India’s parliament passed a landmark bill Thursday that will reserve a third of its seats in the lower house and state assemblies for women, in a major win for rights groups that have for decades campaigned for better gender representation in politics.

The bill received cross-party support and was celebrated by politicians across India’s often fractious political spectrum but some expressed reservations that it could still take years for the quota to be implemented.

A total of 214 lawmakers from the upper house voted in favor of the Women’s Reservation Bill, which was introduced by prime minister Narendra Modi’s government in a special parliamentary session on Tuesday. It was approved by the lower house on Wednesday.

“A historic moment in our country’s democratic journey!” Modi wrote on Twitter after its approval. “With the passing of this bill, the representation of women power will be strengthened and a new era of their empowerment will begin.”

Six attempts to pass the bill, first introduced in 1996, have failed, at times due to strong disapproval from the country’s overwhelmingly male lawmakers.

In India, the world’s largest democracy of 1.4 billion people, women make up nearly half of the country’s 950 million registered voters but only 15% of lawmakers in parliament and 10% in state assemblies.

Despite being voted through, the move will not apply to next year’s general election.

The implementation of the quota could take years as it depends on the redrawing of electoral constituencies, which will only happen after the completion of India’s once-in-a-decade census.

That huge census project was meant to take place in 2021, but was delayed due to the coronavirus pandemic, and has been stalled ever since.

Some members of India’s opposition expressed disappointment that the bill won’t come into effect sooner.

Sonia Gandhi, a leader of the Indian National Congress, said women have been waiting for 13 years for the bill to go through.

“Now they have been asked to wait longer,” she told lawmakers in parliament. “How many years more?”

Rajani Patil, another Congress lawmaker, said that while the party was “very happy” at its passage, their demand is that the bill should be “implemented immediately” for the general elections.

She added: “It should include OBC reservations as well,” referring to India’s caste system, a 2,000 year old social hierarchy imposed on people by birth. Though abolished in 1950, it still exists in many aspects of life.

Nonetheless, the bill’s passage in parliament will be seen as a further boost to Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ahead of national elections next year.

While India has made progress on women’s issues in recent years, it remains a deeply patriarchal country.

It has, since its independence in 1947, had one female prime minister. India Gandhi served as the country’s leader twice before her assassination in 1984.

India’s current President, Droupadi Murmu, who was appointed to the position last year became only the second woman to take the seat.

Across the world, the overall share of lower house parliamentary seats occupied by women is about 26 percent according to UN Women’s data, up from 11 per cent in 1995.

Only six nations have currently achieved 50 per cent or more women in parliament in single or lower houses. Rwanda leads with 61 per cent, followed by Cuba (53 per cent), Nicaragua (52 per cent), Mexico (50 per cent), New Zealand (50 per cent), and the United Arab Emirates (50 per cent).

A further 23 countries have reached or surpassed 40 per cent, including 13 countries in Europe, six in Africa, three in Latin America and the Caribbean, and one in Asia – Timor Leste.

However Taiwan, which is not counted in the UN data, has the second highest representation of women in its legislature in Asia after the UAE at 43 percent.

While there is no evidence to suggest that Russia, the US or China is preparing for an imminent nuclear test, the images, obtained and provided by a prominent analyst in military nonproliferation studies, illustrate recent expansions at three nuclear test sites compared with just a few years ago.

One is operated by China in the far western region of Xinjiang, one by Russia in an Arctic Ocean archipelago, and another in the US in the Nevada desert.

The satellite images from the past three to five years show new tunnels under mountains, new roads and storage facilities, as well as increased vehicle traffic coming in and out of the sites, said Jeffrey Lewis, an adjunct professor at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies.

“There are really a lot of hints that we’re seeing that suggest Russia, China and the United States might resume nuclear testing,” he said, something none of those countries have done since underground nuclear testing was banned by the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. China and the US signed the treaty, but they haven’t ratified it.

Retired US Air Force Col. Cedric Leighton, a former intelligence analyst, reviewed the images of the three powers’ nuclear sites and came to a similar conclusion.

“It’s very clear that all three countries, Russia, China and the United States have invested a great deal of time, effort and money in not only modernizing their nuclear arsenals, but also in preparing the types of activities that would be required for a test,” he said.

Moscow has ratified the treaty, but Russian President Vladimir Putin said in February he would order a test, if the US moves first, adding that “no one should have dangerous illusions that global strategic parity can be destroyed.”

The expansions risk sparking a race to modernize nuclear weapons testing infrastructure at a time of deep mistrust between Washington and the two authoritarian governments, analysts said, though the idea of actual armed conflict is not considered imminent.

“The threat from nuclear testing is from the degree to which it accelerates the growing arms race between the United States on one hand, and Russia and China on the other,” Lewis said. “The consequences of that are that we spend vast sums of money, even though we don’t get any safer.”

Nuclear threats

Lewis’ comments came after a prominent nuclear watchdog group, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, earlier this year set its iconic Doomsday Clock, a measure of how close the world is to self-destruction, to 90 seconds to midnight, the clock’s most precarious setting since its inception in 1947.

The group cited the war in Ukraine, sparked by Russia’s illegal invasion of its neighbor in February 2022, as main reason for its sobering assessment.

“Russia’s thinly veiled threats to use nuclear weapons remind the world that escalation of the conflict – by accident, intention, or miscalculation – is a terrible risk. The possibility that the conflict could spin out of anyone’s control remains high,” the group said.

In other words, the Doomsday Clock today signals a higher risk of the end of humankind than in 1953, when both the United States and the Soviet Union conducted dramatic above-ground tests of nuclear weapons.

Last month United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres issued a fresh appeal for key countries to ratify the international treaty that bans experiments for both peaceful and military purposes

“This year, we face an alarming rise in global mistrust and division,” Guterres said. “At a time in which nearly 13,000 nuclear weapons are stockpiled around the world — and countries are working to improve their accuracy, reach and destructive power — this is a recipe for annihilation.”

Lewis pointed out that the unexpectedly poor performance of the Russian military in Ukraine could be part of the impetus for Moscow to consider resuming nuclear tests.

Dmitry Medvedev, a hawkish backer of Putin and the current deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, has vowed Moscow “would have to use nuclear weapons” if the Ukraine counteroffensive became successful. Medvedev’s bellicose rhetoric has raised eyebrows, but Putin is Russia’s key decision-maker, and widely seen as the real power behind the throne during Medvedev’s four-year presidency.

