ISIS has claimed responsibility for a deadly explosion that ripped through a Catholic mass service at a university gym in the southern Philippines on Sunday.

At least four people were killed and dozens of others were injured in the blast at the Mindanao State University in Marawi City, according to authorities.

In a communique, ISIS said its fighters “detonated an explosive device on a large gathering of Christian disbelievers in Marawi City,” according to the SITE Intelligence Group, a counterterrorism threat intelligence organization that tracks the online activity of extremist groups.

Photos of the scene showed soldiers and emergency workers standing among debris in the gym. A section of the seating area was blown up, chairs strewn across the floor.

Lanao del Sur province Gov. Mamintal Adiong Jr., told reporters more than 40 people were being treated at a government hospital in Marawi, while a number of others with minor injuries were treated at the university’s infirmary following the blast.

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. condemned the attack in a post on X, formerly Twitter. Without naming any specific groups or elaborating further, he described the blast as “senseless and most heinous, perpetrated by foreign terrorists.”

“Extremists who wield violence against the innocent will always be regarded as enemies to our society,” he said, adding that additional security personnel had been deployed to assist in the response.

The United States condemned the “horrific terrorist attack” in a government statement.

“The United States is in close contact with our Philippine partners and stands with the people of the Philippines in rejecting this act of violence,” State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller said.

Mindanao, the second largest island in the Philippines, is home to several Islamist insurgent groups and has long been a hotbed of insurgency against the Philippine government.

While the Philippines is mostly Catholic, Mindanao is home to a sizable Muslim population.

In 2017, ISIS-affiliated militants laid siege to Marawi for five months. The violence forced more than 350,000 residents to flee the city and the surrounding areas before Philippine forces liberated the city.

This story has been updated with additional developments.

A woman has been killed in an apparent shark attack at a beach resort on Mexico’s Pacific coast.

The woman, who has not been officially named, was found dead by emergency services at the scene in Melaque Bay, Cihuatlán municipality, on Saturday, according to a statement from the local civil protection and fire service, posted on Facebook.

One of the victim’s legs had been severed, according to the statement, which said the injury appeared to have been caused by a shark attack.

According to the statement, the incident took place on the same day as a swimming race in the bay, which is located in Jalisco state in western Mexico.

Local beaches will remain closed until further notice, the service said in a separate statement, adding that volunteers are on patrol, warning people to stay out of the water.

Pictures attached to the post show red warning flags in the sand.

The Cihuatlán municipal government also warned people to stay away from local beaches, in a statement posted on Facebook.

“Our priority is to guarantee the safety and wellbeing of every citizen,” the statement reads.

The municipal government of nearby La Huerta also warned citizens about “the presence of a shark on the southern coast of Jalisco” in a statement on Facebook.

The corruption trial of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu restarted Monday after a two month pause that followed the state of emergency declared after the October 7 Hamas attacks.

Israeli Minister of Justice Yaris Levin lifted the state of emergency effective December 1.

Netanyahu’s corruption trial first began in January 2020, making him the first sitting Israeli prime minister to appear in court as a defendant, on trial for charges of fraud, breach of trust and bribery. He denies any wrongdoing.

The prime minister faces charges in three separate cases.

In Case 1000, he is charged with fraud and breach of trust in connection with allegations that he received gifts like cigars and champagne from overseas businessmen.

In Case 2000, he is also charged with fraud and breach of trust and is accused of seeking favorable coverage in one of Israel’s top newspapers in exchange for limiting the circulation of one of the paper’s main rivals.

In the most serious case, Case 4000, he is charged with bribery, fraud and breach of trust for allegedly advancing regulatory benefits worth the equivalent of more than $250 million at the time to his friend Shaul Elovitch, who was the controlling shareholder for the telecommunications company Bezeq.

In return, the prosecution says, Elovitch ensured positive coverage of the Prime Minister in an online news site he owned called Walla! News. Elovitch has denied the charges.

