Palestinians displaced inside Gaza as Israel pushes on with its ground offensive describe cramped living conditions, sky-high prices for food, children going hungry and poor sanitation, amid severe limits on food and supplies entering the coastal strip.

“The way I am getting by is by begging here and there and taking help from anyone,” said Abu Misbah, a 51-year-old building worker trying to support a family of 10.

Vegetables and fruit were unaffordable, he said. His children asked for oranges, but he was not able to buy them.

“We never [been] through this situation before; we were a middle-class family,” he said. “Now since the war we are buying dates which we used to find everywhere for free. We want a solution to our miserable suffering.”

He, like most others in blockaded Gaza, face what aid groups warn is a looming famine. The entire population of Gaza has already been classified in a state of crisis, according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC).

Israel closed its border with Gaza and launched an intensive bombing campaign in response to Hamas’ October 7 attacks, followed by an ongoing ground invasion. The fighting has triggered a humanitarian crisis throughout the Palestinian territory, forcing thousands from their homes.

This week Israel expanded its operation further into southern Khan Younis, warning residents to leave. But the United Nations says Gazans have nowhere safe to go.

‘What kind of life is this?’

Umm Omar, 50, is also displaced in Rafah, and lives in a tent with her family. During the truce, they had briefly returned home only to find all the windows and solar panels broken, and the kitchen destroyed.

“We are nine people in a tent of two meters by one meter,” she said. “We have bought this camping tent ourselves; no-one helped us or provided it.”

Omar said they were getting by on canned food and estimated that most foods were at least four times as expensive as before the war. Medication is also hard to find.

Mahmoud Harara used to make a living selling produce from a cart. Now the 47-year old, from Al-Shujaiya, is also in Rafah, living with eight family members in the streets, including five school-age children.

“My house was destroyed and two of my sons injured from a strike of our home,” he said.

Like thousands of others, the family live in a makeshift tent made of nylon and roam the streets for food. They left home without any belongings and had no mattresses for the tent. Harara said his family was receiving no help, and the price of food was “beyond imagination…Your child asks you for a piece of bread and you can’t provide that for them. What kind of life is this?”

Harara said he walks three kilometers to a hospital to be able to use toilets. The lack of sanitation for the displaced now packed into parts of southern Gaza has led to the spread of contagious and respiratory diseases.

It was also extremely difficult to access drinking water and his children were cold at nights, he said. None of the family had been able to take a shower in several weeks.

Aid groups warn of famine conditions

In recent days, crowds of civilians desperate for food have been seen surrounding aid trucks coming into Gaza. The United Nations has warned that the humanitarian situation in southern Gaza is deteriorating and warned that the volume of aid entering the enclave “remains woefully inadequate.”

The youngest children in Gaza face high risk of severe malnutrition and preventable death as the risk of famine conditions continues to increase, according to a UNICEF statement last week.

The children’s aid organization estimated that in the coming weeks, “at least 10,000 children under five years will suffer the most life-threatening form of malnutrition, known as severe wasting, and will need therapeutic foods.”

“The threat of dying from hunger is already real” for many families in Gaza, UNICEF added.

An IPC report the same week found that that approximately all of Gaza’s 2.2 million residents are now facing acute hunger and the entire population of the Gaza Strip is classified in a state of crisis – the highest share of people facing catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity that the IPC initiative has ever classified.

“Many adults go hungry so children can eat,” IPC reported, saying humanitarian access must be restored throughout the region to enable the rapid delivery of life-saving aid.

The organization added that “the IPC has emphasized that these conditions do not have to persist. Yesterday’s warning of famine in the coming weeks and months can still be averted. But we must act now.”

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has repeatedly said that a ceasefire is necessary to deliver aid to Gaza’s population at scale, and has warned of a potential “catastrophe with potentially irreversible consequences” in the making.

“Amid constant bombardment by the Israel Defence Forces, and without shelter or the essentials to survive, I expect public order to break down soon due to the desperate situation, rendering even limited humanitarian assistance impossible,” he said.

An election boycotted by the main opposition as the world’s longest serving female prime minister looks set to extend her rule.

A cricket legend and former prime minister languishing in prison versus a one-time fugitive looking to make a comeback as a powerful military keeps watch.

A populist leader hoping to enter his second decade in power as he pushes a popular but religiously divisive brand of politics.

And an island nation recovering from its worst economic crisis in decades after protesters stormed the presidential palace.

Four South Asian countries are expected to head to the polls next year, in a grand test for democracy that will see nearly 2 billion people across Bangladesh, Pakistan, India and Sri Lanka cast their ballots from January through September.

All former colonies who gained independence from Britain within the last century, each are at a different stage of growth and facing a variety of crises and opportunities.

Here’s what you need to know about democracy’s greatest show.

Bangladesh

Bangladesh, a country of some 170 million people, is the first to cast votes on January 7.

The once multiparty democracy is being threatened as its ruling Awami League party continues what rights groups say is a campaign to silence dissent, pushing the republic toward something more closely resembling a one-party state.

