A sperm whale that became stranded on a sandbank at a popular beach near Perth, Western Australia on the weekend has died.

Officials from the Parks and Wildlife Service of Western Australia confirmed the 15-meter (49-feet) long whale died Tuesday morning after it swam off the sandbank into open water.

“It was moving pretty gingerly and swam only 200 or 300 meters before it really seemed to sort of stop. Its respiration gave us some signs that it really was coming to the end,” said Mark Cugley, Incident Controller from the Parks and Wildlife Service.

The whale appeared on Saturday at Rockingham Beach, where people swam close to it, touching it and taking selfies.

The whale would already have been in distress on Saturday when it arrived at the beach and the interaction with people may have increased its stress, government marine mammal expert Kelly Waples said Monday.

“Sperm whales are pelagic animals, that means they live offshore in deep water and that’s where they forage and spend their time,” Waples said. “It is pretty unusual to see them this close to shore.”

The whale swam out to sea after that interaction Saturday, but was found on Monday stranded on a sandbar nearby “thin, emaciated and in a place it doesn’t belong,” Waples said.

“It’s come into this area in very poor health and its very unlikely to survive.”

Authorities had considered euthanizing the whale before finding it dead.

According to a statement from the Parks and Wildlife Service of Western Australia, rangers will now move the 30-tonne carcass to a “more secure location in the water, away from the beach,” which remains closed.

The global climate summit went into overtime on Tuesday with no deal on the meeting’s final agreement, and countries are bitterly divided over whether to call time on fossil fuels. Negotiators are scrambling last-ditch meetings to salvage more ambitious language to address the cause of the climate crisis.

The latest draft of the COP28 summit’s centerpiece agreement published Monday dropped previous references to phasing out fossil fuels, stoking anger and frustration among some nations and advocates. More than 100 countries support a phase-out of fossil fuels in some form.

Instead, the watered-down draft offers a list of actions that countries “could” take to reduce their planet-heating emissions, one of which is reducing the consumption and production of oil, coal and gas.

An ambitious deadline set by COP28 President Sultan Al Jaber to strike a deal on a package of agreements expired earlier Tuesday, the last day of the summit, and by 6 p.m. in Dubai the summit was officially past deadline.

The annual climate talks often run over, but COP28 has been particularly fraught, with criticism that oil interests have derailed the process.

The fossil fuel industry was given record access to the conference, a recent analysis showed. Al Jaber is presiding over the talks as the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company that he runs undergoes a major expansion in oil and gas production. He has consistently rejected criticisms of a conflict of interest and pledged to hold a transparent process.

The secretary-general of the oil-producing group OPEC, Haitham Al Ghais, called on members and allies last week to “proactively reject” any language that targeted reducing fossil fuel use, telling members to support language that focuses on “emissions” instead.

Saudi Arabia and Iraq were among the countries that did not want reference to a phase-out of fossil fuels in the text, Catherine Abreu, the founder and executive director of the nonprofit group Destination Zero, told reporters in Dubai. Kuwait’s state news agency KUNA said the country’s delegation to COP28 was “reaffirming” its rejection of a phase-out as well.

Climate advocate and former US Vice President Al Gore warned in a post on X Monday that the summit was “on the verge of complete failure,” pointing specifically to OPEC as part of the problem.

“The world desperately needs to phase out fossil fuels as quickly as possible, but this obsequious draft reads as if OPEC dictated it word for word,” Gore said. “It is even worse than many had feared.”

COP28 hosts defend watered-down draft

The COP28 presidency fended of criticism over the draft Tuesday, saying it supported a “historic” deal that included some language on fossil fuels and aimed for “the highest ambition.”

“We are facing the most demanding COP agenda of all time,” said COP28 Director-General Ambassador Majid Al Suwaidi in a news conference.

“The text we released was a starting point for discussions,” he said, adding that the presidency did not show favoritism to any party.

The EU delegation Tuesday met with its allies in the High Ambition Coalition, which includes several island states, to try to align their next moves. They also held a discussion with UN Secretary General António Guterres.

EU Climate Action Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra told reporters after the meeting that there was “a supermajority” of countries at COP28 that wanted more ambition in the deal to ensure global warming doesn’t exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial level, a critical threshold for the planet.

“We need to keep a 1.5 degree figure alive. It is what science demands and our kids deserve,” Hoekstra wrote in a post on X, along with a photo of him meeting with the High Ambition Coalition.

Several Australian media reports quoted Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen as saying the so-called Umbrella Group of countries — which includes Australia, the US, UK, Canada and Norway — would not sign the draft as it stands.

“The UK is working with all parties and will continue to push for an ambitious outcome at COP28 that keeps 1.5 degrees in reach,” the spokesperson said.

This is a developing story and it has been updated.

Twenty-three Pakistani soldiers were killed Tuesday when a six-man suicide squad attempted to drive a truck full of explosives into a military camp in Pakistan’s northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK), according to the army.

The attack is the deadliest on the country’s armed forces this year. Other assaults on Tuesday in the Dera Ismail Khan District of KPK province left 54 militants dead, according to the military.