Israeli Minister of Regional Cooperation David Amsalem criticized the resumption of the trial in a time of war.

“War? Kidnapped? Evacuees? Economics? No and no… What is most important now is to renew Netanyahu’s trial, and to engage the Prime Minister of Israel with the unfounded testimonies and delusional trifles,” Amsalem, who is also a minister in the Ministry of Justice, said on X.

Netanyahu has called the indictments a “stitch-up” and an effort by Israel’s liberal and media elites to topple him and his right-wing bloc. Under Israeli law, he is not required to step down from office unless he is convicted and that conviction is upheld throughout the appeals process.

Earlier this year, his government pushed through a law effectively stripping the country’s courts of the power to declare a prime minister unfit for office. Critics argue the law was passed for Netanyahu’s benefit amid the ongoing corruption trial and have challenged it before the country’s Supreme Court.

Torrential rains and flash floods have ripped through parts of East Africa for several weeks, killing more than 350 people and displacing over 1 million across Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Tanzania.

In Kenya, at least 136 have died and nearly half a million have been displaced, according to the Interior Ministry. Persistent rains since October have affected 38 out of 47 counties across the country, which have been hit by flash floods, general flooding, and mudslides, President William Ruto revealed in an emergency cabinet meeting last week.

The northeastern parts and the eastern coast of the country have been the worst-hit areas with severe damage to homes and infrastructure, including disruptions to cargo rail services from the port of Mombasa last month.

The unusually heavy rains are largely caused by the El Niño weather phenomenon and are forecast to continue into the new year by the Kenya Meteorological Department.

El Niño is a climate pattern that originates in the Pacific Ocean along the equator and impacts weather all over the world. This phenomenon has been associated with severe flooding in eastern Africa, resulting in landslides, elevated waterborne diseases, and food shortages. Meanwhile, the northern and southern regions of the continent often endure prolonged periods of severe drought during El Niño events.

But the Horn of Africa is also one of the world’s most vulnerable regions to climate change. While the overall amount of rain annually is expected to fall in the region the more the Earth warms, the frequency and intensity of heavy rainfall events are projected to increase. That means the Horn of Africa may experience more drought as well as floods from heavy rain.

President Ruto has activated the National Disaster Operation Center to carry out emergency response. On Thursday, the Interior Ministry announced a decrease of rainfall in northern Kenya is expected this week.

Speaking at COP28 in Dubai on Friday, Ruto captured the immediate reality and devastation of climate change as witnessed by the catastrophic rains.

“The situation in our Horn of Africa region, like many other developing countries, lays bare the harsh reality of climate change,” he said.

‘Either way people suffer’

The extreme flooding comes just months after the region suffered its worst drought in four decades.

“Whether there’s less water or too much water, either way, people suffer,” Afi added.

According to the United Nation’s humanitarian agency (OCHA), the death toll from flooding has risen to 110 in Somalia and 57 in Ethiopia.

In northern Tanzania, authorities said 49 people were killed by floods accompanied by mudslides following heavy rains in the country’s Manyara province.

Up to 85 people were reported injured, Manyara governor Queen Sendiga said Monday, according to state media.

Tanzania President Samia Suluhu Hassan directed response agencies “to help rescue and prevent more disasters from happening.”

In eastern Kenya, the deluge has wreaked havoc on the Dadaab Refugee Camp, which is home to some 300,000 refugees. The camp has experienced a significant number of new arrivals over the last three years — some of them fleeing food insecurity and drought conditions in Somalia.

In November, in Hagadera, a camp inside the Dadaab complex, three out of the 15 blocks of homes were submerged, leaving around 20,000 people — about 13% of the camp — displaced and sheltering in schools and places of worship, according to the International Rescue Committee (IRC).

Surge of water-borne diseases

Aid agencies have reported surges of water-borne diseases like cholera and acute watery diarrhea due to damaged latrines and lack of access to safe drinking water.