Sheikh Hasina, current Prime Minister and chair of the Awami Party, is likely to be reelected as the country’s leader for a fourth consecutive term.

Hasina has been in power since 2009 and won the last election in December 2019, in a poll marred in deadly violence and accusations of poll rigging.

Missing then was her primary opponent Khaleda Zia, a former prime minister and chief of the main opposition, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), who was jailed the year before on corruption charges.

For much of the past three decades, politics in Bangladesh has been defined by a bitter rivalry between the two women, who both saw their politician father and husband respectively assassinated in office. Political turmoil has followed into the second generation.

Zia, 78, now lives under house arrest and her BNP continues to face mounting challenges by Hasina and her ruling dispensation with the mass arrest of its politicians.

The situation has led to protests, and the BNP has decided to boycott the election again, paving the way for Hasina once more.

“The government is claiming to commit to free and fair elections with diplomatic partners while the state authorities are simultaneously filling prisons with the ruling Awami League’s political opponents,” said Julia Bleckner, senior Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch, in a November statement.

“A free election is impossible when the government stifles free expression and systematically incapacitates the opposition, critics, and activists through arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearance, harassment, and intimidation,” Bleckner added.

Yet, the country – which is aspiring to become a middle-income country by 2031 – is experiencing an era of economic growth. Much of this is because of the garment manufacturing industry, which accounts for 35.1% of Bangladesh’s annual gross domestic product, according to the US Commerce Department.

“Since it’s come into being, Bangladesh has always had political instability, but they’ve managed to have very good growth rate” said Sreeradha Dutta, professor of international affairs at OP Jindal Global University and author of “Bangladesh on a New Journey – Moving Beyond Regional Identity.”

She added also that the country is building strong relations with key neighbors in the region.

“So irrespective whoever the leader is, the same developmental models will be picked up… because Bangladesh aspires to be something much larger than what it currently is.”

Pakistan

Ruled for much of its 76 years by political dynasties or military establishments, no democratically elected leader has ever completed a full five-year term since Pakistan won independence.

In recent years the country of 230 million has seen the all-too-familiar mix of political instability and militant attacks percolate alongside a particularly acute economic crisis that has been brutal on both middle and lower income families.

Imran Khan, the country’s former prime minister and arguably the most popular figurehead, is languishing behind bars, charged with fraud and facing charges for revealing state secrets – leaving him unable to contest in the upcoming polls in February.

Khan, who was ousted from power in a parliamentary no-confidence vote last year, says the charges against him are politically motivated and framed to stop him from standing in the election, an allegation authorities deny.

TV stations are banned from running Khan’s speeches, and many of his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party colleagues have been arrested.

In October, Nawaz Sharif, the fugitive former prime minister of Pakistan, returned to the South Asian nation after nearly four years in self-exile, skirting arrest and stirring up the country’s already fraught political scene and leaving many to believe he is bidding for the top seat once again.

The country, meanwhile, faces mounting challenges – from economic uncertainty and frequent militant attacks to climate catastrophes that are putting millions at risk – setting the stage for a difficult road to recovery for its new leadership.

“Political and economic uncertainty go hand in hand,” said Fahd Humayun, assistant professor of political science & Neubauer faculty fellow at the department of political science at Tufts University.

“And any government coming to power through suspicious elections is not only likely to be on a weak footing and reliant on the military for its political survival but will also be unlikely to attract the capital inflows so badly needed.”

India

Often called the world’s largest experiment in democracy, India is expected to head to the polls in the spring, in a mammoth election that is likely to see Prime Minister Narendra Modi secure a rare third term in power.

The populist leader of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has tightened his grip on India’s democratic institutions in way not seen since 1970s, when Indira Gandhi ruled the country with an iron fist, pushing it toward autocracy.

But on the world stage, India has arguably never been more significant.

Modi, whose calendar this year included diplomatic trips to Australia and the United States, is presenting himself as a statesman who is cementing the country as a modern superpower. And 2023 has been a remarkable year for India’s 1.4 billion people.

This year was the moment it overtook China to become the world’s most-populous nation, while the year before it surpassed its former colonial ruler Britain to become the world’s fifth-largest economy.

In August, India made history by soft landing a rover on the moon, becoming just the fourth nation in the world to have completed such a feat – and it launched its first spacecraft dedicated to studying the sun weeks after.

The country hosted the Group of 20 (G20) in September, presenting New Delhi with an opportunity to extend its leadership beyond the country’s borders at a time of increasing political turmoil.

Yet, since his first election nearly a decade ago, critics also say the once secular and democratic founding ethos of the world’s largest democracy is crumbling at alarming speed, with minorities feeling persecuted under the BJP’s majoritarian policies and any criticism of the government facing censorship and harsh punishment.

Squaring off against Modi is a newly formed alliance of 26 political parties known as INDIA, which includes the country’s main opposition, the Indian National Congress.

