The exiled leader of Belarus’ democratic opposition is warning the United States that abandoning Ukraine in its fight against Russia and its President Vladimir Putin would threaten the security of all of Eastern Europe.

“Without free and independent and safe Ukraine, there will be no safe Belarus. But also vice versa. Without free Belarus, there will be constant threat to all our neighbors in the whole region,” she added.

Tsikhanouskaya’s husband was imprisoned after announcing he would challenge Belarus’ longtime leader, Alexander Lukashenko, in the 2020 presidential election. She ultimately ran in his place in an election widely considered fraudulent.

Tsikhanouskaya fled with her children to Lithuania in the same year, after Lukashenko’s government, with aid from Russia, forcefully stamped down pro-democracy protests.

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Lukashenko has deepened ties with Putin, and Belarus – a former Soviet nation – has become a key ally and strategic partner in the fight, with Russian forces using Belarus as a launchpad for invading Kyiv.

This week, Tsikhanouskaya traveled to Washington D.C. for meetings with lawmakers to advocate for increasing pressure on Lukashenko’s regime and countering Putin, including continuing to provide military and security support to Ukraine.

Her meetings with the State Department are the first of what both sides have described as a “comprehensive strategic dialogue” between US officials and the exiled democratic leaders of Belarus.

The United States can play a “crucial role” in Belarusian pro-democracy efforts, Tsikhanouskaya said, but she expressed fear that a new American president could undo diplomatic progress.

Responding to the presidential campaign of former President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly spoken warmly of dictators including Putin, she said she hoped he would be defeated in 2024.

“We need [to] help Ukrainians to win this fight against Russia until the next elections in the USA,” she said.

Beijing has ramped up its push to interfere in next month’s Taiwan presidential election, with a top Chinese leader urging officials to be more effective and discreet in their work at a recent high-level meeting, according to a senior Taiwanese security official.

Wang, a longtime advisor to Chinese leader Xi Jinping, was put in charge of Taiwan affairs earlier this year after being appointed the deputy head of the Central Leading Group for Taiwan Affairs, a decision-making body chaired by Xi.

According to the Taiwanese official, who requested anonymity due to sensitivity of the matter, Wang told officials attending the meeting that the Chinese Communist Party must step up its effectiveness in influencing Taiwan’s public opinion, while reducing the likelihood that external parties could find evidence of such interference.

The allegations come as Taiwan’s presidential candidates are campaigning in full force for the highly consequential election, taking place at a moment of high tensions across the Taiwan Strait as China ramps up military, political and economic pressure on the democratic island that Beijing claims as its own territory.

The candidate for Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), Vice President Lai Ching-te, is currently leading in the polls, leaving contenders in the China-friendly camp behind.

Beijing, which openly loathes the DPP, has long been accused of meddling in Taiwan elections to boost the prospects of candidates who favor closer ties with China, and Taiwanese officials have publicly warned of its more diverse tactics in recent months.

The Taiwanese security official noted Beijing convened the meeting after Xi visited San Francisco last month to meet with US President Joe Biden, who had cautioned his Chinese counterpart against interfering in Taiwan’s elections during their four-hour talks.

Because of that, the source claimed, Wang stressed to officials that it is important to strategize so that external parties can’t easily find evidence of Beijing’s interference.

The attending officials were told to coordinate their work with the Communist Party’s Central Propaganda Department and the People’s Liberation Army’s Base 311 – a psychological warfare unit headquartered in the city of Fuzhou near the coast of the Taiwan Strait, according to the Taiwanese official.

Created in 2005, Base 311 has drawn attention from global defense experts for its role as an operational command for Beijing’s “Three Warfares” strategy against Taiwan – namely “public opinion warfare, psychological warfare and legal warfare.”

The Taiwanese official said Base 311 has also been tasked with organizing trips for Taiwanese media to visit mainland China, as well as picking soundbites that fit Beijing’s narratives from Taiwanese programs and making them into short videos to spread on social media.

Meanwhile, the Chinese government’s Taiwan Affairs Office and the Communist Party’s United Front Work Department are responsible for interacting with Taiwanese businesspeople and low-ranking Taiwanese politicians, the official added.

According to the source, the strategies discussed at the meeting include magnifying narratives that the upcoming election is a “choice between war and peace” – a talking point that blames the ruling DPP for provoking Beijing and stoking tensions – and that the DPP candidates are “diehard Taiwan separatists.”

