A massive underwater mountain, otherwise known as a seamount, has been discovered on the floor of the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Guatemala.

The seamount is most likely a remnant of an extinct volcano, as most seamounts are, according to NOAA Ocean Exploration, a federal program that is part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. At 1,600 meters (5,249 feet) tall, it’s nearly twice the height of Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world, according to a news release from Schmidt Ocean Institute, a nonprofit organization that advances oceanographic research.

The discovery of the massive structure — which covers 14 square kilometers (5.4 square miles) and sits 2,400 meters (7,874 feet) below sea level — occurred in July during an SOI expedition, which are part of the institute’s efforts to further explore the ocean, using a research vessel known as Falkor (too). The ship is designed to map the seafloor by using a multibeam echosounder, which sends out sound waves to the ocean floor in a fan-shaped pattern, then measures the time it takes for the sound to reach the ocean floor and return.

Tomer Ketter, a hydrographer and marine technician with the Schmidt Ocean Institute, was also on board, a spokesperson for the institute said, and Ketter confirmed that the seamount was not in any database measuring ocean depths, including the General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans.

“A seamount over 1.5 kilometers tall which has, until now, been hidden under the waves really highlights how much we have yet to discover,” said Dr. Jyotika Virmani, executive director of Schmidt Ocean Institute, in the news release. “A complete seafloor map is a fundamental element of understanding our Ocean so it’s exciting to be living in an era where technology allows us to map and see these amazing parts of our planet for the first time.”

The seamount was discovered 84 nautical miles outside the Guatemalan Exclusive Economic Zone. It is estimated that there are more than 100,000 seamounts taller than 1,000 meters (3,280 feet) in the world, but less than one-tenth of a percent have been explored, according to NOAA.

“Seamounts have been explored only relatively recently due to the advent of human occupied submersibles and very capable remotely operated vehicles (ROVs),” said Les Watling, an emeritus biology professor with the University of Hawaii at Manoa, via email. Watling was not involved with the discovery but was part of a Schmidt Ocean Institute exploration in 2019.

Finding a seamount

“The fact that it is not on the chart is a bit amazing,” Watling said, noting that most of the ocean floor is unexplored. (NOAA estimates less than 25% of the ocean floor has been mapped as of 2023.)

Ocean researchers know where most seamounts — even ones that haven’t been mapped and explored — are in the world due to satellite radar altimeters, which are used to detect slight differences in the height of the sea by measuring the time it takes a radar pulse sent from a satellite to reach the ocean’s surface and return, Watling said. Above a seamount’s location, the surface of the ocean will bulge slightly, allowing for detection of the large underwater mountains.

About 11 kilometers (6.8 miles) away from where the seamount was mapped, satellite altimetry had shown a modeled seamount, which was most likely this recently mapped seamount, Ketter said, since the pinpoint location of the model may be off due to other land masses in the area. The seamount was not mapped or known before, only its location was predicted from satellite data, he said.

The recently discovered seamount may be taller than the world’s tallest building, but some have been found to have a height of 4,000 meters (13,123 feet) or more, Watling said. The tallest mountain in the world, Mauna Kea in Hawaii — which measures more than 10,210 meters (33,500 feet) from base to peak — started out as a seamount, according to NOAA.

Seamounts act as biodiversity hot spots

Due to a seamount’s geological formation, the mountains tend to serve as biodiversity hot spots, providing a hard surface to which corals, sponges and other marine invertebrates can cling.

“Seamounts create distinct ecosystems because the normally sluggish currents above the deep seafloor accelerate as much as 10-fold as they flow around these obstructions,” said Tony Koslow, an emeritus research oceanographer with Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, in an email.

The accelerated currents create the hard rock substrate to which invertebrates attach themselves while also drawing in other fauna that feed on food particles swept around by the currents, said Koslow, author of “The Silent Deep: The Discovery, Ecology, and Conservation of the Deep Sea.” He was not involved in the discovery.

Researchers estimate that 15% to 35% of endemic ocean species live in a seamount ecosystem, and migratory species also seek out the structures to breed, feed or seek refuge, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts.

“The incredible diversity of life on seamounts has been recognized only relatively recently,” Koslow said. “Perhaps the most significant aspect of this discovery is that it confirms that the seafloor is still poorly mapped.”

Correction: A previous version of the story misstated Tomer Ketter’s work affiliation.

Ukraine’s Security Service is responsible for explosions on two trains traveling along a strategic rail route in eastern Russia this week, a Ukrainian defense source claimed Friday.

With train traffic rerouted around the tunnel, the Ukrainian Security Service on Thursday targeted the second train as it passed over the nearby Devil’s Bridge, according to the source.

Both explosions were the result of planted “explosive devices,” the source claimed.

“The Russians have fallen into the SBU’s trap twice,” the source said, using an acronym for the Ukrainian Security Service. The twin bombings were a “special operation to disable this important railroad,” the source added.

