Astronomers are questioning the theories of planet formation after discovering an exoplanet that technically shouldn’t exist.

The planet, about the mass of Neptune and more than 13 times as massive as Earth, was detected orbiting an ultracool M-dwarf star called LHS 3154 — which is nine times less massive than our sun. An M-dwarf star is the smallest and coolest type of star.

The planet — dubbed LHS 3154b — closely whips around the star, completing one orbit every 3.7 Earth days, making it the most massive known planet in a close orbit around one of the coldest, low-mass stars in the universe, according to a new study published Thursday in the journal Science. It upends how scientists understand the formation of planetary systems.

“This discovery really drives home the point of just how little we know about the universe,” said study coauthor Suvrath Mahadevan, Verne M. Willaman professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State, in a statement. “We wouldn’t expect a planet this heavy around such a low-mass star to exist.”

Stars form from large clouds of gas and dust, and the leftover material creates a disk around the star where planets are later born. The amount of material present within the disks around stars determines how massive the planets that form around them can be. And the disk material is largely dependent on the mass of the star.

For example, small M dwarf stars are the most common throughout the Milky Way galaxy, and they typically have small, rocky planets orbiting them, rather than gas giant planets.

“The planet-forming disk around the low-mass star LHS 3154 is not expected to have enough solid mass to make this planet,” Mahadevan said. “But it’s out there, so now we need to reexamine our understanding of how planets and stars form.”

The habitable zone

The planet orbits a star about 51 light-years away from the sun and was discovered using the Habitable Zone Planet Finder, or HPF, installed on the Hobby-Eberly Telescope at the McDonald Observatory in Texas.

A team of scientists led by Mahadevan built the HPF, which was designed to detect planets orbiting within the habitable zone of small, cool stars. The habitable zone is just the right distance from a star where a planet is warm enough to support liquid water on its surface and potentially support life.

The lower surface temperature of small stars means that planets can orbit them much more closely and still maintain fragile elements such as water on their surfaces. And as planets closely orbit their stars, the gravitational tug between both bodies creates a noticeable wobble that the HPF can detect in infrared light.

“Think about it like the star is a campfire. The more the fire cools down, the closer you’ll need to get to that fire to stay warm,” Mahadevan said. “The same is true for planets. If the star is colder, then a planet will need to be closer to that star if it is going to be warm enough to contain liquid water. If a planet has a close enough orbit to its ultracool star, we can detect it by seeing a very subtle change in the color of the star’s spectra or light as it is tugged on by an orbiting planet.”

A planetary puzzle

Based on modeling and analysis, the research team believes the planet has a heavy core that would require more solid material to have been in the planet-forming disk than was likely present around the star, according to study coauthor Megan Delamer, an astronomy graduate student at Penn State.

The researchers estimate that the amount of dust in the disk would need to be at least 10 times greater than what is typically found in disks around low-mass stars.

“Our current theories of planet formation have trouble accounting for what we’re seeing,” Delamer said in a statement. “Based on current survey work with the HPF and other instruments, an object like the one we discovered is likely extremely rare, so detecting it has been really exciting.”

A few massive planets have been found orbiting low-mass stars, such as the planet GJ 3512 b discovered in 2019, but their orbital periods are much longer, and the planets don’t orbit their stars as closely.

“What we have discovered provides an extreme test case for all existing planet formation theories,” Mahadevan said. “This is exactly what we built HPF to do, to discover how the most common stars in our galaxy form planets — and to find those planets.”

The COP28 president-designate Sultan Al Jaber has strongly denied accusations that his team sought to use the international climate talks in Dubai to strike fossil fuel deals for the UAE’s state-owned oil and gas company.

Several of the documents detailed suggestions to offer new oil and gas projects to visiting officials, which would benefit the UAE.

“These allegations are false, not true, incorrect, and not accurate,” he said at a press conference in Dubai on Wednesday, when asked for comment by a reporter. “And it’s an attempt to undermine the work of the COP28 presidency.”

Al Jaber, his office and the UAE have come under widespread criticism, particularly from Western media and civil society groups, for appointing its top oil executive to preside over the talks, which begin Thursday and are expected to address ways to ramp down fossil fuel use, the primary driver of the climate crisis.

Al Jaber’s denial took more than three minutes, during which he expressed his frustration at the allegations and criticisms around his connections to the oil and gas industry. He also defended the success of the UAE’s rapid economic development, as well as its relationships with foreign governments and businesses.

“Let me ask you a question: Do you think the UAE, or myself, will need the COP, or the COP presidency, to go and establish business deals or commercial relationships?” Al Jaber asked.

“This country over the past 50 years has been built around its ability to build bridges and to create relationships and partnerships.”

Al Jaber emphasized that all of his meetings with officials were squarely focused on his COP28 agenda.

“Every meeting I have conducted with every government or any other stakeholder has always been centered around one thing and one thing only, and that is my COP28 agenda and how we can collectively, for the first time ever, adopt a mindset that is centered around implementation and action to keep 1.5 within reach,” he said.

The Paris Agreement stated that the world should try to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Passing that threshold, scientists say, will make it harder for life on Earth to adapt.

He added that he was often given conflicting advice on whether he should engage with oil and gas companies in his role.

“Sometimes I am told ‘you need to engage with governments and with oil and gas companies to put pressure.’ And sometimes I’m told ‘you can’t do that,’” he said. “So, we’re damned if we do, we’re damned if we don’t.”

After his denial, he thanked the reporter who asked him for comment on the allegations. “I feel much better,” he said, concluding his remarks.

Al Jaber is currently overseeing an expansion in ADNOC’s oil and gas production. The company is in the midst of hiking its capacity from 4 million barrels a day, its level in 2022, to 5 million by 2027.