Relief efforts to reach those in the hardest-hit areas of the camp with food, clean water and medical aid have been hindered by damaged and impassable roads, according to the IRC.

“It’s a poignant reminder of its disproportionate impact and a call to action for all of us to mobilize rapidly to address this imbalance with urgency, solidarity, and inclusivity.”

After large earthquakes, there is an expectation that aftershocks could occur in the hours and days that follow, but aftershocks from some of the strongest earthquakes in recorded United States history may still be happening — nearly 200 years later, new research has found.

Frequent aftershock activities stemming from a trio of quakes that occurred near the Missouri-Kentucky border between 1811 and 1812, and a separate earthquake in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1886, are likely continuing today, according to a study published recently in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth.

One of the regions researchers focused on, called the New Madrid seismic zone, encompasses present-day Memphis and the surrounding Mid-Mississippi River Valley area, and the other includes Charleston and the surrounding coastal plain. Seismic activity in these relatively stable regions of North America is not well understood, and its nature is debated among scientists, the study authors wrote.

“You use the time, distance and the magnitude of event pairs, and try to find the link between two events — that’s the idea,” said lead study author Yuxuan Chen, geoscientist at Wuhan University in China, in a news release. “If the distance between a pair of earthquakes is closer than expected from background events, then one earthquake is likely the aftershock of the other.”

Background events, also known as background seismicity, basically refers to the current rate of seismic activity that’s considered normal for a specific region.

The researchers found that approximately 30% of all earthquakes from 1980 to 2016 near the Missouri-Kentucky border, all magnitude 2.5 or greater, were likely aftershocks from the three major earthquakes that struck the area in 1811 and 1812, which registered between magnitudes 7.3 and 7.5. In the Charleston area, the findings showed that roughly 16% of the region’s modern-day quakes were likely aftershocks from the magnitude 7.0 earthquake of 1886.

Identifying whether modern earthquakes are in fact aftershocks of previous large quakes, or are new, unrelated quakes is important for understanding these regions’ future disaster risk — even if the newer seismic activity causes little to no damage, the researchers said.

Earthquakes vs. aftershocks

The modern seismic activity the researchers studied is likely a mixture of aftershocks from the big quakes from the 1800s and background seismicity, Chen said.

“In some respects, the earthquakes look like aftershocks if you look at the spatial distribution, but earthquakes could be tightly clustered for a couple of reasons,” said Susan Hough, a geophysicist with the US Geological Survey who was not involved in the study. “One is that they’re aftershocks, but also you could have a process of creep going on that’s not part of an aftershock process. Exactly what their results mean is still open to question.”

Another thing to consider when trying to determine whether a quake is an aftershock is how seismically active (or inactive) the region is normally, Hough said.

“In an area where small earthquakes are common, it doesn’t take as long for aftershock rates to drop below the normal seismic rate,” Hough said. “Aftershock sequences in relatively quiet areas could appear to last longer simply because there’s less background seismic activity.”

Debate on long-lived aftershocks

Hough coauthored a similar 2014 study using extensive computer modeling to understand activity in the New Madrid seismic zone, and it came to a different conclusion.

“Are small earthquakes in the New Madrid seismic zone aftershocks of 1811-1812 or not?” Hough said in an email. “We’ve looked into it, and it doesn’t look consistent with a long-lived aftershock sequence.”

She and coauthor Morgan Page, a geophysicist with the USGS Earthquake Science Center, came to the conclusion that the recent tremors were instead new, unrelated earthquakes caused by strain buildup along the New Madrid zone.

Because there were no seismographs in this area in the early 1800s, there is no official data recorded from these quakes. The magnitude and impact data that exists was estimated through newspaper reports and personal journals. Using those reports, the USGS has a pretty good record of where the quakes were centered and how widespread the impacts were felt.

If the 1811 to 1812 sequence was in fact still causing aftershocks, the area would have seen a certain number of small and moderate quakes during the 19th and 20th centuries, Hough explained.