“The first freight train exploded directly in the Severomuyskiy tunnel. To maintain the traffic, the Russians began using a detour route through the Devil’s Bridge. This is exactly what the SBU was counting on: as the train was passing over this high 35-meter bridge, the implanted explosive devices detonated,” the source said.

Russia referred to the Wednesday incident as a “cargo train fire.” It did not call it an attack or blame Ukraine. It has not commented on the second incident.

Russian Telegram channels reported news of two train fires in the area. Videos circulated by some Russian telegram channels show wagons on fire along a rail track, although it is not immediately clear which incident the videos are from.

The Ukrainian source said the Russians use the railroad for “military logistics” and characterized the route as “the only major railroad connection between Russia and China.” The targeted trains were carrying fuel, the source said.

After the first explosion, the rail provider said it was working to determine the extent of the damage. There were no casualties in that incident, according to the East Siberian Transport Prosecutor’s Office.

In a statement after the first explosion, the prosecutor’s office said that a prosecutor was in the area to coordinate the actions of law enforcement and supervisory authorities.

Russian authorities “will take response measures based on the results of the inspection, in case there are grounds to do so,” the statement said.

Russian authorities had also confirmed after the first incident that train traffic had been “organized on a detour route with a slight increase in travel time.”

As a medical social worker at Israel’s Kaplan Hospital, Prof. Shir Daphna-Tekoah is no stranger to trauma.

But when she was drafted in to work on October 7, the day Hamas attacked Israeli farms, villages and a music festival, the scale of the disaster quickly became apparent.

As head of the hospital’s rape crisis center, she was called in as reports surfaced of sexual assaults. But it was soon all hands on deck as the emergency room filled up with the injured.

“I saw the horror on their faces,” Daphna-Tekoah said. “I saw in their eyes that they’d seen something unbelievable.”

Worse followed. “Then came the dead bodies of youngsters in their party clothes,” she said. “They were no more than 23, 24, my own children’s age.”

It was Daphna-Tekoah’s responsibility to support the families saying goodbye to their murdered loved ones. Of one family, she said: “I asked if they would like to thank their child or ask for forgiveness for anything.

“The mother said: ‘I’m so sorry I let you go to the party and that I didn’t protect you.’”

Then, Daphna-Tekoah posed another question. “I asked ‘Would you like me to find out about sperm preservation?’”

“I can’t even explain what I saw,” said Daphna-Tekoah, who knew little about the process other than the need to act fast.

“Before, there was only agony and darkness in the mother’s eyes and suddenly there was a flicker of light and hope.”

Daphna-Tekoah immediately approached hospital management, and just a few hours later they had the legal sign-off needed. By the following morning, the sperm of several victims from the Nova festival had been retrieved.

Now, more than seven weeks later, Israeli hospitals have been inundated with requests to cryogenically freeze the sperm of those killed in the conflict, hospital officials say.

Posthumous sperm retrieval (PSR) was previously open to partners – provided other relatives did not object – but parents of the deceased had to apply for legal permission.

But the Ministry of Health has recently slashed the red tape. In a statement on its website, it says hospitals have been instructed, during the war, to approve requests for PSR “from the deceased’s parents, without referring them to a family court.”

Sperm lives on briefly after death, which is why it’s possible for doctors – usually a fertility or urology specialist – to retrieve it from testicular tissue. Any live sperm cells found are transferred and frozen in liquid nitrogen.

Dr. Noga Fuchs Weizman, medical director of the sperm bank and male infertility unit at Tel Aviv’s Ichilov Hospital, said there have been many requests from bereaved families.

According to Dr. Shimi Barda, laboratory director of the unit, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) offer families the option when informing them of their loss. “They proactively suggest it,” he said.

Soon after the October 7 attacks, the case of Israeli singer Shaylee Atary, whose husband was killed trying to protect their baby in Kibbutz Kfar Aza, made headlines.

According to Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Atary “did everything in her power to retrieve his sperm,” in the hope of expanding their family in the future. She was unsuccessful, but her experience raised awareness.

The retrieval initiative is overseen by the Ministry of Health, which then splits cases between four hospitals.

Detecting live sperm is most likely in the first 24 hours after death, so timing is crucial, said Barda.

“We’ve limited the timeframe to 72 hours; however, the literature and our own experience suggests 44 to 45 hours is the maximum.”

The manner of death is also important.

“It depends on the state of the body, how it was kept and how severe the injuries were,” said Barda.

The hospital speaks directly to families, said Fuchs Weizman. “We tell them what we managed to freeze… and briefly about the process later, if they choose to use it.”

Barda added: “It’s very emotional, very hard, but we give them some hope.”

‘It’s a long process’

Irit Oren Gunders is the founder of Or Lamishpachot (Light to the Families), a non-profit organization supporting families of fallen soldiers. She has long campaigned for parents to have access to PSR.

