United Nations Human Rights Chief Volker Türk said he is “alarmed” by reports that Afghan refugees are being abused in Pakistan as the country carries out its policy of forced mass deportation.

In a statement Wednesday, Türk expressed concern at reports that “the arbitrary expulsion of Afghan nationals from Pakistan has been accompanied by abuse, including ill-treatment, arbitrary arrests and detention, destruction of property and personal belongings, and extortion.”

He called on Pakistani authorities to suspend the repatriation programme “until individual assessment procedures and other safeguards required by international law are in place,” and appealed to Islamabad to probe “complaints of abuse by law enforcement officers.”

Pakistan, which is home to more than a million registered Afghan refugees, launched a mass deportation drive asking them to voluntarily leave the country by November 1.

According to the UN, more than 327,000 refugees have been repatriated to Afghanistan from Pakistan, with “many compelled to leave out of fear of arrest.”

The UN has received reports of night raids, confiscation of cash, jewellery, livestock, arbitrary arrests and detentions of Afghan refugees by the local Pakistan police, the statement said.

“Arbitrary arrests and detentions are contrary to Pakistan’s obligations under international law,” Türk added.

The UN Human Rights Chief called on Pakistan authorities to ensure protection for individuals who “may face persecution, torture, ill-treatment or other irreparable harm in Afghanistan, in accordance with the principle of non-refoulement.”

Türk added that women and girls are particularly vulnerable if repatriated involuntarily as the “de facto authorities’ policies and edicts” limit their right to education, access to earning a living, movement and participation in public life.

When the Taliban regained control of the country in August 2021, the radical Islamist group shut down girls’ schools and banned women from attending university. More recently they have closed beauty salons and prevented women from visiting a popular national park.

As of the end of 2022, Pakistan hosted more than 1.3 million registered Afghan refugees and 427,000 people in “refugee-like situations” from Afghanistan, according to the United Nations’ refugee agency.

But their presence in Pakistan has long been controversial, with police crackdowns and threats of deportation in previous years.

Pakistan’s authorities have framed it a crackdown on “illegal immigrants.”

A task force has been formed to “seize people with fake identity cards and illegal properties built on their fake documents,” while the country’s national database and registration body has been ordered to cancel any “fake identity cards” and confirm any cases with DNA testing, authorities said earlier.

Many Afghans fled the Soviet invasion of their country in 1979, settling in Pakistan during the biggest refugee crisis in the world at the time. Another wave took place in 2021 after the Taliban retook Kabul, with thousands of Afghans crossing the Pakistan border, often with incomplete paperwork while waiting for visas to third countries, such as the United States.

Indian authorities trying to rescue dozens of workers trapped for more than 90 hours deep inside a Himalayan mountain have reached out for international help, contacting the Thai team that rescued a boys’ soccer team from a flooded cave in 2018.

The 40 men have been trapped since a tunnel collapsed during construction work in northern Uttarakhand state on Sunday, with rescue efforts becoming more urgent amid reports some are becoming ill.

Four days after the incident, authorities flew in a high-powered drill from the capital New Delhi to begin work on a rescue tunnel early Thursday as anger grew among relatives outside the tunnel’s entrance.

Authorities said they were exploring all options to reach the men, including contacting teams experienced in delicate rescue missions.

“Help is being taken from special teams from Norway and Thailand,” a statement shared by Uttarkashi District Information Officer, Kirti Panwar, said.

“The rescue team has contacted the Thailand company which had rescued the children trapped in the cave,” it added.

Twelve boys and their soccer coach were rescued after nearly three weeks trapped inside the flooded Tham Luang cave by a specialist cave diving team in 2018.

Indian authorities have also reached out to the Norwegian Geotechnical Institute (NGI) to get advice, the statement said.

In a statement Thursday, NGI said its Indian partner, Indian Railways, RVNL, is assisting with the rescue operation but the agency is “not involved now.”

Fragile rock

The men – all migrant laborers from other states – were helping to construct the tunnel, part of an ambitious but controversial project to upgrade India’s transport network, when part of the passageway leading to the entrance gave way, trapping them some 60 meters inside the mountain with little oxygen, food and water.

Authorities established contact with the men soon after the collapse and have since embarked on a frantic mission to bring them out safely, aided by local police, India’s Disaster Management Authority and State Disaster Response Fund.

Rescuers first attempted to dig through the debris to reach the men, but progress was slow as more rubble fell into the shaft.

“The nature of the rock is very fragile, the more we drill the more it comes out, but we are still trying whatever techniques we have,” Anshu Manish Khalkho, director of administration and finance from the National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation told reporters Wednesday.

Authorities then brought in a drill to try to create a hole wide enough to insert a pipe through which the men could crawl to safety. But work was paused late Tuesday after a landslide complicated efforts and officials decided the machine wasn’t powerful enough.