Beijing has repeatedly decried Lai, the DPP’s candidate, as a “separatist” and “troublemaker” for his pro-independence leanings. In 2017, Lai enraged Chinese officials by calling himself a “pragmatic worker for Taiwanese independence,” though he has moderated his stance since winning the nomination for the race.

The Taiwanese security official pointed out that since last week, there has been a large number of social media posts targeting Lai’s running mate and vice presidential candidate Hsiao Bi-khim, including on accounts allegedly controlled by the Chinese state.

Some posts accused Hsiao – who until recently was Taiwan’s top representative in the US — of being a “diehard separatist,” while others falsely alleged that she still holds US citizenship

“They hope that the party they dislike will lose the election,” the Taiwanese official said, referring to the DPP, which has prioritized elevating Taipei’s ties with Washington since taking power in 2016.

“They have repeatedly attempted to remind (voters) that this election is a choice between peace and war, and that one of the tickets is comprised of separatists,” the official added.

China’s Communist Party has vowed to one day “reunite” with Taiwan, by force if necessary. Regular polling shows the vast majority of Taiwanese have no desire to be part of China and a growing number, especially younger generations, see themselves as distinctly Taiwanese, not Chinese.

The DPP views Taiwan as a de facto sovereign nation, a stance that infuriates Beijing which has cut official communications with the island’s government since the current ruling party came to power.

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.

Since then, China has switched to a different approach. Taiwanese officials and experts have accused Beijing of spreading disinformation on social media, illicitly funding election campaigns and media outlets, and influencing Taiwanese businesses with investments in mainland China.

In 2019, weeks before Taiwan’s last presidential and legislative elections, the island’s legislature passed a law aimed at blocking political interference from China. The Anti-Infiltration Law seeks to plug legal loopholes by blocking any foreign force from making political donations, spreading misinformation, staging campaign events, or otherwise interfering in elections.

Russia fired a barrage of cruise missiles at targets in Ukraine early Friday morning after a nearly 80-day pause, Ukrainian officials said.

The air raid in Kyiv lasted almost two hours but all missiles heading towards the Ukrainian capital were destroyed by air defenses, according to Serhii Popko, head of the Kyiv city military administration.

Some homes were damaged in Kyiv as a result of falling debris from “downed enemy targets,” the Ukrainian Interior Ministry said.

But a missile that hit the city of Pavlohrad in Ukraine’s central Dnipropetrovsk region killed one and injured four others, Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said.

In the eastern Kharkiv region, one person was killed and several others injured in overnight strikes, Klymenko said. A five-story residential building was damaged in Kupiansk district, while at least seven apartment buildings and more than 20 cars were damaged in the city of Kharkiv.

Russia struck Kharkiv with six S-300 missiles, the head of Kharkiv region’s military administration Oleh Syniehubov wrote on Telegram. The Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s office said it had launched an investigation into the strike.

The barrage of 19 missiles across Ukraine was the first such attack in more than two months, as Western intelligence assessments warned Russia is likely to expand its bombardment of civilian infrastructure during the winter.

Of the 19 missiles fired, 14 were destroyed in the Kyiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions, according to Yurii Ihnat, spokesman for the Ukrainian Air Force Command.

“After a long pause of 79 days, the enemy resumed attacks with cruise missiles launched by Tu-95MS strategic aircraft. Preliminarily, approximately 10 bomber missile carriers fired cruise missiles of the Kh-101/555/55 type from the Engels city area, Saratov region,” Popko wrote on Telegram Friday.

The latest major cruise missile attack on Ukraine was on September 21, with 43 missiles launched and 36 intercepted, according to data from the Air Force Command’s official Telegram account.

On November 25, Russia launched what Ukrainian officials said was the biggest drone attack since the start of the full-scale invasion, targeting Ukraine with 75 Iranian-made Shahed drones.

And on Wednesday, a further 48 Shaheds were launched, according to the Air Force Command data.

The deputy chief of Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence Vadym Skibitsky said in November that Russia would likely use a combination of missiles and drones to attack Ukrainian infrastructure this winter.

Last year, with limited Ukrainian air defenses in operation, Russia was able to target Ukraine’s energy grid in an attempt to break Ukrainian resilience with punishing blackouts.