Irit Rosenblum, a pioneering lawyer and founder of New Family, which advocates for family rights, is also working with bereaved parents.

Rosenblum made legal history in 2007 with the case of a woman whose son was killed in Gaza. This client became the first parent in Israel and one of the first in the world to win the right to have her son’s sperm extracted, she said. But it took over a decade for her to become a grandmother.

Rosenblum says she has been instrumental in the birth of more than 100 children. She has long campaigned for biological wills, which provide unequivocal guidance after death. Since the Hamas attacks, she has made it quick and easy to complete a biological will online.

“I’m not a religious person but Israeli society is very family oriented and continuity is a must,” she said.

“The mourner has lost the will to live – the only way to restore meaning to their lives is through the continuity of the person they lost. Not allowing it, even though we have the technology, is not moral.”

Yulia and Vlad Poznianski, whose son Baruch died of cancer aged 25, are among those helped by Rosenblum.

Fifteen years on, Yulia still finds it difficult to talk about Baruch’s death. Instead, she focuses on the future and her granddaughter, Shira, who’s just turned 8.

“We made new life,” said Yulia, of their collaboration with Liat Malka, a single woman who had Shira using their son’s sperm.

“We’re very grateful to her but she’s also grateful to us,” said Yulia of Malka, explaining that they are very active grandparents.

Yulia describes Shira as a “brilliant” child whose resemblance to her father is “unbelievable.”

“She’s a big girl and she understands. She’s not the first and won’t be the last child whose father isn’t alive – especially now,” said Yulia.

Soldiers sent into conflict must be told about their options, said Yulia. “They have to know that they can leave their parents or wife their biological will.”

Israel ‘pushing the envelope’

“The combination of high-tech medicine and a strong cultural, religious and existentialist bent for reproduction results in the highest number of IVF clinics per capita and the highest number of IVF cycles for women in the world.”

He said traditional ethical perspectives have been upended by the loss of life – especially among the young – since October 7.

“This is a new twist and Israel is pushing the envelope here,” he said. “We have the science and know-how on the one hand and on the second hand we have the impetus, which is religion, culture and history.”

Nevertheless, ethical questions must be considered, he said.

“When you face such a horrendous loss you do anything that is some sort of panacea for your endless grief and pain – but this is not the way we make policy.”

He believes bereaved parents should be allowed to access PSR, “but then you halt.”

With “zero urgency,” he said, “we have time to sit and debate and think about the implications of planned orphanhood, motivated by the request of the deceased’s parents.”

He added: “Planned orphanhood in the sense that this child was born out of a tragedy as a living memorial of the deceased soldier.”

But for Daphna-Tekoah, the answer is clear in the wake of the Hamas attack.

“If, as a country, we encourage people to donate organs after death, why aren’t we giving people the right to donate sperm? We’re not living in the Middle Ages and the technology is here. It’s their human right,” she said.

“It was a catastrophe and we owe it to them.”

This story has been updated.

A blind golden mole that glides through sand has been rediscovered in South Africa, 87 years after wildlife experts feared it had gone extinct.

After a two-year search relying on DNA samples and a sniffer dog, a team of conservationists and geneticists from the Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT) and the University of Pretoria have successfully located what’s known as De Winton’s golden mole among sand dunes in the northwest of the country.

The elusive species hadn’t been officially sighted since 1936, and prior to that was only ever found in the small region of Port Nolloth in the northern Cape. About the size of a mouse or hamster and with a shimmering coat that mimics the sand, they are difficult to spot at the best of times. On top of this, they live in largely inaccessible burrows, rarely leave tunnels behind them, and have acutely sensitive hearing that detects movements from above ground.

To detect the species, scientists instead relied on samples of environmental DNA (eDNA) – the DNA that animals shed as they move through the environment, such as skin cells, hair or feces.

“Extracting DNA from soil is not without its challenges, but we have been honing our skills and refining our techniques – even before this project – and we were fairly confident that if De Winton’s golden mole was in the environment, we would be able to detect it by finding and sequencing its DNA,” said Samantha Mynhardt, conservation geneticist with the Endangered Wildlife Trust and Stellenbosch University, in a press release.

During an expedition in June 2021, the team surveyed up to 18 kilometers (11 miles) of dune habitat a day, and – using the help of a trained scent-detection dog named Jessie – collected more than 100 soil samples from sites along the northwest coast where golden mole activity was detected. From this, they determined that several species of golden mole were present in the area.

The challenge was pinpointing if De Winton’s golden mole was one of them. Common species, such as Cape golden mole and Grant’s golden mole were easily identifiable, but since there was only one De Winton’s golden mole reference DNA available, the team could not confidently identify it. They had to wait for nearly a year, until a second gene sequence for the species, from a specimen housed in a Cape Town museum, became publicly available.