Late Wednesday, the higher-powered drill was flown in to create the hole for the escape pipe.

“If this fails, we have a third and fourth backup plan. We are exploring all options to bring our brothers out,” Khalkho said.

“While without seeing the patient one can only say so much, the people I spoke to complained of vomiting and headaches,” said Dr. B.S. Pokriyal. “They are suffering from anxiety and gastritis. We sent medicines, dry fruits, chickpeas, and puffed rice.”

The men have about 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) of space to walk around, Pokriyal said.

“They kept asking us to get them out fast, so I spent some time counselling and motivating them,” he added.

Ambitious project

The tunnel is part of Indian prime minister Narendra Modi’s Char Dham Highway project, a multimillion-dollar infrastructure plan to improve connectivity in the state of Uttarakhand and better access to important pilgrimage locations.

Uttarakhand, a mountainous and picturesque state on India’s border with China, is often referred to as “Devbhumi” or “Land of the Gods” owing to its rich cultural heritage and the abundance of Hindu religious sites.

The Char Dham Highway project is expected to be nearly 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) long, improving access to the state from India’s capital New Delhi. But its development has come at a deep environmental cost with the large-scale destruction of forests.

The project has received criticism from environmentalists who say the heavy construction could seriously damage the Himalayan region, where millions are already feeling the impact of the climate crisis. Experts say the heavy drilling could weaken  already fragile terrain, causing more landslides and flash flooding.

And Sunday’s collapse is one of a number of recent construction disasters to make headlines in India, a country that has been rapidly transforming its infrastructure and spending billions to upgrade its transport network.

In August, more than a dozen workers were killed after a bridge under construction collapsed in the northeastern state of Mizoram. In June, a four-lane concrete bridge that was being built across the River Ganges in the eastern state of Bihar collapsed for the second time in just over a year, raising questions about the quality of its construction.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping suggested Wednesday China could send new pandas to the United States, calling them “envoys of friendship between the Chinese and American peoples,” in the latest gesture aimed at easing fraught ties between the two powers.

“I…learned that the San Diego Zoo and the Californians very much look forward to welcoming pandas back,” Xi told American business leaders during a speech in San Francisco on Wednesday.

“We are ready to continue our cooperation with the United States on panda conservation, and do our best to meet the wishes of the Californians so as to deepen the friendly ties between our two peoples.”

Xi delivered the remarks hours after he held extensive talks with US President Joe Biden, where the two leaders made positive steps in stabilizing rocky relations between the world’s top two economies.

China loans pandas to more than 20 countries around the world as envoys of friendship from Beijing – a program that’s often referred to as “panda diplomacy.”

Over the past decade, Xi has approved new panda loans across Europe, including to Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark and Finland. Last year, China sent a pair of pandas to Qatar, in the first loan to a Middle Eastern country.

In contrast, China has not granted any new panda loans to the US for two decades.

Pandas have served as something of an unofficial barometer of China-US relations since 1972, when Beijing gifted a pair of the bears to the Smithsonian National Zoo in Washington, D.C. following US President Richard Nixon’s historic ice-breaking trip to China.

Earlier this month, three last remaining pandas at the Smithsonian National Zoo – Tian Tian, Mei Xiang and their youngest cub, Xiao Qi Ji – were returned to China, marking the end of more than 50 years of Chinese pandas being housed at the zoo.

Their departure leaves Zoo Atlanta as the only other US zoo to feature pandas from China. The contracts for Atlanta’s four bears is set to expire next year, with no word on an extension.

“Recently, the three pandas at Smithsonian’s National Zoo in Washington D.C. have returned to China. I was told that many American people, especially children, were really reluctant to say goodbye to the pandas, and went to the zoo to see them off,” Xi said at the dinner event Wednesday.

The Chinese leader did not offer additional details on where any future Chinese pandas might be sent, but suggested California would be the most likely destination.

The San Diego Zoo returned its last two pandas to China in 2019, after the loan agreement concluded.

Xi arrived in San Francisco on Tuesday for a four-day visit that includes his attendance at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation international forum. It’s also the Chinese leader’s first trip to the US in more than six years.

The four-hour long meeting between Xi and Biden on Wednesday was the first time the two leaders have spoken since November 2022, when they met on the sidelines of another international gathering in Bali, Indonesia.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping presented an amicable China ready to improve ties with the United States in a landmark meeting with US President Joe Biden Wednesday, marking a noticeable shift in tone for Beijing as it looks to minimize friction with Washington.

Whether that shift is a lasting one for the contentious relationship will be put to an immediate test, however, by comments made by Biden during a solo press conference after the meeting. There, the President reiterated his view that Xi is a “dictator,” after being asked by a reporter whether he stood by a comment saying as much this past June.