In a post on X (formerly Twitter), caretaker Interior Minister Sarfraz Bugti condemned the “terrorist attack on the police station” and expressed deep sorrow over the loss of life.

Islamic militant group Tehreek e Jihad Pakistan (TJP) has claimed responsibility for the attack.

The incident comes less than two months before Pakistan’s general election, in a year that has seen a sharp rise in militant attacks across the country.

Bloody diarrhea, jaundice, acute hepatitis and respiratory infections. These are just some of the diseases spreading in the Gaza Strip, where the World Health Organization (WHO) says the health system is “on its knees and collapsing.”

As the war between Israel and Hamas enters its third month, medics and aid groups are sounding alarm bells on the humanitarian situation in the besieged enclave – where the United Nations is worried that more people may end up dying of diseases than from bombs and missiles.

The coastal territory – which the Hamas militant group controls – has been under complete siege by Israel since the beginning of Israel’s war with Hamas, when the Palestinian group launched an October 7 attack on Israel, killing 1,200 people and kidnapping 240 others, according to Israeli authorities.

Most of the Strip has run out of food, potable water, electricity and medical supplies as hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians crowd into small spaces to shelter from Israel’s bombs.

Apart from foreign nationals and a small number of injured Palestinians, almost no one has been able to escape Gaza, where more than 2 million people remain trapped.

More than 18,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the fighting broke out, the Hamas-controlled health ministry in the enclave said Monday.

Here’s what we know about the potential for disease to spread in the territory.

How has the healthcare system been affected by the war?

Local doctors and the UN have for weeks been warning of deadly outbreaks, with the WHO last month saying that the crisis in Gaza is a “recipe for epidemics.”

In remarks to WHO member countries, Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Sunday said that only 14 hospitals out of 36 in Gaza are functional, with the two main hospitals in the south operating at three times their capacity.

Only two are left operating north of Wadi Gaza, he said, which Israel had asked some 1.1 million people to evacuate south of as it began its ground operation on October 13. Just 1,400 hospital beds are left, he added, with medical facilities running out of supplies while acting as makeshift shelters for the displaced.

What diseases are medics worried about?

The WHO chief said there were worrying signals of epidemic diseases “including bloody diarrhea and jaundice,” adding that there have also been reports of high levels of diarrheal diseases and respiratory infections.

Other diseases reported in Gaza include measles, meningitis, chickenpox and acute viral hepatitis, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza.

Richard Peeperkorn, WHO Representative in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, on Tuesday said there are between 160,000 to 165,000 cases of diarrhea among children under the age of five, which is “much more” than in normal times.

Diarrheal diseases are believed to be the second leading cause of death in children under five years old. Left untreated, diarrhea can last several days, leaving the body without the water and salts needed for survival.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health has also reported more than 133,000 cases of upper respiratory tract infection (URTI) – a viral infection that can affect the nose, throat and sinuses – more than 17,000 cases of lice and nits, some 35,000 cases of skin rashes and more than 1,900 cases of food poisoning.

The ministry has not reported any cases of cholera, but Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), also known as Doctors Without Borders, has repeatedly warned of a potential cholera outbreak amid a lack of clean water in overcrowded areas.

“Many are drinking salty or contaminated water, which can make people sick,” MSF said in October.

Cholera has spread during wars in Yemen, Syria and Sudan in recent years.

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor warned last month that bodies near or in water sources may also lead to contamination, increasing the risk of cholera and other gastrointestinal diseases.

Other diseases, including blood-borne viruses and tuberculosis, may result from the public decomposition of dead bodies for long periods of time, a common occurrence amid the war in Gaza.

What’s causing the diseases and why are they spreading?

After Israel imposed a blockade on Gaza on October 9, the enclave quickly began running out of food and drinking water. Fuel supplies have dwindled, leaving the population with little to no electricity to power medical facilities, refrigerate food or even store bodies killed in the fighting.

Israel is now expanding its military operation deeper into southern Gaza, telling civilians to evacuate areas they had moved to following the military’s call to evacuate the north.

Almost all of Gaza’s population – 1.9 million out of the more than 2 million in the enclave – is now displaced, the WHO said Sunday.

There are few places to move to, and hundreds of thousands are moving into more crowded areas. The UN estimates at least 60% of Gaza’s housing has been destroyed or damaged as of November 24.

How is the international community reacting?

The UN General Assembly will on Tuesday resume its emergency session on the situation in Gaza, days after the United States vetoed a UN Security Council resolution calling for a humanitarian ceasefire.

UN staff in Gaza feel abandoned after the US veto, Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said on Monday. They “cannot understand” why a ceasefire has not been agreed on after thousands have been killed and displaced, he said in the Egyptian city of Arish, close to the Rafah crossing with Gaza.

Gaza is “very close” to seeing “a breakdown of civil order,” which will not allow the agency to operate any more, he said, noting how some civilians in Gaza have resorted to looting warehouses in desperation.