Mary Cleave, the NASA astronaut who in 1989 became the first woman to fly on a space shuttle mission after the Challenger disaster, has died at the age of 76, the space agency announced on Wednesday.

NASA did not give a cause of death.

“I’m sad we’ve lost trail blazer Dr. Mary Cleave, shuttle astronaut, veteran of two spaceflights, and first woman to lead the Science Mission Directorate as associate administrator,” said NASA Associate Administrator Bob Cabana in a statement. “Mary was a force of nature with a passion for science, exploration, and caring for our home planet. She will be missed.”

Cleave — who died Monday, according to the statement — was a native of Great Neck, New York. She studied biological sciences at Colorado State University before going on to earn her master’s in microbial ecology and a doctorate in civil and environmental engineering from Utah State University.

From air to space

She told NASA’s Oral History Project in 2002 that she was enamored with flying airplanes growing up, and she earned her pilot’s license before her driver’s license. At one point, Cleave said, she had wanted to be a flight attendant, but found that at 5-foot-2, she was too short for the role under airline rules at the time.

Cleave noted that affirmative action helped pave the way for her passions, allowing her the opportunity to fly supersonic jets known as T-38s.

“For me, space flight was great, but it was gravy on top of getting to fly in great airplanes,” she told NASA.

Cleave said she had been working at a research lab and finishing her doctoral studies in Utah when she saw an ad at a local post office stating that NASA was searching for scientists to join the astronaut corps. She applied and was selected in 1980.

Getting to orbit

On her first mission, flying on NASA’s Space Shuttle Atlantis in 1985, Cleave became the 10th woman to travel into space. On the mission, she served as a flight engineer and helped operate the shuttle’s robotic arm.

“It seemed like they assigned women to fly the arm (Shuttle Remote Manipulator System (SRMS) or Canadarm) more often than guys, and the rumor on the street was because they thought women did that better,” Cleave said in her 2002 NASA interview, noting that she never confirmed the rumor.

Cleave’s second flight in 1989, STS-30, also on Atlantis, came after NASA had reverted to flying all-male crews for three missions in the wake of the Challenger explosion in 1986, which killed all seven crew members on board, including the first teacher to be selected to fly to space.

Cleave was known to downplay the “firsts” she marked as a female astronaut during her time at NASA, saying, “People tried to make a point of it, and I just let everybody know that I didn’t think that anybody should be making a special point out of this.

“It was just a normal part of the thing, and I just didn’t think it was good to make anything special out of it, because at that point we really were part of the corps,” she added, noting that she was close friends with astronaut Judith Resnick, who died on Challenger.

Women in space

Cleave emphasized that to women on the corps at that time, the focus was always on their jobs.

She was also part of a historic first when she served on NASA mission control’s CapCom — or capsule communication system — as Sally Ride became the first woman ever to travel to space on the STS-7 mission in 1983. When Cleave spoke to Ride in orbit, it became the first female-to-female space communication in the agency’s history. Neither Cleave nor Ride acknowledged the milestone during their conversation.

“I didn’t even notice it. Here’s Sally and I, we didn’t even notice it,” Cleave said, though a reporter did ask her about the event afterward.

Over the course of her two shuttle missions, Cleave spent more than 10 days in orbit.

NASA and beyond

She was assigned to another flight after STS-30. But Cleave said she began to have a change of heart as she waited to fly, spending four years on the ground between her first and second mission. During that time she became increasingly concerned about environmental issues.

Cleave said she could see the planet changing as she stared back at Earth from space. “The air looked dirtier, less trees, more roads, all those things,” she told NASA’s Oral History Project.

“I just couldn’t get that excited about what I was doing, because it wasn’t related to (the environment),” she added, referring to her job as an astronaut.

Cleave said she made the difficult decision to move on from the corps and NASA’s astronaut hub in Houston, taking a role at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland in 1991. There, she worked on a project called SeaWiFS, an ocean-monitoring sensor that measured global vegetation, according to NASA.

Cleave eventually moved to work at NASA’s headquarters in Washington, DC, in 2000, going on to become the first woman ever to hold the title of associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate — the top role overseeing the space agency’s research programs. In that role, Cleave “guided an array of research and scientific exploration programs for planet Earth, space weather, the solar system, and the universe,” according to NASA.

She retired from NASA in 2007, choosing to engage in volunteer work and encourage young women to join scientific pursuits, according to her bio on the Maryland government’s website.

Climate chaos spared no region this year. Canada burned, the US Southwest boiled, a Libyan city was swept away by floods and global heat was, as one scientist said, “gobsmackingly bananas.”

Climate records fell like dominoes, and more are predicted — it is all but certain that 2023 will be the hottest in recorded history.

And yet, even as the climate crisis inserts itself viscerally into people’s lives, experts say the year has seen alarming backsliding on climate action. Green policies have been watered down, huge new oil and gas projects have been greenlit and coal has had something of a resurgence.

A slew of new reports showed countries are wildly off track on limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Instead, the world is on course for warming of up to a catastrophic 2.9 degrees, according to the United Nations Environment Programme — and that’s even if current climate policies are met.

As countries gather in Dubai for the UN’s COP28 climate summit, there are “high expectations,” said Harjeet Singh, the head of global political strategy at nonprofit Climate Action Network International. “At the same time, we are seeing much lower commitment from countries.”

While one year alone cannot determine the success or failure of global climate action, said Kaveh Guilanpour, vice president for international strategies at the non-profit Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, “the world is still not treating this as an emergency, and that’s the fundamental problem.”

Huge oil and gas projects approved

Fossil fuels had a strong year in 2023, with several major projects approved, despite a warning from the IEA two years ago that there can be no more investment into new fossil fuel projects if the world is to meet international climate goals.

“If you’re expanding fossil fuels, you are backtracking,” said Singh.