At that point, Beijing reacted with vitriol, with the remark seen as casting a shadow over tentative progress in advancing dialogue between the two sides following a visit from US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

When asked about Biden’s latest comment at a Chinese Foreign Ministry briefing on Thursday, a spokesperson called it “extremely erroneous” and an “irresponsible political maneuver, which China firmly opposes.”

“What needs to be pointed out is that there will always be some people with ulterior motives attempting to undermine China-US relations. They will not succeed in doing so,” spokesperson Mao Ning said.

It’s still unclear whether there will be any further reaction this time, but the response comes as China’s signaling around the San Francisco Bay Area meeting between Xi and Biden has marked a shift away from its hardline position on the United States. This softening comes as China grapples with a troubled economy and is keen to highlight Xi as a powerful and capable world leader.

According to statements from both the US and China Wednesday, the two sides agreed to restore military communications and to combat the flow of fentanyl from China to the US during several hours of “constructive” meetings.

China labeled the talks as “positive” and “comprehensive” — while also highlighting Xi’s efforts to spell out Beijing’s non-negotiables such as its position on Taiwan and perceived American efforts to contain China’s rise.

Xi’s optics

On Chinese state media and across social media platforms, where the hashtag #Planet-Earth-Is-Big-Enough-For-Both-China-And-The-US was trending, the broad perception appeared to be of a job well done.

Chinese state broadcaster CCTV highlighted how Biden invited Xi for a walk around the leafy estate where the meeting took place and that the American leader “personally escorted him to his car to bid goodbye” — a detail that was also highlighted in another top-trending hashtag on Chinese social media.

The positive coverage of the event was a break from the typical rhetoric critical of the US that often plays across Chinese state and social media. Anti-US rhetoric has been a significant theme boosting growth in Chinese nationalism as tensions flared between the two in recent years.

The optics of a warm welcome and the display of a commanding presence next to Biden are critically important for Xi, who analysts say was not only keen to stabilize a complicated relationship at a time of economic weakness, but also to present himself to his domestic audience as skillfully helming China’s foreign affairs.

Xi’s visit came as the Chinese economy struggles with a property market crisis, high local government debt and record youth unemployment. At the same time, crackdowns across several sectors have pummeled business confidence and led many to question what opportunities remained in China.

“These challenges are tremendous,” said Alfred Wu, associate professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, who noted that in California, Xi wanted to show viewers back home his “leadership capacity in the foreign affairs arena” and that he is highly regarded in America and a world leader on par with Biden.

A press conference with China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi in California following the bilateral meeting also underscored some of those optics.

Wang noted that Biden sent a “separate invitation to President Xi Jinping specifically to hold a heads of state meeting,” unlike other bilateral meeting arrangements happening during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum that Xi and other leaders from across the Pacific are in town to attend.

“(The Xi-Biden meeting) is sure to become a milestone … and a major event in today’s international relations,” Wang said, pointing out that the four-hour face-to-face talks were held “amidst the backdrop of a critical stage in China-US relations.”

Xi also took a conciliatory tone speaking at a dinner event in front of American CEOs later that day.

He told the audience the most fundamental question shaping US-China relations is whether they are rivals or partners.

“If we regard each other as the biggest rival, the most significant geopolitical challenge and an ever-pressing threat, it will inevitably lead to wrong policies, wrong actions and wrong results,” Xi told an audience that included Apple CEO Tim Cook and Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

“China is willing to be a partner and friend of the United States,” he added.

‘Bottom lines’

While it helped to advance dialogue and cooperation, the meeting was also a chance for both sides to highlight their differences — and showed areas where they did not reach consensus, which analysts say will continue to define their contentious relationship.

And even within areas where they two sides did come to agreement, there remains fragile ground.

China’s announcement of the restoration of military communications, which the Biden administration had long pushed for, said those would resume “on the basis of equality and respect.”

“What that means is in the future anytime China is annoyed with anything the US does, China can say it’s cutting off military-to-military dialogues again and blame it on the US (for) no longer making China feel ‘respected,’” said Wen-Ti Sung, a Taiwan-based fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub.

“(This) undermines the basis of the talks’ resumption and existence,” he added.

On Taiwan, the self-ruling democracy that China’s ruling Communist Party claims, Xi urged the US to stop arming the island and to support China’s “peaceful reunification,” according to China’s readout of the meeting released by state media.

“China will eventually achieve reunification, and will inevitably achieve reunification,” Xi was quoted as saying — another line that was also trending on Chinese social media following the meeting.

Biden, for his part, reaffirmed the long-standing American position on Taiwan and its opposition to any unilateral changes to the status quo, saying cross-strait differences must be “resolved by peaceful means,” according to a readout from the White House.

Xi also called on the US to “not scheme to suppress or contain China,” in an apparent reference to America’s strengthening of its alliances in Asia and what Beijing sees as efforts to stymie its economic development with trade and investment restrictions on high tech. Washington says those curbs are intended to protect its national security against an assertive and authoritarian China.