Belarus, which has played a key role in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, has also received tactical nuclear weapons from Moscow, President Alexander Lukashenko said in August. He added that Minsk would be willing to use them in the face of foreign “aggression.”

Russia and China

Even as the Russian military was invading Ukraine last year, analysts have also seen an expansion of the country’s nuclear test site in Novaya Zemlya in the Arctic Ocean archipelago.

In mid-August, the facility received renewed focus when Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu paid a visit, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.

The Novaya Zemlya site was first used by the Soviet Union to conduct nuclear tests in 1955 until the USSR’s final underground explosion in 1990. During that time, the site saw a total of 130 tests involving more than 200 devices, according to a review published in the Science and Global Security journal.

“The Russian test site is now open year round, we see them clearing snow off roads, we see them building new facilities.” Lewis said.

Near those facilities are tunnels where Russia has tested in past, Lewis said. “In the past five or six years, we’ve seen Russia dig new tunnels, which suggests that they are prepared to resume nuclear testing,” he added.

“The Russians may be trying to go right up to the line by making all the preparations for a nuclear test, but not actually carrying one out. In essence, they’d be doing this to ‘scare’ the West,” Leighton said.

Increased activity was also detected at the Chinese nuclear test site in Lop Nur, a dried up salt lake between two deserts in the sparsely populated western China.

Satellite images show a new, fifth underground tunnel has been under excavation in recent years, and fresh roads have been built. A comparison of the images taken in 2022 and 2023 shows the spoil pile has been steadily increasing in size, leading analysts to believe tunnels are being expanded, Lewis said.

In addition, the main administration and support area has seen new construction projects. A new storage area was built in 2021 and 2022, which could be used for storing explosives, he added.

“The Chinese test site is different than the Russian test site,” Lewis said. “The Chinese test site is vast, and there are many different parts of it.”

“(It) looks really busy, and these things are easily seen in satellite imagery. If we can see them, I think the US government certainly can,” he added.

Increased activity at Lop Nur was also noted in an April report by the Sasakawa Peace Foundation’s China Observer project, a group of China experts in Japan.

After an analysis of satellite photos of the Lop Nur site, the group concluded that China’s “possible goal is to conduct subcritical nuclear tests.”

It found a possible sixth testing tunnel under construction at Lop Nur, saying “the fact that a very long tunnel has been dug along the mountain’s terrain with bends on the way indicates that the construction of the test site is in its final phase.”

“Since the announcement of suspending nuclear tests in 1996, the Chinese side has consistently respected this promise and worked hard in defending the international consensus on prohibiting nuclear testing,” it said.

It added that the international world should have “high vigilance” about the United States’ activities in nuclear testing.

Activity in Nevada’s desert

The US releases an unclassified version of the Nuclear Posture Review every few years, which provides an overview of the role of nuclear weapons in its security strategy.

The most recent report, released in October last year, said that Washington would only consider using nuclear weapons in “extreme circumstances.” However, it also stated that the US does not adopt a “no first use policy” because it would result in an “unacceptable level of risk” to its security.

The US conducted its last underground test in 1992, but Lewis said the US has long been keeping itself in a state of readiness for a nuclear test, ready to react if one of its rivals moves first.

“The United States has a policy of being prepared to conduct a nuclear test on relatively short notice, about six months,” he said.

The commercial satellite imagery, taken above the nuclear test site in Nevada, officially known as the Nevada National Security Site, shows that an underground facility – the U1a complex – was expanded greatly between 2018 and 2023.

The National Security Administration (NNSA), an arm of the US Department of Energy that oversees the site, says the laboratory is for conducting “subcritical” nuclear experiments, a longstanding practice meant to ensure the reliability of weapons in the current stockpile without full-scale testing.

“In subcritical experiments, chemical high explosives generate high pressures, which are applied to nuclear weapon materials, such as plutonium. The configuration and quantities of explosives and nuclear materials are such that no nuclear explosion will occur,” the NNSA’s website says.

“(This) will provide modern diagnostic capabilities and data to help maintain the safety and performance of the US nuclear stockpile without further underground nuclear explosive testing,” the spokesman added.

A report from the US Governmental Accountability Office (GAO) released in August says the US will build two measurement devices at the Nevada site to “make new measurements of plutonium during subcritical experiments.”

The devices and related infrastructure improvements, needed “to inform plans for modernizing the nuclear weapons stockpile” will cost about $2.5 billion to $2.6 billion and be ready by 2030, according to the GAO report.

However, the expansion of facilities at the Nevada test site could fuel fears in Moscow and Beijing that Washington may be preparing for a nuclear test – because while both countries could see the development from satellite images, they lack the ability to independently verify what’s going on inside, Lewis said.

And such perceptions can become dangerous, especially in the current era with fear and lack of trust on all sides, he said.

“The danger is even if all three start by only planning to go second, one of them might talk themselves into the importance of going first, one of them might decide that since everybody else is doing it, it’s better to get the jump and really get going.”

If they do, the world would know – any major underground blast is likely to be detected by the International Monitoring System (IMS), a network of 337 facilities that monitors the planet for signs of nuclear explosions.

Continued modernization

Hans Kristensen, the director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, agreed there is a real danger of testing escalation should one of the major powers do so.

“The minute one of the major nuclear powers pops a nuclear weapon somewhere, you know, all bets are off, because there’s no doubt that everyone will join that business again,” he said.

In a recent yearbook on world nuclear forces, co-authored by Kristensen and published by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) in June, analysts concluded that all of the world’s nuclear powers – which also included the United Kingdom, France, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel – have continued to “modernize their nuclear arsenals” last year.

Russia, for instance, announced on September 1 that its new Sarmat or “Satan II” intercontinental ballistic missile is operational. The Sarmat could carry 10 and possibly more independently targeted nuclear warheads with a range of up to 18,000 kilometers (or about 11,185 miles), according to the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The US is also building new delivery systems for nuclear warheads like the B-21 stealth bomber and Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine. As part of the upgrade, nuclear storage sites will also be added to US Air Force bases in Ellsworth and Dyess, Kristensen wrote in a report in the Federation of American Scientists in 2020.