This winter, defense and energy officials say Ukraine is better prepared. But Skibitsky warned Russia’s strikes “will definitely not be such primitive attacks as last year.”

In Nigeria’s northern state of Kano, doctors and health workers are grappling with one of the worst diphtheria outbreaks in recent times.

Cases have been reported in the country since May of last year, but in the past few months, the outbreak has spread at an alarming rate, health officials say. Local, federal, and international bodies have struggled to contain the bacterial disease, with 17,000 suspected cases in Nigeria so far.

Worryingly, the outbreak has now spread to other West African countries such as Niger and Guinea and Medecins San Frontieres (MSF) says these nations are currently facing some of the most severe outbreaks of this vaccine-preventable disease ever documented on the continent.

At its peak, MSF in Kano reported up to 700 cases a week. This rate dropped in September, but cases are slowly starting to rise again, currently at 500 weekly.

A bacterial disease

Diphtheria is a bacterial disease that creates a toxin that kills tissues and attacks cells in the respiratory system, making it hard for patients to breathe and swallow. If the toxin enters the bloodstream, it can damage the nervous system, and cause heart and kidney damage or paralysis, even after recovery, according to an MSF explainer on the disease.

Murjanatu Muhammad, a 30-year-old from Kano, has seen all of her children, 10-year-old Mohammed, eight-year-old Fatima, and twins Jamila and Husseina, aged five, admitted to hospital with diphtheria.

For another mother, Firdausa Salisu, her son Auwal Nura has been sick since he was born four years ago and was receiving treatment from a traditional healer who advised against vaccines, his mother said.

“The traditional medicine man that was treating him advised that he should not be vaccinated at the time. By the time he recovered and I wanted him to be vaccinated, I was told he was past the age of receiving the vaccines.”

High mortality in children

Thousands of children like Auwal have experienced the alarming range of symptoms caused by diphtheria, says Dr. Hashim Juma.

Dr. Juma, with over 20 years of experience in the field, is currently based in Kano working as the emergency medical coordinator for MSF.

“This is very serious. Patients come in vomiting blood, paralysis in the legs… there is high mortality, particularly with children.”

Dr. Hashim Juma, Medecins Sans Frontieres.

“There are many diseases with complications, but this is very serious. Patients come in vomiting blood, paralysis in the legs… there is high mortality, particularly with children.”

Medical workers have been struggling to treat patients effectively, partly due to a lack of diphtheria anti-toxins (DAT).

So far, MSF says it has only been able to provide 5,000 DAT doses to patients.

DAT doses and antibiotics are particularly hard to come by due to the lack of production, as well as the cost and time needed to manufacture.

Dr. Dagemlidet says that only three companies produce these doses, two of whom are approved by the World Health Organization (WHO).

He added that manufacturers need four weeks to make one batch of 1,500 DAT doses, and treating patients could cost up to 350 Euros ($370) from DAT alone. He believes this needs to change as soon as possible.

“In the short term, we need to improve production capacity of anti-toxins. Long term, we need to invest in research and development,” Dr. Dagemlidet says.

“It’s a global health crisis… in our globalized world, an outbreak can happen here, or in an urban area somewhere else. Global health security is so important.”

Vaccine mistrust

Vaccination has also played a crucial role in this ongoing outbreak. Whilst some vaccine uptake has helped prevent infections, there are a number of barriers from increasing uptake.

As of November, only 30% of patients in Kano had full vaccine protection, according to MSF. This rate is at its lowest in the northwestern state of Sokoto at just 6%. In response, WHO and UNICEF have started a vaccination campaign across 14 states in Nigeria.

Dr. Juma explains that in Kano there is mistrust and lack of awareness surrounding vaccines. He says: “There is a vaccine hesitancy here. People have had a bad experience with the side effects before. During our first intervention, we could see people were not highly welcoming to the vaccine team.”

The lack of vaccination coverage also applies to the rest of West Africa, with 65% of diphtheria patients having never received a single vaccine dose.

In late November, WHO published an updated explainer on diphtheria, emphasizing the importance of high vaccine uptake to tackle the outbreak. The organization recommends six vaccine doses to babies at six weeks old to provide long-term protection.

GAVI, a vaccine alliance programme, also announced on December 4 that eligible countries can now apply to implement diphtheria vaccines into their health programs.

As the outbreak has escalated since July, Dr. Juma has seen vaccine uptake improve. In order to contain this surge of diphtheria, and help prevent future outbreaks too, this trend must continue.

