The terrifying attack was just one of multiple locations hit on Saturday morning by the most sustained and coordinated assault inside Israel ever carried out by Hamas militants.

At least 260 bodies would later be found at the festival site, according to Israeli rescue service Zaka. Some attendees were taken hostage, seen in social media videos being seized by their armed captors.

The outdoor Nova Festival event in a rural farmland area near the Gaza-Israel border was supposed to be an all-night dance party, celebrating the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. But as dawn broke, Gibly said they began hearing sirens and rockets.

Explosions can be heard in video taken by Gibly of her and friends walking through the quickly emptying concert grounds, roughly two miles from the border.

“Ima’le,” someone is heard saying, a common Israeli expression of fear or feeling startled.

Gibly and the others didn’t know it, but less than two miles away, Gaza militants had also begun attacking Israeli tanks and soldiers.

When attendees fled in their cars, Gibly said the roadways became clogged and no one could move. That’s when the gunshots began, she says.

In videos Gibly took, an Israeli military vehicle is seen driving against the flow of traffic as people try to make way for it. Someone outside the car be heard screaming: “Go! Go forward! Go forward!”

That’s when Gibly said she and her friends panicked, abandoned the car, and began running.

‘Like a shooting range’

A video circulating on social media showed hundreds of attendees fleeing their cars, running across an empty field with gunshots echoing in the background.

“It was so terrifying and we didn’t know where to drive to not meet those evil … people,” she said. “I have a lot of friends that got lost at the forest for a lot of hours and got shot like it was a range.”

Gibly is still trying to get in touch with her friends who were also at the concert. She says she doesn’t know if others survived, were taken prisoner, or worse.

The festival’s organizers are helping Israeli security forces locate missing attendees.

Hostage taken to Gaza

Details of hostages from the attack are beginning to emerge as family members recognize relatives in videos circulating from Gaza.

In one video that went viral, an Israeli woman and her boyfriend – identified as Noa Argamani and Avinatan Or, who had attended the festival – were shown being kidnapped.

In it, Argamani was seen on the back of a motorcycle being driven away as she pleaded for help. Or was seen nearby as the motorcycle carrying Argamani rode past, and was eventually apprehended by several men – and made to walk with his hands held behind his back.

Family members and friends of the couple have expressed that they want the video to be widely shared in hopes of locating them and securing their safe release.

“But still, we have people missing. We have friends and families, young and old, everyone that got to Gaza Strip, and we need to do everything and now to get them back,” he said.

“I saw his girlfriend Noa in the video, scared and frightened, I can’t imagine what’s going through her at all – screaming in panic on a motorcycle, when some scumbags are holding her and they don’t let her go,” he said.

“My brother, who is a big guy, two meters tall, trains four times a week, a really strong guy. They held him maybe four or five people and just led them towards the strip, I guess.”

Her cousin confirmed to the Washington Post that Louk attended the music festival.

In the video, Louk is seen motionless. One gunman, carrying a rocket propelled grenade, has his leg draped over her waist; the other holds a clump of her dreadlocks. “Allahu Akbar,” they cheer – meaning “God is great” in Arabic.

Some of the crowd gathered around the truck join in the cheers. One man spits on Louk’s head as the car drives off.

“We recognized her by the tattoos, and she has long dreadlocks,” Louk’s cousin told the Washington Post. “We have some kind of hope … Hamas is responsible for her and the others.”

In a video obtained by German news outlet Bild, Louk’s mother Ricarda said: “This morning my daughter, Shani Nicole Louk, a German citizen, was kidnapped with a group of tourists in southern Israel by Palestinian Hamas.”

“We were sent a video in which I could clearly see our daughter unconscious in the car with the Palestinians and them driving around the Gaza Strip,” she said. “I ask you to send us any help or any news. Thank you very much.”

A British man who broke into Windsor Castle with a loaded crossbow and planned to assassinate Queen Elizabeth II has been handed a nine-year jail sentence.

Jaswant Singh Chail, 21, was arrested on Christmas Day 2021 within the grounds of the royal residence, where the late monarch was staying during the pandemic.

Chail was thought to have scaled the castle’s perimeter with a nylon rope ladder before he was detained. Wearing black clothes and a sinister metal mask, he told a police protection officer, “I am here to kill the Queen,” before being arrested.