Yet in March, the Biden administration approved the massive and controversial Willow oil drilling project in Alaska. The area to be drilled holds 600 million barrels of oil, enough to release 9.2 million metric tons of planet-heating pollution, according to the administration’s figures. That’s equivalent to adding 2 million gas-powered cars to the roads.

The decision “moved us in the opposite direction of our national climate goals” Erik Grafe, an attorney for environmental law group Earthjustice, said in a statement at the time.

On the other side of the Atlantic, the UK announced plans for an expansion of oil and gas in the North Sea in July. The government pledged to grant hundreds of new drilling licenses, in a move one climate advocate described as sending “a wrecking ball through the UK’s climate commitments.”

Fossil fuel expansion by wealthy countries is set to continue long into the future. Just five developed countries — the US, UK, Canada, Australia and Norway — are responsible for 51% of oil and gas expansion planned between 2023 and 2050, according to a September report from campaign group Oil Change International.

“If this oil and gas expansion is allowed to proceed, it would lock in climate chaos and an unlivable future,” the report noted.

Weakened climate policies

An unexpected battle in Europe in early spring over a ban on the sale of new gas and diesel powered cars set the tone for a fraught year for getting new climate policy on the books

The bloc’s law had seemed like a done deal, but Germany objected at the last minute, and added a loophole that would allow the sale of combustion engine cars beyond the 2035 deadline — as long as they run on synthetic fuels.

Across Europe, there has been pushback on green plans. An attempt in Germany to introduce a law to replace fossil fuel-powered heating systems with more efficient systems that can be run on renewable energy was watered down after widespread opposition was stoked in part by the far right.

In the UK, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced a dilution of climate pledges in September. The government’s own independent climate advisory body responded by saying it “made meeting future targets harder.”

While many countries insist they are still committed to net zero by 2050 — meaning they plan to remove at least as much planet-warming pollution from the atmosphere as they produce — “targets are only valuable if they are followed up with implementation,” said Joeri Rogelj, a climate professor at Imperial College London.

A coal bonanza

Global consumption of coal — the single biggest contributor to climate change — reached an all-time high in 2022, and demand is set to remain near record levels this year, according to the IEA.

In the first half of 2023, China was approving new coal projects at a rate equivalent to two large coal plants every week, according to an analysis from Global Energy Monitor. This coal “spree,” as the report called it, was partly triggered by concerns over power shortages during blistering heat waves.

China has pledged to peak emissions by 2030 and while the country has made giant strides on renewable energy, experts say its continued reliance on coal threatens its climate progress.

“China is making the path towards its energy transition and climate commitments more complicated and costly,” Flora Champenois, co-author of the report and research analyst at GEM, said in a statement.

It’s not just China. The US may have reduced its domestic coal consumption, but it has ramped up exports. In the first eight months of this year, US thermal coal exports reached their highest level since 2018, driven by demand from Asia.

And in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, some countries have turned to coal in the scramble to replace Russian oil and gas. Germany temporarily reopened coal plants and in October, the government approved bringing coal plants back online over winter to avoid shortages.

Experts say this scramble for coal — even if short term — has also strained relations between the West and the Global South.

“The first time that the developed world has a bit of a challenge, they immediately backtrack and they say ‘oh, because it’s exceptional, we’re going to reopen coal-fired power plants,’” Rogelj said.

Fossil fuel companies dialed down green plans

Big oil companies made eye-popping profits in 2022. BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell and Total pulled in a record $199.3 billion that year as they benefited from soaring oil and gas prices following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

But the windfall did not translate into huge boosts for clean energy plans. Instead, many announced expansion of fossil fuels and, for some, a dialing down of green pledges.

BP scaled back the ambition of a commitment it had made only three years ago to slash oil and gas production by 40% by 2030. In February, it announced it would instead aim for a roughly 25% reduction by the end of the decade.

Despite record profits, Shell announced in February that it would keep renewables spending steady, despite having increased it in previous years.

And at a June conference, Exxon head Darren Woods said he aimed to double the amount of oil produced from the company’s US shale projects over five years. The company also dropped a years-long project to develop fuel from algae, previously a much-touted part of its green ambitions.

The three companies maintain they are committed to the clean-energy transition.

An Exxon spokesperson said the company was “embracing” the challenge to reach net zero. “We’re doing our part by investing $17 billion in lower-emission initiatives through 2027.”

But according to a November IEA report, the oil and gas industry must rapidly scale up its ambitions. Around 50% of its total capital spending needs to go toward clean energy projects by 2030, according to the report. At the moment, they commit just 2.5%.

“The oil and gas industry is facing a moment of truth at COP28 in Dubai,” IEA executive director Fatih Birol said in a statement. “With the world suffering the impacts of a worsening climate crisis, continuing with business as usual is neither socially nor environmentally responsible.”

Glimmers of hope

It would be a mistake to suggest everything is going in the wrong direction, Guilanpour said. “You need to think about trajectories, and on those trajectories, you’re going to get bumps in the road.”

The relationship between the US and China has long been bumpy, but its cooperation on climate change has been a glimmer of hope. In mid-November, the countries pledged a major ramp-up in renewable energy, and agreed to economy-wide reduction of all greenhouse gases — not just carbon dioxide — the first time China officially stated its intent to do so.

While 2023 did see backsliding, the long-term pathway is heading in the right direction — albeit much too slowly, said Claire Fyson, co-head of the climate policy team at Climate Analytics, a climate science and policy institute.

But, she added, “we’re still in very dangerous territory.”

Light, tasty and simple to make, egg fried rice has long been a beloved dish in China and one of most recognizable icons of Chinese cuisine around the world.

But in recent years, the popular stir-fry has become a highly sensitive subject for China’s online nationalists, especially around the months of October and November.