But in its most recent gauge of voter sentiment, the Congress party lost three out of four regional votes in key state elections in December, giving a boost to Modi and his BJP.

As the election draws close, analysts say Indian politics remains unpredictable, and much can change as the parties gear up to campaign in the months ahead.

“People are hoping there will be a challenge to Modi, that the opposition parties can get their act together. That dream that seemed possible even three months ago now looks more difficult,” said C. Raja Mohan, senior fellow at Asia Society Policy Institute, during a recent talk with the Asia Society.

“But even six months is a long time in politics.”

Sri Lanka

Nearly two years ago, Sri Lanka’s then-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa was forced to flee his country after angry protesters stormed his residence in anger, blaming him for the country’s worst economic crisis in 73 years.

It was a remarkable moment for a protest movement that thrust the bankrupt nation of 22 million into the global spotlight after inflation soared and foreign reserves dwindled, leaving millions unable to afford food, fuel and medicines.

Rajapaksa resigned from his post, paving the way for current President Ranil Wickremesinghe to take over.

In elections expected before September, Wickremesinghe is likely to stand for a second term, months after he helped secure a much-needed loan from the International Monetary Fund and made sweeping reforms to the budget to ensure financial growth.

Sri Lanka hasn’t had a general election since 2018, and Wickremesinghe has repeatedly delayed the polls due to the economic crisis.

As the economy – and the country’s people – recover, a date for the election is yet to be announced and it remains to be seen whether 2024 will be the year the country’s people decide on its future leader.

At least 20 people, including two children, were killed and 111 others injured in a Ukrainian attack on the Russian city of Belgorod on Saturday, Russia’s Ministry of Emergency Situations has said.

The deaths were the result of a “massive” attack on downtown Belgorod, according to Russian state news agency TASS, quoting the emergencies ministry.

“This crime will not go unpunished,” the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement.

“The Kiev regime … is trying to divert attention from the defeats on the front lines and to provoke us into taking similar actions.”

Following the attack, Russia requested an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council, Russia’s First Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN, Dmitry Polyanskiy, said Saturday.

Saturday’s shelling comes after Russia launched overnight Thursday into Friday its biggest air attack on Ukraine since the start of its full-scale invasion, resulting in at least 40 deaths and more than 150 injuries.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has been briefed about the attack in Belgorod, the Kremlin said, ordering a health ministry team and emergencies ministry rescuers to be sent to the city to help those affected.

About 40 civilian facilities have been damaged in the city due to the shelling, which caused 10 fires which have since been extinguished.

Russian authorities said Belgorod was also shelled Friday night with one civilian killed, the region’s governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said. Four others, including a child, were injured, he added.

On Saturday, a child also died as a result of Ukrainian shelling in Russia’s Bryansk region, the region’s Governor Aleksandr Bogomaz said.

Russia’s defense ministry said it destroyed 32 Ukrainian UAVs flying over the Russian regions of Bryansk, Oryol, Mursk, and Moscow, according to a Telegram post by the defense ministry Saturday.

Ukraine has not publicly commented on the incidents and rarely claims responsibility for attacks on its neighbor.

Rescuers comb through Kyiv rubble

The toll from the Russian strikes on Ukraine – which saw an unprecedented number of drones and missiles fired at targets across the country – meanwhile continued to mount.

A 77-year-old man died from his injuries in the city of Odesa, Oleh Kiper, the head of the Odesa region military administration said, bringing the total killed to 40.

The man was critically injured when a missile hit a three-storey building in the center of Odesa, Kiper added.

Schools, a maternity hospital, shopping arcades and blocks of flats were among the buildings hit in Friday’s barrage, prompting widespread international condemnation and renewing calls for more military aid.

The toll in the capital Kyiv rose to at least 16, after the bodies of more civilians were recovered from the rubble of a warehouse, Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko said Saturday. All the deaths in Kyiv occurred at the warehouse.

“The attack on the capital city on December 29 was the largest in terms of civilian casualties” since the start of the full-scale invasion, he said.

“Rescuers are working and will continue to clear the rubble until tomorrow,” Klitschko said. “January 1 will be declared a Day of Mourning in Kyiv.”

During the wave of strikes, Poland’s military authorities claimed that an “unidentified airbourne object” briefly entered its airspace.

Russia said it would not give any any explanation “until concrete evidence is presented.”

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg wrote on X that NATO remained vigilant over the incident.

The European Council has decided to enlarge the border-free Schengen area to include Bulgaria and Romania, the council’s Spanish presidency said Saturday.

Controls on air and sea borders will be lifted as of March 2024, and discussions on lifting controls at land borders will continue in the new year, according to a statement by the European Commission.

“An enlarged Schengen area will make the EU stronger as a Union, internally and on the global stage,” the commission said, welcoming both countries.

The Schengen area currently offers unrestricted travel within a territory of 26 countries (of which 22 are EU countries), and includes more than 400 million citizens, making it the largest area of free movement in the world, according to the Commission.