In February, Chail pleaded guilty to three charges, including treason and possession of an offensive weapon, at a hearing at London’s Old Bailey court.

Sentencing judge Justice Hilliard jailed him for nine years with a further five years on extended licence, the PA Media news agency reported Thursday.

“The defendant harbored homicidal thoughts which he acted on before he became psychotic,” the judge said. “His intention was not just to harm or alarm the sovereign – but to kill her.”

Chail was sentenced under a “hybrid order” under the Mental Health Act, meaning he will serve his term at Broadmoor high-security psychiatric hospital until he is well enough to be transferred to prison, according to PA Media.

The court heard that Chail was a “Star Wars” fan who described himself as a “Sith” in a video that he sent to about 20 people after breaching the castle grounds, and had been pushed to break into the castle by his AI chatbot “girlfriend,” the UK news agency reported.

The Old Bailey was also told that Chail wrote in a journal he tried to email his sister that if the sovereign was “unobtainable” he would “have to go for” the prince, an apparent reference to then-Prince Charles, as “he seems to be just as suitable in many ways.”

British media reported that Chail was the first person in the UK to be convicted of treason in over 40 years.

According to PA Media, Chail apologized to the royal family in a letter to the court, in which he expressed his “distress and sadness.”

“He is embarrassed and ashamed he brought such horrific and worrying times to their front door,” his barrister Nadia Chbat said. “He has expressed relief no one was actually hurt.”

A Russian missile strike killed at least 51 people, including a child, in a village near the eastern Ukrainian city of Kupiansk on Thursday, officials say, in one of the deadliest attacks against civilians since the conflict began.

Moscow’s forces targeted a cafe and a shop in Hroza, in the Kharkiv region, soon after midday local time, according to Ukrainian Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko.

Scenes emerged of emergency workers wading through dense rubble in the aftermath of the attack. Doctors are treating the six people injured by the strike.

Bodies of the deceased, including a 6-year-old boy, were removed from the destroyed buildings, said Oleh Synehubov, a regional military official. The bodies of 29 victims have been identified, the Ukrainian interior minister said. The other bodies were sent to facilities in the city of Kharkiv.

There were locals inside the store when the missile ripped through, Ukraine’s interior minister said, triggering a scale of devastation not seen since an attack on a railway station in Kramatorsk in early 2022 killed more than 60 people.

A wake for a fallen Ukrainian soldier was being held at the village cafe when the missile struck, killing several members of the of soldier’s family, Dmytro Chubenko, spokesperson for the Kharkiv Regional Prosecutor’s Office, told Ukrainian media outlet RBC.

The fallen Ukrainian soldier had previously been buried in the city of Dnipro, but his relatives wanted him to be reburied in the village where he was originally from, Chubenko said.

“The wake was attended by the son of the deceased, who was also a soldier,” he said. “The son, along with his wife and mother, were in a cafe and were killed by a rocket,” he added.

According to the latest death toll, the attack wiped out about one fifth of the village, which was home to 330 people.

There was a similar attack in the nearby town of Pervomaiske, when people were also saying goodbye to a fallen soldier, according Chubenko also said. “His fellow soldiers were present then. Today, there were only civilians at the site of the attack.”

Hroza was hit by an Iskander missile, according to Ukrainian officials. The Iskander is a ballistic missile with a relatively short range, that depending on configuration carries a warhead of between 500 and 700 kilograms.

It has been extensively used by the Russians against Ukraine, causing substantial civilian casualties.

Hroza is located about 40 kilometers from the frontlines of the war near Kupiansk, the city in Kharkiv that Russian forces seized early on in the war before losing it a year ago.

The Ukrainian military has since been trying to resist advances from Moscow. For Kyiv, the city is strategically important to prevent Russia from accessing the nearby Oskil River – where it is much easier to cross than further south.

‘Demonstrably brutal’

Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov said the strike shows Kyiv needs more defense systems to “protect our country from terror,” amid fears of dwindling military aid from Western allies.

His comments came amid political upheaval in the US Congress, the lawmaking branch of government, and drained ammunition stocks among NATO countries, which threaten the flow of military aid to Kyiv.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the attack was “a demonstrably brutal Russian crime – a rocket attack on an ordinary grocery store, a completely deliberate terrorist attack.”

“Russian terror must be stopped. Anyone who helps Russia circumvent sanctions is a criminal. Everyone who still supports Russia is supporting evil,” Zelensky said on the sidelines of a European leaders summit in Granada, in southern Spain.

