – ambulances met them halfway. We gave them the needed medical treatment,” Dr. Khalil Al Daqran, the Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital spokesman said. “There were signs of torture on their arms and signs of beating all over their bodies.”

The Israeli military said it was detaining and questioning individuals “suspected of terrorist activity” as part of its military operations in combat areas in northern Gaza and that “individuals who are found not to be taking part in terrorist activities are released.”

The IDF also defended its practice of ordering those it detains to undress, saying the practice is “to ensure that they are not concealing explosive vests or other weaponry.”

Human rights groups have decried the photos and their wide circulation online after they emerged in Israeli media.

“Whether the detention is of a civilian or a combatant, the law protects those in detention in custody against degrading and humiliating treatment and outrages upon personal dignity,” said Omar Shakir, Human Rights Watch’s Israel and Palestine Director.

Israeli officials have since claimed to the US that going forward they will give detainees clothes back “immediately” if they conduct strip searches, State Department spokesperson Matt Miller said Wednesday, adding that Israeli officials told their US counterparts that the photos should not have been taken or released.

Civilians can be detained during armed conflict under international law, but only when “absolutely necessary for imperative reasons of security,” Shakir said, adding that Israel has violated those laws before.

Flat-faced dogs are all the rage – and have been for a while. With its wrinkly nose and bat-like ears, the French bulldog – which recently climbed to take the title of the most popular dog breed in the US, according to the American Kennel Club’s 2022 registration statistics – is beloved of celebrities like Reese Witherspoon and Megan Thee Stallion.

But while they are cute, some of these animals’ distinctive facial features could be affecting their sleep, researchers say.

Researchers from Hungary’s Eötvös Loránd University used electroencephalogram tests (EEGs) to study the sleep of 92 dogs, attaching electrodes to their heads for three hours to record their brain activity and investigate whether flat-faced dogs suffered from poorer sleep quality than long-nosed breeds.

Because of their narrow nostrils and smaller airways, flat-faced dogs are prone to breathing difficulties. Some veterinarians warn against buying these dogs, which have been bred to exhibit such characteristics.

“We found that the flat-faced dogs slept more in the three hours given to them during the study. More daytime sleep is probably compensation for insufficient sleep at night. But, when we studied the EEG patterns, we got more exciting results than that,” researcher Zsófia Bognár said in a statement.

The researchers took note of what happened during the dogs’ REM sleep, explaining that an abundance of beta and delta brain waves during REM sleep is generally associated with learning success in dogs and intelligence in humans.

The shorter-nosed – or brachycephalic – dogs had decreased beta waves and increased delta than their longer-nosed peers, and more frequent sleep spindles – bursts of coherent brain activity visible on the EEG – researchers observed.

“This pattern has previously been associated with poorer learning in dogs and loss of white matter in humans,” said Ivaylo Iotchev, first author of the study published in the journal Brain Structure and Function.

Experts added that the shorter-nosed dogs spent more time sleeping, “suggesting that the sleep apnea these breeds usually suffer from increases daytime sleepiness.”

The researchers said it is likely that the popularity of shorter-nosed dogs is down to their “infant-like traits,” including large eyes and heads, high foreheads and small noses, adding “we humans find these traits irresistibly attractive. That’s how babies get us to care for them.”

“It is possible that the selection of dogs to be infant-like in appearance has also infantilized their brain function,” researcher Enikő Kubinyi, professor and head of the MTA-ELTE Lendület “Momentum” Companion Animal Research Group and ELTE NAP Canine Brain Research Group, said in a statement.

“But this is a bold assumption for now. What is very likely, however, is that breeding for brachycephalic heads leads to potentially harmful changes in brain function.”

Ukraine is developing a “drowning not waving” problem. It is struggling to say clearly how badly the war is going.

Giving a candid public assessment of how poorly a conflict is going can be an unwise move as it can result in morale and support draining. After Obama boosted troops in Afghanistan, public support declined over the years, in part because of a lack of realism about how the war was going.