The decision to add Bulgaria and Romania was unanimously approved by the European Council, the commission also said, noting that it had sent multiple “fact-finding missions” in 2022 and 2023 to the countries’ external borders to confirm their readiness to join Schengen.

European Council President Charles Michel sent his congratulations to Romania and Bulgaria via X, calling it “a long awaited step for Romanian and Bulgarian citizens to enjoy easier freedom of movement with the perspective of land transport to come.”

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen described the decision as “a historic moment for Bulgaria and Romania. And a day of great pride for Romanian and Bulgarian citizens… This is a major step forward for both countries and for the Schengen area as a whole.”

Romania and Bulgaria also hailed the decision, with Romanian Foreign Minister Luminita Odobescu writing on X, that it is “an important outcome for Romania’s citizens. Our thanks to all EU partners and institutions for the support. Romania remains committed to a strong and secure Schengen area.”

Romanian President Klaus Iohannis echoed his foreign minister’s comments, saying on X, it “is a an important step for the benefit of the Romanian people.”

Meanwhile Bulgaria’s Foreign Minister Mariya Gabriel posted on X that “today Schengen becomes stronger with Bulgaria and Romania.”

The former leader of a Hong Kong pro-independence group said Thursday he had fled to Britain to seek asylum in breach of a police supervision order, joining a growing list of pro-democracy activists living in self-imposed exile overseas following Beijing’s crackdown on the city.

In a Facebook post, Tony Chung, 22, said he had faced “stringent surveillance” by national security police following his release from prison in June after serving a sentence for secession under a tough security law. He also claimed officers had exploited his poor financial situation in an attempt to induce him to become a paid informant.

“I feared stepping out of my home, feared using the phone in public, and worried about the possibility of being detained again by national security police officers on the streets,” he said. “Every meeting with the national security police officers filled me with dread, fearing that they may accuse me of endangering national security and would demand me to prove my innocence.”

Chung said he traveled to Britain via Japan after obtaining permission from police to go on a Christmas trip to Okinawa.

He joins an exodus of activists that have fled since Beijing imposed a sweeping national security law on Hong Kong more than three years ago, following nearly a year of pro-democracy protests that rocked the city.

Critics of Hong Kong’s national security law – which criminalizes secession, subversion, terrorism, and collusion with foreign powers and carries a maximum punishment of life imprisonment – say it has been used to crush the city’s opposition movement, overhaul its electoral system, silence its outspoken media and cripple its once-vibrant civil society.

But the Hong Kong government and Chinese authorities have repeatedly rejected such criticisms and said the law helped the city “restore stability” following the 2019 protests.

Earlier this month, Agnes Chow, one of the most prominent faces of the pro-democracy movement, revealed she had fled to Canada and would not return to Hong Kong to meet bail conditions as police investigate allegations she endangered national security.

Hong Kong police have recently placed HK$1 million ($128,000) bounties on a number of democracy activists living in self-imposed exile in a move condemned by the United States and United Kingdom.

All of those wanted now live in the US, Canada, Britain and Australia, which have suspended their extradition treaties with Hong Kong due to concerns over the security law.

Teenage activist

Chung was just a teenager when he became involved in politics.

In 2016, he co-founded Studentlocalism, a pro-independence group, which disbanded shortly before Beijing imposed the national security law in 2020.

At the time, those advocating for independence from China were a minority very much on the fringe of Hong Kong’s once broad democracy movement. But during the huge and sometimes violent democracy protests that raged for months in 2019, calls for greater autonomy, and even independence, became more commonplace, alarming Beijing.

Beijing imposed its new national security law on Hong Kong the following year.

A few months after the law was enacted, Chung was detained by Hong Kong police on secession charges under the security law amid reports he planned to claim for asylum at the US consulate.

In 2021, he was sentenced to a total of 43 months in prison for trying to separate the city from China, and for money laundering.

He was released in June and was put under a one-year supervision order by police.

But Chung claimed that national security police have arbitrarily tightened their surveillance, requesting meetings with him every two to four weeks, questioning him on every detail of his activities, including information about the people he was in contact with and the content of their conversations.

He said authorities also imposed restrictions making it difficult for him to find temporary jobs. Chung speculated that authorities learned of his financial struggles and proposed to pay him informant fees.

“In the past six months with no income from any work, the national security police officers kept on coercing and inducing me to join them,” Chung said on Facebook.

Chung said national security police officers in September also suggested taking him on a trip to mainland China. He said he feared being extradited to the mainland and turned down the proposal.

Before she fled to Canada, fellow activist Chow also claimed that as condition to get her passport back from police, she had to travel in August with authorities to the mainland Chinese city of Shenzhen, just across the border from Hong Kong.

A Hong Kong police statement earlier this month confirmed they had returned Chow’s passport to allow her to study overseas and prolonged her bail. It did not address her account of the trip to Shenzhen.

If 2023 was the year British politics got stuck in traffic, 2024 should be the year it gets moving again.

At some point in the next 12 months, it is expected that the United Kingdom will hold an election some would argue is long overdue.