Emotions are running so high this week that one of the country’s most famous chefs has been forced to apologize – for making a video on how to cook the dish.

“As a chef, I will never make egg fried rice again,” Wang Gang, a celebrity chef with more than 10 million online fans, pledged in a video message on Monday.

Wang’s “solemn apology” attempted to tame a frothing torrent of criticism about the video, which was posted on Chinese social media site Weibo on November 27.

Angry nationalists accused Wang of using the video to mock the death of Mao Zedong’s eldest son, Mao Anying, who was killed in an American air strike during the Korean War on November 25, 1950.

Wang’s video was solely about making egg fried rice, but for some Chinese nationalists, any mention of the dish around the anniversary of Mao Anying’s death or birthday on October 24 amounts to a deliberate act of insult and mockery.

However, by attacking mentions of egg fried rice by famous chefs and other online influencers, the nationalist users have inadvertently promoted the very rumor their government is trying to quash.

The controversial account has it that Mao Anying, an officer in the People’s Liberation Army, disobeyed orders to take shelter during the air raid. Instead, the hungry young man fired up a stove to make egg fried rice, which sent smoke into the air and gave away his position to enemy jets.

That version of events was mentioned in the memoir of Yang Di, a military officer who worked alongside the younger Mao at the commander’s headquarters. But Chinese authorities have repeatedly refuted it as rumor.

Under leader Xi Jinping, the Chinese government has cracked down on voices that criticize national heroes or question the official narrative about them. In 2018, the country passed a law to ban the slander of national “heroes and martyrs,” a crime punishable by up to three years in prison.

Last May, former investigative journalist Luo Changping was sentenced to seven months in prison for “insulting martyrs” who froze to death during a Korean War battle. He had used a pun on social media to suggest that Chinese soldiers portrayed in a blockbuster movie about the war were stupid.

On the 70th anniversary of Mao Anying’s death in 2020, the Chinese Academy of History – an official think tank launched by Xi to counter “incorrect” views of Communist Party history – called the egg fried rice story “the most vicious rumor.”

“These rumormongers have tied up Mao Anying with egg fried rice, dwarfing the heroic image of Mao Anying’s brave sacrifice to the greatest extent,” the academy said in a post on social media site Weibo. “To put it in one sentence – their hearts are evil.”

It discredited Yang’s memoir as “full of flaws and cannot withstand verification at all.” Citing other eyewitness accounts and declassified telegrams, the post concluded that Mao Anying was killed because enemy forces detected radio waves from the busy telegraphs coming in and out of the headquarters in the days leading up to the air raid.

Despite official denials, the disputed egg fried rice story has persisted. In some corners of the Chinese internet, November 25 is celebrated as the “Egg Fried Rice Festival” or “Chinese Thanksgiving” – a nod to the belief that if the younger Mao had survived the war, he might have inherited power from his father and turned China into a hereditary dictatorship like North Korea.

In 2021, a Weibo user in the southern city of Nanchang was detained by police for 10 days for commenting in a post that “the greatest achievement of the Korean War is egg fried rice.”

“Thank you egg fried rice. Without it, we would be the same as (North Korea) now,” the post said.

‘My biggest mistake’

Wang’s egg-fired rice video, posted two days after the anniversary of the younger Mao’s death, was seen as particularly egregious as it was far from his first “transgression” – at least in the eyes of Chinese nationalists.

In 2018, Wang posted a video introducing his homemade egg fried rice recipe on October 22. Two days later, on Mao Anying’s birthday, Communist Party mouthpiece the People’s Daily shared Wang’s video. The move raised eyebrows and drew accusations that even the party’s flagship newspaper had been corrupted.

In 2020, Wang posted a video of himself making Yangzhou fried rice – a deluxe version featuring ham, shrimp, peas and carrots in addition to eggs – on October 24, which sparked a nationalist outcry. Wang responded by issuing a swift apology.

“I only found out about this situation after I posted the video today and saw everyone’s comments,” he wrote in comments underneath the video. “I’m only sharing the delicious food and have no other motives.”

After the latest backlash on Monday, Wang explained in his apology that his team had posted the video without his knowledge.

“This video has caused a lot of trouble and a very bad experience for everyone. I apologize again,” he said after taking down the cooking video. “I was busy with personal matters recently and did not participate in the release of the video. This was my biggest mistake.”

Wang, 34, who hails from a rural village in Sichuan province, said his grandfather had been a veteran of the Korean War and spent six years in North Korea.

He said he looked up to his grandfather and dreamed of becoming a soldier since childhood, but failed the physical examination to join the army at 17. “In my mind, soilders are very sacred,” he said.

But Wang’s critics are not letting it go easily.

“It might be a coincidence the first time. But can it be a coincidence every single time?” a comment said of Wang’s egg fried rice videos.

Some called for Wang to be banned on Chinese social media, while others urged authorities to punish him for insulting national “heroes and martyrs,” citing the 2018 law.

But some have also come to Wang’s defense, noting that the chef has posted egg fried rice in other months throughout the year.

“You don’t need to apologize. It is society that should apologize to you,” a Weibo user said in support of Wang.

“Why don’t we clearly stipulate a complete ban on eating and making egg fried rice in November, or simply retire egg fried rice from Chinese cruisine all togther,” another supporter quipped.

Hu Xijin, former editor-in-chief for Global Times and a prominent nationlist voice, cautioned that many people are still unaware of the rumors about Mao Anying. He called for public opinion to be more tolerant of unintentional mentions of “relevant elements” around the younger Mao’s birthday and death anniversary.

“Being more tolerant of each other and not making this into a hot topic is by and large a comfort and protection to martyr Mao Anying’s heroic spirit. It will help the issue gradually quiet down and weaken the rumor’s damage,” Hu wrote.