“Russia needs this and similar terrorist attacks for one thing only: to make its genocidal aggression the new normal for the whole world.”

Zelensky sought reassurance from European leaders on Thursday, telling reporters Europe’s “biggest challenge” will be to preserve its “unity” in the face of Russia’s invasion.

Ukranian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal called the attack “brutal and cynical.”

“Dozens of people were killed, including a child. It is impossible to describe this horror in words,” he posted on Telegram.

“We must stop the Russian terror so that enemy missiles and shells do not take any more lives or injure any more people. This can only be done in a coordinated and united manner, with the help and support of our partners,” Shmyhal added.

The UN’s humanitarian coordinator in Ukraine said images arriving from the scene of the attack “are absolutely horrifying,” accusing Russian forces of carrying out a war crime.

“Our thoughts are also with the people of Ukraine, who had to witness today, once again, another barbaric consequence of Russia’s invasion,” Denise Brown said.

“Intentionally directing an attack against civilians or civilian objects is a war crime. Intentionally launching an attack knowing that it would be disproportionate is a war crime.”

When the discovery of fossilized footprints made in what’s now New Mexico was made public in 2021, it was a bombshell moment for archaeology, seemingly rewriting a chapter of the human story. Now new research is offering further evidence of their significance.

While they look like they could have been made yesterday, the footprints were pressed into mud 21,000 to 23,000 years ago, according to radiocarbon dating of the seeds of an aquatic plant that were preserved above and below the fossils.

This date dramatically pushed back the timeline of humans’ history in the Americas, the last landmass to be settled by prehistoric people. The 61 dated prints, which were discovered in the Tularosa Basin, near the edge of an ancient lake in White Sands National Park, were made at a time when many scientists think that massive ice sheets had sealed off human passage into North America, indicating that humans arrived in the region even earlier.

However, some archaeologists questioned the age of the footprints established by those initial findings. The skeptics noted that aquatic plants such as Ruppia cirrhosa — the one used in the 2021 study — can acquire carbon from dissolved atoms in the water rather than the air, which can result in a misleadingly early date.

In a follow-up study published Thursday in the journal Science, researchers said they have produced two new lines of evidence to support their initial dates.

“Even as the original work was being published, we were forging ahead to test our results with multiple lines of evidence,” said Kathleen Springer, research geologist at the US Geological Survey and co-lead author on the new Science paper, in a news release.

“We were confident in our original ages, as well as the strong geologic, hydrologic, and stratigraphic evidence, but we knew that independent chronologic control was critical.”

When and how early humans first migrated to the Americas has long been debated and remains poorly understood. Current estimates for the first inhabitants range from 13,000 years ago to more than 20,000 years ago. However, the earliest archaeological evidence for the region’s settlement is sparse and often controversial, making the footprints especially important.

Confirming the age of ancient footprints

For their follow-up study, the researchers focused on radiocarbon dating of conifer pollen, because it comes from a terrestrial plant and avoids the issues that can arise when dating aquatic plants such as Ruppia, according to the news release.

The scientists were able to isolate some 75,000 grains of pollen, collected from the exact same layers as the original seeds, for each sample. Thousands of grains are required to achieve the mass necessary for a single radiocarbon measurement. The pollen age matched that found for the seeds.

The team also used a dating technique known as optically stimulated luminescence, which determines the last time quartz grains in the fossil sediment were exposed to sunlight. This method suggested that the quartz had a minimum age of 21,500 years.

“The immediate reaction in some circles of the archaeological community was that the accuracy of our dating was insufficient to make the extraordinary claim that humans were present in North America during the Last Glacial Maximum,” said Jeff Pigati, USGS geologist and co-lead author of the study. “But our targeted methodology in this current research really paid off.”

This study helps illuminate the grand story of human evolution, but there’s still much that remains unknown about how the Americas were populated.

It’s not clear whether early humans arrived by boat or came over a land bridge from Asia. Nor, despite advances in genetic evidence, is it clear whether one or many populations of early modern humans made the long journey.

Bente Philippsen, an associate professor and radiocarbon dating expert at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, said determining the age of pollen grain is an “intricate process that comes with a risk of contamination.”

What’s more, she noted in a commentary published alongside the study, dates derived from luminescence have large measurement uncertainties.