“Both sides should understand each other’s principles and bottom lines,” Xi added.

The deep concerns each has about the other’s intentions are unlikely to be soothed after one meeting. How those agreements are executed in the weeks and months to come say much about whether China and the US are both committed to lasting stability.

“The meeting indicates that the US-China relationship is not going to further worsen in the next year, but will it rebound very quickly and become significantly warmer very soon? I would say no,” said Liu Dongshu, an assistant professor focusing on Chinese politics at City University of Hong Kong.

“Of course, Xi Jinping wants better US-China relations, but (Beijing) realizes … the fundamental fact (is) that the US wants to contain China, so their expectation is that warmer relations are good, but as long as they don’t get worse, they can accept that,” he said.

One immediate indicator of how relations will progress may be seen in any further response from Beijing to Biden’s “dictator” comment, and whether its state media and social media platforms continue gloss over the comment to focus on the positive outcomes from Wednesday.

Biden himself seems to indicate hope that the two can work through their differences as he noted that “(Xi) is a dictator in the sense that he is a guy who runs a country that is communist” and that the Chinese government “is totally different than ours.”

“Anyway,” he added. “We made progress.”

Robotic explorers investigating Mars are currently out of touch with space agencies on Earth after hitting a giant communications roadblock.

Mission controllers at NASA won’t send any commands to its fleet of orbiters and rovers, including Perseverance and Curiosity, for the next 10 days due to the Mars solar conjunction.

The phenomenon occurs every two years when Mars and Earth are unfavorably positioned on opposite sides of the sun as they travel along their individual orbits.

During the roughly two-week period, the hot, energized gas continually spewed by the sun from its outer atmosphere can interfere with the radio signals that NASA uses to communicate with its Martian robotic explorers.

If engineers attempt to send commands to any of the Martian spacecraft during this time, the messages may get mixed up — and that gamble isn’t worth the risk of rovers or orbiters receiving corrupted communication that could endanger them.

A planned communications drop started Saturday and is in place until November 25. For a couple of those days, mission controllers expect a complete blackout. However, they expect to receive regular health updates from the various spacecraft.

The slowdown is a nice break for the people who devote their time to working on Mars missions, but it doesn’t mean the work completely stops. The robotic fleet will still operate — albeit without the close supervision they usually receive.

“Our mission teams have spent months preparing to-do lists for all our Mars spacecraft,” said Roy Gladden, manager of the Mars Relay Network at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, in a statement. “We’ll still be able to hear from them and check their states of health over the next few weeks.”

Mars rovers and orbiters on autopilot

The Curiosity rover, which recently marked 4,000 sols (about 11 Earth years) on the Martian surface, found a suitable parking spot within its exploration site of Gale Crater. About 2,300 miles (3,700 kilometers) away, Perseverance also settled into a spot in Jezero Crater.

Both rovers received the lengthy lists of commands prior to the communications blackout that will keep them busy, including tasks such as tracking changes in the Martian weather, surface conditions and radiation.

Perseverance will take the opportunity to survey surrounding rocks and use its cameras to spot clouds and dust devils. Weaker and smaller than tornadoes on Earth, dust devils are swirling vortices of air that lift and move dust around on the red planet.

The Ingenuity helicopter, which has largely served as the Perseverance rover’s aerial scout, will also lie low and won’t conduct any flights during this time. Instead, the chopper will study the movement of sand using its color camera. While the assignment sounds like a simple task, sand can be one of the biggest and most challenging obstacles to Mars missions.

Meanwhile from above, the Mars Reconnaissance and Odyssey orbiters will continue taking images of the red planet’s surface, while MAVEN (short for Mars Atmospheric and Volatile Evolution) will track interactions between the sun and the Martian atmosphere.

Once the conjunction period is over, the robotic fleet will share the collected data, and the Mars missions and their teams will resume their normal cadence of exploring the red planet.

Israeli forces launched a raid Wednesday on Gaza’s largest hospital, Al-Shifa, after accusing Hamas of operating from tunnels beneath the vast complex – a claim denied by the militant group and hospital officials.

Thousands of Palestinians are believed to be sheltering in and around the hospital, which the UN said had become the “epicenter” of fighting in the area, trapping vulnerable patients, staff and displaced Palestinians as they run out of medical supplies and fuel.

The hospital’s main building has effectively ceased functioning, with doctors working by candlelight and wrapping premature babies in foil to keep them alive – with some warning the situation inside has become “catastrophic.”

In recent days, the hospital has become a microcosm of the wider war and the rhetoric around it. Palestinians hold up the fighting around Al-Shifa as proof of Israel’s wanton disregard for civilian life in Gaza, while Israel points to the hospital as an example of Hamas’ use of civilians as human shields.

But the decision by Israeli forces to enter the hospital marks a potential escalatory moment in the conflict which began on October 7, when Hamas militants entered Israel, killing more than 1,200 people and taking over 200 others hostage – the largest such attack on Israel since the country’s founding in 1948.