“The new study considers the question from a different angle, considering how tightly clustered earthquakes are, and concluding that some of the events are ongoing aftershocks,” Hough said. “The question remains: if New Madrid earthquakes are aftershocks, why don’t they follow the rules that aftershocks are known to follow?”

The big difficulty with confirming or denying the results of these studies or the long-lived aftershock more broadly is that among seismologists there is no universally agreed-upon definition on what an aftershock of an earthquake is, said John Ebel, a professor of geophysics at Boston College who was not involved in the latest study.

“Every seismologist who studies such phenomena has no choice but to make assumptions about how to define foreshocks, mainshocks and aftershocks,” said Ebel, who is also a senior research scientist at Boston College’s Weston Observatory, in an email. “Thus, different seismologists will define foreshocks, mainshocks and aftershocks in somewhat different ways, and that makes comparing studies by different investigators subject to uncertainty and disagreement.”

For Hough’s 2014 study, the researchers considered an aftershock sequence to be over when the rate of earthquakes fell below the rate before the main shock. Aftershocks might still be continuing, but once the normal seismic rate for the area returns, she said, you can no longer identify them as aftershocks.

Defining an aftershock

In areas of frequent seismic activity such as California, the aftershocks of a large earthquake last less than a decade, Ebel said. He added this is particularly the case for earthquakes of magnitude 6.5 or greater that have occurred in the past 50 years or so.

However, locations away from plate boundaries, such as in Central or Eastern North America, the rate of background earthquakes is very low. Other studies have also speculated that aftershocks in areas away from plate boundaries could last many centuries. The new study just applies another statistical method to reach a similar conclusion, according to Ebel.

“Because all such studies rely on statistical analyses, which inherently have some variability in them, these studies cannot answer the questions that they address with complete certainty,” Ebel said.

It would be easier to distinguish this, he explained, if we had thousands of years of earthquake data for both California and Eastern North America.

“For this reason, we seismologists sometimes disagree about which earthquakes are foreshocks or aftershocks,” Ebel said, “and I think those disagreements are inherently unresolvable.”

Police carried out raids on gay venues in Russia late Friday, two online Russian news outlets reported, one day after the country’s top court ruled to ban the “international LGBTQ movement” and labelled it an extremist organization.

Thursday’s landmark ruling by the Supreme Court sent a fresh shiver of fear through Russia’s LGBTQ community, who have already faced an intensifying crackdown in recent years, as President Vladimir Putin seeks to shore up his image as defender of traditional moral values against the liberal West.

The raids took place in at least three entertainment venues in the capital Moscow, according to the two independent Russian Telegram news outlets, Ostorozhno Novosti and Sota.

Police said they were conducting routine drug raids, the outlets added.

Ostorozhno Moskva also reported that police photographed the passports of partygoers.

“Eyewitnesses said that security forces entered the premises under the pretext of an anti-drug check and photographed visitors’ passports,” it said. “In the middle of the party, they stopped the music and (the police) started entering the halls.”

The outlet also posted video of an eyewitness describing a fearful scene: “I was there. I honestly sh** myself when the music stopped and they said there was a police raid. I thought that was it, I would be imprisoned for 12 years. On the way out they took a photo of my passport (ID). So you understand, 300 of us stood naked, in only underwear, and waited for somebody to bring us clothes, and no one understood what was happening.”

Independent Telegram news channel Sota, citing an employee of the gay club Central Station in Moscow, reported the raids happened at the Secret Club and the Mono Bar in Moscow, as well as at the popular pop-up Hunters Party.

Sota also reported that the Central Station Club in St. Petersburg announced its closure on Friday, saying the club’s management said that they were denied further rental of the site due to the “new law.”

Video posted by the two news outlets show a police van parked outside what appears to be one of the venues with flashing lights but no sirens. At least two people who appear to be police officers can be seen at the entrance of the venue.