Not constitutionally overdue: Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is not obliged to call an election until 17 December 2024, exactly five years since the last one took place.

Overdue in the sense that the incumbent Conservative government’s mandate – won in 2019 on Boris Johnson’s optimistic, pre-Covid, post-Brexit platform – belongs to a different decade.

The UK is going through a difficult patch.

There is a cost-of-living crisis. Inflation and interest rates are very high by comparison with any period of time in the past decade. Public services, already struggling to keep up with demand, have been stretched further by rising costs and strike action, leading to longer waits for hospital treatment.

There is a shortage of affordable housing and frequent strikes disrupt rail services. And all of this is happening at a time when the tax burden is historically high.

Many of these problems were inherited by Sunak when he took over from Liz Truss in October 2022. Since coming into office, Sunak’s primary objective has been to steady the ship after his two predecessors, Truss and Johnson before her, oversaw such chaotic governments that they were both forced from office as Conservative polling numbers fell through the floor.

Sunak has since done his best to patch the hole in his sinking ship. But, more often than not, he and his government look stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Politically, Sunak is in an undesirable position. The biggest threat to his authority comes from the right of his own base – both within the party and among right-wing voters. Their key concerns include immigration (net migration for 2022 was upgraded by the Office for National Statistics to a record high of 745,000 in November), so-called culture wars issues and any perceived betrayal of the Brexit vote in 2016.

He is blamed by many in his party for the political assassination of Johnson. Sunak served as Johnson’s chancellor (finance minister) from February 2020 to July 2022. During the Covid-19 pandemic, he was a key part of Johnson’s crisis government and was at times lauded for the financial support he provided businesses and individuals during the toughest periods of lockdown.

However, the overlapping scandals of Johnson’s government – ranging from breaking his own Covid rules to appointing a key ally known for sexual harassment – made Johnson too toxic for Sunak, leading him to step down in July 2022.

Sunak’s resignation – which was followed by a string of others – was seen by ultra-committed Johnson allies as the defining moment in his downfall. They have never forgiven Sunak for his betrayal.

Johnson’s exit from office created an acute division in the Conservative Party. Johnson is widely seen as both the architect and deliverer of Brexit, making him the champion of the Conservative right.

Even though Sunak is, in many ways, to the right of Johnson, his perceived treachery means loyal Johnsonites will never trust him.

This has created a headache for Sunak, who must simultaneously appease the right of the party with red-meat policy while also presenting to the wider public as the anti-Johnson: a sensible, calm, technocratic leader stabilizing the country during difficult times.

Balancing act

Sunak has refused to cut taxes and fostered friendlier relations with the European Union – unpopular with the right of his party – while also pushing back green policies and making lots of noise on culture war issues like immigration and trans rights.

His impossible balancing act is perhaps best illustrated by two decisions he made this autumn. In October, Sunak junked HS2, a high-speed rail project connecting the north and south of England that was signed off under former Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron. This decision was taken to appease some on the right of the party who saw it as an unnecessary waste of money that Cameron should have never introduced.

Weeks later, Cameron – a liberal reformer who led the campaign against Brexit – was appointed as Sunak’s new foreign secretary, to the dismay of many on the party’s right. An unfriendly headline in the Conservative-supporting Daily Telegraph newspaper recently read: “David Cameron’s return has put the pro-EU, anti-Israel blob back in charge.”

It isn’t just right-wing media commentators who are publicly laying into Sunak and his government.

Johnson himself has recently started a weekly column in the Daily Mail newspaper, from which he has lobbed grenades at his successor. The firebrand Brexiteer Nigel Farage has a daily TV show in which he rages about immigration and Brexit. One of Johnson’s biggest allies, former cabinet minister Nadine Dorries, has written a book all about the apparent plot to remove Johnson from office, in which she claims Sunak had a starring role.

It’s here that we come back to the election and the fact that it is overdue.

All the issues described above can in some way be filed under “party management.” So much of what Sunak and his government spend their time talking about seems to be aimed at a very small audience of Conservative MPs and party members. It often feels that niche issues are driving the political narrative in a country that has bigger and more important things to be worrying about.

And for all the energy – and even moderate successes of Sunak’s premiership to date – the polls have barely budged, with the Conservatives still trailing the opposition Labour Party by double digits. Which raises the question: Why is Sunak, the third Conservative prime minister since the last election, ­waiting to give the public a say?

Biding time

Allies of the prime minister point out that the UK does not elect leaders, but MPs whose parties can form governments. Parliaments are then typically given five years to get on with governing. But a lot has happened in the past five years and, with the best will in the world, it is hard to argue that Johnson’s election manifesto of 2019 is the basis on which Sunak is currently governing.

One likely reason for the delay is that Sunak is waiting to see if his polling numbers improve. Pro-Sunak moderate Conservatives support this even if they think they are ultimately fated to lose the next election.

Sunak is quite within his rights to hang on until the last minute. Who knows, he might even turn around those polling numbers and pull off an improbable win.