“Otherwise, it is possible that a controversy after another will only strengthen the rumor’s impact.”

On Tuesday, Wang removed the video of his apology and closed the comment sections on his Weibo page.

The death of Henry Kissinger on Wednesday saw the loss of a diplomat Beijing has long considered a trusted friend, with China’s Foreign Ministry on Thursday hailing the former American secretary of state as “a pioneer and architect of China-US relations” for his central role in the establishment of bilateral ties.

Paying tribute to the late statesman during a regular press briefing, ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said “the Chinese people will remember Dr. Kissinger’s sincere devotion and important contributions to China-US relations.”

Chinese leader Xi Jinping had sent his condolences to President Joe Biden, Wang added.

Kissinger’s death was also mourned on Chinese social media Thursday, where his passing became the top trending topic on heavily moderated microblogging site Weibo with more than 400 million views.

“Farewell, old friend of the Chinese people,” said a top comment with thousands of likes.

“The person who started a period of history has finally become history,” another comment said.

Considered a highly influential but controversial figure in the United States and around the world, Kissinger is highly regarded in China for his role laying the groundwork for the formation of diplomatic relations between Beijing and Washington – a crucial and highly consequential step in the country’s reengagement with the world.

In July 1971, Kissinger became the first high-ranking US official to visit Communist China. His secret meeting with Chinese leaders paved the way for then President Richard Nixon’s breakthrough trip the following year.

That visit, in turn, opened the door for the normalization of ties between the world’s richest country and its most populous in 1979.

“There is no more important diplomat in the 20th century than Henry Kissinger, certainly with regard to US-China relations, he has left an indelible mark,” said Scott Kennedy, senior adviser in Chinese Business and Economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) think tank in Washington.

Long after Kissinger left office, Beijing had regarded the well-connected diplomat as a potential helping hand in navigating the increasingly hawkish views towards China in Washington. Amid fraught relations in recent years, Chinese state-controlled media has celebrated former diplomat in an apparent signal of signal their displeasure with the tougher stance taken by US administrations.

In a statement Thursday, Chinese Ambassador to the United States, Xie Feng, said he was “deeply shocked and saddened” to learn of Kissinger’s passing.

“History will remember what the centenarian had contributed to China-US relations, and he will always remain alive in the hearts of the Chinese people as a most valued old friend,” Xie said on social media X.

Chinese state media highlighted Kissinger’s friendship with China, noting that he visited the country more than 100 times over half a century. State broadcaster CCTV called him a “living fossil” who witnessed the development of US-China relations.

Many state-run outlets cited a glowing quote from Kissinger’s interview with official news agency Xinhua in 2011. “China is the country with which I have the longest and most in-depth contacts. China has become a very important part of my life. Chinese friends are of extraordinary significance to me,” the American diplomat was quoted as saying. 
 
And even amid growing tensions – as recent US administrations have grown increasingly alarmed by China’s aggressive foreign policy and authoritarianism at home –– Kissinger remained a strong advocate of positive engagement to avoid conflict.

Final visit

Kissinger last traveled to China in July, when the Biden administration was busy dispatching cabinet officials to the Chinese capital in an attempt to restore fractured communications ahead of a potential visit to the US from Xi, which took place earlier this month.

Bilateral relations had then plunged to a new low following the fallout from an alleged Chinese spy balloon and a high-level US visit to selfTaiwan last summer.

On his surprise visit to Beijing, Kissinger was granted a meeting with Xi who hailed him as an “old friend.” That made him stand out from US climate envoy John Kerry and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who traveled there on separate trips that same month and only met with their counterparts.

Kissinger also met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who told him “US policies toward China require Kissinger-style diplomatic wisdom and Nixon-style political courage.”

On that trip, Kissinger was held up in Chinese state media as an example of “old friends diplomacy,” according to Alfred Wu, an associate professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, referring to China’s practice of pointing to international figures who have contributed to positive, stable relations between their country and China.

“Chinese media very clearly tried to paint the picture that ‘this is good diplomacy,’ and Kissinger is forward-looking and has goodwill for mitigating the tensions between two countries — and other current diplomats are not like Kissinger,” said Wu, adding that Beijing was, in reality, not aiming to be a “close friend” of the US in its own diplomacy.

“Kissinger, the Flying Tigers, all are part of the story of the US-China relations ‘golden model’ or ‘good old days’ that Xi Jinping wants to promote,” Wu said, referring to American pilots who helped China fight Japan during World War II, who were recently highlighted in state media coverage ahead of Xi’s US visit.

But among some Chinese intellectuals there are “mixed feelings” about Kissinger’s legacy, with some saying he only tried to promote peace with China, and didn’t have principles when it came to China’s political realities, Wu added.

‘Creative diplomacy’

Kissinger’s covert 1971 visit to China as Nixon’s national security advisor followed more than two decades of hostility and almost no contact between the two countries.

That trip, where he met Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai, and a second visit that same year, paved the way for Nixon’s own breakthrough trip the following February and the signing of the carefully worded Shanghai Communique, where both sides agreed to work toward normalizing relations.

The tectonic shift in US-China relations that was formalized some eight years later opened the door for extensive economic engagement starting from the early 1980s. It also shifted the balance of power in the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union, experts say, by deepening a split between Moscow and Beijing.

But getting there was a significant challenge.

“There were a variety of voices in the United States in the 1960s quietly calling for finding a path toward normalization with China … but it took very careful, wise diplomacy to actually implement and get that process rolling,” said Kennedy at CSIS in Washington, pointing to both sides’ management of key differences.

Fifty years later, Kissinger’s brand of pragmatism and what experts describe as his efforts to put aside ideological differences for strategic purposes appears at odds with the recent trajectory of the US-China relationship. 
 