Ukraine’s acutely bad presentation of its troubles is mostly due to the myopia of its allies.

The lack of understanding in parts of US Congress is breathtaking. A congressman this week suggested Ukraine should name a finite price tag and a specific, simple goal. It’s staggering after two American wars of choice in two decades, costing trillions of dollars, that congressional memories are so short, and comprehension so limited.

Instead, Kyiv consistently points to past successes and future goals. They have reclaimed about half the territory Russia took last year; they have damaged its Black Sea presence strategically. They have a plan for 2024, Zelensky said, but it is secret.

Yet in truth, the most useful headline for Kyiv should be how unutterably bleak the frontlines are for them now. In nearly every direction, the news is grim. Russian forces are hiving off parts of the eastern city of Avdiivka, yet another town Moscow seems content to throw thousands of lives at despite its minimal importance. Along the Zaporizhzhia frontline, where the counteroffensive was focused but ultimately slow and unrewarding, Russian units have come back with renewed vigor and the defense is costly for Ukraine. Ukraine has made a plucky (or foolhardy) dash across the Dnipro River, with some small progress into Russian lines. The casualties have been immense, their supply lines are problematic, and their prospects dim.

Kyiv is now facing almost nightly cruise missile attacks, mostly held back by air defenses, Ukrainian officials say. So long as these protections continue, Ukraine might have a chance of entering spring with its infrastructure intact. But air defenses might be the first to be impacted, according to the Biden administration, when US money runs out.

Zelensky has had a truly abysmal week. His team trumpeted the symbolic victory of EU accession negotiations, and he called it a sign “history is made by those who don’t get tired of fighting for freedom.” But for actual EU membership the war has to end, and it has to end with Ukraine remaining a viable nation. Neither of these things are currently guaranteed.

Instead, Zelensky must put a brave face on two urgent funding disasters in four days. Hungary’s decision to veto $55bn in EU funding for Ukraine’s war efforts was met with assurances from EU officials that early January would likely see a unanimous, positive vote. But Viktor Orban – a right-wing populist with an inexplicable fondness for indicted war criminal Vladimir Putin – has opened the door to European disunity. The West’s cohesion up to this point was an outlier. The elections across Europe and vacillation ahead will likely hear greater demands for diplomacy and answers as to how the war ends.

Zelensky’s trip to Washington, and the heartfelt pleas it delivered, failed. Even if Washington manages to resume funding early next year, it has already damaged Ukraine. Stalling and political theater have made vital assistance – to defend the US’s European NATO allies from being dragged deeper into the worst land war in Europe since the 1940s – fair game for partisan horse-trading.

The Congressional debate was not about war policy in Ukraine, or Kyiv’s efficiency, or why the counteroffensive had failed. It was far shallower: a tit-for-tat trade on US border policy, coupled with unreasonable demands for Ukraine to predict the future course of the war. It is a jaw-dropping failure of American foreign policy the consequences of which will echo over the next decades. Not since Neville Chamberlain had a piece of paper in his hand, suggesting the Nazis could be negotiated with, has so much been at stake.

The bleak military picture for Ukraine was the case before Congress stalled US aid. Now the challenge ahead – the possibility Ukraine may face Russia without NATO backing – weighs on the minds of those who should be focused on the winter battles ahead.

“Without aid, we are finished”, one morose Ukrainian medic told me Thursday, after months of patching troops back together, and losing a colleague in the summer. Others troops manage to be more stoic, and insist they will fight on as they have no choice. But be in no doubt: No US or EU money – or just one of those failing – quite likely means most of Ukraine will fall under Russian occupation in the next two years.

That would put a belligerent, super-charged, revenge-hungry Russian military right on NATO’s borders, something which would immediately become Washington’s problem. Why? Because outside of the NATO treaty of mutual defense, on a purely practical level, secure and free democracies in Europe are key American trading partners and the bedrock of the US’s global heft.