The SIPRI report said that Russia and the US currently possess about 90% of all nuclear weapons in the world, with the US estimated to have more than 3,700 warheads stockpiled, and Russia having about 4,500. Both countries keep their strategic nuclear arsenals on “hair-trigger” alert, meaning that nuclear weapons can be launched on short notice.

China’s nuclear arsenal has increased from 350 warheads in January 2022 to 410 in January 2023.

In the past, China did not marry up warheads with delivery systems, keeping their nuclear forces on a “low-alert” status. But the Arms Control Association (ACA) NGO said this year the PLA now rotates missile battalions from stand-by to ready-to-launch status monthly.

Fiona Cunningham, a nonresident scholar in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote in the ACA’s monthly journal in August that Beijing’s nuclear stance is hard to discern.

“The increasing size, accuracy, readiness, and diversity of China’s arsenal bolsters the credibility of the country’s ability to threaten retaliation for a nuclear strike and enables China to make more credible threats to use nuclear weapons first,” she wrote.

Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, agreed, writing in the organization’s September newsletter that “China, Russia, and the United States continue to engage in weapons-related activities at their former nuclear testing sites.”

But Kimball noted that without a real test, “it is more difficult, although not impossible, for states to develop, prove, and field new warhead designs.”

What’s the point of more tests?

But if all three countries have suspended nuclear testing since the 1990s, what could they gain from the resumption of these tests?

Lewis said a reason to test, especially for China, is to get more up-to-date data for computer models that show what a nuclear explosion will do. Because while the United States and Russia have conducted hundreds of tests, China has only done around 40 and has significantly fewer data points.

“Those 40 tests were done in the 1960s, in the 1970s, in the 1980s, when their technology wasn’t that high. The data that you have is not that good,” Lewis said.

Others point out that the big powers have not tested low-yield nuclear weapons, which produce a smaller nuclear explosion that might be targeted on a specific battlefield unit or formation, rather than destroying a major city.

In a 2022 report for the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Baltimore, researchers Michael Frankel, James Scouras and George Ullrich suggest that the US might hesitate to retaliate for a Russian low-yield attack because it has not tested the types of weapons it would need to use.

“While the United States now has several lower-yield weapons in its arsenal, they are insufficient in quantity and diversity of delivery systems,” their report, titled “Tickling the Sleeping Dragon’s Tail,” says.

In particular, the report says, smaller nukes, with yields lower than a kiloton (for comparison, the atomic bomb the US dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945 had a yield of about 15 kilotons) that can be delivered by aircraft or ships have been proposed a deterrent to Russian nuclear threats.

“Such weapons are unlikely to be available absent testing,” the report says.

The United States, the world’s first nuclear power, has conducted 1,032 tests, the first coming in 1945 and the last coming in 1992, according to the United Nations’ data. The Soviet Union – now Russia – conducted 715 between 1949 and 1990, and China has tested 45 times between 1964 and 1996.

Lewis believed an urge for the US, Russia and China to be the first to develop “exotic” weapons of the future also instills a need for nuclear testing of those possible systemsl.

Some of these may soon be in the Russian arsenal, as Putin has boasted about weapons like an nuclear-armed doomsday torpedo and a nuclear-powered cruise missile.

“We’re on the verge of this kind of science fiction future where we are resurrecting all of these terrible ideas from the Cold War,” Lewis said.

India has called Canada a “safe haven for terrorists” following its suspension of visas for Canadian citizens, as the fallout grows over Ottawa’s accusation that New Delhi is potentially behind the assassination of a Sikh separatist activist on its soil.

In a strongly worded statement to reporters Thursday, India’s foreign ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said Canada needed to “worry about its international reputation” in the wake of its explosive allegations.

He added: “If you’re talking about reputational issues and reputational damage, if there’s any country that needs to look at this, I think it’s Canada and its growing reputation as a place, as a safe haven for terrorists, for extremists, and for organized crime.”

His comments followed India’s move to suspend visa applications for Canadian citizens over what it says are “security threats” against diplomats in the country.

“The issue is of incitement of violence, the inaction by the Canadian authorities, the creation of an environment that disrupts the functioning of our high commission and consulates, that’s what’s making us stop temporarily the issuance of visas or providing visa services,” Bagchi added.

Relations between the two countries plummeted this week after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said India was potentially behind the June killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Sikh separatist activist, who was gunned down by two masked men in Surrey, British Columbia.

India has vehemently denied the claims, calling them “absurd and motivated.” Bagchi said Canada has provided “no specific information” to support the allegations.

India’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting on Thursday issued an advisory to television channels, asking them to refrain from “giving any platform to persons who are facing serious charges, such as terrorism or belonging to organizations proscribed by law.”

The Indian government has long accused Canada of inaction in dealing with what it says is Sikh separatist extremism aimed at creating a separate Sikh homeland that would be known as Khalistan and include parts of India’s Punjab state.

Nijjar was an outspoken supporter of the creation of Khalistan. India considers calls for Khalistan a grave national security threat.

A number of groups associated with the idea of Khalistan are listed as “terrorist organizations” under India’s Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA). Nijjar’s name appears on the list of UAPA terrorists and in 2020, the Indian National Investigation Agency accused him of “trying to radicalize the Sikh community across the world in favor of the creation of ‘Khalistan.’”

Several Sikh organizations overseas say the movement is being falsely equated with terrorism by the Indian government, and say they will continue to peacefully advocate for the creation of Khalistan, while bringing to light what they say is years of human rights abuses faced by the community in India.

The history of Khalistan

Sikhs once had their own kingdom in the Punjab and the push for the creation of Khalistan dates back decades, to around the time India gained independence from its British colonial rulers in 1947.

When Partition hastily divided the former colony along religious lines – sending Muslims to the newly formed nation of Pakistan, and Hindus and Sikhs to newly independent India – Punjab, which was sliced in half, saw some of the worst violence.

Sikhs suffered heavily in the ensuing bloodshed, and the community felt mistreated in the new Hindu-majority nation, prompting some prominent leaders to advocate for the creation of Khalistan. Over the years, violent clashes have erupted between followers of the movement and the Indian government, claiming many lives.

In the 1980s, Punjab witnessed a decade-long insurgency by some Khalistani militants, who committed a series of human rights abuses, including the massacre of civilians, indiscriminate bombings and attacks on Hindus, according to Human Rights Watch.