With the disease now present in neighboring Niger, there is concern that once again the population is not adequately equipped. Dr. Juma says that there is little to no vaccination coverage there, a great concern considering the high level of movement between Kano and Niger.

In order to address the outbreak, the message is clear. Vaccination must improve. Dr. Juma says: “We stress the need to make the routine vaccination system stronger and stronger… then you can control the outbreak.”

Lessons have also been learned regarding doses of antitoxins and antibiotics, explains Dr. Dagemlidet. He says: “We need to have at least a minimum quantity of anti-toxins in each country, so when the first cases happen, adequate resources are available to help local areas.

“The best way of responding to emergencies is anticipation and prevention.”

The first week of the COP28 climate talks has come to an end not with the euphoria of the first days of breakthrough announcements, but with growing anxiety about whether the world will do anything about the main cause of the climate crisis: fossil fuels.

The trade-show-like pavilions — where countries have for days been touting everything from zero-carbon shipping to nuclear fusion energy — are slowly starting to empty. One European nation’s pavilion had just three staff members left late Wednesday morning, all rushing out to catch a flight home. Another representing climate vulnerable states had its lights switched off, no one at all inside.

The summit’s glamorous early days are over. What’s left now is the tedious, hard work between countries’ negotiators who are sorting the thorny issue of what to do about fossil fuels — pursuing what could potentially be the most ambitious COP outcome in years.

But journalists, delegates and civil society groups are still talking about the summit’s president, whose recent remarks cast a shadow over the negotiations.

Comments from Sultan Al Jaber that came to light on Sunday sent shockwaves through Expo City in Dubai: In a late-November panel discussion, he said there is “no science” behind the demand to phase out fossil fuel to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius – the goal of the Paris climate agreement. Al Jaber, who is also an oil executive, fiercely defended his commitment to climate science the next day, and said phasing out fossil fuels is “inevitable” and “essential.”

Days later, UN climate chief Simon Steill was asked by a reporter about Al Jaber during a news conference Wednesday, but refused to be drawn on the controversy, saying his focus was now on the summit’s critical negotiations.

US climate envoy John Kerry fended off similar inquiries. Kerry has publicly supported Al Jaber’s COP presidency several times, but chose not to wade into it at a press conference Wednesday. He had earlier told POLITICO that Al Jaber’s remarks perhaps “came out the wrong way” and could use a “clarification.”

Getting climate action on the same page as the science has never been more urgent; 2023 will officially be the hottest year on record, and even scientists are expressing alarm that the climate impacts they’re seeing are outpacing their predictions. The planet’s average temperature this year is on track to be around 1.4 degrees above pre-industrial levels — just a hair below the Paris Agreement’s threshold.

The impacts of the climate crisis weigh heavily on attendees at the talks — but there are now concerns among civil society groups and some delegates that Al Jaber’s remarks may bleed into the negotiations themselves.

“The whole COP has been a conflict of interest,” said Isabel Rutkowski from Germany, part of the European Youth Forum. “It’s frustrating because the science is pretty clear, and you have a president for COP who is not following science. It’s crazy.”

A ‘frustrating’ distraction

Whether Al Jaber’s comments will have an impact on final language around fossil fuels is yet to be seen, but countries are deeply divided over the issue.

The latest draft of the summit’s key agreement included several options: One called for a phase-out of fossil fuels –— the language widely supported by most climate scientists. Another called for a phase-down of fossil fuels, which is weaker language and leaves the door open for a future with more planet-warming pollution. Another option was to omit language on fossil fuels altogether.

“It’s frustrating,” said Murguía, who wanted to see more progress and “action” and fewer distractions.

“Mexico is a highly vulnerable country and we’re facing that as our own fight,” he said, pointing to Hurricane Otis, which killed dozens of people and tore through coastal cities. “We’re trying to rebuild Acapulco now.”

Reaching consensus on fossil fuels was always going to be a tough fight. The UN’s Stiell said Wednesday that there was a “spectrum of positions” on the issue among the nations at the summit.

A delegate from the Philippines, which represents the G77 nations — a coalition of developing countries — described the US as taking a “broadsword” to the agreement, with nearly 200 edits or comments, the sources said.

Some of India’s delegates expressed reservations on phasing out fossil fuels, according to the sources, but the country has previously supported a phase-down.