More than 11,000 have since been killed by retaliatory Israeli strikes in Gaza, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah, which draws figures from the Hamas-controlled territory.

Here’s what we know so far about Al-Shifa and the Wednesday raid.

What happened on Wednesday?

On early Wednesday morning local time, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it was “carrying out a precise and targeted operation against Hamas in a specified area in the Shifa Hospital” in Gaza.

“We were asked to stay clear of the windows and the balconies. We can hear the armored vehicles, they are very close to the entrance of the complex,” he said.

What is Israel claiming?

Israel has repeatedly claimed Hamas is using the hospital complex for military purposes. In a presentation to the media last month, Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari accused Hamas of directing rocket attacks and commanding operations from bunkers underneath the hospital building, which he said was linked to the network of tunnels that Hamas has dug underneath Gaza city.

The IDF also published an “intelligence-based” illustrated video of what it claims the Hamas headquarter under Al-Shifa looks like. The video shows a 3D diagram of the hospital, which moves to show an animated network of purported tunnels and operation rooms.

Other hospitals inside Gaza were also being used by Hamas in similar ways, Hagari claimed during the presentation, which included aerial photos, graphics and voice recordings.

Israel has made other efforts to publicize what it says is proof of Hamas’ operations under hospitals. On Monday, the IDF invited news media to visit the Al Rantisi children’s hospital in Gaza City, where Hagari alleged parts of the basement had been a Hamas “command and control center” and may have been used to hold hostages.

The director of hospitals at the Hamas-controlled ministry of health on Tuesday dismissed Israel’s accusations, saying the basement of the Rantisi hospital was used to shelter women and children, not store Hamas weaponry and hold hostages.

How have Palestinians responded?

Hamas, Palestinian health officials and medical workers have also vehemently denied Israel’s claims about Al-Shifa, and condemned Wednesday’s raid.

After the raid began, Palestinian Authority Health Minister Dr. Mai Al-Kaila said it represented “a new crime against humanity, medical staff, and patients,” and warned it could have “catastrophic consequences” for patients and medical staff.

In a statement Wednesday, Hamas blamed both Israel and the US for the raid, claiming that the US had given Israel “a green light … to commit more massacres against civilians” by using Israel’s “false narrative” of Al-Shifa being used as a command center.

The statement also accused the United Nations of failing to defend Palestinians.

What has the United States said?

The White House has backed Israel’s claims, saying Tuesday that Hamas was storing weapons and operating a command node from the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza, citing US intelligence.

“Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, PIJ, members operate a command-and-control node from al-Shifa in Gaza City. They have stored weapons there and they are prepared to respond to an Israeli military operation against that facility,” John Kirby, a US National Security Council spokesman, told reporters traveling with President Joe Biden. Kirby presented no evidence to back up his statement.

But Biden also said Monday that hospitals in Gaza “must be protected” and that his “hope and expectation is that there will be less intrusive action” around them.

Why is Al-Shifa so important?

The sprawling medical facility of Al-Shifa, which sits in the western part of Gaza City, was built in 1946 when Gaza was still under British rule. It has long been seen as the backbone of medical services across the besieged Gaza Strip, and has been hit in previous Hamas-Israel conflicts.

As early as Israel’s first war with Hamas in 2008-2009 – almost a year after the militant group seized control of the enclave – Israel had been claiming that Hamas fighters were sheltering in mosques, hospitals and other civilian places to avoid Israeli attacks.

Former Minister of Internal Security and Shin Bet director, Avi Dichter, said in in 2009 that it was “an open secret” among Palestinians living in Gaza that Hamas uses Al-Shifa for its operations, a claim that Hamas repeatedly denied.

The hospital was struck nine years ago during the 2014 Israel-Gaza war, which was strongly condemned by aid and medical organizations. Palestinians blamed the 2014 attack on Israel, while Israel said it was the result of a failed rocket launch by Hamas.

The hospital made headlines a year later, when human rights group Amnesty International published a damning report on Hamas, including allegations that Hamas militants interrogated and tortured people at a clinic in Al-Shifa.

What does international law say about targeting hospitals?

International humanitarian law (IHL) governs the way in which warfare is conducted and seeks to limit the suffering caused. It is designed to give protection to civilians and civilian objects, including medical staff and facilities.

But protection is not unconditional. “They can lose their protection if they are used outside of their humanitarian function to commit acts harmful to the enemy,” Cordula Droege, chief legal officer of the International Committee of the Red Cross, explained in a video Tuesday, adding that using buildings like hospitals to house combatants and weapons can turn civilian objects into legitimate military targets.

Once a hospital has lost its protected status, an attack could be permissible – but the attacking party must give warning before launching a strike. “The purpose of such a warning is to allow those who misuse the hospital to stop the acts harmful to the enemy, or, if they persist, to allow for the safe evacuation of patients and medical staff,” Droege said, noting that this is not always feasible in conflict situations.