In counterinsurgency operations, Indian security forces arbitrarily detained, tortured, executed, and “disappeared” tens of thousands of Sikhs, the rights group said. The Indian government also enacted counterinsurgency legislation that facilitated human rights violations and shielded security forces from accountability for these violations, it added.

In 1984, then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi ordered Indian troops to storm Amritsar’s Golden Temple – Sikhism’s holiest shrine – to kill Sikh separatists, in an operation that caused huge anger within the Sikh community.

Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards in the aftermath, prompting a renewed bout of violence that killed more than 3,000 people, mostly Sikhs.

A year later the violence spilled over to Canada, when Sikh separatists bombed an Air India plane that had taken off from Toronto airport, killing all 329 people aboard, including numerous Canadians of Indian descent.

The Khalistan movement now

There is no insurgency in Punjab today and analysts say supporters of the Khalistan movement remain very much on the margins in India.

However, the movement continues to evoke a level of sympathy from some Sikhs within the global diaspora, particularly in Canada, Britain and Australia.

A small but influential number of those Sikhs support the idea of Khalistan, with referendums periodically held to reach a consensus to establish a separate homeland.

Nijjar’s death shocked and outraged many within the Sikh community in Canada, which has more than 770,000 members and is one of the largest outside India.

Canadian police have not arrested anyone in connection with Nijjar’s murder. But in August, police said they were investigating three suspects and issued a description of a possible getaway vehicle, asking for the public’s help.

For nearly nine months, tens of thousands of Israelis have protested every week against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to overhaul the judiciary, concerned that it risks severely curtailing the powers of the Supreme Court, the only body that provides a check on the executive and legislative branches of government.

Meanwhile, watching and worrying from the sidelines, many Palestinians fear a weakened Supreme Court could lead to the expansion of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank and the eventual annexation of the territory they want for a future state.

Most Israelis have cited the erosion of democracy and human rights in protesting the overhaul, but its potential implications on more than three million Palestinians living under Israeli occupation in the West Bank haven’t played a significant part in the public discourse.

Sawsan Zaher, a Palestinian citizen of Israel and human rights lawyer working with the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, argues the implications could be enormous. She refers to the overhaul as a “judicial coup,” saying it risks facilitating the “de facto annexation of the West Bank without any critique or any review” from the Supreme Court.

Zaher’s concern is rooted in words and actions that Netanyahu government has taken since coming into power at the end of last year. The cabinet includes a number of West Bank settlers in powerful positions, and the agreement that brought together the government calls for extending Israel’s sovereignty in the West Bank, effectively a call for annexation.

Under Netanyahu’s far-right government, Israel has approved a record number of housing units in West Bank settlements, Peace Now said in a July report.

Most countries and the United Nations consider the West Bank and East Jerusalem as occupied and therefore view Israeli settlements there as illegal under international law. Israel says the territory is disputed and denies its settlements there are illegal.

Many Israelis support their government’s expansion into the occupied territories. A 2020 survey by the Jerusalem-based Israel Democracy Institute found that more than half of Jewish Israelis supported extending Israeli sovereignty in the West Bank, an ambition that Netanyahu has voiced.

The overhaul includes a number of bills, the first of which passed in July by a 64-0 vote, thanks to the entire opposition walking out in protest before the vote. That law strips the Supreme Court of the power to declare government decisions unreasonable.

Supporters of the overhaul say that the judicial system in Israel is flawed, and gives too much power to the court. Some have been calling for judicial reform for years, saying it would balance all three branches of government.

Last week, the Supreme Court heard challenges to the reasonableness law, with the entire panel of 15 judges convening for the first time ever to hear a case.

Justices grilled lawyers from both sides rigorously, giving little indication which way they would rule. It is unclear when the court will announce its decision on the reasonableness law.

The ruling could be historic, since the reasonableness law is an amendment to one of Israel’s 13 Basic Laws. Unlike many democracies, Israel doesn’t have a written constitution. Instead, it relies on Basic Laws, as well as court ruling precedents that could one day become a constitution. The court has never struck down a Basic Law or an amendment to one.

A narrow avenue for legal recourse

Experts say that while the Supreme Court has generally supported Israel’s settlement expansion, it has sometimes provided a narrow avenue for legal recourse by Palestinians.

Eliav Lieblich, a law professor at Tel Aviv University said the court has never hindered the settlement movement. “It never ruled on the overall legality of the settlement projects.”

But Zaher said that Palestinians have never considered the Supreme Court as sympathetic to their cause, and that Netanyahu’s overhaul risks scrapping any remaining mechanisms, no matter how small, that can override policies viewed by Palestinians as violations of their rights.

“Did the Supreme Court protect Palestinian rights in the West Bank? The answer clearly is that in 95% of cases, no,” Zaher estimated.

Palestinians in the West Bank fall under a different set of laws than Israelis. They are subject to the jurisdiction of multiple, separate authorities, including the Palestinian Authority and Israeli military laws. West Bank Palestinians have the option of petitioning Israeli courts to rule against evictions, demolitions or land seizures, even if there’s a slim chance of success.

According to human rights organizations, the Supreme Court approves the majority of the orders for demolition of the family homes of Palestinians engaged in attacks against Israelis, and rarely grants petitions filed by Palestinians against those measures. The practice has been criticized by rights groups as collective punishment. Israel argues that it deters future attacks.

Palestinians have however had some rare victories. In 2005, the Supreme Court ordered the government to come up with a new route for part of its security barrier in the northern West Bank to minimize hardship for Palestinians. The International Court of Justice in The Hague had said a year earlier that the entire barrier is illegal.

And in 2012, Israel’s Supreme Court ruled in favor of a group of Palestinian landowners, ordering the removal of five settler buildings in the West Bank above the Palestinian village of Dura al-Qara.

More recently in 2017, Israeli security forces bulldozed nine homes built on private Palestinian land in the West Bank settlement of Ofra. The decision to destroy the homes came after the High Court of Justice struck down an appeal by the settler residents of Ofra to evacuate the homes but not destroy them. The court had issued the demolition ruling in 2015, seven years after the legal aid group representing the Palestinian landowner filed the case in 2008.