However, she said that the new study’s findings overall “strongly indicate” a human presence in the Americas around the time of the Last Glacial Maximum, a period between 19,000 and 26,000 years ago when two massive ice sheets covered the northern third of North America, reaching as far south as New York City, Cincinnati and Des Moines, Iowa.

The ice and cold temperatures would have made a journey between Asia and Alaska impossible during that time, meaning the people who made the footprints likely arrived much earlier.

Jennifer Raff, an associate professor at the University of Kansas and author of “Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas,” said the footprint findings were a “big deal” for the field.

“The American continents were the last step on modern humans’ global journey across the world,” she said via email. “It is fascinating to imagine what it must have been like to enter a new region and contend with the challenges (and opportunities) that new environments would have presented.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested Thursday that it was not an “external” attack that crashed the plane carrying Wagner warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin in August, but hand grenades within the aircraft.

Speaking at the Valdai Forum in Sochi, Putin said the “chairman of the investigative committee just reported a few days ago that the fragments of hand grenades were found in the bodies of the victims. There was no external influence on the plane, it is an established fact.”

Prigozhin, who led a failed uprising against the Kremlin, was among the 10 people on board the private plane which crashed in a field northwest of Moscow in August while en route to St. Petersburg. All on board, including Prigozhin and his top aides, were killed.

The Russian leader, whose government has denied involvement in the crash, did not detail how grenades might have exploded on the plane, but said that he thought investigators should have performed drug or alcohol tests on the bodies of the victims.

“I repeat, in my opinion such an examination should have been carried out but it wasn’t,” he said, also saying that “10 billion in cash and 5 kilos of cocaine” had previously been found by Russian security forces in Wagner’s office in St Petersburg.

Putin said the chairman of the investigation committee said it was ok to “share this information publicly” as it was “an established fact.”

The crash came two months to the day after Prigozhin’s attempted mutiny against Russia’s military leadership, which posed the biggest challenge to Putin’s rule in decades.

In June, Prigozhin and his Wagner troops seized key military sites and marched toward Moscow, where the Kremlin had deployed heavily armed troops to the streets. But before they could face off, a deal was struck that ended the rebellion and sent Prigozhin and his fighters to neighboring Belarus.

Following the deadly crash, Russian officials said they were considering various scenarios surrounding the incident, including the possibility of a “deliberate atrocity,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters in late August.

Peskov has denied claims that the Kremlin might have been involved in the plane’s demise, calling such speculation an “absolute lie.”

Drones laden with explosives hit a military college graduation ceremony in the western Syrian city of Homs on Wednesday, killing 80 people, including women and children, and wounding hundreds more, according to Syria’s Minister of Health.

“In a preliminary toll, the terrorist act that targeted the graduation ceremony of students at the Military College in Homs led to the death of 80 martyrs, including 6 children, and the number of injured was 240,” Hassan Al-Ghobash said.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack. In an earlier statement, the defense ministry blamed “terrorist organizations supported by well known international parties.”

“There were dozens of wounded soldiers, with critical injuries among the invited families, including women and children, in addition to a number of college students participating in the graduation,” the ministry said in a statement.

The Syrian armed forces said the attack was “unprecedented,” and vowed to respond “with full force and determination, warning that those who planned and executed the attack “will pay dearly.”

The ancient city of Homs, once known as the capital of the Syrian revolution, was the site of intense battles between regime forces and opposition fighters seeking to unseat President Bashar Al Assad in 2012. The city fell to the regime in 2014, when rebels left it after a two-year siege.

Located in the agricultural heartland of central Syria, the city had long been a transport and commercial hub of vital strategic importance. The road through Homs connects the capital, Damascus, in the south to Syria’s largest city, Aleppo, in the north.

Meanwhile, at least eight people were killed on the other side of the country Thursday by Turkish airstrikes targeting Kurdish-controlled areas of northeastern Syria, according to a statement by Kurdish security forces in the region.

“The Turkish state launched on Thursday a series of attacks on our regions with more than 15 drones penetrating the airspace of northeastern Syria, and again targeted many positions, infrastructure, service facilities, and gas and oil stations, resulting in death and injuries. Its aggression also affected areas populated by civilians,” said Asayish, the Kurdish internal security force.