Bingo, it was a clear match.

The team was ecstatic. “Though many people doubted that De Winton’s golden mole was still out there, I had good faith that the species had not yet gone extinct,” said Cobus Theron, senior conservation manager for EWT and a member of the search team, in the press release.

A paper detailing the team’s findings published this week in the Biodiversity and Conservation journal. It notes that while the sampling demonstrated that the species may be widespread along the west coast, it is in low abundance and could be threatened by habitat loss due to diamond mining in the area. Conservation action is “both critical and urgent” to protect the populations, it adds.

The golden mole project was in partnership with conservation group Re:wild, as part of its Search for Lost Species program, which aims to locate species whose status is unclear. De Winton’s golden mole is the 11th of its “most-wanted lost species” rediscovered since the program launched in 2017.

Christina Biggs, manager for the Search for Lost Species, said in the release that the success of the search speaks to the persistence of the EWT team: “They left no sandhill unturned and now it’s possible to protect the areas where these threatened and rare moles live.”

The detection method could also bring hope for future missions around the world. “Now not only have we solved the riddle, but we have tapped into this eDNA frontier where there is a huge amount of opportunity not only for moles, but for other lost or imperiled species,” said Theron.

Kept in the dark. Forced to sit in silence. Fed only meager rations. These and even more chilling scraps of information are beginning to show how hostages survived in Hamas captivity.

Around 240 people, from infants to octogenarians, were taken hostage during Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7. Dozens have been freed but many more remain missing, presumed to be held by the Palestinian militant organization and other groups in Gaza, as the warring sides resume battle.

The Red Cross and other humanitarian groups have not been allowed to visit the hostages. So relatives and the wider watching world have to wait for testimony from those who have been freed to know what might be happening to their loved ones still held in Gaza: whether they have been seen, if they are alive or dead.

The details below have been compiled from comments by freed hostages to their families, their carers and sometimes to reporters.

Under the terms of the deal between Israel and Hamas, most of those released are women, children and foreign workers. As of Friday, only one adult Israeli man – who also had Russian citizenship – had been released and no members of the Israeli military. Hostages are believed to be spread across locations and in the hands of different groups. It’s already seeming that not all hostages were treated the same way; the story of each new person recovered will add to the understanding.

Kept in the dark amid ‘nonstop bombing’

Adina Moshe was dragged from her safe room at home in Israel, taken to Gaza and forced into tunnels five stories underground, her nephew Eyal Nouri said.

Moshe said his aunt was held in an underground room where the lights were switched on for only two hours a day. The darkness was literal and also figurative, Nouri said. Deprived of any information, their other senses and imaginations became keener.

“They didn’t know anything about what happened above,” Nouri said. “They just heard the nonstop bombing until the day before their release. Suddenly, there was amazing silence and they knew something was going to happen but they didn’t know what.”

The network of tunnels under the built-up enclave of Gaza described by Adina Moshe matched the testimony of Yocheved Lifshitz, an 85-year-old grandmother released early in the conflict, outside the terms of the truce.

“It’s her birthday on the 17th of [November]. She will be 9,” he said. “She won’t even know what day it is. She won’t know it’s her birthday. There will be no birthday cake. No party, no friends. She will just be petrified in a tunnel under Gaza. That is her birthday.”

Hand was taken aback after her release when Emily told him that she, her friend Hila Rotem-Shoshani and Hila’s mom Raaya Rotem, were imprisoned above ground, in a series of houses. That came with dangers of its own. As Israeli forces attacked Gaza, moving deeper and deeper into the Palestinian territory, Rotem and the girls were forced to run from building to building.

“That’s terrifying. Being pulled, dragged, pushed … under gunfire probably,” Hand said. An estimated 40-50% of buildings in northern Gaza have been damaged, independent researchers say, and the United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said on Wednesday up to 1.8 million people in Gaza, or nearly 80% of the population, are thought to be internally displaced.

Hand was right about Emily losing track of time. Released on the 50th day of captivity inside what she called “the box,” the little girl told her father she thought she had been gone for a year.

Forced to endure in silence

“The most shocking, disturbing part of meeting her was she was just whispering, you couldn’t hear her. I had to put my ear on her lips,” Hand said of Emily. “She’d been conditioned not to make any noise.”

Both Emily and Hila dared only to whisper, even once they were back with their families. Three days later, Hand said he could hear Emily from about a meter (three feet) away when she talked, but when she cried she buried herself under bedclothes and was almost silent.

She had learned the Arabic for “keep quiet!” Hand said. Child hostages were only allowed to draw or play cards without making noise.

Omer Lubaton Granot, who founded the Hostages and Missing Family Forums, said a gun was held to Eitan’s head to threaten him if he would cry.