Yet Zelensky faces an ally in the US so split and ignorant in part of its body politic, he must pretend things are not that bad. To admit Ukraine is struggling bolsters the argument there is no point funding a loser. If he says Ukraine is winning, then why does he need more help? If it is a stalemate, then surely that is not too bad after two years?

Some fringe Republicans insist Russia was always going to win, so why delay the inevitable by providing aid that gets Ukrainians killed? Those who want to say no to Ukraine need little excuse. But it delays the next, darker question, of when do you finally say ‘no’ to Moscow? How much of Ukraine, or maybe later its European neighbors, is it acceptable for Putin to subjugate or flatten? Does this question feel at all familiar?

Scientists have discovered a previously hidden ecosystem with an expansive system of lagoons in the salt plains of Puna de Atacama, an arid plateau in Argentina — with giant stromatolites that could provide a glimpse into the earliest life on Earth and possibly even on Mars, according to new research.

Stromatolites are layered rocks created by the growth of blue-green algae, or cyanobacteria, through photosynthesis. The structures are considered to be one of the oldest ecosystems on Earth, according to NASA, representing the earliest fossil evidence for life on our planet from at least 3½ billion years ago.

“These are certainly akin to some of the earliest macrofossils on our planet, and in really a rare type of environment on modern Earth,” said Brian Hynek, a professor in the department of geological sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder, who helped document the ecosystem. “They are a window into the distant past as to what life might have looked like 3½ billion years ago on our planet.”

Ancient giant stromatolites used to be widespread in Earth’s Precambrian era, which encompasses the early time span of around 4.6 billion to 541 million years ago, but now they are sparsely distributed around the world. The most well-developed areas are in the Bahamas and the Shark Bay area in Western Australia, according to the nonprofit conservation organization Bush Heritage Australia.

Modern stromatolites are relatively small, Hynek said, whereas ancient stromatolites used to grow to 20 feet (6 meters) tall and 16 to 22 feet (5 to 7 meters) wide, he said. Beneath the waters of Puna de Atacama’s lagoons, the recently uncovered stromatolites are up to 15 feet (4.5 meters) wide and several feet high, according to a news release from the University of Colorado Boulder.

Stromatolites also tend to grow in alkaline conditions, but the Puna de Atacama’s system of lagoons are acidic. The stromatolites found today are almost all carbonate rocks (made of limestone), but these structures are mostly composed of the minerals gypsum and halite (rock salt), Hynek said.

It is unclear why the stromatolites are so large, Hynek said, but he speculated that the inland ecosystem sat undisturbed for a long period of time, which allowed them to grow unimpeded.

More on ancient stromatolites

Unlike modern stromatolites, ancient stromatolites grew in a period when the atmosphere lacked oxygen. In these conditions, the stromatolites’ microbes used anoxygenic photosynthesis, which doesn’t require oxygen, to convert light energy into compounds that support living cells.

“It is spectacular to find structures that could be biogenic (produced by living organisms) at this unusual altitude,” said Pieter Visscher, a professor of marine sciences at the University of Connecticut who has extensively studied stromatolites, in an email. “A major issue with the discovery, whether biogenic or not, is that these are formed in the presence of oxygen (in the current atmosphere). Until 2.3 billion years ago, there was no oxygen.”

While the stromatolites are in an environment containing oxygen, Hynek said he believes the layers farther down in the rock have little to no access to oxygen and are actively formed by microbes using anoxygenic photosynthesis. This would make the structures similar to the ones found on ancient Earth.

Hynek spotted the system of lagoons through satellite imagery in April 2022 when he was studying another lagoon in northwestern Argentina that had smaller stromatolites with microbes that use anoxygenic photosynthesis.