In other cases, however, rulings in favor of Palestinians have been reversed. Last year, in an unprecedented move, the high court ruled that a settlement outpost – Israeli housing in the West Bank built without government authorization – on private Palestinian land can remain place, almost two years after ordering its removal.

Fears of ‘speedy’ annexation

Palestinians say that settlement expansion under the Netanyahu government suggests there will be even less restraint on expansion when the Supreme Court is no longer a bureaucratic hurdle for the government.

There may be “an acceleration of the annexation in a speedy way that we did not see before,” Zaher said.

Ahmed Tibi, a Palestinian-Israeli member of Israel’s parliament and head of the Ta’al party, said that supporters of the reasonableness law include far-right ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir, both of whom are settlers. These supporters, Tibi said, “aim to control the judicial system to facilitate the annexation of occupied territories.”

Gershon Baskin, director of the Holy Land Bond, a new investment fund aimed at investing in housing projects for Palestinians in East Jerusalem, sees settlement expansions as being at the heart of Netanyahu’s judicial plan.

“The small avenues that Palestinians have found within the Israeli High Court are going to be closed doors in the not-too-distant future if Netanyahu is successful in pushing through the reform,” Baskin said.

While the formal annexation of the West Bank is “an extreme scenario,” Lieblich said, it would be easier to do if the Supreme Court is severely weakened, with no authority to review government decisions. Weakening judicial review would also make it easier to take incremental steps that could amount to annexation for all practical purposes, he said.

“Once you diminish judicial review, you empower the executive, in what is already a zero-sum game (between Israel and the Palestinians),” he added.

Nigerian singer and songwriter Asake is creating a new Afrobeats sound that is deeply African and completely global.

Originally a dancer, he began recording music in 2018. By 2020, Asake had a hit single with “Mr. Money,” a banger he performed at nightclubs across Lagos and Port Harcourt, Nigeria.

2022 was his breakout year. He signed a record deal with YBNL Nation and landed the highest-charting Nigerian debut album in Billboard history with “Mr. Money with the Vibe.” Since then, he has been selling out tour dates internationally, including a show at the Barclays Center in New York earlier this month, a first for an African act at that venue.

This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Madowo: Do you feel that the fame just came all of a sudden?

Asake: I didn’t know it would come at this time. Everything just changed for me. All of a sudden, in Dubai people that don’t even understand it are singing it — like from there to London, everybody just shouting it without even knowing what they are saying. I’m so happy that God gave me the knowledge and the confidence to be where I am today because I don’t know where I will be tomorrow.

Madowo: What do you think makes Afrobeats music so great? Why has it blown up around the world?

Asake: For me, I think it’s the spirit, and for people that are coming from Nigeria and from Africa to actually want to be involved in something and take it from where someone like Fela [Kuti] actually dropped it, and still make it bigger, because we love to actually make something bigger in Nigeria.

Madowo: You infuse a lot of Fuji sound in your music; how would you describe your sound?

Asake: I grew up listening to Fuji [a music genre that began with Nigeria’s Yoruba people]. But to me, I think I do a lot of things because, you know, I love to come with the vibe. It’s just like a bit of Amapiano, a bit of Afrobeat, a bit of Fuji, a bit of R&B, a bit of hip hop, just to make Asake.

Madowo: What is your earliest memory of thinking, ‘I think I want to be a performer. I think I’m going to be somebody who puts on a show’?

Asake: I just fell in love with it. My father used to be a singer, and my mother danced a lot, too. So, I feel like it’s like a family thing that has been in the blood … but they didn’t do it professionally. They were just doing it for the fun of culture and for the fun of what they are seeing around them.

Madowo:  Why did you adopt your mother’s name as your stage name?

Asake: I just like the feeling that comes with this, with the fact that I love my mother, and they are using my mother’s name to call me. I know the kind of mother I have and she’s very powerful. I’m Ahmed Ololade, but I have a strong name now.

Madowo: Before you were a professional singer, you were a dancer; how did you move from dance to full-on musician?

Asake: The main reason why I left dance is for the love of money. I know I want to be very honest. Dance is something that I love. I can’t even do without moving, but I feel like the kind of money I want, I’m not sure dance can give me. I think both music and dance work together because in a video without a dancer, it’s like this song is boring. Even if you want to make it so gangster-like, oh, there are so many people bumping, you still need to use the dancers. So, as they work together, I think for the love of money, I’d rather be singing (laughs).

Madowo:  So, if the dance had a bit more money that you could be commercially successful as a dancer, that’s what you would be doing?

Asake: No, I would join music and dance together. So, I will have more money (laughs).

Madowo: You met Olamide, and that changed the trajectory of your career; what’s been the influence of Olamide on Asake?

Asake: How can I explain this? You know when you are trying to go downstairs, and there’s no lift, and there’s no stairs? How can you get there? So, I think the best way I can explain it is Olamide is like the lift and the stairs for me to get to the top.

Madowo:  How do you prepare for a performance? How do you get into the frame of mind to present a show for thousands of people?

Asake: I see art. I want to see another Asake entirely. Performance for me is like a movie. Every song needs to have its own mood and its own interpretation to it on stage. Everything just works together, like the audio, me in person, and the video interpretation itself.

Madowo: What are the dreams you still have?

Asake: I want the songs everybody in the world will be singing. I don’t know how I’m going to do it, but the most important thing for me is to keep going.

Ukraine has launched a missile attack on the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, the Russian-appointed governor of Sevastopol, Crimea, said on Friday.

“The enemy launched a missile attack on the headquarters of the fleet,” Sevastopol governor Mikhail Razvozhayev said on Telegram.

Over the past month, Ukraine has stepped up attacks on Russian military bases and other installations, including air defenses, in Crimea.

Sevastopol, home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet headquarters, is one of the largest cities on the Crimean peninsula and was illegally annexed by Moscow’s forces in 2014.

Russian state media TASS reported that debris was “scattered for hundreds of meters” following the missile strike. TASS added that a large number of ambulances were on their way to the scene of the attack.

Razvozhayev also said a piece of shrapnel fell near the Lunacharsky Theater.

The Russian-appointed governor said operational services went to the scene of the attack and that information about any casualties is being clarified.

In an update later Friday, Razvozhayev said there was no more “missile and aviation danger” following the incident.

Razvozhayev had previously warned that another attack was possible and encouraged residents to avoid the city center.