The IDF said in a statement on Wednesday that it had warned for weeks that Hamas’s “continued military use of the Shifa hospital jeopardizes its protected status.” The statement added that the IDF had also notified the relevant authorities on Tuesday that all military activities within the hospital must stop within 12 hours.

But this “does not mean there is free license to attack,” said Droege. All strikes are governed by the “principle of proportionality,” which states the attacking party has to ensure the expected harm caused to civilians will not be “excessive” in relation to the expected military advantage. All parties must also take precautions to minimize civilian harm.

While none dispute the horror of such attacks, legal experts are divided over whether Israel’s actions necessarily violate IHL.

According to the source, two investigative judges on Tuesday issued four warrants against Assad, his brother Maher al-Assad, and two other senior officials, for complicity in crimes against humanity and complicity in war crimes.

A Red Notice is a request to law enforcement worldwide to locate and provisionally arrest someone pending extradition, surrender, or similar legal action, according to Interpol.

The legal case was brought forward by the Syrian Centre for Media and Freedom of Expression (SCM), the Open Society Justice Initiative (OSJI) and the Syrian Archive in March 2021 “over the use of banned chemical weapons against civilians in the town of Douma and the district of Eastern Ghouta in August 2013, in attacks which killed more than 1,000 people,” the plaintiffs said in a statement Wednesday.

The Syrian government was accused of using poison gas in Ghouta, a suburb of Damascus, then a rebel stronghold that the regime had been desperately trying to take back for more than a year. It in turn accused opposition forces of carrying out the attacks themselves.

An investigation was opened “in response to a criminal complaint based on the testimony of survivors of the August 2013 attacks,” the plaintiffs’ statement read.

Lawyer Mazen Darwish, founder and director-general of the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression (SCM), said in a statement Wednesday that the decision “constitutes a historic judicial precedent.”

“It is a new victory for the victims, their families, and the survivors and a step on the path to justice and sustainable peace in Syria,” Darwish said.

Hadi al Khatib, founder of the Syrian Archive, said: “With these arrest warrants, France is taking a firm stand that the horrific crimes that happened ten years ago cannot and will not be left unaccounted for. We see France, and hopefully, other countries soon, taking the strong evidence that we have gathered over years and finally demanding criminal responsibility from the highest-level officials.”

The Syrian government has long been accused of war crimes, but it has repeatedly insisted its strikes target “terrorists.” It has denied using chemical weapons.

“We have never used our chemical arsenal in our history,” Assad said in 2017. He added that “morally” the Syrian government would never do this “because it’s not acceptable.”

The UN Security Council has approved a resolution calling for “humanitarian pauses and corridors” in war-torn Gaza, a long-awaited diplomatic breakthrough after weeks of bitter negotiations.

Twelve countries voted to approve the measure, with the United States, the United Kingdom, and Russia abstaining.

The resolution called for “urgent and extended humanitarian pauses and corridors throughout the Gaza Strip for a sufficient number of days to enable, consistent with international humanitarian law, the full, rapid, safe, and unhindered humanitarian access for United Nations humanitarian agencies and their implementing partners.”

The International Rescue Committee has said humanitarian groups need a minimum ceasefire of five days in order to do vital work to restore basic services and necessities for Gaza’s over 2 million civilians. US President Joe Biden also said last week that he asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for “a pause for a lot more than three days.”

Gaza has been under siege since October 7, when Israel closed exit points from the Palestinian enclave, cut it off from food, water and electricity, and began an intensive campaign of airstrikes in retaliation for lethal terror attacks carried out by Palestinian militant group Hamas, which killed an estimated 1,200 people and also saw about 240 taken hostage.

The offensive in Gaza has escalated in recent weeks with expanding ground operations in Gaza’s north, from which civilians have been instructed to evacuate along  approved routes in short windows.

The resolution also called for the release of “all hostages held by Hamas and other groups, especially children” and for all parties to “refrain from depriving the civilian population in the Gaza strip of basic services and humanitarian assistance.”

The resolution, drafted by Malta, had already received the backing of the UN’s 22-member Arab Group.

Lior Haiat, a spokesman for the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said after the vote that “Israel calls on the Security Council and the international community to insist on the release of all Israeli hostages quickly as the resolution stipulates.”

“Israel expects the Security Council to condemn Hamas unequivocally and address the need to create a different security reality in Gaza. There is no room for prolonged humanitarian truces as long as 239 hostages are in the hands of Hamas terrorists,” he said.

Palestinian Ambassador Riyad Monsour acknowledged that the council is “finally acting,” but said that it should have called for a ceasefire. He also criticized its lack of condemnation for the deaths of civilians and humanitarian workers.

In a statement, the International Rescue Committee called the vote “an important first step.”