In recent days, between 60 and 100 trucks have been using Rafah crossing to enter Gaza – a volume aid groups say is too little to mitigate the territory’s humanitarian crisis.

It is unclear when more aid will make it into Gaza, but Israeli authorities said Monday that two crossings it shares with Gaza – Kerem Shalom and Nitzana – will be used to help screen humanitarian aid destined for the territory, noting that no aid will be allowed directly into Gaza from either crossing in Israel.

The aid will be screened at both crossings then forwarded from there to international aid organizations in the Gaza Strip via Rafah in Egypt, Israel said.

Glaciers in the Himalayas are melting rapidly, but a new report showed an astonishing phenomenon in the world’s tallest mountain range could be helping to slow the effects of the global climate crisis.

When warming temperatures hit certain high-altitude ice masses, it sets off a surprising reaction that blows robust cold winds down the slopes, according to the study published December 4 in the journal Nature Geoscience.

The warming climate creates a greater temperature gap between the surrounding air above Himalayan glaciers and the cooler air directly in contact with the ice masses’ surface, explained Francesca Pellicciotti, professor of glaciology at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria and lead author of the study.

“This leads to an increase in turbulent heat exchange at the glacier’s surface and stronger cooling of the surface air mass,” she said in a news release.

As the cool, dry surface air gets cooler and denser, it sinks. The air mass flows down the slopes into the valleys, causing a cooling effect in the glaciers’ lower areas and neighboring ecosystems.

With ice and snow from the mountain range feeding into 12 rivers that provide fresh water to nearly 2 billion people in 16 countries, it’s important to find out whether the Himalayan glaciers can keep up this self-preserving cooling effect as the region faces a likely rise in temperatures over the next few decades.

Glacier melt

“The main impact of rising temperature on glaciers is an increase of ice losses, due to melt increase,” said Fanny Brun, a research scientist at the Institut des Géosciences de l’Environnement in Grenoble, France. She was not involved in the study.

“The primary mechanisms are the lengthening and intensification of the melt season. They cause glaciers to thin and retreat, leading to deglaciated landscapes that tend to further increase the air temperature due (to) larger energy absorption by the surface,” Brun said.

That energy absorption at the surface is determined by something called the albedo effect. Light or “white” surfaces such as clean snow and ice will reflect more sunlight (high albedo) compared with “dark” surfaces such as the land that is exposed as glaciers retreat, soil and oceans (low albedo). In general, Brun said this phenomenon is interpreted as a positive feedback loop, or a process that enhances a change, but it is overall poorly studied and difficult to quantify.

At the base of Mount Everest, however, measurements of overall temperature averages appeared curiously stable instead of increasing. A close analysis of the data revealed what was really happening.

“While the minimum temperatures have been steadily on the rise, the surface temperature maxima in summer were consistently dropping,” said Franco Salerno, coauthor of the report and researcher for the National Research Council of Italy, or CNR.

However, even the presence of these cooling winds is not enough to fully counteract increasing temperatures and glacier melt due to climate change. Thomas Shaw, who is part of the ISTA research group with Pellicciotti, said the reason these glaciers are nevertheless melting rapidly is complex.

“The cooling is local, but perhaps still not sufficient to overcome the larger impact of climatic warming and fully preserve the glaciers,” Shaw said.  

Pellicciotti explained that the general scarcity of data in high-elevation areas across the globe is what led to the study team’s focus of using the unique ground observation records at one station in the Himalayas.

“The process we highlighted in the paper is potentially of global relevance and may occur on any glacier worldwide where conditions are met,” she said.

The new study provides a compelling motivation to collect more high-elevation, long-term data that are strongly needed to prove the new findings and their broader impacts, Pellicciotti said.

Treasure trove of data

Located at a glacierized elevation of 5,050 meters (16,568 feet), the Pyramid International Laboratory/Observatory climate station sits along the southern slopes of Mount Everest. The observatory has recorded detailed meteorological data for almost 30 years.

It’s those granular meteorological observations that Pellicciotti, Salerno and a team of researchers used to conclude that warming temperatures are triggering what are called katabatic winds.

The cold winds, created by air flowing downhill, usually occur in mountainous regions, including the Himalayas.

“Katabatic winds are a common feature of Himalayan glaciers and their valleys, and have likely always occurred,” Pellicciotti said. “What we observe however is a significant increase in intensity and duration of katabatic winds, and this is due to the fact that the surrounding air temperatures have increased in a warming world.”

Another thing the team observed was higher ground-level ozone concentrations in connection with lower temperatures. This evidence demonstrates that katabatic winds work as a pump that’s able to transport cold air from the higher elevation and the atmospheric layers down to the valley, Pellicciotti explained.

“According to the current state of knowledge, Himalayan glaciers are doing slightly better than average glaciers in terms of mass losses,” Brun said.

Glacier loss in Asia vs. Europe

Brun explained that in Central Himalaya, on average, the glaciers have thinned about 9 meters (29.5 feet) over the past two decades. 

“This is much lower than glaciers in Europe, which have thinned of about 20 meters (65.6 feet) over the same time span, but this is larger than other regions in Asia (for example in the Karakoram region), or in the Arctic region,” Brun said.