While Biden and Xi met earlier this month to ease tensions, the friendly public gestures belied the mistrust on both sides, with each seeing the other as seeking to use or co-opt the current world order in their favor.

“It’s more difficult for the US and China to find a pragmatic balance because the domestic politics in both countries … (have) shifted dramatically,” said Kennedy.

“It’s really hard to think today that we would have the US and others engage in that kind of creative diplomacy with China … and (other) countries with which we have the biggest differences,” Kennedy added. “That’s what Kissinger was able to do.”

The Israel Defense Forces said Wednesday it was assessing a Hamas claim that the youngest Israeli hostage, 10-month-old Kfir Bibas, his brother and his mother are dead.

The armed wing of Hamas said earlier Wednesday, without providing evidence, that Kfir, his 4-year-old brother, Ariel, and their mother, Shiri, were killed in an Israeli airstrike. The armed wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades, said they had been killed in earlier Israeli bombing.

The IDF responded with a statement saying they were “assessing the accuracy of the information.” It said they had spoken to the relatives of the Bibas family and “are with them at this difficult time.”

“Hamas is wholly responsible for the security of all hostages in the Gaza Strip. Hamas must be held accountable. Hamas’ actions continue to endanger the hostages, which include nine children. Hamas must immediately release our hostages,” the IDF said.

Minutes after the Hamas claim emerged, a senior Israeli official who was holding a briefing at the time said “I hope it’s not true,” and “we have no indication they’re murdered.”

In an interview with Israel’s Channel 12, Jimmy Miller, Shiri’s cousin, said the IDF had informed the family of Hamas’ claim.

“Hamas took them alive, Hamas is the one responsible for their health, and Hamas need to return them back to us alive. We don’t care if they transferred them to someone else, or to another entity, they are (exclusively) responsible to bring them back to us alive and well,” Miller said.

The Bibas family later confirmed it had “learned of Hamas’ latest claims,” according to a statement from the Hostages and Missing Persons Families Forum.

“We are waiting for the information to be confirmed and hopefully refuted by military officials. We thank the people of Israel for their warm support, but kindly request privacy during this difficult time,” they said.

IDF chief spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said earlier in the week that the IDF did not believe the boys and their mother were in the hands of Hamas.

There has been no Israeli bombing of Gaza since a ceasefire began on Friday morning.

Kfir, Ariel and Shiri Bibas, and presumably their father Yarden were all kidnapped from Nir Oz, an Israeli kibbutz that was devastated when it came under attack by Hamas militants on October 7. The attackers murdered more than a quarter of the community and seized scores of others, as they fired at people’s homes, looted and destroyed what they could.

“They shouldn’t be kept like this. It’s inhumane. It’s so scary,” said a visibly upset Keshet.

Holding up posters of Kfir and Ariel, he asked: “Are these the enemies of Hamas? Are these the enemies of anyone? Should these children be used as bargaining chips? … There is no justification for using them like this. We just want them back, really.”

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Fatima Shahin spent seven months in an Israeli prison. Authorities initially accused her of attempted murder of an Israeli in the occupied West Bank, but she was never charged with any crime.

On Friday, the 33-year-old from the West Bank city of Bethlehem was freed, one of the 39 Palestinians released that day in exchange for Israeli hostages as part of the truce between Israel and Hamas.

As of Wednesday, Israel had released 180 Palestinian prisoners and detainees and Hamas had released 81 hostages.

Like Shahin, the majority of those released so far – 128 of the 180 – were detained and hadn’t been charged, put on trial or given an opportunity to defend themselves. Some say they weren’t even told why they were being detained.

Some of the Palestinians were held under a murky military justice system that theoretically allows Israel to hold people for indefinite periods without trial or a charge.

Israel has been operating two distinct justice systems in the West Bank since it captured the area in 1967. Palestinians living there fall under the jurisdiction of Israel’s military court system, where judges and prosecutors are uniformed Israeli soldiers. Meanwhile, Jewish settlers there are subject to civilian courts.

B’Tselem, The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, a non-governmental organization, says the courts “serve as one of the central systems maintaining Israel’s control over the Palestinian people.”

Shahin said that while in detention, she was denied access to a lawyer and was barred from speaking to her family, as she recovered from life-changing injuries that she suffered during her arrest.

Administrative detention

Before the truce came into effect last week, the Israeli Ministry of Justice published a list of 300 Palestinian prisoners and detainees eligible for release under the exchange agreement.

A majority of people on the list hadn’t been charged or sentenced for any crime.

Instead, according to the document, some were either detained or held under administrative detention, a controversial procedure that allows Israeli authorities to hold people indefinitely on security grounds without trial or charge, sometimes based on evidence that isn’t made public.

It is also used by Israel as a preventative measure: people are detained not for what they have done, but for future offenses they allegedly planned to commit.

Many of the detainees held under the policy have no idea why they are being imprisoned, because evidence against them is classified.

“This leaves the detainees helpless – facing unknown allegations with no way to disprove them, not knowing when they will be released, and without being charged, tried or convicted,” according to B’Tselem.

Under Israeli law, people can be held in administrative detention for up to six months, but the term can be renewed indefinitely.

According to data obtained from the Israel Prison Service (IPS) by B’Tselem, of the more than 1,300 Palestinians that were held in administrative detention as of September, about half had been detained for more than six months.

The IDF legal adviser said that the administrative detention law is in line with international law frameworks and complies with the Geneva Convention. However, the official admitted it was possible that in some cases, the law was used in a “heavy-handed” way.

Israel has been widely criticized for its use of the policy. When prominent Palestinian activist and former Islamic Jihad spokesperson Khader Adnan died in Israeli prison after an 87-day hunger strike in May, UN experts called on Israel to end the practice, calling it “cruel” and “inhumane.”