Al Jaber’s influence over talks may become clearer next week, when ministers and senior officials join other delegates and discuss this language openly in public sessions, said Tom Evans, a policy advisor in climate diplomacy and geopolitics for the E3G climate consultancy.

And the controversy could, ironically, bring positive outcomes, he said.

“The fact that we have had so much scrutiny on the fossil fuel industry and on the comments on the fossil fuel transition is actually, maybe helpful in putting them under the spotlight and saying, ‘If things do go south, we’ll be pointing at the UAE,’” Evans said.

He cautioned that there were several other countries that were blocking progress on including a fossil fuel phase-out, and that failure in that regard wouldn’t solely be the UAE’s doing.

“But, we do see that pressure now playing into the discussions, constructively,” he said.

UK immigration minister Robert Jenrick resigned over new government legislation on the Rwanda asylum transfer scheme published Wednesday, claiming that the proposed law “does not go far enough.”

The government’s ill-fated plan to send some asylum seekers awaiting decisions on their claims to the African nation Rwanda has been the subject of extensive legal challenge since it was announced in April 2022.

Three successive Home Secretaries have attempted to take the policy over the line with efforts continuing despite the UK Supreme Court declaring the scheme unlawful in judgement handed down in November.

In the latest blow to the scheme, Jenrick who works within the Home Office, said he would not be able to accompany this latest draft bill through the legislative process as he does not believe it goes “far enough” to ensure the policy’s success.

“The stakes for the country are too high for us not to pursue the stronger protections required to end the merry-go-round of legal challenges which risk paralysing the scheme and negating its intended deterrent,” Jenrick said in his resignation letter.

Jenrick had previously promised publicly to do “whatever is required” to clamp down on illegal migration to the UK, even if that meant withdrawing from the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR).

A group of hardline lawmakers within Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Party, including previous Home Secretary Suella Braverman, have all been lobbying for the UK to leave the human rights treaty, citing it as a barrier blocking the Rwanda policy.

The legislation unveiled by the government on Wednesday did not take the UK out of the treaty, but did have a vital caveat attached to it. On the first page of the bill, UK Home Secretary James Cleverley said he could not guarantee that the legislation was “compatible with the Convention rights.”

The bill also disapplies certain sections of the UK Human Rights Act, a staple piece of legislation which incorporated the rights set out in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) into domestic UK law. Another clause stipulates that the bill is sovereign and its validity is unaffected by key international law instruments including the ECHR and the Refugee Convention.

The legislation was roundly criticized by Britain’s opposition Labour Party who pointed out this is the third draft legislation that the government has presented to parliament. Shadow Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper described the government as being in “total chaos,” saying it should be focusing instead on “going after” criminal gangs smuggling people to the UK.

Legal experts such as Mark Elliot, Professor of Public Law at the University of Cambridge, have also criticized the bill. In a blog post, Elliot described the bill as “hypocritical,” saying it “presupposes” Rwanda heeding its obligations under international law to treat asylum seekers humanely whilst allowing the UK to “breach its own obligations” under international law.

The government was also handed down a warning on Wednesday from the Rwandan government, who threatened to pull out of the arrangement if the UK does not adhere to international law, according to the British national news agency, PA Media.

Rwandan Foreign Minister Vincent Biruta emphasized in a statement that “without lawful behavior by the UK, Rwanda would not be able to continue with the Migration and Economic Development Partnership.”

The next stage in the bill’s journey will see UK lawmakers debate its merits in parliament, in what is referred to as the “second reading.”

The Israeli prime minister said Wednesday that Israeli forces had surrounded the house of Yahya Sinwar, potentially closing in on the top Hamas official in Gaza – and the man most wanted by Israeli authorities.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Sinwar was not in the house and was believed to be hiding underground in Gaza, but a senior adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday that it was “only a matter of time before we get him.”

Israel has publicly accused Sinwar of being the “mastermind” behind Hamas’ terror attack against Israel on October 7 – though experts say he is likely one of several – making him one of the key targets of its war in Gaza.

A longtime figure in the Islamist Palestinian group, Sinwar was responsible for building up Hamas’ military wing before forging important new ties with regional Arab powers as the group’s civilian and political leader.

He was elected to Hamas’ main decision-making body, the Politburo, in 2017 as the political leader of Hamas in Gaza branch. However, he has since become the Politburo’s de facto leader, according to research by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR).