Understanding how long these glaciers are capable of locally counteracting global warming’s impacts could be crucial in order to effectively address our changing world.

“We believe that the katabatic winds are the response of healthy glaciers to rising global temperatures and that this phenomenon could help preserve the permafrost and surrounding vegetation,” said study coauthor Nicolas Guyennon, a researcher at the National Research Council of Italy.

Further analysis is needed, however. The study team next aims to identify the glacial characteristics that favor the cooling effect. Pellicciotti said more long-term ground stations for testing this hypothesis elsewhere are virtually absent.

“Even if the glaciers can’t preserve themselves forever, they might still preserve the environment around them for some time,” she said. “Thus, we call for more multidisciplinary research approaches to converge efforts toward explaining the effects of global warming.”

A separate report in 2019 found that even in the most optimistic case, in which average global warming was limited to only 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial temperatures, the Himalaya region would lose at least one-third of its glaciers.

Israel’s relations with the United Nations have sunk to a historic low after a spat between the two escalated this week.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Wednesday invoked a rarely used but powerful tool in his determined push for a ceasefire in Gaza, causing outrage among Israeli diplomats.

Article 99 of the UN charter allows the UN chief to raise to the Security Council’s attention “any issue that may aggravate existing threats to the maintenance of international peace and security.” Guterres, in a letter to the 15-member council, used the diplomatic tool and urged for the body to “press to avert a humanitarian catastrophe” and unite in a call for a full humanitarian ceasefire.

The step caused outrage among Israeli diplomats. Israel has strongly opposed calls for a ceasefire, arguing that it needs to press on with its offensive in Gaza to eliminate Hamas after its militants attacked the country. on October 7, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 240 hostages. Israel’s campaign in Gaza has resulted in the deaths of more than 16,000 people, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry in Ramallah, which compiles its reports with data from medical sources in Hamas-run Gaza.

Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen lashed out at the secretary-general for his letter, saying the UN chief’s tenure was “a danger to world peace” and that his call for a ceasefire in Gaza amounted to supporting Hamas and the October 7 attack.

Guterres’ letter was the seventh time in the UN’s 78-year history in which Article 99 had been invoked, and the first time it was used since 1989, when then Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar urged the Security Council to call for a ceasefire during the Lebanese civil war, according to Daniel Forti, a senior UN analyst at the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank.

“We are at a breaking point,” Guterres told the Council meeting Friday. “There is high risk of the collapse of the humanitarian support system in Gaza, which would have devastating consequences”.

Forti said Guterres’ letter was unlikely to shift political dynamics inside the Security Council, but that it could create more urgency for diplomatic action. “Because this tool is used so rarely, it does have a moral impact,” he said.

Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Gilad Erdan has argued that a ceasefire “cements Hamas’ control of Gaza” and extends “the suffering of all.”

He also criticized Guterres for the rare use of Article 99, noting that recent wars in Ukraine, Yemen, and Syria hadn’t prompted the same response. “Despite the immense global impact of other conflicts and far more pressing threats to international peace and security, Israel’s defensive war against Hamas — a designated terrorist organization — was the catalyst for activating Article 99.

Guterres had already faced intense criticism by Israel, which has long felt the UN is biased against it, and multiple Israeli officials have publicly called for his resignation. The UN chief has repeatedly condemned Hamas’ October 7 attack, including in the letter in which he invoked Article 99.

US vetoes ceasefire resolution

Later in the day, the US vetoed a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in war-torn Gaza Friday, amid growing concern about the civilian death toll there. The resolution, which referenced Guterres’ use of Article 99, was drafted by the United Arab Emirates and co-sponsored by at least 97 other countries.

A majority of thirteen of the Security Council’s 15 members voted for the brief resolution, with the UK abstaining from the vote and the US exercising its veto power.

But speaking after the vote, US Deputy Ambassador Robert Wood criticized the resolution for failing to mention Hamas’ terror attacks on October 7, among other things.

One of the Council’s five permanent members with veto power, the US has repeatedly resisted calls for “ceasefire,” emphasizing Israel’s right to defend itself. Friday’s vote was the sixth attempt by the council to reach a consensus on the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas. Only one previous vote was successful, which called last month for “humanitarian pauses and corridors” to be established in Gaza.

The UN Security Council has failed to agree on how to respond to the Hamas attacks and Israel’s subsequent war with the Palestinian militant group, with rival camps within the body, particularly the United States and Russia, clashing.

Relations at a historic low

Gabriela Shalev, who served as Israel’s ambassador to the UN from 2008 to 2010, said Israel-UN relations are at a historic low now, noting that ties had become strained soon after Israel was established following a UN General Assembly resolution in 1947.

Israeli diplomats have used their platforms at the UN to denounce the world body since the war began. Gilad Erdan, the Israeli ambassador to the UN, and his staff have been wearing yellow Stars of David to protest the UN’s alleged inaction on the Hamas attack, evoking memories of Nazi-era persecution of Jews.