Whenever it happens and whatever the outcome, it does feel like Groundhog Day in the UK as the Conservative Party once again is embroiled in turmoil. There is an argument that a break from the rollercoaster of Brexit, Covid and Johnson is a good thing.

But 2019 really does feel like a long time ago, and it’s hard to find anyone who can make a coherent argument that the public should be denied a say in how they are governed for very much longer.

One hundred and twenty miles off the coast of Palawan in the Philippines sits the Sierra Madre, a rusting World War II-era landing vessel that hosts a small contingent of Philippine marines and serves as the infrastructural backbone of an atoll called the Second Thomas Shoal.

In 2016, the Permanent Court of Arbitration at the Hague declared that the shoal belonged to the Philippines and that China has no legal basis to claim historic rights to the bulk of the South China Sea.

Beijing subsequently moved aggressively to underscore its public rejection of the court’s ruling, ramping up construction on numerous man-made islands with military facilities to buttress its assertion of control over almost all the South China Sea.

China’s key tool in all of this has been its huge coast guard – the largest such force in the world.

China Coast Guard ships have rammed, attacked with water cannons, or otherwise forcefully confronted Philippine vessels seeking to resupply or repair the Sierra Madre, and so keep it from breaking up in heavy weather and rough seas – a development that would severely undermine Manila’s continuing hold on the Second Thomas Shoal.

This desperate Filipino race against time has attracted the keen attention of the United States, whose increasingly close ties to Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the Philippines new pro-American leader, have included plans for an expansion of American access to military bases on the Philippine mainland.

As President Biden declared on October 26, “The US defense commitment to the Philippines is ironclad. Any attack on Filipino aircraft, vessels, or armed forces” would automatically trigger Washington’s mutual defense treaty with Manila.

But Chinese behavior contains a deeper threat.

As the Philippine case illustrates, Beijing has long used its massive coast guard as a force to project power, not only in the South China Sea but elsewhere, ignoring international norms, creating facts on the ground (or the sea,) pushing the envelope while daring others to push back.

And some analysts believe that China could soon start to deploy the coast guard to ratchet up the pressure on Taiwan, the democratic island that Beijing has vowed to bring under its control, by persuasion if possible, and force if necessary.

This is especially true with the forthcoming January 13 presidential and legislative elections in Taiwan.

If the island’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, which views Taiwan as a de facto sovereign nation and not part of China, should for the third consecutive time win the island’s presidential poll – it enjoys a small lead in public opinion surveys – the odds of a tough Chinese response will increase significantly.

And even if the more China-friendly Kuomintang (KMT) pulls out an upset and prevails on January 13, it is highly unlikely to meet Chinese expectations for rapid movement towards eventual unification with the mainland – heightening the chances for further Chinese muscle-flexing.

This kind of pressure would create an extraordinarily difficult challenge for Taiwan and the US Navy, especially since the coast guard now has the backing of a Chinese law allowing it to use lethal force in waters which China claims.

“If one day Chinese coast guard ships appear around Taiwan – and they can range up to 10,000 tons – what do the US or Taiwan do?” asks former Taiwan Defense Minister Andrew Yang. “They are coast guard, not navy. They aren’t firing a shot. Do the US or Taiwan fire first?”

The coast guard also makes it easier for the Chinese Communist Party to deploy other tools of coercion it has so far not chosen to use, including moves that could directly threaten foreign companies doing business in Taiwan.

Such steps might include insisting that foreign vessels sailing to the island first undergo customs inspections in nearby Chinese ports or demanding that foreign air carriers serving Taiwanese airports first file flight plans with Chinese authorities.

The possibility that Chinese vessels might at some point inspect foreign commercial ships on the high seas to underscore its Taiwan claims could well lead to international insurers linking maritime insurance rates to compliance with evolving Chinese requirements, creating additional legal, political, and financial pressures on foreign companies doing business in Taiwan — all the while steadily undermining Taiwan’s effort to retain political separation from China.

Beijing has already been conducting almost daily air and naval operations in Taiwan’s self-declared Air Defense Identification Zone. In September, a record 103 sorties were staged in a single day.

More recent incursions have included Chinese aircraft circumnavigating Taiwan, as well as increasingly crossing an informal Taiwan Strait “median line” designed to keep the two sides apart and so reduce the danger of an accidental clash.

Beijing has also challenged US ships in the strait, including an incident in June in which a People’s Liberation Army warship cut across the bow and came within 150 yards of a US guided-missile destroyer as it was transiting the strait with a Canadian frigate. In September, China’s first domestically built aircraft carrier, the Shandong, conducted operations south and then north of Taiwan.

These so-called “gray zone activities” have so far succeeded in giving China the upper hand in the South China Sea. The situation may soon reach a point where Taiwan’s friends and allies will have to confront the challenge of whether they will prove equally effective in and around the democratic island.