“It is now incumbent upon all parties to the conflict, and all UN member states to do everything in their power to help turn these words into action,” the statement continued.

Trapped in a ‘spiderweb’ of red lines

The UN, created to maintain global peace and security, remains the nerve center of frenetic attempts to create peace in the Middle East, but has run into repeated roadblocks over the past month, notably from the United States, as the death toll climbed.

Wednesday’s vote was the Security Council’s fifth attempt to pass a resolution on Israel’s war with Hamas, which controls Gaza. Two resolutions proposed by Russia failed to gain enough votes, while United States, a steadfast backer of Israel’s right to defend itself, vetoed a Brazilian resolution calling for a humanitarian pause. The US’s own call for a pause was vetoed by Russia and China.

“There is a lot of pressure on the council to react, but the council has these difficulties: It’s a body trapped at the crossings of different red lines; an insect trapped on a spider’s web and the web is composed of different red lines,” he said.

As deliberations dragged on, Israeli attacks on Gaza have killed at least 11,255 Palestinians since October 7, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah, drawing from sources in Hamas-controlled Gaza. The ministry also said that 4,630 of the dead are children.

UAE Ambassador to the UN Lana Nusseibeh, speaking ahead of the vote Wednesday, said that “protection of children” was the “North Star that has guided this council’s approach on this draft.”

“This text is also what humanitarian actors have consistently called for as the bare minimum for them to be able to do their lifesaving work. The resolution means in real time, enough time and space for search and rescue operations to save those children who are buried under the rubble,” she added.

The Health Ministry said Tuesday it was having significant difficulties obtaining updated information because of the parlous state of communications in Gaza.

Pleas from the UN’s top figures have grown pointed over the weeks. Though limited aid has been allowed to enter Gaza, the UN’s Secretary General Antonio Guterres has described it as “a trickle” and “a drop in the ocean.” The UN’s emergency relief chief Martin Griffiths on Wednesday said the “carnage” in Gaza could not be allowed to continue.

Volker Türk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, accused both Hamas and Israel of committing war crimes. “The atrocities perpetrated by Palestinian armed groups on October 7 were heinous, brutal and shocking, they were war crimes – as is the continued holding of hostages,” he said last week.

“The collective punishment by Israel of Palestinian civilians amounts also to a war crime, as does the unlawful forcible evacuation of civilians,” he added.

Israel says it tries to mitigate harm to civilians in its pursuit of Hamas, and accuses the group of hiding behind civilian infrastructure, including hospitals. Hamas denies the claim.

In a measure of global sentiment, over 120 countries last month voted for a “sustained humanitarian truce” leading to a cessation of hostilities at the United Nations General Assembly. But the vote in that body is nonbinding, unlike a mandatory Security Council vote.

Federal regulators have granted SpaceX permission to launch a long-awaited second test flight of its Starship system — the most powerful rocket ever built — following an explosive first attempt in April.

The Federal Aviation Administration, which licenses commercial rocket launches, said Wednesday that SpaceX has permission to launch the mission after the agency determined it “met all safety, environmental, policy and financial responsibility requirements.”

SpaceX’s website states that the company is targeting a two-hour launch window on Friday, November 17, that opens at 7 a.m. CT (8 a.m. ET).

Public notices issued to mariners indicate that backup opportunities for liftoff could include the mornings of November 18, 19 and 20.

The Starship spacecraft and its Super Heavy booster are at the center of SpaceX’s plans to eventually put humans on Mars, as well as aid NASA’s effort to return humans to the moon for the first time in more than 50 years. Starship is intended to serve as the lunar lander for the Artemis III mission, currently slated for 2025. And if the test flight once again fails, it could bog down NASA’s lunar exploration timeline.

April’s inaugural integrated test flight of Starship and Super Heavy — the massive rocket expected to propel the spacecraft to orbital speeds — ended just minutes after takeoff when the vehicle began tumbling tail-over-head, forcing SpaceX to initiate self-destruct mode and explode both rocket stages over the Gulf of Mexico.

SpaceX has spent the past several months rebuilding the launch site and making upgrades to the rocket system at the company’s Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas. The launchpad was torn to pieces by the sheer force of Super Heavy’s engines igniting, sending debris into the surrounding coastal area.

The rocket mishap’s potential impacts galvanized a group of environmental and wildlife advocates to file a May lawsuit againt the FAA, claiming the agency had failed to comply with federal environmental laws when it greenlit Starship’s first test flight.

William Gerstenmaier, SpaceX vice president for build and reliability, faulted regulators for holding up the second test flight, saying at a mid-October US Senate hearing, “It’s a shame when our hardware is ready to fly, and we’re not able to go fly because of regulations or review.”

The FAA finished its safety investigation in September, laying out 63 corrective actions for SpaceX. The agency then completed a safety review on October 31 for SpaceX’s planned second test flight.