He and Cohen, the foreign minister, have been at the center of Israel’s attempts to discredit the UN and its chief.

On October 24, Guterres delivered an address to the Security Council in which he “unequivocally” condemned Hamas’ attack but said that it didn’t happen “in a vacuum,” and that the Palestinians had been “subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation” by Israel.

That caused fury among Israeli diplomats. In response, Erdan called on the secretary-general to resign and said his country would block visas for UN officials to “teach them a lesson.” He noted that Hamas officials were citing his address as justification for their attack, and accused the UN of antisemitism, calling for its funding to be stopped.

Cohen has refused to meet Guterres since then, saying there is “no place for a balanced approach” to the October 7 attack, and has repeatedly called on him to resign.

Shalev, the former Israeli ambassador, said the way Israeli diplomats have been addressing the conflict with the UN is “not the right way,” particularly calls for the secretary-general’s resignation. Disregarding the opinions of the UN or leaving the organization wouldn’t help Israel, she added.

“The Secretary-General is appointed by the General Assembly and the only body that can fire him or force him to retire is the General Assembly,” she said.

Quarrel goes beyond the secretary-general

Israel’s quarrel with the UN has gone beyond the secretary-general. Israeli officials have also criticized the World Health Organization, UN Women and the UN’s Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese.

Meanwhile, more than 100 UN staffers have been killed in Gaza since the conflict began, the largest loss in the world body’s history. UNRWA employs more than 10,000 people in Gaza. UN offices across the world observed a minute of silence and flew their flags at half-staff last month to pay tribute to them. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) last month said it had recorded collateral and direct damage to more than 60 of its facilities, most of which were schools sheltering thousands of civilians.

UNRWA has been a major target of Israeli criticism. The organization was founded by the UN a year after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, to provide relief to displaced Palestinians. It defines Palestinian refugees as those who were dispossessed from their homes during Israel’s creation in 1948 as well as their descendants, which qualifies them to return to their ancestral homes in what is now Israel. Those who fit that definition now number 5.9 million. Israel has rejected the notion that they could return, arguing that the move would nullify its Jewish character.

Israel has long accused UNRWA of anti-Israeli incitement, which UNRWA has repeatedly denied, and in 2017, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sought to dismantle the UN body, saying it should be merged with the main UN refugee agency.

Since the October 7 attack, Israeli journalists and news outlets have refocused their attention on UNRWA and have amplified stories questioning its role in the war.

Last month, an Israeli journalist claimed on the social media platform X, formerly Twitter, that one of the hostage takers in Gaza was a teacher at an UNRWA-run school. That report was picked up by Israeli news outlets, prompting the UN agency to issue a statement calling for an “immediate stop” to the spreading of “unsubstantiated claims” about the organization, saying they amounted to “misinformation.”

Another story widely picked up by Israeli media claimed that the Israeli military found weapons in Gaza stored below UNRWA boxes, suggesting that the UN agency could be complicit in Hamas’ militancy. Erdan, Israel’s UN ambassador, said the video proved that the UN had become an “accomplice to terror.”

Albanese has been the subject of a fierce campaign of Israeli criticism. The official was recently accused by an Israel government spokesman of being “a shameless Hamas-complicit official” who exercises “disgusting Holocaust inversion.”

The next day, Albanese wrote that anyone working on Israel or the Palestinian territories is accused of “supporting terror” or “being antisemitic.”

“The most shameful attacks directed at the UN are the ones against UNRWA, which represents the UN at critical times of war, including with lifeline support,” Albanese added.

Articles in the Israeli media have also questioned UNRWA’s credibility and called for a “rethink” of the organization.

Shalev said there was little Israeli trust in UNRWA.

“Where does the humanitarian help that goes to Gaza go to? Does it go to the population or to Hamas?”

UNRWA has repeatedly denied allegations that its aid is being diverted and that it teaches hatred in its schools, and has questioned “the motivation of those who make such claims, through large advocacy campaigns.” It has condemned the Hamas attack as “abhorrent.”

Despite the longstanding distrust, Shalev said that anti-UN rhetoric was not the best way for Israelis to respond.

“We have to show the world… what really happened on October 7,” she said, adding that Israel doesn’t have to “act emotionally” or “make all these empty declarations” to pursue that goal.

Seishi Sato had an ominous feeling when he saw something rustling in a bush during a recent stroll in a forest in northern Japan.

Before he knew it, two Asiatic bears had sprung from the shrub, one charging at him as he frantically tried to fend it off while fearing for his life.

He survived the attack — but not without plenty of scratches and puncture wounds on his arm and thigh.

Sato is among at least 212 people who survived what has been a record year for bear attacks in Japan, according to the Ministry of Environment. Six people have died.

With a month of 2023 still to go, this year’s total has already far surpassed the 158 that took place throughout the whole of 2020 (the previous record year). And the number of bear attacks have never exceeded 200 per year since record began in 2006.

Sightings of “kuma”, or bears, are not unusual in Japan but are generally concentrated in the northern part of the country, where mountain ranges, lush bush and crystal-clear rivers provide an ideal habitat and abundant sources of the acorns, beechnuts, fruits and insects that make up their diet.