Turkey’s military has launched a series of airstrikes against Kurdish targets in Syria and Iraq following a deadly bombing in the Turkish capital on Sunday. The attack in Ankara was claimed by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has carried out a decades-long insurgency against the government and is classified as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States, and the European Union.

New images from the James Webb Space Telescope have revealed surprising pairs of planet-like objects in the Orion Nebula that have never been detected before.

The Orion Nebula, a glowing cloud of dust and gas, is one of the brightest nebulae in the night sky and identifiable as the sword in the Orion constellation. Located 1,300 light-years from Earth, the nebula has long presented astronomers with a wealth of celestial objects to study, including planet-forming disks around young stars and brown dwarfs, or objects with a mass between that of planets and stars.

Astronomers used Webb’s near-infrared camera, called NIRCam, to capture mosaics of the Orion Nebula in short and long wavelengths of light, revealing unprecedented details and unexpected discoveries.

When astronomers Samuel G. Pearson and Mark J. McCaughrean studied the short-wavelength image of the Orion Nebula, they zoomed in on the Trapezium Cluster, a young star-forming region that’s about 1 million years old, filled to the brim with thousands of new stars. In addition to the stars, the scientists spotted brown dwarfs, which are too small to kick-start the nuclear fusion at their cores to become stars. Brown dwarfs have a mass that is below 7% the mass of the sun.

On the hunt for other low-mass isolated objects, the astronomers found something they had never seen: pairs of planet-like objects with masses between 0.6 and 13 times the mass of Jupiter that appear to defy some fundamental astronomical theories.

The scientists dubbed them Jupiter Mass Binary Objects, or JuMBOs.

“Although some of them are more massive than the planet Jupiter, they will be roughly the same size and only slightly larger,” said Pearson, a European Space Agency research fellow at the European Space Research and Technology Centre in the Netherlands.

The astronomers found 40 pairs of JuMBOs and two triple systems, all on wide orbits around one another. Although they exist in pairs, the objects are typically about 200 astronomical units apart, or 200 times the distance between Earth and the sun. It can take between 20,000 and 80,000 years for the objects to complete an orbit around each other.

The objects’ temperatures range from 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit (537 degrees Celsius) to 2,300 F (1,260 C), Pearson said. The gaseous objects are young, astronomically speaking — about 1 million years old. Our solar system, in comparison, is 4.57 billion years old.

“We are halfway through the life of the sun, so these objects in Orion are 3-day-old babies,” said McCaughrean, senior adviser for science and exploration at the European Space Agency. “They’re still quite luminous and warm because the energy they have when they get created still allows them to glow, which is how we can see these things in the first place.”

McCaughrean and Pearson have written two research papers based on their discoveries in the Orion Nebula using the Webb telescope. The studies have been submitted to academic journals for publication, and the preliminary findings are available on a preprint site called arXiv. But many questions about JuMBOs remain — including how they came to be in the first place.

JuMBOs: Upending the rules of astronomy

Stars form from giant clouds of gas and dust that collapse beneath gravitational forces. This process continues as disks of gas and dust swirl around the stars, giving rise to planets. But no existing theories explain how the JuMBOs formed, or why they’re present in the Orion Nebula, McCaughrean said.

For instance, some may consider the JuMBOs to be like rogue planets, or objects of planetary mass that freely travel through space without orbiting stars. But many rogue planets begin by orbiting stars before being ejected, and it would be hard to explain how pairs of them were kicked out at the same time while remaining gravitationally connected to each other.

“Scientists have been working on theories and models of star and planet formation for decades, but none of them have ever predicted that we would find pairs of super low mass objects floating alone in space — and we’re seeing lots of them,” Pearson said. “The main thing that we learn from this is that there is something fundamentally wrong with either our understanding of planet formation, star formation, or both.”

The Orion Nebula is a favorite observational target of astronomers, and the larger and more sophisticated telescopes become, the more objects are revealed within the nebula, McCaughrean said.

“While the objects we are looking at are really faint, they are brightest in the infrared, so that (is) where you have the best chance of detecting them,” Pearson said via email. “JWST is the most powerful infrared telescope that has ever been built and these observations simply wouldn’t be possible with any other telescope.”

Observations of the nebula scheduled for early 2024 could provide more insight into the atmospheric compositions of the JuMBOs, Pearson said. The researchers also want to uncover more details about the objects, including making precise measurements of their masses.

Meanwhile, other research focused on different star-forming regions could reveal whether JuMBOs are elsewhere beyond the Orion Nebula.