He has been designated a global terrorist by the US Department of State since 2015, and has been recently sanctioned by the United Kingdom and France.

Harel Chorev, senior researcher at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University, said that while Sinwar is a key player within Hamas, he shouldn’t be seen as its sole leader.

“He is perceived as the most senior one because he has a very high public profile, but Hamas doesn’t work this way,” he said. “Hamas is a decentralized organization with several separate power centers and he is one of them.”

Chorev said that while Sinwar is a prominent figure, he is one of a “triumvirate” of Hamas officials responsible for the October 7 attack, along with Mohammed al-Masri, popularly known as Mohammed Deif, the commander of the Al-Qassam Brigades, the military arm of Hamas, and Deif’s deputy, Marwan Issa.

Sinwar, with his silver head of hair and dark eyes set deep under prominent eyebrows, is by far the best known and most recognizable of the three, but it was Deif who announced the October 7 attacks.

But while Sinwar has spent the past few years giving speeches and being photographed, Deif is an extremely secretive, shadowy figure who hasn’t been seen in public in decades.

‘Dead man walking’

Sinwar was born in 1962 in a refugee camp in Khan Younis, southern Gaza. His family was displaced from Al-Majdal, a Palestinian village in modern day Askhelon, during the Arab-Israeli war.

He joined Hamas in the late 1980s and became one of the founders of its feared internal intelligence apparatus, known as the Majd.

He was convicted in 1988 of playing a role in the murder of two Israeli soldiers and four Palestinians suspected of collaboration with Israel, and spent more than two decades in Israeli prison.

Sinwar later said he had spent those years studying his enemy, including learning to speak Hebrew.

He was released in 2011 as part of the deal that saw more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners exchanged for Gilad Shalit, an IDF soldier who had been captured and taken to Gaza, where he was held for more than five years.

At that time, Sinwar called the exchange “one of the big strategic monuments in the history of our cause.”

Chorev said his release was helped by the fact that his brother was one of Shalit’s kidnappers and insisted on him being included in the deal.

Back in Gaza, Sinwar has risen through the ranks and quickly became a key player within Hamas. Chorev said he became known for his brutality and the violence he inflicts on anyone he suspects of betrayal or collaboration.

“It is well known that while in prison, he tortured people, mostly members of Hamas, using (a) hot plate to cause them burns… his role in the Majd really tells you a lot about his character, his cruelty. But at the same time, Israelis who met him said that he can also be very practical, openly discussing options,” Chorev said.

As the political leader of Hamas, Sinwar focused on the group’s foreign relationships. According to the ECFR, he was responsible for restoring Hamas’ relationship with Egyptian leaders who were wary of the group’s support for political Islam, and for pulling in continued military funding from Iran.

Sinwar was considered a vital decisionmaker and likely the main point of contact within Gaza during the intense negotiations over the return of the more than 240 hostages taken into the enclave by Hamas in the October 7 attacks. The talks involved senior figures from Israel, Hamas, the United States, Qatar and Egypt.

“At the end of the day there are two people” atop the negotiations, said Gershon Baskin, a well-known Israeli peace activist involved in the 2011 release of Shalit, the Israeli soldier. “One is Yahya Sinwar on the Hamas side, and the other is Benjamin Netanyahu on the Israeli side.”

More than 100 Israeli and foreign hostages were released by Hamas and 240 Palestinian prisoners and detainees released by Israel as part of a truce won in those talks, before the temporary ceasefire collapsed on December 1, with Israel and Hamas blaming each other for the failure.

Sinwar has been called many things over the past two months: Israeli military spokesman Lt. Col. Richard Hecht called Sinwar the “face of evil” and declared him a “dead man walking.” Israeli media compared him to Osama bin Laden, while a profile published by the IDF nicknamed him “the Butcher from Khan Younis.”

But Chorev said that despite his position in the spotlight, Sinwar is just one of many commanders Israel needs to remove before it can say it has “destroyed Hamas.”

“To put it simply, if Israel will kill Sinwar, it doesn’t mean necessarily that it will topple down Hamas. However, Hamas can still be toppled down even if Sinwar stays alive … because it’s not (a hierarchical orgnization). In order for Israel to destroy Hamas, it needs to destroy a critical mass of power centers, not just him,” he said.