But experts say Japan’s bears are increasingly venturing out of their traditional habitats and into urban areas in search of food. Some suggest this is because climate change is interfering with the flowering and pollination of some of the animals’ traditional sources of food.

“Bears are expanding their home range this year and are coming down to areas near human settlements in search of food,” said associate professor Maki Yamamoto, who studies bears at the Nagaoka University of Technology in Niigata.

Increasingly, this is bringing them into the paths of people like Sato, who was attacked just a half-hour walk from the shop he runs, where he sells pet supplies and mushrooms he picks from the forest.

“People are becoming very alert to this situation,” said Sato, adding that other residents had been attacked outside the front doors of their village homes.

As of November, there had been 19,191 sightings across the country, up from 11,135 sightings throughout the whole of the previous year and 12,743 in 2021.

Iwate, where Sato lives, has logged more cases than anywhere else – 5,158 – followed by its neighboring prefecture of Akita, which has reported 3,000 sightings.

So pressing has the issue become that Environment Minister Shintaro Ito pledged last month to help affected communities.

“We are considering providing emergency assistance to local communities in response to their needs, such as surveying and capturing bears living in the vicinity of human settlements, taking into consideration the wishes of prefectures where human casualties due to bears are particularly on the rise,” he told a press conference.

Protective mama bears

Japan is home to two main types of bear: brown bears, which live in Hokkaido, the northernmost of Japan’s main islands, and a small population of Asiatic bears, which reside in Honshu, Japan’s largest island.

Both breeds have an omnivorous diet, enjoy feeding on acorns and tend to avoid humans if possible. An Asiatic bear weighs between 40 and 100 kg while a Japanese brown bear can grow up to 400kg. But both are far from being the biggest bear on earth. Kodiak Brown Bears in Alaska, for example, can weigh up to 600kg.

“Both brown bears and Asiatic black bears are basically timid animals that avoid people,” said Professor Koji Yamazaki from the Tokyo University of Agriculture.

When bears do attack, the cause is usually because a mother bear fears an encounter with a human poses a threat to her cub, experts said.

Sato, who runs the YouTube channel Primitive Forest Bear to share his adventures in nature, recalled that the Asiatic bears he ran into appeared to be mother and child.

He captured the attack on camera and posted the video online as a reminder to others to take care.

The video, which has since gone viral, shows him screaming for his life and hitting the animal with a tree branch to drive it away. At one point, he climbs a tree to avoid being mauled. Luckily, the bear eventually turns away.

“When I saw the video, I was scared to death,” Sato said.

Climate change and population shifts

With encounters on the increase, some experts believe climate change may be a factor in pushing bears further from their traditional habitats.

“The thing is that you can have years of bad harvests and years of good harvest of acorns. And when the harvest is bad, the bears cannot store enough energy before hibernation by eating mountain acorns alone, so they get closer to human settlements looking for fruits, chestnuts, persimmons, walnuts, and farm products in general,” Yamamoto, from Nagaoka University of Technology, explained.

“This year, bears have been appearing more in the villages precisely because of the very bad harvest of acorns from the beech, the bears’ favorite tree,” she said.

Tsutomu Mano, a senior research fellow at the Hokkaido Research Organization, said climate change “is likely to have a significant impact on the flowering time of plants and the activity of insects responsible for pollination, which is necessary for fruiting.”

And when the bears don’t have enough food, they often turn to human neighborhoods to look for leftovers in the bins, he said.

Once they’ve developed a taste for human leftovers they will keep returning for more, Mano said.

Another factor that some believe may be coming into play is Japan’s rapidly shifting demographics.

With a median age of 48, Japan has one of the world’s oldest populations,  according to the Economic and Social for Asia and the Pacific, a United Nations’ arm that tracks population trends.

At the same time, the country is experiencing a shift in which younger generations are increasingly moving to big cities for better job opportunities.

Taken together, the two factors mean populations on the rural edges of northern prefectures are fast dwindling, creating conditions such as “abandonment of cultivated land and overgrowth along riversides” that “make it easier for bears to enter,” according to Mano.

According to national broadcaster NHK, out of the 71 people attacked by bears in October, 61 were above the age of 60. Twenty-one people were in their 80s.

On October 24 alone, four people – all in the 70s – were injured in Akita on the same day, the broadcaster reported.

What’s the solution?

At Karuizawa, a resort town located in Nagano prefecture, northwest of Tokyo, conservationists have taken to patrolling the forest with dogs to scare the bears away, according to local media.

But officials in Akita prefecture, which recorded the second-highest number of bear attacks, have a more drastic measure in store. They have begun offering rewards to trappers.

Governor Norihisa Satake announced late last month a 5,000-yen ($33) prize for each bear captured in the prefecture. The authorities are also mulling a proposal to set aside a fund of up to 15 million yen ($100,000) to pay for the transportation of the captured bears.

But experts say a more holistic approach is needed.