Ukrainian officials have yet to comment on the incident.

Over the past month, Ukraine has stepped up attacks on Russian military bases and other installations, including air defenses, in Crimea.

In recent weeks, Ukraine launched a missile attack on a shipyard in Sevastopol. Officials said a Russian S-400 missile system was destroyed in Crimea, and most recently a Russian command post near Sevastopol on Wednesday.

On Wednesday, Ukraine Defense Intelligence spokesman, Andrii Yusov, told Ukrainian television that “Crimea is still being used as a logistics hub for, among other things, the transfer of enemy forces and means to other parts of the front,” and stated that “in order to destroy this logistics hub, certain operations are being used and implemented: at sea, on land, and in the air.”

The European Commission has sent a letter to Poland asking for “clarifications,” amid reports that Polish officials have been involved in an alleged cash-for-visas scandal.

Poland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Polish consulates have been accused of participating in a widespread illegal scheme through which migrants from Africa and Asia were issued Polish visas in exchange for large sums of money.

As Poland is a member of the passport-free Schengen area, visas issued by the country grant holders free access to the 27 European Union member states, as well as Switzerland and Iceland.

The allegations could further exacerbate European tensions over grain supplies, which have led to Poland saying it will no longer send arms to Ukraine, and Kyiv filing lawsuits against three EU member states, including Poland.

Brussels is “following the recent media reporting about these alleged cases of fraud and corruption very closely,” according to the European Commission’s spokesperson Anitta Hipper.

“These allegations are very concerning and give rise to questions regarding the compliance with EU law,” Hipper said in a Wednesday statement. “This is why Commissioner (Ylva) Johansson wrote a letter to the Polish authorities to ask for clarifications.”

Johansson sent a memo posing a “set of detailed questions,” and asked the Polish authorities to reply by October 3, Hipper said.

“So, we count on the Polish authorities to provide the necessary information to the Commission and to investigate these allegations,” Hipper added.

The Polish Foreign Ministry refuted allegations the ministry “has imported hundreds of thousands of migrants from Muslim countries and Africa.”

“It is not true,” the ministry said in a statement on September 15. Claims that Poland is the EU leader issuing entry permits to the Schengen zone are also not true, the ministry added.

But Polish prosecutors announced they had brought charges against seven individuals in a visa-issuing scandal that resulted in the firing of the deputy foreign minister, according to state news agency PAP.

“The investigation was initiated on March 7 based on information provided by the Central Anticorruption Bureau,” Daniel Lerman, deputy director of the National Prosecutor’s Office Department of Organized Crime and Corruption, said at a news conference on September 14, PAP reported.

“It concerns paid protection in the acceleration of visa procedures in relation to several hundred visas,” he said, adding that most of the visas were refused.

Those visa applications related to foreigners who applied for visas at Polish diplomatic missions in Hong Kong, Taiwan, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, India, Singapore and the Philippines, PAP said.

The Polish Foreign Ministry said 1,951,000 national and Schengen visas were issued in the last 30 months.

Of that figure, Ukrainian nationals accounted for 990,000, Belarusian nationals accounted for 586,000, and other nationalities comprised 374,000 of the visas issued. The ministry said the number of visas distributed to Russian citizens “has decreased significantly in recent years.

It repeatedly dismissed “false” allegations that consuls received orders from the ministry regarding visa issuance, adding that decisions on those applications are made independently.

“Representatives of the management of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs do not have the authority to instruct consuls to issue a specific visa decision,” the ministry said.

“It is not true that Poland outsourced all technical support for processing visa applications to an external company and that visa brokerage companies acted as consular officers,” the ministry added.

The ministry said visa applications are submitted by candidates directly at the consular office, or at the visa application acceptance point.

Ukraine endured a deadly nationwide Russian missile barrage targeting energy facilities in Kyiv and other cities on Thursday, just hours before President Volodymyr Zelensky was set to meet US President Joe Biden at the White House.

Five people died in the southern region of Kherson, while a 9-year-old girl was among seven people injured in the latest attack on Kyiv. The child and an 18-year-old woman were hospitalized after debris fell from an infrastructure facility onto a residential building, according to Mayor Vitalii Klitschko.

Officials called it “a terrible night for Kherson city,” with at least three people killed and six injured, noting that apartment buildings and cars were also damaged in Russian shelling on residential areas. Two people were injured in the city of Kharkiv, where Russia launched six strikes in the early hours of the morning, according to local officials. And at least 10 people were injured in overnight missile attacks on the city of Cherkasy in central Ukraine.

The strikes marked the first time in six months that Russia has launched attacks on Ukraine’s power infrastructure, according to the state energy provider Ukrenergo, just as the country gears up for colder seasons that will require more energy use for heating. Last year, Russia began a series of intense attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure in October.

Ukrenergo said the overnight missile attacks resulted in damage to power facilities in western and central regions and caused blackouts in several areas.

Ukrainian air defenses shot down 36 of 43 missiles launched by Russia on Thursday, Ukraine’s army chief said. But air raid alerts remain in place in parts of the country, as some Ukrainian officials warn that the missile threat is ongoing.

The attacks came as the capital Kyiv crossed the 1,000-hour mark of air raid alarms since the start of the Russian invasion, according to the head of the city’s military administration.

“It’s a restless morning,” Ukraine’s Minister of Internal Affairs Ihor Klymenko said Thursday, as he urged Ukrainians to follow the safety rules.

The air raid alarms, which frequently blare on loudspeakers throughout the city and on residents’ cell phones, are so commonplace that government officials have had to appeal to residents to continue to use bomb shelters.

“Do not neglect the air raid alarms,” the head of Kyiv City Military Administration Serhii Popko said on Thursday, highlighting that a year and a half of continuous alarms has taken a toll on the capital. “We have survived it and we will overcome much more together.”

The latest round of missile strikes comes after a contentious United Nations General Assembly in New York on Wednesday, where Zelensky argued that removing Russia’s veto power “will be the first necessary step.”

“It is impossible to stop the war because all efforts are vetoed by the aggressor,” Zelensky said during a speech at Wednesday’s UN Security Council meeting.

While allies have already imposed sanctions on Russia since the start of the war, the Ukrainian president called for applying preventative sanctions to countries that engaged in conflicts.