A box-shaped cloud of opaque dust that lies at the center of our galaxy has long perplexed scientists, and observations that reveal a new detail about its composition are deepening the mystery — possibly upending what’s known about how stars form.

The cloud, nicknamed “the Brick” for its visual impenetrability and rectangular appearance, was previously estimated to hold more than 100,000 times the mass of the sun. And such a dense blob should be churning out massive new stars, based on researchers’ current understanding of star formation.

But it’s not.

The Brick is largely dormant. And the latest observations, made using the James Webb Space Telescope, did not reveal any hidden, young stars.

The new Webb data instead unveiled that the Brick is not just made up of gas. It’s also littered with frozen carbon monoxide — much more than previously expected — according to a study published Monday in The Astrophysical Journal. And there’s more ice forming deeper into the Brick.

The findings could have drastic implications for how scientists analyze this region going forward. More carbon monoxide ice inside the Brick could dramatically change how researchers study and measure dark clouds in the center of the Milky Way.

“We are (now) closer to understanding what exactly is happening in the Brick and where the mass is,” said University of Florida astronomer Adam Ginsburg, lead author of the study. “But we opened more questions than we closed with this.”

Among those questions: Why and where is this carbon monoxide freezing into ice?

Other mysteries that loom for this region remain unanswered as well: Why can’t we see any new stars forming? Is the Brick not as dense as scientists once believed? And what are the strange ridge- and filament-like features that show up within the Brick?

“We have more to investigate before we can really be sure what’s going on,” Ginsburg said. “I would say we’re in the hypothesis-forming phase, not the drawing conclusions phase.”

What Webb revealed

Ginsburg and his fellow researchers, which included University of Florida graduate students, first got their hands on this new Webb data in September 2022.

It was a crucial moment. As the most powerful space telescope ever constructed, Webb could offer never-before-seen insights into the Brick. But right off the bat, Ginsburg and his team found the data needed a lot of work. The Webb telescope orients itself using a map, determining which direction it’s pointing by referencing where it is in relation to known stars.

The trouble was, “there’s so many stars at the galactic center that it gets confused,” Ginsburg said. So, researchers had to spend months cleaning up the data, orienting it to line up correctly with the existing maps of the sky.

Then, as they peered at the Brick, they found that the images from Webb were turning out the wrong color.

“All the stars were coming out a bit too blue,” Ginsburg said, prompting researchers to wonder if something was wrong with the data.

But it turned out, he said, the problem was with their assumptions. The scientists hadn’t expected there to be so much carbon monoxide ice — and that was the cause of the color change, according to the study.

Learning of the existence of the ice could have broad ripple effects for all kinds of research into the center of the Milky Way, said Dr. Natalie Butterfield, an assistant scientist at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, who was not involved in the study.

Butterfield said her own research — which includes studying supernovae and the radiation between star systems — could be forever altered by understanding the existence of this carbon monoxide ice. It could change how scientists estimate the mass of all the clouds in the galactic center.

Why carbon monoxide matters

There are several perplexing things about all this carbon monoxide ice. For instance, the area is fairly warm — around 60 Kelvin (minus 351.67 degrees Fahrenheit) — while carbon monoxide typically freezes at 20 Kelvin.

It could be that the dust inside the Brick is much colder than the gas, causing the carbon monoxide around the dust particles to turn solid. Or, Ginsburg said, it could be that water is freezing, trapping carbon monoxide inside.

The answer matters.

All the ice in a region such as the Brick can give scientists new insight into our solar system — even our home planet.

The ice and water that exist on Earth, for example, likely arrived here via comets. So, where ice exists in the universe and how it forms can help researchers understand where these comets come from and how they collected the materials they deposited.

Where are the stars?

And then there is the big mystery of why there is a lack of star formation within the Brick.

Scientists already know that new stars are brewed from dust clouds and hydrogen molecules. But scientists cannot directly observe hydrogen molecules within the Brick — or anywhere else in the universe — because they’re invisible to telescopes.

However, scientists also know that for every hydrogen molecule, there’s likely a certain amount of carbon monoxide. And carbon monoxide is visible — so scientists can measure it as a proxy for identifying how many hydrogen molecules are in a given area.

Researchers have been using this method for measuring hydrogen molecules for 50 years, Ginsburg said.

But they’ve always assumed the carbon monoxide was gas — not solid ice, as the Webb data revealed. This finding opens a whole new can of worms, Ginsburg said.

