A simple act of walking into a mosque with his wife and two children in New York City is what made the past six months of struggle worth it for Ye Chengxiang – even if not everyone is celebrating his arrival.

“It’s only been over two months here, but we can feel the spirit of freedom, inclusiveness, and equality,” he said over a bowl of noodles. It was his only day off from working 12-hour shifts at a Chinese restaurant in New York City.

The slim former restaurant owner left China last October. The ruling Communist Party’s crackdown on his Hui Muslim ethnic group and growing restrictions on personal life gave his family no choice, he says. “When I was in China, I had a pent-up feeling in my heart,” he said of living as a Muslim in China, where his children were banned from entering a mosque.

Ye and his wife drained $40,000 of their life savings and illegally crossed the United States’ southern border in December after an exhausting weeks-long journey that saw the family take a hazardous boat journey from Colombia to the edge of the Darien Gap, a mountainous rainforest region that connects South and Central America. His anxieties melted away as Ye crossed into the US, which he described as entering a warm embrace. “I felt like I was home, and that feeling was very real,” he said.

Their destination was New York City’s Flushing neighborhood, home to a Chinese community going back generations. The city has integrated millions of migrants over the decades, and it continues to inspire newcomers like Ye – even as the arrival of such migrants has turned into a flashpoint in US politics ahead of the November elections.

After arriving in New York, Ye spent a week in a Manhattan shelter. Then, with the help of a group of other Chinese Muslim asylum seekers, he found a place to live and a job making noodles as his family proceeded through the religious asylum claim process.  Their first court date is in October

On downtown Flushing’s Main Street, people hand out fliers offering help, for a fee, for the undocumented to secure drivers’ licenses. Alongside the street vendors hawking vegetables, undocumented migrants walk into buildings with employment agencies offering restaurant and sales jobs. This is what draws Chinese migrants toward enclaves like Flushing and Sunset Park, where immigrant networks, legal service centers, job markets and nonprofits form a vital support system.

For Chinese asylum seekers like Ye, there is a well-trodden route to residency in the US. Chinese nationals have the highest number of asylum claims granted  in the US compared to other nationalities, because their “pathway to claiming political asylum [for Chinese nationals] is more codified,” said Amy Hsin, a sociology professor at Queens College in New York, who specializes in immigration and social inequality.  The US expanded asylum pathways for Chinese citizens in the past due to geopolitical events and policies, like the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre and the one-child policy, she explained.

Recently, growing restrictions on freedoms in China and its stuttering economy have led to this new influx of disillusioned Chinese citizens. More than 37,000 Chinese citizens were picked up by law enforcement crossing illegally from Mexico in 2023, US government data shows. That’s up from around 3,800 people the year before, and many of them were headed to New York City, according to experts.

“As a country under the rule of law, the Chinese government protects its people’s freedom of speech and freedom of religious belief in accordance with the law,” it also said.

‘America is better’

On the fourth floor of an old mall, migrant workers walk into a legal service center. They say they have lost their passports, or had them confiscated, in the melee of voluntarily turning themselves in for asylum with the Customs and Border Protection. The office, which helps them in their asylum applications, also connects them with the Chinese Embassy to apply for new travel documents.

The center’s owner, who declined to be named in this story because he does not have a license to practice law in the US, has helped more than 100 Chinese nationals since opening the office two years ago. The burden of proof for asylum claims in the US is high and the owner said many of his clients have struggled to provide concrete evidence of political and religious repression they faced in China. Many go on to protest against the Chinese government once in the US, freed from Chinese authorities and its censors, he said.

Dressed simply in jeans and a black jacket, Jiang Zhen said the sweeping crackdown on free speech, civil society and religion was suffocating him in China. He believes he was blacklisted for criticizing China’s government on social media sites, his accounts banned or suspended.

Poverty in rural China, like in his hometown in Hunan province, had become unbearable, with relatives and parents of friends “drinking pesticides, drowning themselves in rivers, or hanging themselves … especially when they are suffering from diseases like cancer and have no money for treatment,” he said, adding that the Chinese government ignores “the living conditions of the lower classes.”

As he waits for his work permit, which can take up to 18 months to approve, the 33-year-old now works illegally cleaning dishes at a Cantonese restaurant in Queens. He earns $4,000 a month, slightly more than what he earned as a business owner in the coastal Chinese province of Guangdong.

Next to him, a woman in a pearl-colored puffer jacket, who asked to remain anonymous because she works illegally in the country, said the US was not what she had imagined. She joked that China’s infrastructure bests what she has seen in New York. “From movies I watched when I was younger, I remembered Chinatowns being bustling and beautiful,” she said. “But after coming here, I found that Chinatown is in a state of ​​disrepair. It’s broken and dirty. I was so surprised,” she said as the room burst out in laughter.

When asked why she has chosen to remain in the US, she replied: “Because the US is actually more powerful, despite sometimes the broken appearance,” she said. “I am not starving in China, but everyone wants a better life. Obviously, America is better.”

Anti-China measures

Both China and US authorities have been concerned with the uptick in migration to the southern border – but for entirely different reasons.

In the US, a record number of migrants at the southern border has been seized upon by Republicans who claim it as proof of the Biden administration’s impotence, pushing immigration control to a top election issue. While most migrants at the southern border hail from Latin American countries, some politicians have focused on Chinese migration as a security concern; Republican Rep. Mark Green of Tennessee, who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, claimed last May that some Chinese migrants at the border had military experience, according to his blog, though he did not offer evidence.

Wan Yanhai, a human rights activist based in New York, said the implication that the Chinese asylum seekers could be soldiers or spies was “discriminatory.”