Well-known Russian transgender blogger and LGBTQ activist Milana Petrova – who is no longer living in the country – posted about the raids on her Telegram channel.

She said the raids were on private LGBTQ parties, not nightclubs.

“There were NO raids there yesterday. There were raids on individual LGBT parties for adults. There, people’s passports were photographed without their will, apparently for further repression,” Petrova posted on Sunday.

“Let me remind you that the law came out the day before yesterday,” Petrova said. “Never in the history of the country have there been such cruel laws,” she added.

The manager of the popular Mono gay club, who goes by the name Alexey Khoroshy, denied reports his club was raided. Khoroshy said only the pop-up party in Moscow was raided.

“Yesterday was the only drug raid at Hunters Party. So, everything is calm as before – we are working! And remember that drugs are evil!” Khoroshy said.

However, people chatting on an online group linked to the Hunters Party expressed their fear.

“No one will be at peace anymore, we are now balancing between propaganda and extremism,” posted one person directly linked to the Hunters Party on the group chat.

Another person responded: “It is dangerous, I won’t go anymore.”

Russian officials have not commented on the raids. There was no mention of routine drug or any other type of raids on state-run media.

Russia’s LGBTQ community have already faced a host of new laws that specifically target them.

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

The ban was rubber-stamped by Putin just days after a harsh new “foreign agents” law came into effect, as the Kremlin cracks down on free speech and human rights as its military operation in Ukraine falters.

The new laws significantly broaden the scope of a 2013 law which banned the dissemination of LGBTQ-related information to minors. The new iteration extends the ban on promoting such information to adults as well.

It is now illegal in Russia to promote or “praise” LGBTQ relationships, publicly express non-heterosexual orientations or suggest that they are “normal.”

Correction: An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of the Russian Telegram channel Ostorozhno Moskva and misidentified venue locations. The raids were only in Moscow.

Ukrainian prosecutors are investigating whether Russian troops killed two Ukrainian service members after the pair had surrendered.

The probe, which is being overseen by the Ukraine prosecutor general’s office, was announced a day after video of the incident was shared by Ukrainian government on social media. The incident took place near an observation post outside the village of Stepove near Donetsk, in eastern Ukraine, the office said in a statement.

“The killing of prisoners of war is a gross violation of the Geneva Conventions and is classified as a serious international crime,” the statement read.

Russia has been accused of carrying out a litany of crimes since it invaded Ukraine, though the Kremlin has denied wrongdoing. Earlier this year, The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin for his alleged role in a scheme to deport Ukrainian children to Russia

Ukrainian officials are investigating a substantial number of criminal cases and war crimes, including 3,000 involving children.

Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman, Dmytro Lubinets, on Saturday wrote on Telegram that the killing of the unarmed soldiers was “not an isolated case.”

A video that surfaced in March appeared to show Russian troops executing a captured Ukrainian soldier, and two videos that emerged the following month on pro-Russian social media seemed to capture on camera Russian troops beheading Ukrainian service members.

Lubinets said that he believed Ukrainian officials would be able to identify the Russian troops responsible.

“I believe that our law enforcement and intelligence agencies will be able to identify the Russian servicemen who committed this crime,” Lubintes added.

One of the most prominent faces of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement revealed Sunday that she is living in Canada and will not return to meet bail conditions as police investigate allegations she endangered national security.

Agnes Chow, a former student activist and politician, broke more than two years of public silence in a social media post on her 27th birthday, announcing she had left Hong Kong for studies in Canada in September – and that she will not return to Hong Kong later this month to report to police as required.

“Probably I won’t return for the rest of my life,” she said in a post on Instagram.

Chow, who was sentenced to 10 months in prison in 2020 for taking part in Hong Kong’s mass anti-government protests the previous year, was bailed by police in a separate case upon her release in 2021 on suspicion of “colluding with foreign forces to endanger national security.”

She had her passport confiscated, was ordered to regularly report to police and had kept a low profile since.