“Anyone who wants to start a war should see before their fatal mistake what exactly they will lose when the war would start,” Zelensky said.

On Thursday, Zelensky travels to meet Biden, who is seeking to hear a “battlefield perspective,” the White House said.

It comes as the Ukrainian president pleas for additional aid for his war-torn country and the US Congress remains divided about how to proceed. Biden will also reiterate US support “that we’re going to continue to be with them for as long as it takes,” National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications John Kirby said.

One of Ukraine’s closest and most vocal allies has now said it will stop sending arms to Kyiv, a major reversal that threatens to upend Europe’s strategic relationship with the country as it wages a counteroffensive against Russia.

Poland’s decision was both sudden and predictable, coming after months of tensions over a temporary ban on Ukrainian grain imports to a number of European Union countries.

It also follows a pattern of increasingly confrontational behavior towards Kyiv from Poland’s government, just weeks before a tight general election.

And it could have implications for Ukraine’s attempts to push Russian forces out of the country’s southern regions, in an ongoing assault that has been making slow and grinding progress.

Here’s what you need to know:

What has Poland announced?

“We no longer transfer weapons to Ukraine because we are now arming Poland,” Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said in a blunt social media statement on Wednesday.

Morawiecki added in a television interview that Poland will now focus on supplying “the most modern weapons” for its own purposes, state news agency PAP reported. “If you want to defend yourself you have to have something to defend with,” the prime minister said.

It marks a major change in policy. In the spring, Poland became the first NATO country to send fighter jets to Ukraine – months ahead of the United States, which only agreed last month to approve the transfer of F-16 jets, pending the completion of training by Ukrainian forces.

It has also previously sent more than 200 Soviet-style tanks to Ukraine, and most Western military equipment and other supplies reach Ukrainian forces by crossing Polish territory.

Poland will now only carry out the supplies of ammunition and weapons to Kyiv that were agreed before Warsaw made its decision to stop shipments, government spokesman Piotr Muller said Thursday, according to PAP.

Muller emphasized that Ukraine has made a series of “absolutely unacceptable statements and diplomatic gestures” and that “Poland does not accept this type of unjustified actions,” PAP reported.

Ukraine seemingly moved to ease the rift on Thursday. Kyiv’s minister of agrarian policy said he had spoken with his Polish counterpart and issued a statement saying the pair “discussed the situation and Ukraine’s proposal to resolve it, and agreed to find a solution that takes into account the interests of both countries.”

It also agreed to establish a grain trade system with Slovakia that would enable a ban on imports of Ukrainian grain to be lifted, Slovakia’s agriculture ministry said on Thursday.

How did we get here?

Pressure has been building for months over a ban on Ukrainian grain, initially put in place earlier this year by several EU nations to protect the livelihood of local farmers worried about being undercut by the low price of Ukrainian grain.

Last week, the EU announced plans to suspend the rule. But three nations – Poland, Hungary and Slovakia – said they intended to defy the change and keep the restrictions in place. It prompted protests from Ukraine, which this week filed lawsuits against all three countries over the issue.

Ukraine, often called the “breadbasket of Europe” due to the vast quantities of grain it produces, had its Black Sea ports blockaded by Russia following its full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Fearing that the situation was “threatening global food security,” the European Commission set up what it called “solidarity lanes” in May to facilitate exports, and temporarily eliminated all duties and quotas on Ukraine’s exports, allowing a glut of cheap Ukrainian grain to flow into the continent.

Anger in Poland has been simmering since the spring, when farmers led demonstrations against the moves. But they erupted once again in recent days, after the decision of the three nations to ignore the removal of the ban.

In a swipe against the trio on Wednesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told the UN General Assembly in New York that “it is alarming to see how some in Europe, some of our friends in Europe, play out solidarity in a political theater – making a thriller from the grain.”

Zelensky added that the nations involved “may seem to play their own role but in fact they are helping set the stage to a Moscow actor.” His comments sparked immediate condemnation from Poland, with the foreign ministry summoning the Ukrainian ambassador to convey its “strong protest.”

A tight election looms

Poland’s initial response to the war on Ukraine earned its populist government a rare swelling of goodwill from across Europe, and made it a major player in the Western response to Russia’s aggression.

The country has taken in more than 1.5 million Ukrainian refugees and allowed 15 million to cross its borders to flee the conflict. The two countries shared a decades-old suspicion of Moscow and Warsaw had warned for years of the pitfalls of buying Russian energy, which melded their relationship in the initial phases of the war.

But tensions have frayed in recent months, exacerbated by a pivotal election.

Poland’s populist ruling party, Law and Justice (PiS), are preparing for a vote on October 15 which opinion polls suggest could result in them losing their parliamentary majority. They are particularly suffering in their stronghold rural regions in eastern Poland, where agriculture is an important economic pillar.

PiS is losing a chunk of its typical voter base to the Confederation party, a historically far-right group that has been rallying against the costs of Warsaw’s military aid to Kyiv and complained that Ukraine’s plight has become a greater priority for the government than that of Polish people.

In response, PiS has seemingly toned down its support for Kyiv in recent months and shown willingness to take on a more combative stance. In August, Warsaw summoned the Ukrainian ambassador to Poland after a Polish foreign policy adviser accused Kyiv of being ungrateful for Poland’s support in exporting its grain.

What does this mean for the war?

If a solution is not found, Kyiv will have concerns that Poland’s decision to stop sending weapons will reverberate through Europe.

Warsaw has been among the most eager nations to bolster Kyiv’s arsenal since the initial days of the full-scale war, and has shown a willingness to push other European powers and the US into joining them.

In January, when Germany agonized over whether to provide Leopard 2 battle tanks to Kyiv’s troops, Poland took a leading role in bringing together a European coalition that gave Berlin enough leeway to make the move.

For days, Polish officials talked up publicly and privately their desire to get the high-tech combat vehicles onto the front lines, and insisted they would do so whether or not fellow nations came with them.

Kyiv and its allies will have concerns that if Warsaw takes a new attitude to future arms shipments, other hesitant European countries will feel less pressure to also donate supplies.

The urgency of the war to Poland has also slipped over the course of year. Poles had long warned that their country was in the crosshairs of Russia’s imperial designs, and Moscow’s invasion spiked fears that Poland would be a future target.