“What we hear from the stories from children – the captivity’s harsh reality is unbelievable,” Granot said. “Sisters of other children told them that Hamas have told the children that their whole family has died, that nobody wants them back, that they don’t have a home to go to. They tried to scare the children.”

Fed survival rations

Captives ate the same food as the guards, according to Lifshitz, who was released with her neighbor on October 24.

Grandmother Ruth Munder told Israel’s Channel 13 conditions got worse as the captivity went on, and as Israel’s vise on Gaza tightened. UN officials have warned of “massive outbreaks of infectious disease and hunger” in the enclave due to Israel’s strict blockade on all imports beyond a small amount of humanitarian aid.

At the beginning, a guard brought chicken, rice, canned goods and cheese for the hostages. “When we got up we had tea and in the evening once again tea and sweet things for the children,” Munder said, “until the economic situation started to be bad and people were hungry.”

Adina Moshe said in her tunnel room, “They were fed only rice, some beans from cans, which they tried to avoid eating so as not to have stomachache,” her nephew reported.

Emily Hand told her father that they always had breakfast and sometimes lunch or an evening meal. She said she was so hungry she learned to like plain bread with olive oil. Since her release she’s wanted to eat “like a horse,” her father said, but they are restricting intake for now while her shrunken stomach recovers.

It’s a similar story for other former captives, whose weight loss and pale skin jolted the relatives welcoming them home.

Thai former captive Uthai Saengnuan said his concern was with his countrymen still in captivity.

Physical and mental wounds

Eitan, the 12-year-old, was beaten when he arrived in Gaza, his aunt also said. “Perhaps I was naïve but I thought he would be well-treated. But no, they are monsters,” she said of his Hamas captors.

Emily Hand said she was not hit and her father said he believed harsh voices were enough to make her do what was wanted.

“She’s a little bit distant now, she’s a little bit cold,” he said. “She talks about things that happened like it’s in third person, like it happened to someone else. She’ll say she saw horrible things, but she says it with a straight face.”

Thomas Hand said Emily suffered insect bites too. “Her head is full of lice, absolutely full of head lice. I’ve never seen so many in my life.”

He said he and his older daughter worked in tandem with combs. “Just one pass and the thing was full, full of little black creatures.”

Elma Avraham, 84, was seriously ill when she returned from Gaza, first needing a ventilator as she fought to survive in hospital.

Dr. Hagai Levine, head of the medical team for the Hostages and Missing Family Forums, said her body told its own harrowing story.

“You can see on her body that she was dragged from place to place, that she was handcuffed,” he said. “She has chemical wounds from not treating her basic needs.”

First steps to recovery

Rehabilitation will take time. Former detainees may experience a range of layered psychological impacts including anxiety, depression, disorientation, grief, post-traumatic stress and survivor’s guilt, experts say.

Many hostages lost their homes in the October 7 attacks; as they return, some are also finding out how many of their friends and relatives were killed.

But Dr. Efrat Bron-Harlev, chief executive officer of the Schneider Children’s Medical Center of Israel, where some of the hostages have been treated after being released, said what the staff had seen so far made them optimistic.

“We heard from many of the children and women unimaginable accounts, some of them really surreal. We have heard stories, which are hard for us as doctors and as caregivers to believe they can exist,” Bron-Harlev said.

But their patients were strong and determined.

“Over the last five days, we met children who were initially withdrawn and lost, and after a day or two, they were already running around the ward, playing and laughing.”

Israel said Friday it believed 137 hostages taken captive on October 7 remained in Gaza.

King Charles III told world leaders Friday that the warning signs of the climate crisis are being ignored and that the world is heading for “dangerous uncharted territory,” with devastating consequences for lives and livelihoods.

Delivering an opening address to delegates at the World Climate Action Summit, part of the COP28 summit in Dubai, the King said he prayed “with all my heart that COP28 will be a critical turning point towards genuine transformational action.”

“Some important progress has been made but it worries me greatly that we remain so dreadfully far off track,” he said, adding, “we are taking the natural world outside balanced norms and limits and into dangerous uncharted territory.”

Referring to this year’s climate change-fueled extreme weather, including Canada’s unprecedented wildfire season, deadly flooding in Pakistan and Bangladesh and catastrophic drought in East Africa, the King told delegates that the “hope of the world” rested on decisions taken at the summit.

“We are carrying out a vast, frightening experiment of changing every ecological condition all at once as a pace that far outstrips nature’s ability to cope,” he said.

The King called for a series of measures, including a ramp-up of public and private finance, to tackle the climate crisis and rapidly increase renewable energy.

“In 2050, our grandchildren won’t be asking what we said, they will be living with the consequences of what we did or didn’t do,” he said. “The Earth does not belong to us, we belong to the Earth,” he added.

UAE President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who has already spoken at the ceremony, announced a $30 billion green investment fund, “designed to bridge the climate finance gap.”