While it’s not yet possible for humans to venture to the intriguing ocean worlds in our solar system, NASA is sending a cosmic message in a bottle to Jupiter’s moon Europa that will carry more than 2 million names.

And your name can be one of them if you sign up before the year ends.

The launch of NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft is one of the most anticipated missions of 2024. The probe is expected to lift off from Kennedy Space Center in October and set off on a 1.8 billion-mile (2.9 billion-kilometer) journey to Jupiter’s moon Europa.

After arriving in orbit in 2030, Europa Clipper will spend the next few years flying by the ice-covered moon to see if the ocean beneath it could support life. Europa is among several ocean world moons considered to be one of the best places to search for life beyond Earth.

In addition to a suite of nine science instruments, Europa Clipper will carry a poem written by Ada Limón, the US poet laureate.

As part of her laureateship, Limón wrote “In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa.” The original poem will be engraved in Limón’s handwriting on a tantalum metal plate sealing the spacecraft’s sensitive electronics inside a vault to protect them from Jupiter’s harsh radiation.

The poem will face the inside of the vault, along with microchips stenciled with the names of people who submit to NASA’s Message in a Bottle campaign.

Once all the names have been collected, they will be added to the spacecraft, which is being assembled at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

The space agency offers a continuous live view of Europa Clipper’s assembly on its website.

Technicians will use electron beams to stencil the names on the dime-size silicon chips at JPL’s Microdevices Laboratory. Each name will be smaller than 1/1000th the width of a human hair.

NASA has a long history of sending names to space aboard missions, including Artemis I, the Perseverance rover and Parker Solar Probe.

Europa Clipper is the largest spacecraft NASA has developed for a planetary mission. With its massive solar arrays deployed, Europa Clipper will be more than 100 feet (30.5 meters) across and stand 16 feet (about 5 meters) tall.

After arriving in orbit in April 2030, Europa Clipper is set to make nearly 50 flybys of Europa, eventually coming within 16 miles (25.7 kilometers) above its thick ice crust to survey almost the entirety of that moon.

The spacecraft will use cameras, spectrometers, ice-penetrating radar and a thermal instrument to understand how the moon formed and if it’s possible for life to exist on icy ocean worlds.

Nearly 1,000 new species were discovered in 2023 by scientists at London’s Natural History Museum and the California Academy of Sciences, proving that Earth is still home to many unexplored wonders.

The discoveries were made during a year that marks the 50th anniversary of the US Endangered Species Act, which offers protections for threatened plants and animals and has helped save hundreds of species, according to Scott Sampson, California Academy of Sciences executive director.

“Yet a million more species remain imperiled due to human-driven activities like habitat destruction, climate change, and pollution,” Sampson said in a statement. “We must document the Earth’s living diversity so that we can work to protect it, and the California Academy of Sciences is honored to take part in this critical global effort.”

The diverse list of 968 new species includes previously unknown dinosaurs and extinct creatures, beetles, moths, sea slugs, geckos, fish, frogs, spiders, plants, fungi, worms and a legless skink.

Pest controlling-wasps

Scientists will likely recall 2023 as the year of the wasp. Of the 815 new species described by Natural History Museum researchers this year, 619 of them were different types of pollinating, predatory and parasitic wasps.

The extraordinary number of discoveries was boosted by the work of Dr. John Noyes and Christer Hansson, scientific associates at the Natural History Museum, who are conducting ongoing research to uncover bees, ants and wasps in Costa Rica.

“It is important to keep describing new species because many will have a profound influence on their environment and without knowing what to call them, we cannot convey any information about them,” Noyes said.

Some of the new wasp species showcase a variety of metallic hues, including blue, purple and orange. As a fan of “Doctor Who” and a nod to the British television series marking its 60th year in 2023, Noyes named a genus of wasp after the show’s fictional mutant villains called the Daleks and their creator.

And while wasps may seem like nuisances armed with stingers, the insects help control populations of pests that can plague agricultural crops.

“In the past 60 years or so, three species have been incredibly important. One in preventing the possible starvation of up to 300 million people in Africa, a second preventing the rainforest from destruction in Thailand, and another the collapse of the economy of Togo,” Noyes said.

A legless lizard

A new species of legless lizard was found slithering along the slopes of Serra da Neve, the second-tallest mountain in Angola. Legless lizards, known as skinks, resemble snakes, hiding among leaves on the forest floor to hunt for insects and other small prey.

Skinks differ from snakes in that they have external ear openings and movable eyelids, according to the Virginia Zoo.

While most skinks are uniform in color, the newly described Acontias mukwando has a pink ring around its neck.

Serra da Neve provides a unique ecosystem to the unusual plants and animals that only are found living on the isolated peak. The mountain is on the northern edge of the Namib Desert and has a cool, humid environment.

“Each new species we describe from this mountain — and others like it — is evidence that places like these deserve some sort of conservation consideration,” Academy of Sciences research associate Aaron Bauer said in a statement. “We’re still finding new species on these isolated ‘islands,’ which tells us it’s not too late for protection.”