“We’re not sure if the microbes are actively participating in their growth (in the newly discovered stromatolites). We think they are. But we haven’t done the experiments yet to try to figure that part out,” said Hynek, who documented preliminary observations with microbiologist Maria Farías, cofounder of Punabio SA Environmental Consulting. “There’s a lot of work to be done. We just discovered them and hardly scratched the surface.”

Hynek and Farías were slated to present their findings December 11 at the 2023 meeting of the Geophysical Union in San Francisco, according to a news release.

Possible window into ancient Mars

If the stromatolites are produced by microbes using anoxygenic photosynthesis, the discovery could provide insight on the possibility of life on ancient Mars, Hynek said.

“We’ve identified more than 600 ancient lakes on Mars; there may have even been an ocean. So, it was a lot more Earth-like early on,” he said. Hynek also said the minerals gypsum and halite, found in the stromatolites in Argentina, are also in salt deposits all over Mars.

“If Mars ever evolved life through photosynthesis, this is the type of thing we’d be looking for (stromatolites) — and it is the type of thing we’re looking for,” said Hynek, who is also a research associate at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics.

“If we’re going to find any sort of fossils on Mars, this is our best guess as to what they would be, because these are the oldest ones from the Earth rock record.”

Hynek said he hopes to return to the lagoon soon to conduct more research on the stromatolites.

“Stromatolites on Mars? A long shot, but who knows. So far, no carbonates at the surface of Mars, but the search continues,” Visscher said, for potential signs of life. 

The Emir of Kuwait, Sheikh Nawaf al-Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah, has died at age 86 after ruling the Gulf state for three years.

Officials announced his death on Saturday, according to state news agency KUNA.

Sheikh Nawaf al-Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah had been admitted to hospital in November following an emergency health issue, according to the state news agency. The 86-year-old’s condition was stable at the time, KUNA reported.

The Emir was sworn in September 2020, following the death of Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, who ruled the gulf state for 14 years.

Kuwait, a Gulf Arab nation home to over 4.2 million people, has the world’s sixth-largest oil reserves.

An Al Jazeera journalist has died after being badly injured during an Israeli attack in southern Gaza and then forced to wait five hours for medical attention, the network said on Friday.

Camera operator Samer Abu Daqqa died of wounds sustained in the attack, the Qatar-based network said, adding that he was bleeding for hours before medical personnel could reach him due to heavy shelling in the city.

Dahdouh was eventually evacuated to a hospital, but Abu Daqqa’s injury was too severe to survive, according to Walid Alomari, Al Jazeera’s bureau chief for Jerusalem and the West Bank. “Too many in Gaza bleed and die because ambulances can’t reach them,” he said.

Al Jazeera said it did not have further information about Abu Daqqa’s injuries due to poor telecommunications in the area.

Abu Daqqa and Dahdouh were on assignment in the southern city of Khan Younis when they came under fire. Daddouh later said they had been hit by a drone strike.

At least 17 others were killed and dozens of others were injured early Friday morning after artillery fire struck the city’s Haifa school and a residential home in the area.

Three civil defense workers in Gaza whose rescue efforts at the school were being covered by the al Jazeera team were also killed, according to the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Interior.

Khan Younis has been heavily bombarded by the Israeli military since a fragile truce between Hamas and Israel broke down on 1 December.

The IDF on Thursday called on people in Gaza to move from parts of Khan Younis to displacement shelters in the same area to “ensure safety,” the latest in a series of social media messages from the IDF telling Palestinians to flee from one place to another to avoid the Israeli offensive against Hamas.

IDF Arabic spokesperson Avichay Ardaee posted on X telling people in Khan Younis to move from several “blocks” in the city to three shelters for displaced people in western part of the area and warned against using eastern roads due to IDF advances.

Al Jazeera on Friday aired a video of Dahdouh receiving treatment at a hospital for wounds in his right arm and abdomen, where the veteran journalist can be seen crying out in pain.