But with the war now bogged down in Ukraine’s east and Moscow’s army suffering serious deficiencies in manpower and leadership, the prospect of Russian President Vladimir Putin attacking a NATO country such as Poland appears slim.

The ongoing Ukraine counteroffensive has meanwhile benefited from Western support and supplies, but Kyiv has pushed for more to see it through what is likely to be a lengthy and stubborn conflict. It will worry that Poland’s decision could cause a domino effect that leaves future shipments in jeopardy.

When the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft swings by Earth on Sunday, it is expected to deliver a rare cosmic gift: a pristine sample collected from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu.

If all goes according to plan, the spacecraft will release a capsule containing an estimated 8.8 ounces of asteroid rocks and soil from space toward a landing zone in the Utah desert.

NASA will provide a live stream of the sample delivery beginning at 10 a.m. ET Sunday. The capsule is expected to enter Earth’s atmosphere at 10:42 a.m. ET, traveling about 27,650 miles per hour (44,498 kilometers per hour). It will land in Utah about 13 minutes later.

After releasing the capsule, OSIRIS-REx will continue on its tour of the solar system to capture a detailed look at a different asteroid named Apophis.

Studying the sample can help scientists understand key details about the origins of our solar system because asteroids are the “leftovers” from those early days 4.5 billion years ago. But the sample can also provide insights into Bennu, which has a chance of colliding with Earth in the future.

Returning NASA’s first asteroid sample collected in space to Earth has been years in the making. Here’s a look at the mission milestones so far — and what lies ahead.

A spacecraft’s cosmic tour

OSIRIS-REx, which stands for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer, has been on quite a journey over the past seven years. Launched from Cape Canaveral in 2016, the NASA spacecraft arrived in orbit around Bennu in December 2018.

The first US mission sent to a near-Earth asteroid, OSIRIS-REx made history several times over. It performed the closest orbit of a planetary body by a spacecraft. Bennu became the smallest object ever orbited by a spacecraft.

OSIRIS-REx surveyed the asteroid in its entirety to determine the best location to collect a sample. Bennu, a rubble-pile asteroid shaped like a spinning top, is about one-third of a mile (500 meters) wide and composed of rocks bound together by gravity.

The views of Bennu provided by the spacecraft afforded the mission team unprecedented insights about the asteroid, which included the discovery of water ice locked within Bennu’s rocks and carbon in a form largely associated with biology. The team also witnessed particles from the asteroid releasing into space.

The spacecraft spiraled closer and closer to the asteroid until it went in for a historic TAG, or Touch-and-Go sample collection event, on October 20, 2020.

Along the way, challenges threatened the success of the mission, including that the sample collection head on the spacecraft collected so much material that the container couldn’t seal properly, leaking precious asteroid material into space.

During the historic collection event, the sampling head of the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft sank 1.6 feet (0.5 meters) into the surface of the asteroid. Apparently, Bennu’s exterior is made of loosely packed particles that aren’t bound together securely, based on what happened as the spacecraft collected a sample. If the spacecraft hadn’t fired its thruster to back away after its quick collection of dust and rocks, it might have sunk right into the asteroid.

That’s when the mission team learned that the asteroid’s surface is similar to a pit of plastic balls.

The OSIRIS-REx team was able to meet and overcome these challenges, and the spacecraft is slated to return the largest sample collected by a NASA mission since Apollo astronauts brought back lunar rocks decades ago.

The team was also able to organize a final flyby of Bennu by the spacecraft in April 2021, allowing it the chance to see how OSIRIS-REx disturbed and altered the surface of the asteroid during the collection event. The before and after photos showed some intriguing differences created by the sample collection and the firing of the spacecraft’s thrusters after it pushed away from the asteroid, including moving and rearranging large boulders on the asteroid’s surface.

Returning to Earth

Since bidding Bennu farewell in May 2021, OSIRIS-REx has been on a return trip to Earth, circling the sun twice so it can fly by our planet at the right time to drop off the asteroid sample.

NASA and Lockheed Martin Space have spent much of this year rehearsing every step of the sample retrieval process.

If the spacecraft’s trajectory is on track, the sample capsule is expected to release from OSIRIS-REx 63,000 miles (102,000 kilometers) from Earth on early Sunday. Since departing Bennu, the spacecraft has made numerous maneuvers and fired its thrusters so it will fly by Earth at the right time to release the capsule. The capsule will land within an area of 36 miles by 8.5 miles (58 kilometers by 14 kilometers) on the Defense Department’s Utah Test and Training Range.

Parachutes will deploy to slow the capsule to a gentle touchdown at 11 miles per hour (17.7 kilometers per hour), and recovery teams will be standing by to retrieve the capsule once it is safe to do so, said Sandra Freund, OSIRIS-REx program manager at Lockheed Martin Space, which partnered with NASA to build the spacecraft, provide flight operations and help recover the capsule.

A helicopter will carry the sample in a cargo net and deliver it to a temporary cleanroom established at the range in June. There, a team will prepare the sample container for transport on a C-17 aircraft to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston on Monday. Details about the sample will be revealed through a NASA broadcast from Johnson on October 11.

Scientists will analyze the rocks and soil for the next two years at a dedicated cleanroom inside Johnson Space Center.

It’s crucial to understand more about the population of near-Earth asteroids such as Bennu that may be on an eventual collision course with our planet. A better grasp of their composition and orbits is key in predicting which asteroids may have the closest approaches to Earth and when, as well as developing methods of deflecting these asteroids.

The sample will be divided up and sent to laboratories around the globe, including OSIRIS-REx mission partners at the Canadian Space Agency and Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency. About 70% of the sample will remain pristine in storage so future generations with better technology can learn even more than what’s now possible.

The sample will reveal information about the formation and history of our solar system as well as the role of asteroids in helping develop habitable planets such as Earth. Scientists believe that carbonaceous asteroids such as Bennu crashed into Earth early during their formation, delivering elements like water.

“We’re looking for clues as to why Earth is a habitable world — this rare jewel in outer space that has oceans and has a protective atmosphere,” said Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx principal investigator at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

“We think all of those materials were brought by these carbon-rich asteroids very early in our planetary system formation. We believe that we’re bringing back that kind of material, literally maybe representatives of the seeds of life that these asteroids delivered at the beginning of our planet that led to this amazing biosphere, biological evolution and to us being here today.”