Adnan became a symbol of Palestinian resistance to Israeli detention policies after spending a total of eight years in Israeli jails, mostly under administrative detention. He was never sentenced.

Despite the criticism, the number of administrative detainees held in Israeli facilities has been rising steadily.

As of September, the number was at its highest in more than three decades, surpassing the previous record set at the height of the Second Palestinian Intifada (uprising) in 2003, according to data obtained by B’Tselem and HaMoked, an Israeli NGO that focuses on human rights law and provides free legal aid to Palestinians.

Children in detention

The events of recent days have also put the spotlight on another issue that Israel has been criticized for: the detention of children aged 18 or younger.

According to B’Tselem, the Israel Prison Service was holding 146 Palestinian minors on what it defined as security grounds as of September.

Under Israeli law, children as young as 12 can be imprisoned for up to six months. Minors are sent to military prisons alongside adults.

A majority of those released so far through the exchange deal are teenagers between the ages of 16 and 18, but Israel’s list of people eligible for release also includes five 14-year-olds and seven 15-year-olds.

Malak Salman was 16 when she was arrested in 2016 for an alleged attempted stabbing of an Israeli police officer in Jerusalem. Israeli authorities said no one was injured, but she was convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to 10 years in a military prison. After an appeal, the sentence was reduced to nine years.

Salman was one of the prisoners released on Friday, after serving almost eight of those nine years. She was finally reunited with her family in Jerusalem, but her family wasn’t allowed to celebrate.

Israeli authorities have banned celebrations surrounding the releases of the Palestinian prisoners after Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir said that “expressions of joy are a support for terrorism” and that “celebrations of victory give strength to those same human scum.” Ben Gvir was previously convicted of inciting racism against Arabs and supporting a terrorist organization.

Since the deadly October 7 terror attacks by Hamas on Israel, Israel Police have used the Counter Terrorism Law to widen a crackdown on Palestinians.

Article 24 of this legislation states that anyone who does anything to “empathize with a terror group” whether that is by “publishing praises, support or encouraging, waving a flag, showing or publishing a symbol” can be arrested and jailed for up to three years.

After the Hamas attacks last month, Palestinians have been arrested after expressing solidarity with civilians in Gaza and sharing verses from Quran on social media, among other reasons.

Referring to celebrations by the families of freed detainees, Ben Gvir said on Thursday that “the policy here is very, very, very clear – not to allow these expressions of joy, and resolutely strive to make contact and stop any support for these Nazis.”

Like the rest of the Palestinians held by Israel, children are put through the Israeli military court system, which means their rights are limited and not in line with international juvenile justice system standards.

According to a report by Save the Children earlier this year, between an estimated 500 and 1,000 children are held in Israeli military detention each year.

Many of the children are held for stone throwing, it said, an offense that carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison under Israeli law.

Earlier this year, the organization said that its survey of Palestinian children detained by the Israeli military showed that 86% reported being beaten, 70% said they were threatened with harm and 69% reported being strip searched during interrogation.

Search and rescue operations are underway after a US special operations aircraft crashed off the shore of Japan’s Yakushima Island on Wednesday.

The aircraft, an Air Force CV-22B Osprey assigned to the 353rd Special Operations Wing, was carrying eight airmen when it experienced an “aircraft mishap” during a “routine training mission,” according to Air Force Special Operations Command.

“Emergency personnel are on scene conducting search and rescue operations,” Air Force Special Operations Command said in a release. “The cause of the mishap is currently unknown.”

The Japanese Coast Guard was notified of the crash at roughly 2:47 p.m. local time, the spokesperson said. Since the crash, the government of Japan’s Okinawa Prefecture has requested to ground all Ospreys on the island chain, though the US military official said no stand-down has been ordered thus far.

“Given the concerns over the danger of Ospreys, as such unexpected incident became a reality, the only thing I can say is I regret it very much,” Okinawa Gov. Denny Tamaki said at a news conference.

The aircraft can conduct long-range infiltration, exfiltration and resupply missions for special operations forces. It can conduct missions that would require both rotary-wing and fixed-wing aircraft.

The Osprey has a history of mechanical and operational issues that have resulted in service member fatalities dating back to 1992. Wednesday’s crash comes just months after three US Marines were killed while flying in a MV-22B Osprey during a military exercise in Australia.

But statistically, the V-22’s mishap rate is lower than other aircraft. Marine aviation spokesman Maj. Jorge Hernandez told Marine Corps Times in 2022 that the Marine variant of the aircraft, the MV-22, had a mishap rate of 3.16 per 100,000 flight hours.

Wednesday’s incident also comes roughly two weeks after five Army special operations aviators were killed in a training flight crash in the eastern Mediterranean Sea.

This story has been updated with additional details.

Warning: This article contains disturbing descriptions about the practices of colonial settlers in Tasmania and violence against Tasmanian Aboriginal peoples.

Colonial settlers of the Victorian era were often complicit in atrocities committed against native populations — and new research is unveiling just how those stories intertwine with the lineage of museum specimens still on display today.

New details about the misdeeds of one prolific collector of human and animal remains are detailed in a paper by Jack Ashby, the assistant director at Cambridge University’s Museum of Zoology in the United Kingdom. The study, published Tuesday in the peer-reviewed journal Archives of Natural History, shines a light on past injustices and raises questions about the legitimacy of some academic honors bestowed on scientists of the era.

A review of letters and other documents about the British colonist Morton Allport, who lived on the Australian island of Tasmania in the 1800s, showed he explicitly requested scientific accolades in exchange for providing skins or bones of Tasmanian tigers and Aboriginal Tasmanian people — which he obtained by gruesome means — to European museums.