However, as part of its environmental review, the FAA set up a consultation with the US Fish and Wildlife Service under the Endangered Species Act. That process concluded on November 14, according to a statement from the agency, allowing FAA to issue the launch permit.

Now, SpaceX is set for another attempt to propel Starship off the launchpad and send it on a mission to complete nearly one full lap of Earth.

Starship challenges

If the test mission once again fails, NASA’s aim to return humans to the moon’s surface could face delays as the space agency is racing other nations — including China — to build a permanent lunar settlement. The space agency has already warned that Starship might not be ready in time for a 2025 moon landing attempt.

Even if successful, SpaceX still has numerous technological hurdles to clear. The company must demonstrate the rocket can safely deliver a satellite or another payload to Earth’s orbit, as well as dock with a refueling tanker to top off its propellant while in orbit — a move that will be essential for getting the massive vehicle to the moon.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk posted in August on social media that he foresees about a “50% probability of reaching orbital velocity,” though he cautiously added that “even getting to stage separation would be a win,” referring to the launch phase when the Super Heavy rocket detaches from the Starship spacecraft.

Environmental concerns

SpaceX may also face additional pushback from environmentalists ahead of — or in the wake of — the second launch attempt.

The group of environmental and wildlife advocates that previously sued the FAA could still attempt to seek an injunction to stop the next launch.

When reached for comment, Jared Margolis, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, said the nonprofit group had not decided whether to pursue that route, though it recognized the option was still on the table. It’s not clear, however, whether the group will have enough time to file the proper paperwork before SpaceX moves forward with the anticipated launch.

Astronomers have spied an intriguing phenomenon in the distant universe — a galaxy that closely resembles the Milky Way — and it’s challenging key theories on how galaxies evolve.

The faraway system, called ceers-2112, was spotted by an international team using the James Webb Space Telescope.

Like our home galaxy, the newly discovered ceers-2112 is a barred spiral galaxy, and it’s now the most distant of its kind ever observed. The bar at the center of the structure is made of stars.

Ceers-2112 formed soon after the big bang created the universe (which is estimated to be 13.8 billion years old), and the galaxy’s distinct structure was already in place 2.1 billion years later.

Given the distance between Earth and the objects from the early days of the universe, when telescopes like Webb observe light from the distant cosmos, it’s effectively like looking into the past.

“Unexpectedly, this discovery reveals that galaxies that resemble our own existed already 11,700 million years ago, when the Universe had just 15% of its life,” said lead study author Luca Costantin in a statement. He is a Spanish National Research Council postdoctoral researcher at Spain’s Centro de Astrobiología in Madrid.

Astronomers were surprised to see such a well-ordered and structured galaxy at a time when others were much more irregular. While massive spiral galaxies are common in the Milky Way’s cosmic neighborhood, that hasn’t always been the case.

The revelation, made possible by Webb’s highly sensitive light-detecting capabilities, is changing scientists’ understanding of galaxy formation and the beginning stages of the universe.

“Finding ceers-2112 shows that galaxies in the early universe could be as ordered as the Milky Way,” said study coauthor Alexander de la Vega, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Riverside, in a statement. “This is surprising because galaxies were much more chaotic in the early universe and very few had similar structures to the Milky Way.”

A study detailing the findings was published November 8 in the journal Nature.

Early evolution of barred spiral galaxies

Astronomers thought barred spiral galaxies such as the Milky Way didn’t appear until the universe reached at least half of its current age because it was believed that it took several billion years of galactic evolution before the massive collections of stars within galaxies could form central bars.

The bars take shape when stars within spiral galaxies rotate in an orderly fashion, as they do in the Milky Way. Until now, astronomers didn’t believe early galaxies had enough stability for bars to form or last.

But the discovery of ceers-2112 has suggested that this evolution only took about 1 billion years or less, de la Vega said.

“Nearly all bars are found in spiral galaxies,” de la Vega said. “The bar in ceers-2112 suggests that galaxies matured and became ordered much faster than we previously thought, which means some aspects of our theories of galaxy formation and evolution need revision.”

Investigation of dark matter

De la Vega believes that astronomers will need to alter their theoretical models for how galaxies form and evolve by accounting for the amount of dark matter included in the earliest galaxies.

While dark matter has never actually been detected, it is believed to make up 85% of the total matter in the universe — and it’s something the European Space Agency’s Euclid telescope has been designed to map. Dark matter may have played a role in the formation of the bars.

The discovery also suggests that bars can be detected in early galaxies, despite the fact that the oldest galaxies are much smaller.

“The discovery of ceers-2112 paves the way for more bars to be discovered in the young universe,” de la Vega said. “Initially, I thought detecting and estimating properties of bars in galaxies like ceers-2112 would be fraught with measurement uncertainties. But the power of the James Webb Space Telescope and the expertise of our research team helped us place strong constraints on the size and shape of the bar.”