It’s not the first time tragedy has struck Dahdouh while covering the siege of Gaza. In October, Al Jazeera reported that an Israeli airstrike killed Dahdouh’s wife, son and grandson. He received the news while he was on air.

As of December 15, preliminary investigations by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) found at least 64 journalists and media workers were among the thousands killed in Gaza since Israel’s siege began on October 7, following Hamas’ deadly terror attacks.

The majority of journalists killed in this war have been Palestinians, alongside four Israeli and three Lebanese members of the press, according to CPJ. Thirteen journalists have also been reported injured, 13 are missing, and 19 have reportedly been arrested, the organization said.

‘Why don’t you join your family abroad?’

Abu Daqqa’s colleagues have been paying tribute to his bravery following his death, with Al Jazeera investigative reporter Tamer Al-Mishal describing him as “professional” and “a great cameraman and editor [who] doesn’t fear anything.”

“I spoke to him a few days ago and told him ‘Why don’t you join your family abroad?’ And he told me they will be back soon when this war is over,” Al-Mishal said.

Abu Daqqa had decided not to leave Gaza, Al-Mishal added, noting that the cameraman had worked for more than 20 years for Al Jazeera.

Al Jazeera aired video showing the journalist’s friends and family crying over his body at the Al Nasser medical complex near Khan Younis. His mother Umm Maher was seen being carried by two people saying, “He hasn’t seen his children, he hasn’t seen his children.”

Abu Daqqa’s wife and children – three boys and a daughter – are currently in Belgium, according to Al Jazeera.

“We miss a great dear friend and father of three [boys] and a girl… Yes, he had an opportunity to work in Belgium, but he favored his beloved Gaza over Belgium,” Alomari said.

Seven weeks into Israel’s ground operation in Gaza, one of the key challenges facing the Israeli military is the labyrinth of Hamas tunnels that it says spans the entirety of the Strip.

If successful, flooding could be ramped up to degrade the tunnel network on a larger scale.

The method, however, is difficult and controversial. Even if implemented with sufficient amounts of water at high enough pressure, it may prove only partially successful. It also risks contaminating freshwater supplies and damaging whatever infrastructure remains on the surface.

For the Israeli government, it also risks killing hostages still held by Hamas in Gaza, many of whom are believed to be underground.

The Israelis are unsure whether the method will work, the American official said, but they assured the US that they are being careful to only test it in tunnels where they do not believe hostages are being held.

A spokesperson for Hamas on Thursday said the group had built its tunnels to withstand possible attempts to pump water into them.

“The tunnels were built by well-trained and educated engineers who considered all possible attacks from the occupation, including pumping water,” Hamas spokesperson Osama Hamdan told a news conference in the Lebanese capital Beirut.

The tunnels however have also acted as an economic lifeline for Gaza’s residents, transporting people, goods and sometimes even American fast food amid a 17-year blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt.

A tool of warfare

Tunnels have historically been used as a tool of warfare. They were used by the French in the interwar period, by al Qaeda in the mountains of Afghanistan and by the Viet Cong in the jungles of Southeast Asia.

Hamas’ tunnels are unique, however. They are “very innovative in their depth, in their sophistication, in their mining, in their trapping,” said Danny Orbach, a military historian at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

The subterranean structure is allegedly built under most of the Gaza Strip – a densely populated territory that is home to more than 2 million people – and by some accounts reaches a couple of hundred feet underground.

Hamas’ tunnels can be large enough to fit adult fighters, weaponry, goods and even cars, according to experts and footage released by the group. Some are reinforced with thick cement walls or are separated by metal doors, and not all of them are connected, experts say.

The scale of the Israeli military’s tests is unclear: how much water and how much pressure it is using to flood the tunnels it or even which tunnels it is targeting.

For the operation to succeed, the pressure with which the water is pumped into the tunnels would have to be high enough to destroy not only the cement walls, but also the thick, metal doors separating some of them.