“The main question is, ‘What?! Where did that come from?’” Pearson said. “It’s just so unexpected that a lot of future observations and modelling are going to be needed to explain it.”

In Africa, demand for beauty and personal care is growing fast but there’s still a gap in what’s available for consumers. Fake cosmetics and skin-whitening products can put consumers at risk, while the global brands that import to the continent are often expensive and not tailored towards Black skin.

Uncover – a startup founded by three women in Kenya in 2020 – wants this to change. It has developed a range of cosmetics that serve the needs of African women, says Sneha Mehta, the company’s CEO and co-founder. With each product tried and tested by focus groups in either Kenya or Nigeria (where the startup is currently active), she says it has a high chance of creating something that’s popular in the African market.

For instance, Uncover’s sunscreen, one of its best-selling products. Jade Oyateru, the startup’s COO and co-founder, explains that while demand for sunscreen is growing among African women, they often complain that it leaves a ghostly white layer on their skin. Uncover responded by formulating a hydrating and fast-absorbing sunscreen that doesn’t leave a white cast, she says.

The African identity carries through to the product’s ingredients, with each one containing a plant grown on the continent. The sunscreen includes cooling aloe vera, while the vitamin C serum uses baobab that helps to reduce redness and the toner has rooibos leaf extract that is said to be anti-ageing.

Currently, Uncover’s products are manufactured in laboratories in South Korea, a world leader in beauty technology. Mehta says that in the next 10 years, she would love to start manufacturing in Africa, but currently the infrastructure is not up to standard and she doesn’t want to compromise on quality.

According to Technavio, a global market research firm, Africa’s beauty and personal care market is expected to grow by more than $5 billion from 2021 to 2026. This potential has attracted global players such as L’Oréal and Rihanna’s Fenty Beauty to sell on the continent, but their products are still predominantly focused on Western markets, says Mehta.

Rubab Abdoola, a consultant at Euromonitor International, which has also carried out research into Africa’s beauty industry, believes that developing skincare products for African consumers will help homegrown brands like Uncover differentiate themselves from global cosmetic giants.

“Although multinational brands still have a strong reputation on the continent and are perceived as being a status symbol in some cases, very often one of the complaints that consumers have is that these companies do not have products that have been developed by taking into account the skin of the African woman and the African climate,” she says.

Pan-African skincare

Urbanization and a young population are some of main drivers behind the booming African beauty market, but there is still a big gap in knowledge, says Uncover’s Oyateru. “Women know that they want to get into skincare and beauty and cosmetics, but they struggle to find the right products and the right information,” she says.

Uncover hopes to help solve this through digital tools on its website and engaging social content. Consumers can book virtual consultations with an in-house aesthetician and there is also a free skin quiz on the site, which can recommend products and nutrition tips based on a few questions.

The quiz provides useful marketing information. “Based on the data we’ve been able to collect, we understand women who have acne-prone skin, we understand women who have dry skin, and the kinds of products they buy,” says Oyateru, adding that the company tailors email newsletters towards skin types.

So far, this method seems to be working. Since 2020, Uncover has amassed a digital audience of more than 170,000 and raised $1.5 million in funding. While it is focusing its attention on Kenya and Nigeria it has also seen demand from other African countries, as well as diaspora communities across the world.

In the next two to five years, the startup will look to expand into other countries such as South Africa and Ghana, says Oyateru, with the aim of becoming a pan-African brand. The long-term mission is to change beauty standards across the continent.

Our products don’t just “address how you look, but (also) how you feel,” says Mehta. “We’re building a brand … to ensure that anyone – whether it’s a woman of color, somebody with acne or somebody with hyperpigmentation – loves the skin they’re in.”

Owning a car in Singapore, one of the world’s most expensive countries, has always been something of a luxury. But costs have now soared to an all time high.

A 10-year Certificate of Entitlement – a license people in the wealthy city state must purchase before they are even allowed to buy a vehicle – now costs a record minimum of $76,000 (104,000 Singapore dollars), more than four times what it did in 2020, according to Land Transport Authority figures.

And that just buys the right to purchase a standard Category A car, with a small to medium-sized engine of 1,600cc or below.

Those who want something bigger or flashier – like an SUV – will have to fork out $106,630 (146,002 Singapore dollars) for the Category B license – up from $102,900 (140,889 Singapore dollars).