In her Instagram post, Chow said she decided to flee after “considering the situation in Hong Kong, my personal safety, my physical and mental health,” adding that she had faced sustained pressure from authorities.

She said her passport was only returned to her after she agreed to travel in August on a police-organized trip to mainland China to learn about the country’s development.

Chow said she received permission from Hong Kong authorities to pursue her master’s degree in Canada, on the condition that she returned to Hong Kong to report to police during school breaks.

In a statement Monday, Hong Kong police condemned Chow’s plans to skip bail as “irresponsible behaviors that blatantly challenge law and order.”

“Police urge the relevant individual to step back from the brink, refrain from choosing the path of no return and carrying the label of ‘fugitive’ for the rest of her life,” the police statement said.

Escorted mainland China trip

Chow cofounded the pro-democracy Hong Kong political party Demosisto in 2016 with fellow activists Joshua Wong and Nathan Law when they were students. Demosisto was disbanded on June 30, 2020, the same day Beijing imposed a sweeping national security law on the semi-autonomous city.

Chow was among the first pro-democracy leaders to be detained under the law in Hong Kong. Wong is currently behind bars, while Law is in self-imposed exile in the United Kingdom.

Critics say the law has wiped out opposition to the government and curtailed political freedoms in the once outspoken city. The Hong Kong government has repeatedly denied the legislation is suppressing freedoms and insisted the law has “restored stability” to the city following the 2019 protests.

In her Instagram post, Chow said she was admitted by a university in Toronto earlier this year. But as a 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.

Under the escort of five national security police officers, Chow said she was taken to an exhibition highlighting China’s achievements since its reform and opening in the late 1970s, and the headquarters of tech giant Tencent to understand “the motherland’s technological development” – where she was required to pose for photos, according to her post.

“I felt as if I was under surveillance the whole time,” she wrote, citing whispers between police officers and staff members behind her back and requests for her to pose for photos.

She also said she was required to write an appreciation letter to “thank the police” for organizing the trip and allowing her to “understand the great development of the motherland.”

“To be honest, I have never denied China’s economic development. But such a powerful country is sending people who fight for democracy to prison, restricting their freedom of entering and leaving the country, and imposing visits to mainland China for patriotic exhibitions as an exchange for getting their passports back – isn’t this a show of vulnerability?” she wrote.

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

Living in fear

Chow also recounted the mental toll that strict bail conditions had taken on her over more than two years.

Every three months, Chow had to sign a notice extending the confiscation of her passport. She was also ordered to report regularly to police about her income, work, family and personal relationships, Chow wrote on Instagram.

“It was as if someone wanted to remind me every once in a while: you have not regained your freedom, you’re still under surveillance, don’t try to do anything,” she wrote.

Chow said every time she reported to the police, she was fearful of being rearrested.

She had been diagnosed with depression, anxiety disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder, she said, adding her mental and physical state reached a low point this year, prompting her to apply for graduate school in Canada.

Chow said she gained permission to leave after providing the national security police details of her program and writing a requested “letter of repentance.” In the letter, she stated regretted her past political activities and pledged that she will never participate in politics or meet her fellow activists again.

“Over the past few years, I have experienced first-hand how precious freedom from fear is,” Chow wrote. “Freedom is hard to come by. In my daily life of fear, I cherish all the people who have not forgotten me, who care about me and love me even more. Hope we can reunite in the near future and give each other a good embrace.”

Venezuelans voted by a wide margin Sunday to approve the takeover of an oil-rich region in neighboring Guyana – the latest escalation in a long-running territorial dispute between the two countries, fueled by the recent discovery of vast offshore energy resources.

The area in question, the densely forested Essequibo region, amounts to about two-thirds of Guyana’s national territory and is roughly the size of Florida.

Sunday’s largely symbolic referendum asked voters if they agreed with creating a Venezuelan state in the Essequibo region, providing its population with Venezuelan citizenship and “incorporating that state into the map of Venezuelan territory.”