Developing nations have long pushed the rich world to channel more financing to the global south to help it make the green transition. He spoke in Dubai, where the UAE is hosting the talks.

After a year of record global temperatures, fueling deadly extreme weather, the pressure is high at COP28 for leaders to make ambitious progress on tackling the climate crisis. But countries still remain divided about the role fossil fuels, the main driver of climate change, will play in the future.

COP28, which opened Thursday, started with a significant development as countries formally adopted a damage fund, decades in the making, to help nations hit hardest by the climate crisis.

Among countries making immediate commitments were the United Arab Emirates and Germany, both of which pledged $100 million, and the UK, which announced £60million, part of which will be used for “other arrangements,” according to the news release. The US announced a commitment of $17.5 million, which some experts and advocacy groups said was “embarrassing.”

World leaders including India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Brazil’s President Lula Da Silva, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Prime Minister of Barbados Mia Mottley are due to address delegates later.

Israel’s military restarted fighting against Hamas in Gaza after a week-long truce to allow hostages to be released broke down on Friday.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it had “resumed combat operations” and accused Hamas of violating the truce first by firing rockets toward Israeli territory.

Smoke could be seen billowing across parts of the densely populated enclave as the IDF declared it was once again “out to destroy” Hamas.

The resumption of fighting marks the end of a brittle truce between the warring parties that allowed for the release of 110 Israeli women and children, as well as foreign nationals, who had been taken hostage by Hamas during its October 7 attack, and for the release of about 240 Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Hamas “didn’t respect its obligation to release today all the abducted women and launched rockets towards the citizens of Israel.”

His office said 137 people are still being held hostage in Gaza, including 117 men and 20 women. Two of the abductees are under the age of 18 and 10 are aged 75 and over, it said.

Netanyahu said his government remained committed to achieving its war aims, which he said were releasing the hostages, eliminating Hamas and ensuring that Gaza never again constitutes a threat to Israelis.

The Hamas-controlled Government Media Office in Gaza blamed the international community – and the United States in particular – for the resumption of fighting, saying they bear “responsibility for the crimes of the ‘Israeli’ occupation and the continuation of the brutal war against civilians, children and women in the Gaza Strip.”

At least 32 people were killed in Gaza and dozens injured after Israeli strikes began again on Friday, according to a spokesperson for the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health in Gaza.

With the resumption of fighting could come an expansion of Israel’s military operations in Gaza, which have until now focused predominantly in the north. The IDF dropped leaflets in the southern city of Khan Younis on Friday, calling it a “fighting zone” and telling residents to “evacuate immediately.”

Israel repeatedly told residents of northern Gaza to move south of Wadi Gaza – the wetlands that roughly split the territory – for their safety. Khan Younis is located south of that line.

Before the truce began last week, Israel defense minister Yoav Gallant had warned Israel will aim to “dismantle Hamas wherever it is,” which “will include both the north and the south” of Gaza.

If the truce is unable to be revived, the resumption in fighting will reignite a festering conflict that has wrought devastation to Gaza and triggered a humanitarian catastrophe that was described by the UN Secretary-General as “a crisis of humanity.”

Hours before the latest fighting erupted, the United States pressured Israel to shield Palestinian civilians in one of the most significant diplomatic moves yet in the more than 50-day conflict.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken laid out American requirements in private talks in Jerusalem with Netanyahu and his war cabinet. But he also made the Biden administration approach clear in unmistakable language in public.

“I underscored the imperative of the United States that the massive loss of civilian life and displacement of the scale that we saw in northern Gaza not be repeated in the south,” Blinken said in a televised press conference in Tel Aviv.

End of brief respite

Israel had repeatedly stated it would resume its military assault in Gaza if Hamas could not produce 10 hostages for each extra day of pause.  As the 7 a.m. local time deadline (midnight ET) passed, the hostilities resumed almost immediately.

Both Israel and Hamas had indicated earlier they were prepared for fighting to resume. “We should be prepared for a quick transition into full scale fighting at any point, today, tomorrow, at any moment. As soon as we maximize the move to return hostages we will resume fierce fighting across the whole Gaza Strip,” Gallant said Thursday.

Hamas’ armed wing on Thursday also told their forces to “remain on high combat readiness” in the final hours of the truce, the Al-Qassam Brigades said on Telegram.

The hard-negotiated truce, which came into effect on November 24, marked the first major diplomatic breakthrough in the latest conflict which began when Hamas gunmen stormed into Israel on October 7, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and seizing more than 200 hostages, in the deadliest such attack faced by the country since its founding in 1948.

Since October 7, more than 14,800 people, including 6,000 children, have been killed in Gaza after Israel launched attacks from the air and the ground, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in the West Bank, using data from Hamas-run health authorities in the Strip.

The brief pause in hostilities allowed for more than 2,700 trucks carrying thousands of tons of desperately needed aid to cross from Egypt into Gaza since October 21, according to an Egyptian official. But even that was completely inadequate to meet the needs of the more than two million people in Gaza, many of whom are displaced, aid agencies said.