Then there are the costs of the vehicle itself to think about.

The quota system was introduced in 1990 to minimize traffic and reduce emissions in a space-starved city state that is home to 5.9 million but boasts an impressive public transport network.

It has put cars out of reach for the average resident of Singapore, where the median monthly household income in 2022 was $7,376 (10,099 Singapore dollars), according to the Department of Statistics.

Wong Hui Min, a mother of two, said she might need to rethink her reliance on her car despite using it mostly for her family.

“I run around a lot, sending my kids to and from school, also for other activities like swimming lessons and tuition. I need my car. Taking taxis or shared rides everywhere is just not convenient for me,” she said.

“A Singaporean family on average has to save up years just to buy a car to help with their needs,” Wong continued, adding, “I don’t know if I can afford to keep my car in the long run.”

For some, the announcement is just the latest financial blow.

Locals say living in Singapore, already ranked the world’s most costly city, has gotten extraordinarily expensive in recent years amid persistent inflation, rising costs of public housing and a slowing economy.

But supporters of the quota system say it has helped spare Singapore the sort of congestion that routinely snarls up other Southeast Asian capitals such as Bangkok, Jakarta and Hanoi.

Those who can’t afford a Certificate of Entitlement can also make use of Singapore’s extensive public transport system they point out.

Failing that, there is the option of getting a motorbike – permits for which are a relative snip at $7,930 (10,856 Singapore dollars).

Parasto Hakim was startled by a knock at the front gates.

She scanned her classroom for a quick headcount – all the girls were already in attendance. It could only be the Taliban.

Her heart pounding, she opened the door to find at least five members of the Afghan militant group demanding to check if she was breaking any rules. She was. This was a secret school, set up to teach girls despite the bans on female education imposed by the Taliban since they retook control of Afghanistan two years ago.

Hakim immediately employed the school’s security protocols. In order to ensure her staff and students’ safety, she had instructed them on how to respond to a Taliban inspection.

“I told the girls to ‘stay silent, keep your eyes down and don’t talk’ even if the Taliban speak to you directly,” Hakim said from an undisclosed location outside Afghanistan.

“So when they (the Taliban) were asking them questions, the girls were just looking at me and I had to reply – I was so scared.”

Hakim says the Taliban tried to bribe the girls into talking, but they remained silent. The militants then started shouting at her and tried intimidating her and another teacher with their questions, she said. But after getting nowhere, they left.

Broken promises

In the summer of 2021, Hakim watched in horror as the Taliban’s tanks rolled into Kabul amid the United States’ chaotic final withdrawal from the country. This time the group vowed a more progressive government than its previous fundamentalist rule between 1996 and 2001.

At a news conference held shortly after the takeover, senior Taliban leadership insisted women and girls would be protected from violence and that education would remain a right for all. Hakim did not believe a word of it, she says.

“They said the exact same words as before, saying they will make (Afghanistan) an environment according to the Sharia law and Islamic values, that they would have girls back at school and women would be able to work and attend university,” Hakim said.

“I thought to myself, they are lying, they won’t change, and they will never ever allow girls to go to school again.”

The Taliban’s promises were soon broken. Girls are not allowed to go to school beyond the 6th grade and are barred from attending university.

Women are being erased from Afghan public life by the all-male government. Last December, all local and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs), including the United Nations, were ordered to stop their female employees from coming to work. This year the Taliban closed all beauty salons across the country, an industry that had employed roughly 60,000 women.

The UN described the Taliban’s draconian restrictions as “discriminatory and misogynistic” in a report published in June this year and said their rule could amount to “gender apartheid” and a “crime against humanity.”

Hakim says she came to the conclusion that continuing to provide girls with an education was the only way to fight back against the Taliban. In the face of history repeating itself, she turned to the example set by Afghan women who defied the odds more than 25 years ago, the last time the Taliban seized control.

“I was asking myself, what was the young generation doing in 1996 when the Taliban were in power? How were they living?” she said.

‘I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t’

Inspired, in part, by a 1996 Christiane Amanpour documentary titled “Battle for Afghanistan,” Hakim decided to create secret schools for a new generation of Afghan girls.

That night, Hakim says she made a series of frantic calls to her contacts, asking for help. Among them was her old friend, Maryam.