“Trapping is not sufficient to manage bears, so it is necessary to consider a combination of various methods,” said Yamazaki, from the Tokyo University of Agriculture.

The first step was to study what types of bear – in terms of their ages, genders and locations – were going astray and why, he said.

On Thursday, Reuters, AFP, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch released investigations into the circumstances of the deadly strike. AFP and HRW claimed the strike was a “deliberate,” targeted attack by Israel on the journalists. In a statement to Reuters, Israel Defense Forces spokesperson Richard Hecht said: “We don’t target journalists.” He did not provide further comment, the news agency reported.

The Israel Defense Forces on Friday said that the October incident in which a Reuters journalist was killed is still “under review.”

AFP photographer Christina Assi had her leg amputated and remains in the hospital as a result of the strike, according to AFP.

Eylon Levy, a spokesperson for the Israeli government, said Thursday that he was “not familiar” with the new reports. “The guiding principle in Israel’s campaign against Hamas is we uphold the principles of international law regarding proportionality, necessity, distinction,” he said. “We target Hamas, we do not target civilians.”

Israel and Hezbollah were engaged in intense crossfire across the Lebanon-Israel border at the time.

Neither the Lebanese army nor the Iran-backed Hezbollah are known to have such ammunition in their arsenal.

“The shooter should have seen the journalists from the tank,” he added.

British weapons expert Chris Cobb-Smith said the photograph of the remnants of the shell clearly showed an “expended tank round.”

“Two projectiles hit the area of the media crews and from the damage to the wall, the location where Issam’s body ended up and from an analysis of the second crater, I believe the shots came from the area of the high ground just over the border,” said Cobb-Smith, referring to a foot-high wall seen in aftermath video near Abdallah’s body. Cobb-Smith said his analysis of the damage left by the projectile suggested that the attack came from a southeasterly direction.

Maher determined that the attack was likely a “supersonic event” due to the absence of an “approaching whoosh or whine, as you might see with artillery fire.”

Cobb-Smith’s theory that the shells travelled from the southeast would be consistent of the findings of the investigations released Thursday.

Israeli surveillance towers are seen in video of the attack, raising further doubt that Israel had not realized the tank crew was attacking journalists.

In it’s statement Friday, the IDF said, “On October 13, 2023, the terrorist organization Hezbollah launched an attack on multiple targets within Israeli territory along the Lebanese border,” the IDF said in a statement. “One incident involved the firing of an anti-tank missile, which struck the border fence near the village Hanita.”

“Following the launch of the anti-tank missile, concerns arose over the potential infiltration of terrorists into Israeli territory. In response, the IDF used artillery and tank fire to prevent the infiltration. The IDF is aware of the claim that journalists who were in the area were killed,” the statement continued.

“The area is an active combat zone, where active fire takes place and being in this area is dangerous. The incident is currently under review,” the IDF said.

IDF spokesperson Richard Hecht on October 14 called Abdallah’s death “a tragic thing,” without naming him directly or acknowledging Israel’s involvement. The same day, the IDF said: “A report was received that during the incident, journalists were injured in the area. The incident is under review.”

Al Jazeera has accused Israel’s military of “deliberately targeting the journalists to silence the media,” saying the attacks are a part of “a pattern of ‘repeated atrocities’ against journalists.”

Amnesty International’s investigation did not find “any indication that there were any fighters or military objectives at the site of the strikes.”

“Israeli forces had observation towers, ground elements, and air assets deployed to closely monitor the border. All of this should have provided sufficient information to Israeli forces that these were journalists and civilians and not a military target,” Amnesty said in its report.

“Our investigation into the incident uncovers chilling evidence pointing to an attack on a group of international journalists who were carrying out their work by reporting on hostilities. Direct attacks on civilians and indiscriminate attacks are absolutely prohibited by international humanitarian law and can amount to war crimes,” said Aya Majzoub, Amnesty International’s Deputy Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa.

“The strikes were deliberate and targeted,” AFP said in its report. AFP global news director Phil Chetwynd said in the report, “AFP has been very clear that we will take all judicial avenues that we deem relevant and possible to ensure that we can get justice for Christina and Issam.”

Speaking Thursday in Washington, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that Abdallah’s death should be investigated. Blinken said it was his understanding that Israel had begun such an investigation and stressed the importance of seeing it through.

A Pentagon spokeswoman said earlier that the agency had not conducted its own assessment of Abdallah’s death but it continued to urge Israel to protect innocent civilians, including members of the press.

Editor’s Note: Lindsay Shiver of Thomasville, Georgia, pleaded not guilty on Friday, Dec. 8, to killing her estranged husband in a Bahamian court during her formal arraignment.

American Lindsay Shiver, accused of conspiring to kill her husband with two co-defendants in the Bahamas, was granted bail of $100,000 by a Bahamian Supreme Court justice on Wednesday.

She will be outfitted with an electronic monitoring device and must comply with an 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew. As Shiver walked into court wearing ripped jeans and a T-shirt, spectators yelled questions but it did not appear she replied to anyone.