Renewed fighting threatens once again to shut off that one supply line into Gaza – where residents were already struggling to find shelter, food and clean water while under constant bombardment from Israeli airstrikes.

There had been hopes that the truce, originally slated to last just four days, could be extended into an eighth. But negotiators had warned that extending the truce would be mired in logistical and strategic challenges.

Hamas claimed on Thursday it was having trouble locating 10 women and children hostages – a condition that Israel insisted must be met – to extend the truce.

According to a source briefed on the talks, negotiations are still ongoing with Qatari and Egyptian mediators despite the resumption of Israeli airstrikes on Gaza.

“Hamas wants to set new terms for the men and the Israeli soldiers,” said Danny Danon, adding that “we are close to the end” of the current phase of the deal.

“They want a different equation. Now we have one Israeli hostage for three Palestinian prisoners, and they want to try and change that ratio. As long as they can provide hostages, we are willing to talk,” he said.

In the seven-day pause in fighting, 86 Israelis and another 24 foreign nationals were released. Another Israeli dual citizen was also freed outside of the agreed-upon deal.

As of Thursday, 240 Palestinians had been freed from Israeli prisons – mainly women and minors. Under the terms of the truce deal, Israel has to free three Palestinians for every Israeli hostage released.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

A fire that ripped through a train as it travelled along a strategic rail tunnel in eastern Russia was the work of the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU), a Ukrainian defense source has claimed.

The explosion occurred on the Baikal-Amur railway, in the Bessolov Severomuyskiy tunnel in Buryatia, in the eastern Siberia region of Russia bordering Mongolia, according to the source.

“The explosion is yet another successful special operation by the SBU,” the source said. The SBU has not officially commented on the incident.

Russia has not immediately called this an attack or blamed Ukraine for what it has so far characterized as a “a cargo train fire.”

Ukraine has for months been striking targets inside Russia, as it slowly tries to wear down domestic support for Moscow’s war.

The Russian Railway reported a fire incident on a train along that route and said they are working on “eliminating the consequences of a cargo train fire in the Severomuyskiy tunnel,” in a statement posted to Telegram.

The Ukrainian source characterized the route as “the only major railroad connection between Russia and China.”

A prosecutor is in the area to coordinate the actions of law enforcement and supervisory authorities, according to a statement from the East Siberian Transport Prosecutor’s Office. “According to preliminary information, a wagon in a freight train caught fire at night on November 29, 2023 at the Itykit – Okusikan crossing of the East Siberian Railway while traveling through the Severomuisky tunnel.

Recovery and fire trains were involved to eliminate the consequences of the fire. There were no casualties,” the prosecutors office said. Russian authorities “will take response measures based on the results of the inspection, in case there are grounds to do so,” the statement said.

Train traffic has been rerouted, according to the Russian Railway. “Train traffic has not been interrupted along the route, it was organized on a detour route with a slight increase in travel time.”

The rail provider said it was working to determine the extent of the damage.

Russia’s Supreme Court has declared what it called the “international LGBTQ movement” an extremist organization and banned all activities associated with it in the country.

The landmark ruling on Thursday is set to further erode the rights of Russia’s LGBTQ community, who have faced an intensifying crackdown in recent years, as President Vladimir Putin seeks to shore up his image as defender of traditional moral values against the liberal West.

Russia’s highest court found in favour of a motion filed by the Ministry of Justice which claimed the LGBTQ community risked “inciting social and religious discord”, in violation of Russia’s Law on Countering Extremism, according to a statement from the UN condemning the decision.

While there is no legally recognized LGBTQ community in Russia under the country’s discriminatory anti-gay law, Thursday’s ruling states: “The claims are to be satisfied: to recognize the international LGBT movement as an extremist organization and to prohibit its activities in Russia,” according to state news agency RIA Novosti.

The four-hour hearing was held behind closed doors with only the Justice Ministry present for the proceedings and materials classified. RIA Novosti reports the decision is effective immediately.

Two weeks ago, the Justice Ministry said on its official website it had initiated legal proceedings to designate the ‘international LGBT social movement’ as an extremist organization and seek its prohibition in Russia.

The ministry did not elaborate on what it meant by the “movement.”

In the statement Thursday, the UN said it “deplores” the ruling and warned that it could leave “members, employees and people engaging with such organisations” at risk of criminal charges and imprisonment.

Under Russian legislation, an organisation designated as extremist faces immediate dissolution, and its leaders face charges of up to 10 years in prison, according to the UN Human Rights Chief.

“This decision exposes human rights defenders and anyone standing up for the human rights of LGBT people to being labelled as ’extremist’ – a term that has serious social and criminal ramifications in Russia,” the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said.