“We have to start at least something for girls to gather together and have their own indoor community, in underground spaces to learn and be educated,” Hakim recalled telling Maryam. “I have all the resources you need; I just need you (Maryam) to expand it,” she continued.

“I was working so I could afford to buy books, notepads and everything we need for underground classes.”

Maryam, a trained educator, said that when she heard from Hakim, she was eager to help and wanted to break free of the Taliban’s restrictions.

After the militant group imposed the bans on girls’ education, Maryam says she was trapped at home and felt like a “zombie,” with nothing to do and nowhere to go. The situation led to her suffering from severe anxiety and depression, she said.

“I was in a situation where I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t, it was some of the worst days of my life,” she said.

Maryam says as word of the school got around, more students began to enroll, and she found girls were relieved to attend to escape the pressure of being at home.

“Some girls refuse to stay home on government holidays, even if there’s no teacher at the school, they ask me to let them come in,” Maryam said.

“That shows how desperate they are to escape the stress of sitting at home and thinking about how they are deprived of their rights.”

“The school is like a light for me, it’s like a road where I can see happiness and sunrise at the end of it,” Maryam said.

“It gives me hope that one day regular schools will reopen, and every girl will be free to go back to school and women will be able to go back to their jobs.”

Such hope is sorely needed in Afghanistan. Rates of anxiety, depression and suicide among women are on the rise in Afghanistan since the group’s return to power, according to the UN.

‘It felt like being a prisoner’

One of Maryam’s students, 16-year-old Fatima, was among the many girls and women feeling depressed and anxious while confined to their homes by the Taliban’s prohibitions, their future opportunities tragically curtailed.

“I thought I was being thrown out of society,” Fatima recalled. “It felt like being a prisoner, like a prisoner who is only allowed to eat and drink, but not allowed to do anything else.”

“By sitting uneducated at home, we can’t achieve anything,” she continued. “I didn’t want to be a burden on my family and society, and by getting an education, I want to fulfill my dreams.”

With the support of her family, she discovered the underground classes taught by Maryam and others and found her passion. She loves tailoring and dreams of becoming a famous fashion designer.

“I want to be a woman who is well known amongst people,” she said. “I don’t want to be behind a mask forever, I want to be able to show my real face.”

For Yalda, another student, resuming her education proved to be a lifeline. She had nearly given up on her goal of becoming an engineer.

“It was an escape from the anxiety and depression I felt sitting at home,” the 14-year-old said about going back to school, even in this limited way.

Yalda, Fatima, Maryam and countless others are dreaming of a future without the Taliban and preparing for the day they can step out of the darkness.

“Even if the Taliban stay seven or eight more years, they will eventually go and then we can go to university and continue our education,” Yalda said.

‘Half a human being’

Fawzia Koofi, a women’s rights activist and pioneering Afghan lawmaker under the previous internationally backed administration, remembers living through a similar regime change when the Taliban first came to power.

Speaking from exile, Koofi says women then faced the same restrictions on movement and education that they face today. And back in 1997, she – just like Hakim – started a secret school, but with a few differences.

“It was always a small number of girls, maybe six or seven, I only taught them English and science, not to arouse suspicion (from the Taliban),” Koofi said. “We still had to be very careful and take precautions to prevent them from detecting us.”

Koofi had been accepted into medical school but was confined to her home when the Taliban took power in 1996.

“When you’re outside, the Taliban would look at you as if you are half a human being; telling you to cover your face,” she said. “It was never about what you can contribute to society or how talented you are, it was only about what you wore.”

During her subsequent political career, Koofi made history in 2005 by becoming the first woman elected to Afghanistan’s parliament and then the country’s first female deputy speaker.

After the Taliban returned in 2021, she fled the country, hoping one day to return.

Hope stronger than fear

Back at the secret school, Maryam learns the Taliban are checking neighborhoods for illegal activities and fears they risk being caught. She still feels gut-wrenching nerves at the prospect of a visit from the militants.

“I am scared, I experience fear at every moment,” she said. “But at the same time, I move on with the hope that tomorrow will be better than today.”

“There is a power stronger than fear, that is our hope for the future.”

The future is something Fatima also keeps in mind while making her journey to school every morning.

She says she worries that she could be arrested by the Taliban but, to her, it’s worth the risk.

“If they detain me, I will tell them I just want to be educated,” Fatima said. “I don’t want to sit at home and that is not a crime.”