At the very least, Orbach says, the flooding operation could force Hamas militants to move within the tunnels, which would aid Israeli intelligence in identifying militants and possibly hostages.

There will likely be complications

The method of shutting down tunnels by flooding them isn’t new for Israel or Gaza.

In an effort to shut some of the tunnels allegedly built by Hezbollah on the Israel-Lebanon border, the IDF in 2018 flooded them with cement, which ended up spilling out onto the surface in the southern Lebanese village above the structure.

Similarly, Egypt in 2013 began flooding tunnels running underneath its shared border with Gaza, using seawater, sewage water and cement to halt what it said was the smuggling of weapons by Islamist insurgents from the Strip into its Sinai Peninsula.

The water that flooded the tunnels rose to the surface, destroying crops, contaminating fresh water supplies and risking the spread of disease, Palestinian factions in Gaza later said.

The Israeli military said this month that it destroyed at least 500 tunnel shafts in Gaza and located more than 800 around the Palestinian enclave. The IDF said last week that many of the tunnel shafts “were located in civilian areas” and inside civilian structures.

But the flooding process could have a devastating impact on the territory, depending on how it’s done.

Flooding tunnels underneath populated areas risks damaging the infrastructure that remains intact in the territory. It also risks contaminating the source of its freshwater, experts said.

“I see one problem with seawater (flooding) for example,” Orbach said. “Gaza is a very sandy topography. That means that seawater can leak down and destroy the aquifers, the drinking water.”

The territory’s only freshwater resource, the Coastal Aquifer, is already being increasingly depleted by over-extraction and contaminated by sewage and seawater infiltration, according to Amnesty International.

The war has significantly curtailed access to drinking water, with aid agencies warning that Palestinians are being forced to drink dirty or salty water to quench their thirst, increasing risks of waterborne diseases.

If the entire network of tunnels is flooded, buildings on top of them could also collapse, Orbach said, adding that the damage could be extensive because so many of them are under civilian infrastructure.

The goal of the flooding, however, may not be to completely destroy the tunnels at this time, some experts said.

“Because the tunnels are so extensive and because so many of them are dug under infrastructure, buildings and schools and what not, there is a desire to incapacitate them in the moment, even if it doesn’t fully destroy them,” said Matthew Levitt, director of the Reinhard program on counterterrorism and intelligence at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. The Israelis could work with a post-war governing body in Gaza about completely dismantling the tunnel network, he added.

“I imagine there is a consideration of how much seawater is necessary to make a tunnel unusable, as opposed to putting people’s lives at risk,” Levitt said, referring to the hostages believed to still be underground in Gaza.

“I think people have a vision of flooding the tunnels as pumping so much water in that the entire tunnel is without oxygen and just filled with water,” he said, “and I imagine that is not the case.”

Hostages may be in the tunnels

The most pressing concern for most Israelis today is the dozens of hostages still in Gaza, with many believed to be held underground.

The Israeli government is under intense public pressure to retrieve the hostages alive.

Leaked audio recordings of a meeting between freed hostages and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this month revealed anger at the prospect of flooding the tunnels.

A freed female abductee whose husband remains in captivity is heard on one recording as saying: “And you are talking about washing the tunnels with sea water? You are shelling the route of tunnels in the exact area where they are,” referring to heavy bombardment above of the tunnels.

Some of the hostages released by Hamas in October spoke about the tunnel system, describing the structure as a spiderweb.

Adina Moshe, who was dragged from her safe room in Israel and taken to Gaza on October 7th, was forced into tunnels five stories underground, according to her nephew Eyal Nouri.

“The bottom line is that Hamas invested tremendous time and money in this infrastructure, which is not for the benefit of the people in the Gaza Strip,” Levitt said, adding that from Israel’s perspective, it remains one of the most important military-critical infrastructure targets. “So, by one means or another, one can certainly expect that Israelis are going to be looking to disable the Hamas tunnel system.”