Ginsburg noted that it’s crucial for researchers to understand what state of matter the carbon monoxide is in — gas or solid — to arrive at the right answers.

Every new piece of knowledge about the Brick and its makeup better informs why this opaque cloud isn’t producing stars, even though — by most accounts — it should be one of the most active star nurseries in the galaxy.

“It’s a really natural place for new stars,” Ginsburg said. “But we haven’t found very many — only a very, very tiny handful.”

There are some possible answers that Ginsburg and other researchers are anxious to explore: Perhaps the Brick is more spread out — less compact — than scientists once thought. Or maybe it’s just too young, and its star-forming days are ahead.

Those are questions, Ginsburg and Butterfield said, that Webb can continue to help researchers answer.

“It’s just an impressive, impressive telescope,” Butterfield said. “I think this is just the first of many unique results that will be coming out of the JWST for the galactic center.”

Investigations by two news organizations and two human rights groups made public on Thursday say that it was Israeli tank shells that in October killed Reuters videographer Issam Abdallah and injured six other journalists in southern Lebanon.

The reports by Reuters, AFP, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch drew on forensic analysis, witness testimony and interviews with government officials, lawyers and medical professionals.

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.”

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.”

AFP and HRW claim in their reports that the strike was a “deliberate,” targeted attack by Israel on the journalists. In a statement to Reuters, Hecht said, “We don’t target journalists.” He did not provide further comment, the news agency reported.

Abdallah, 37, was killed and six other reporters were wounded while filming the Israeli border from southern Lebanon. AFP photographer Christina Assi had her leg amputated and remains in the hospital, according to AFP.

After analysis of weapon fragments found at the scene, the reports say the journalists were killed and wounded by a 120 mm tank round of Israeli origin “that is not used by any other groups in the region,” AFP adds, fired from a little over one kilometer from the teams’ position.

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.

Images from Gaza circulating on social media Thursday showed a mass detention by the Israeli military of men who were made to strip to their underwear, kneel on the street, wear blindfolds, and pack into the cargo bed of a military vehicle.

The exact circumstances and dates of the detentions are unclear, but some of the detainees’ identities were confirmed by colleagues or family members.

The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor posted an image of one detainment and said in a statement on its website Thursday that “the Israeli army detained and severely abused dozens of Palestinian civilians.”

“Euro-Med Monitor received reports that Israeli forces launched random and arbitrary arrest campaigns against displaced people, including doctors, academics, journalists, and elderly men,” it said.

The Israeli media, without indicating a source, has portrayed the images as the surrender of Hamas members. A journalist asked IDF spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari about the images during a news conference on Thursday, saying, “We’ve seen images of many captives, Hamas terrorists, that the IDF arrested during the ground maneuvering.”

Hagari said that, in fighting Hamas, “those left in the area gradually come out.”

“We investigate and check who has ties to Hamas, and who does not,” he said. “We arrest them all and question them. We will continue dismantling each one of those strongholds until we are done.”

In a statement Thursday, Al-Araby Al-Jadeed said that one of its correspondents and several members of his family were among those detained as part of the incident portrayed in the images.

“Today, Thursday, the Israeli occupation army arrested the journalist and the director of ‘The New Arab’ office in Gaza, our colleague Diaa Al-Kahlot, from Market Street in Beit Lahia, along with a group of his brothers, relatives, and other civilians,” Al-Araby Al-Jadeed wrote.

“The occupation deliberately forced Gazans to take off their clothes, searched them, and humiliated them when they were arrested before taking them to an unknown destination, according to what the people there told us. Pictures and video clips spread showing soldiers arresting dozens of Gazans using criminal and humiliating method.”

Hussam Kanafani, the Al-Araby Al-Jadeed editor-in-chief, said in the statement that Al-Kahlot and his family were still missing.

“We will make every effort possible, in cooperation with international institutions and organizations concerned with the rights and freedom of journalists in the world, to determine the whereabouts of our colleague Diaa and release him as soon as possible,” Kanafani said.

Al-Madhoun said he was in contact with his sister, who is in Gaza.

He said that he recognized his cousin Aboud in one of the photographs and saw his brother Mahmood in a video. He said that Mahmoud is a shopkeeper and Aboud “is not involved in any activities; he helps his father in construction.”

This is a developing story and will be updated.