“In all, Allport shipped five Tasmanian Aboriginal skeletons to Europe, proudly identifying himself as the most prolific trader in Tasmanian bodily remains,” according to the study.

Most of the human remains have since been repatriated or were destroyed during war, according to the study, though one skeleton remains in a Belgium museum. But as many as 12 skeletons and skins of carnivorous marsupials called Tasmanian tigers, or thylacines, obtained by Allport are still at the Cambridge University’s Museum of Zoology where Ashby works, serving as a dark reminder of how modern science intersects with colonial genocide and brutality.

“Thinking about what happened to the people in Tasmania, what happened to thylacines and other species in Tasmania … these are entwined with the human and the environmental cost of the colonial projects,” Ashby said.

A backdrop of brutality

Allport, born in 1830, moved from Great Britain to Tasmania with his family as an infant as the violence against and displacement of Indigenous peoples in the colony reached its height.

The colonial government allowed settlers to murder Tasmanian Aboriginal people without punishment and, in 1830, even established a bounty for the capture of Indigenous humans and Tasmanian tigers, or thylacines. The result was the murder or displacement of most of the Indigenous population, driving the number of Aboriginal people from around 6,000 in 1804 down to fewer than 300 by the time Allport arrived on the island, according to the study.

The study relied on historical documents to show that the colonists, employing racist ideas about evolution and “natural selection,” believed that both native humans and animal species were inferior and destined for extinction.

As the local population of native peoples dwindled, the scarcity drove a demand for tokens of their existence in the form of skeletal remains — a market that Allport was eager to supply, according to the study.

It incentivized Allport to purchase and resell or donate the remains of thylacines, which today are believed to be extinct, largely because of colonial actions.

And it spurred him to engage in the brutal acts of grave robbing and corpse mutilation.

William Lanne

The paper details the horrific story behind the remains of one Indigenous person, William Lanne, who was thought to be the last Tasmanian Aboriginal man alive before his death in 1869.

Lanne’s body was taken to a local hospital with plans for burial. But a man under Allport’s direction and another colonist collector, William Crowther, each broke into the hospital on separate occasions before the burial and stole various parts of Lanne’s corpse, according to the study.

Allport even ordered the exhumation of Lanne’s grave after the Aboriginal man’s burial to retrieve what was left of his skeleton, the study states.

The actions were met with public backlash, causing Crowther to lose a respected position at the local hospital.

But both men went on to high-status positions in the colony, and Allport’s role in the desecration of Lanne’s remains has been scarcely publicized, according to the study.

Crowther became Tasmania’s elected premier and later had a statue erected in his honor in the state’s capital. (In 2022, after extensive campaigning by Aboriginal groups, the local city council voted to remove the statue.)

And, from 1870 to 1878, Allport enjoyed a seat as the vice president of the Royal Society of Tasmania, an organization dedicated to science and culture that was modeled after the Royal Society in London. It was while he was serving in that position that the Royal Society of Tasmania exhumed the hidden remains of the last known surviving Tasmanian Aboriginal woman, Truganini, who died in 1876, according to the study.

Truganini had explicitly requested to be cremated to avoid having her remains become a museum exhibit. The Royal Society defied those wishes, displaying her skeleton until 1947, Ashby writes.

Some Aboriginal Tasmanian people did survive colonial persecution, Ashby added, though at brutal costs.

“Many Aboriginal women had been kidnapped by whalers, sealers and other settlers and taken to Bass Strait islands and Kangaroo Island,” where they were often tortured, enslaved and raped, according to the study. Their descendants make up today’s Tasmanian Aboriginal community, Ashby said.

Though Allport was not directly implicated in the murder of any individual Tasmanian Aboriginals, Ashby said, the collector’s writings make clear he recognized and even “savored” the impacts of colonization.

The extinction of Tasmanian tigers

The study also recounts how Allport sought out the carcasses of Tasmanian tigers, which were already widely persecuted because of the belief that the animals were a threat to colonial livestock. (The more likely culprit for livestock killings were dogs trained by colonists to hunt kangaroos, the study notes. Very few sheep were killed by thylacines, according to historical records, while hundreds were killed by dogs.)

To obtain the specimens, Allport relied on a network of “friends,” who likely retrieved the remains from trappers and farmworkers, according to the study.

Allport would then take credit for collecting the thylacines and submit the specimens to European museums, including Musée Royal d’Histoire Naturelle in Brussels, Belgium, the British Museum in London, and the University Museum of Zoology at Cambridge.

Allport explicitly requested “quid pro quo” commendations for handing over the remains, according to his letters. And he was lavished with titles, receiving “accolades from elite international scientific institutions,” the study states. Two species of fish were also named in Allport’s honor.

It’s not clear why Allport sought recognition over financial gain. It could be that Allport’s other businesses — which included mining — were successful enough that Allport was not financially driven, seeking instead to bolster his own status and that of the Tasmanian colony, Ashby said.

But the recognition came even though Allport did little to advance scientific understanding, Ashby said. And it raises the question of how many other acclaimed “scientists” of the era took part in similar practices.

Grappling with a violent legacy

Ashby said that the thylacine specimens at the Cambridge museum are valuable for modern science, offering information about parasites and population genetics. But Ashby believes there is a duty to also share the violent history of the artifacts.

Ashby added that it has only been in roughly the past five years that natural history museums have “woken up to the idea that our collections have colonial legacies — which sounds crazy.”

“We’re not being honest as institutions by not telling these stories,” Ashby said. “We are purported to be scientific, apolitical institutions, but a huge amount of decisions go into how museums present nature.”

Professor Rebecca Kilner, head of the university’s department of zoology, said in a statement that the organization has long appreciated that “natural history can help us understand more about the natural world and how to conserve it.”

“We now (realize) that the social history behind our collections is just as important,” Kilner said.