In a news conference announcing preliminary results from the first tranche of counted votes, the Venezuelan National Electoral Council said voters chose “yes” more than 95% of the time on each of five questions on the ballot.

It is unclear what steps Venezuela’s government would take to enforce its claim, however.

Venezuela has long claimed the land, which it argues was within its borders during the Spanish colonial period. It dismisses an 1899 ruling by international arbitrators that set the current boundaries when Guyana was still a British colony, and Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has cast the referendum in anti-imperialist sentiment on social media.

Guyana has called the move a step towards annexation and an “existential threat.”

Last week, Guyanese President Irfaan Ali visited troops in Essequibo and dramatically hoisted a Guyanese flag on a mountain overlooking the border with Venezuela.

The International Court of Justice, based in The Hague, ruled before the vote that “Venezuela shall refrain from taking any action which would modify the situation that currently prevails in the territory in dispute.” It plans to hold a trial in the spring on the issue, following years of review and decades of failed negotiations. Venezuela does not recognize the court’s jurisdiction on the issue, however.

What happens next

The vote’s result was widely expected within Venezuela, although its practical implications are likely to be minimal, analysts say, with the creation of a Venezuelan state within the Essequibo a remote possibility.

It’s unclear what steps the Venezuelan government would take to follow through on the result, and any attempt to assert a claim would certainly be met with international resistance.

Still, the escalating rhetoric has prompted troop movements in the region and saber-rattling in both countries, drawing comparisons from Guyanese leaders to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Many residents in the predominantly indigenous region are reportedly on edge.

“The longstanding row over the border between Guyana and Venezuela has risen to a level of unprecedented tension in the relations between our countries,” Guyanese Foreign Minister Robert Persaud wrote Wednesday in Americas Quarterly.

Even without implementing the referendum, which would require further constitutional steps and the likely use of force, Maduro may stand to gain politically from the vote amid a challenging re-election campaign.

In October, the Venezuelan opposition showed rare momentum after rallying around Maria Corina Machado, a center-right former legislator who has attacked Maduro for overseeing soaring inflation and food shortages, in the country’s first primary in 11 years.

“An authoritarian government facing a difficult political situation is always tempted to look around for a patriotic issue so it can wrap itself in the flag and rally support, and I think that’s a large part of what Maduro is doing,” said Phil Gunson, a Caracas-based analyst with the International Crisis Group.

Language experts choosing the Oxford word of the year 2023 were dazzled by a bright young thing, selecting a relative newcomer, “rizz,” for the top spot.

Derived from the word “charisma,” “rizz” refers to a person’s ability to attract a romantic partner through “style, charm or attractiveness,” dictionary publisher Oxford University Press (OUP) said in its announcement Monday. The word received more than 32,000 votes from the public, OUP added.

“Rizz” soared in popularity earlier this year, after Spider-Man actor Tom Holland was asked by Buzzfeed what the secret to his rizz was. His answer? “I have no rizz whatsoever. I have limited rizz.”

The publisher of the Oxford English Dictionary added that the word can also be used as a verb, in the phrase “rizz up,” meaning to attract or chat up a person.

While word of the year contenders do not need to be new words, they must have a significance to the year in question. OUP said its 2023 shortlist was chosen to “reflect the mood, ethos, or preoccupations of the year.”

So, how did “rizz” fight off its rivals?

OUP’s experts shortlisted eight words, which were put into competing pairs for the public to vote on. From the resulting four finalists, the experts did one last analysis, before picking “rizz” as the winner.

The other finalists were “prompt,” the instruction given to an artificial intelligence program that influences the content it creates; “situationship,” which means a romantic partnership that is not considered to be formal or established; and lastly, “Swiftie” – the name given to an avid fan of singer Taylor Swift.

In 2022, Oxford’s word of the year was “goblin mode,” a colloquial term for behavior that is unapologetically lazy in a way that rejects social norms.