Homosexuality was decriminalized in Russia in 1993, but homophobia and discrimination is still rife.

In recent years, the Kremlin has introduced or expanded on a raft of anti-LGBTQ laws, a conservative shift that has intensified following the invasion of Ukraine. Presidential elections are due next year, with Putin widely expected to extend his rule.

In July this year, Russia passed a law banning doctors from conducting gender reassignment surgeries, except in cases related to treating congenital physiological anomalies, in children.

In December 2022, Putin signed into law a bill that expanded a ban on so-called LGBTQ “propaganda” in Russia, making it illegal for anyone to promote same-sex relationships or suggest that non-heterosexual orientations are “normal.”

The package of amendments signed by Putin included heavier penalties for anyone promoting “non-traditional sexual relations and/or preferences,” as well as gender transition.

The new law was an extension of legislation introduced in 2013, which banned the dissemination of LGBTQ-related information to minors.

Scientists have created tiny living robots from human cells that can move around in a lab dish and may one day be able to help heal wounds or damaged tissue, according to a new study.

A team at Tufts University and Harvard University’s Wyss Institute have dubbed these creations anthrobots. The research builds on earlier work from some of the same scientists, who made the first living robots, or xenobots, from stem cells sourced from embryos of the African clawed frog (Xenopus laevis).

“Some people thought that the features of the xenobots relied a lot on the fact that they are embryonic and amphibian,” said study author Michael Levin, Vannevar Bush professor of biology at Tufts’ School of Arts & Sciences.

“I don’t think this has anything to do with being an embryo. This has nothing to do with being a frog. I think this is a much more general property of living things,” he said.

“We don’t realize all the competencies that our own body cells have.”

While alive, the anthrobots were not full-fledged organisms because they didn’t have a full life cycle, Levin said. 

“It reminds us that these harsh binary categories that we’ve operated with: Is that a robot, is that an animal, is that a machine? These kinds of things don’t serve us very well. We need to get beyond that.”

The research was published Thursday in the journal Advanced Science.

How did they make them?

The scientists used adult human cells from the trachea, or windpipe, from anonymous donors of different ages and sexes. Researchers zeroed in on this type of cell because they’re relatively easy to access due to work on Covid-19 and lung disease and, more importantly, because of a feature the scientists believed would make the cells capable of motion, said study coauthor Gizem Gumuskaya, a doctoral student at Tufts.

The tracheal cells are covered with hairlike projections called cilia that wave back and forth. They usually help the tracheal cells push out tiny particles that find their way into air passages of the lungs. Earlier studies had also shown that the cells can form organoids — clumps of cells widely used for research.

Gumuskaya experimented with the chemical composition of the tracheal cells’ growth conditions and found a way to encourage the cilia to face outward on the organoids. Once she had found the right matrix, the organoids became mobile after a few days, with the cilia acting a bit like oars.

“Nothing happened on day one, day two, day four or five, but as biology usually does, around day seven, there was a rapid transition,” she said. “It was like a blossoming flower. By day seven, the cilia had flipped and were on the outside.

“In our method, each anthrobot grows from a single cell.”

It’s this self-assembly that makes them unique. Biological robots have been made by other scientists, but they were constructed by hand by making a mold and seeding cells to live on top of it, Levin said.

Different shapes and sizes

The anthrobots the team created weren’t identical.

Some were spherical and fully covered in cilia, while others were shaped more like a football and covered irregularly with cilia. They also moved in different ways — some in straight lines, some in tight circles, while others sat around and wiggled, according to a news release on the study. They survived up to 60 days in laboratory conditions.

The experiments outlined in this latest study are at an early stage, but the goal is to find out whether the anthrobots could have medical applications, Levin and Gumuskaya said. To see whether such applications might be possible, researchers examined whether the anthrobots were able to move over human neurons grown in a lab dish that had been “scratched” to mimic damage.

They were surprised to see the anthrobots encouraged growth to the damaged region of the neurons, although the researchers don’t yet understand the healing mechanism, the study noted.

Falk Tauber, a group leader at the Freiburg Center for Interactive Materials and Bioinspired Technologies at the University of Freiburg in Germany, said that the study provided a baseline for future efforts to use the bio-bots for different functions and make them in different forms.

Tauber, who was not involved in the research, said the anthrobots exhibited “surprising behavior,” in particular when they moved across — and ultimately closed —scratches in the human neurons.

He said the ability to create these structures from a patient’s own cells suggested diverse applications both in the lab and perhaps ultimately within humans.  

Levin said he didn’t think the anthrobots posed any ethical or safety concerns. They are not made from human embryos, research that is tightly restricted, or genetically modified in any way, he said.

“They have a very circumscribed environment that they live in, so there’s no possibility that they somehow get out or live outside the lab. They can’t live outside that very specific environment,” he said. “They have a natural life span so after a few weeks, they just seamlessly biodegrade.”