Puzzling plants

Scientists from the National Polytechnic Institute in Durango, Mexico, worked with Academy of Sciences researchers to study a rare succulent in the Sierra Madre Occidental mountain range.

The plant, which grows out of the side of cliffs, has long been known to the local O’dam Indigenous community. The O’dam people refer to the plant with bald leaves and stems as da’npakal, which means bald, naked or slippery in their language.

Researchers have named the succulent Pachyphytum odam to maintain the connection between the plant and the community living on the land where it grows.

Meanwhile, scientists solved a case of mistaken identity for a flowering plant in Costa Rica. For more than 150 years, the plant was thought to belong to a similar but separate species in Mexico.

The newly identified plant, Stenostephanus purpureus, is different from a plant called Stenostephanus silvaticus found in Mexico. The flowers are different colors, and the Costa Rican plant is missing a flat petal often called a landing pad for butterflies and other insects as they collect pollen. Instead, hummingbirds likely pollinated Stenostephanus purpureus.

“I never questioned the identification of the Costa Rican specimens, not until I did a side-by-side comparison with images of living plants from Mexico,” said Academy of Sciences researcher Ricardo Kriebel in a statement. “The differences between the two are subtle when you’re working with dead, dry specimens from collections.”

A new look into the past

Natural History Museum researchers identified four new species of extinct birds by studying fossils, including those that lived during the time of dinosaurs. One of the most intriguing discoveries of the year was Kumimanu fordycei, the largest penguin that ever existed on Earth. The flightless birds lived 60 million years ago and weighed an estimated 330 pounds (150 kilograms).

A previously unknown type of armored dinosaur species was also found on the Isle of Wight. Known as Dinosaur Island, the Isle of Wight is considered one of the best places to find dinosaur fossils in the United Kingdom.

The ankylosaur, which lived on the island 140 million years ago, was named Vectipelta barretti in honor of Natural History Museum professor Paul Barrett.

“Paul is incredibly influential in our discipline,” said Dr. Susannah Maidment, a paleontologist at the museum who studied the new species, in a statement. “He is incredibly high profile and has contributed an enormous amount to the field. But he’s also had an absolutely enormous influence on all of our careers, and we wanted to thank him for that. So we decided to name a small, slow-moving, spikey organism after him.”

Researchers also named an ancient fungus after beloved children’s book author and illustrator Beatrix Potter. The 400-million-year-old Potteromyces asteroxylicola, found infecting the roots of fossilized plants, is the earliest known disease-causing fungus. In addition to writing the Peter Rabbit books, Potter was an avid mycologist who studied and created detailed depictions of fungi.

South Africa has filed an application at the International Court of Justice to begin proceedings over allegations of genocide against Israel for its war against Hamas in Gaza, the court said on Friday.

South Africa accuses Israel of being “in violation of its obligations under the Genocide Convention” in its application, and argues that “acts and omissions by Israel … are genocidal in character, as they are committed with the requisite specific intent … to destroy Palestinians in Gaza,” according to the ICJ.

Over 21,507 people have been killed in Gaza since October 7, according to the enclave’s Hamas-controlled Health Ministry. Among the dead are at least 308 people who were sheltering in United Nations shelters, per the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees.

Israel has rejected South Africa’s claims and application to the world court, saying through its Ministry of Foreign Affairs that South Africa “is calling for the destruction of the State of Israel, and that its “claim lacks both a factual and a legal basis.”

“Israel is committed to international law and acts in accordance with it, and directs its military efforts only against the Hamas terrorist organization and the other terrorist organizations cooperating with Hamas,” its statement said, adding that it has made “every effort to limit harm to the non-involved and to allow humanitarian aid to enter the Gaza Strip.”

Israel’s aerial bombardment and ground invasion of Gaza, in response to Hamas’ deadly terror attacks and kidnapping rampage on October 7, have caused widespread devastation in the densely-inhabited coastal strip, prompting outcry from aid groups and the international community.

US President Joe Biden said earlier this month that that Israel is engaged in “indiscriminate bombing” in Gaza. US intelligence assessment suggests that nearly half of the air-to-ground munitions that Israel has used in Gaza in its war with Hamas have been unguided, otherwise known as “dumb bombs.” Unguided munitions are typically less precise and can pose a greater threat to civilians.

“South Africa is gravely concerned with the plight of civilians caught in the present Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip due to the indiscriminate use of force and forcible removal of inhabitants,” a statement released by South Africa’s Department of International Relations and Cooperation said on Friday.

“Furthermore, there are ongoing reports of international crimes, such as crimes against humanity and war crimes, being committed as well as reports that acts meeting the threshold of genocide or related crimes as defined in the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, have been and may still be committed in the context of the ongoing massacres in Gaza,” it says.

“As a State Party to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, South Africa is under a treaty obligation to prevent genocide from occurring.”

South Africa and Israel are both parties to the Genocide Convention, according to the ICJ, which is also known as the World Court and is the principal judicial organ of the United Nations.