Shiver must report to the Cable Beach Police Station in Nassau three times per week. She must also not come within 100 feet of her husband, as part of her bail conditions.

Shiver, 36, of Thomasville, Georgia, is accused of unsuccessfully conspiring with the two Bahamas natives to kill her husband, Robert Shiver, on July 16 while on the Abaco Islands, months after the couple filed for divorce.

The defendants were arraigned last month, according to court documents. They were not required to enter pleas at that hearing.

Divorce proceedings

Lindsay and Robert Shiver had filed for divorce in April, court records indicate.

Robert Shiver filed for divorce on April 5, and Lindsay Shiver filed for divorce the following day, according to the complaint listed on the Thomas County, Georgia, Clerk of Courts website.

Robert Shiver is an insurance executive and former Auburn University football player, court records and his company’s website show. Lindsay Shiver also attended Auburn University, according to social media posts.

Lindsay Shiver’s next court appearance is slated for October 5.

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly spelled the name of Bahamian Supreme Court Justice Cheryl Grant-Thompson.

To date, tens of millions of animal mummies have been unearthed in Egypt. But while there are millions of mummified cats, dogs, ibises and birds of prey, primate mummies are rare — and little understood.

Now, new analysis of mummified baboons is shedding light on the animals’ place in ancient Egypt, revealing that, while they were prized as sacred animals, their living conditions were less than ideal.

Researchers analyzed bones from mummified baboons, which were discovered in the early 1900s in the necropolis Gabbanat el-Qurud, in the so-called Valley of the Monkeys, to the southwest of Egypt’s Valley of the Kings. The bones represented dozens of individual baboons — from infants to adults — in two species: the hamadryas baboon (Papio hamadryas) and the olive baboon (Papio anubis).

Of all the animals that the ancient Egyptians venerated, baboons were the only ones not native to Egypt, Van Neer added.

The baboons are thought to have played a role in ancient Egyptian rituals, the scientists reported Wednesday in the journal PLOS One. But raising and caring for large wild animals — particularly non-native species — is challenging. Before their deaths the baboons were sunlight-deprived and developed bone ailments from poor nutrition, researchers discovered. Examination of the skeletal remains revealed signs of rickets; the baboons had deformed arms, legs and faces, undeveloped teeth, osteoarthritis and other pathologies due to deprivation and metabolic disease.

Their deformities resembled those seen in the bones of baboons from two other ancient Egyptian sites — Saqqara and Tuna el-Gebel — dating to around the same period, the authors wrote.

A jumble of bones

At the three main Egyptian sites where mummies of Old World monkeys were interred, 463 mummified primates have been discovered, according to the study. The baboon bones examined for the new analysis were collected in 1905 and 1906 by archaeologists from the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle de Lyon in France (now the Musée des Confluences).

In the tombs were pieces of dried skin with long tufts of hair still attached, suggesting that the animals had been placed there as mummies. The French archaeologists recovered 23 skulls, 24 mandibles and more than 200 isolated bones, which were assembled into complete skeletons regardless of whether all the bones belonged to the same baboon, according to the study.

Two skeletons had been cobbled together from bones belonging to two different baboons, and one skeleton represented three of the primates. Of the four skeletons that were properly put together, only one had the correct skull. After analyzing the bones one by one, the study authors identified 36 different baboons of all ages, a set with more adults than juveniles and a few more males than females.

The bones also revealed signs of metabolic problems during adolescent growth, including curved shafts, misshapen shaft heads and arthritic joints. Two female baboons had suffered from tooth decay. There were lesions in some of the skulls; two of the primates had shortened snouts, and two others had snouts that bent to the left.

The mummies were also centuries older than previously thought. Based on the mummies’ proximity to nearby ceramic artifacts in the tombs, earlier estimates placed them between the first and second centuries at the earliest, and possibly as recent as the seventh century.

But when the study authors examined bone collagen and fibers from a textile that had been wrapped around an intact baboon mummy, they found that the animals were likely entombed between 803 and 520 BC. The researchers confirmed that time frame using a technique called radiocarbon dating, which can determine the age of organic material by measuring the amount of decay in a radioactive isotope of carbon.

Sacred and suffering

Conditions for the captive primates may have been even worse than their remains suggested, as bones often don’t preserve records of parasites and other types of ailments, the researchers reported.

However, it’s important to note the scientists’ findings don’t suggest that the baboons were being intentionally abused. Their keepers likely did the best that they could to care for the animals, “but this must not have been easy,” Van Neer said.

“Baboons are good climbers and they were therefore probably kept in buildings or enclosures with high walls to prevent them from escaping. Because of the lack of sunlight they developed the metabolic disorders that we see, mainly rickets. There are no signs of broken bones that would suggest the animals were ill-treated physically,” he said.

“Unfortunately, the Egyptians did not know enough about the care and feeding of baboons,” Ikram added. “While trying to give them reverence and care they actually established conditions detrimental to the health and well-being of the animals — the way to hell is paved with good intentions!”

Mindy Weisberger is a science writer and media producer whose work has appeared in Live Science, Scientific American and How It Works magazine.