There would be little reason for the Chinese government to embed spies among southern border arrivals, he pointed out, considering migrants are not the demographic that would gain access to state secrets in the US. “These migrants in the US are doing low-level jobs and don’t speak the language, so they can’t do this kind of work. … It’s impossible for them to be spies.”

But the rhetoric around the rise of undocumented Chinese migrants highlights growing tensions between the US and Chinese governments. Geopolitical and security concerns have led an increasingly hawkish Biden administration to unravel years of technological and economic integration with its chief rival in the Pacific.

But Jiang, the asylum seeker who believes he was blacklisted by Beijing, is unfazed by the growing intergovernmental tensions. “It’s not really anti-China, it’s anti-Communist Party. I’m also against the Communist Party, I don’t have a good impression of them either, right?”

‘Deportation can’t stop me from embracing freedom’

Wan, a prominent former HIV activist in China, had to leave the country in 2010 due to harassment by Chinese authorities, he says. He received permanent US residence a year later and has gone on to help Chinese migrants in Flushing.

Many of the new arrivals head to the enclave’s unlicensed hostels, he said. He worries that rising hostel prices – upwards of $20 per night – could lead to a rise in homelessness, especially for the low-income elderly population in Flushing.

Li Jiada lives in one of those hostels, sharing a cramped room with five other men, sparsely decorated except for a calendar hanging above his single bed.

Life has not been easy for the 26-year-old, soft-spoken former fashion photographer since he arrived in the US on January 2023. He had spent three months in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center after failing an initial screening for asylum when he crossed the southern border. He was released this year pending deportation proceedings expected within the next year.

He initially struggled to find a job in New York. When he found one, he says, he was sexually harassed by a client and has since found a new role as a manicurist, earning $2,000 a month. His costs are higher than what he earns, but he says, “There’s no regret because coming here has given me more options.”

He is desperate to stay in the US and thinks Christianity, which he discovered while in detention, will save him from deportation. The Communist Party sees any large group outside its dominion as a threat, has banned the online sale of Bibles, and has arrested Christians for “inciting subversion of state power.”

“Maybe my only way forward is through Jesus,” he said. Li plans on filing a new asylum application based on his new-found religion.

Sitting in a Baptist church in Flushing, Li spoke about the stress of the looming deportation and thinks back about the first thing he did when he arrived in New York: seeing the Statue of Liberty, a sculpture that has become a symbol of hope for millions of immigrants before him.

“After the treacherous journey to get here, I needed to see the embodiment of my beliefs: democracy, freedom, equality, and rule of law,” he said. “The US has yet to accept me, but deportation can’t stop me from embracing freedom.”

“At that moment, I felt like I could suddenly speak English fluently,” he joked. “My talent was unleashed, and I said: “What the f**k?”

Albert Einstein was right: There is an area at the edge of black holes where matter can no longer stay in orbit and instead falls in, as predicted by his theory of gravity.

Using telescopes capable of detecting X-rays, a team of astronomers has for the first time observed this area — called the “plunging region” — in a black hole about 10,000 light-years from Earth. “We’ve been ignoring this region, because we didn’t have the data,” said research scientist Andrew Mummery, lead author of the study published Thursday in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. “But now that we do, we couldn’t explain it any other way.”

It’s not the first time that black holes have helped confirm Einstein’s grand theory, which is also known as general relativity. The first photo of a black hole, captured in 2019, had previously strengthened the revolutionary physicist’s core assumption that gravity is just matter bending the space-time fabric.

Many of Einstein’s other predictions have turned out to be correct over the years, among them gravitational waves and the universal speed limit. “He’s a tough man to bet against at this point,” said Mummery, a Leverhulme-Peierls Fellow in the department of physics at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom.

“We went out searching for this one specifically — that was always the plan. We’ve argued about whether we’d ever be able to find it for a really long time,” Mummery said. “People said it would be impossible, so confirming it’s there is really exciting.”

‘Like the edge of a waterfall’

The observed black hole is in a system called MAXI J1820 + 070, which is made up of a star smaller than the sun and the black hole itself, estimated at 7 to 8 solar masses. The astronomers used NASA’s space-based NuSTAR and NICER telescopes to collect data and understand how hot gas, called plasma, from the star gets sucked into the black hole.

NuSTAR is short for the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, which orbits Earth, and NICER, formally known as the Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer, is located on the International Space Station.

“Around these black holes there are big discs of orbiting material (from nearby stars),” Mummery said. “Most of it is stable, which means it can happily flow. It’s like a river, whereas the plunging region is like the edge of a waterfall — all of your support is gone and you’re just crashing headfirst. Most of what you can see is the river, but there’s this tiny region at the very end, which is basically what we found,” he added, noting that while the “river” had been widely observed, this is the first evidence of the “waterfall.”

Unlike the event horizon, which is closer to the center of the black hole and doesn’t let anything escape, including light and radiation, in the “plunging region” light can still escape, but matter is doomed by the powerful gravitational pull, Mummery explained.

The study’s findings could help astronomers better understand the formation and evolution of black holes. “We can really learn about them by studying this region, because it’s right at the edge, so it gives us the most information,” Mummery said.

One thing that’s missing from the study is an actual image of the black hole, because it is too small and far away. But another team of Oxford researchers is working on something even better than a picture: the first movie of a black hole. To achieve that, the team will first need to build a new observatory, the Africa Millimetre Telescope in Namibia, which Mummery expects to be online within a decade. The telescope, which will join the international Event Horizon Telescope collaboration that captured the groundbreaking 2019 image of the black hole, will enable scientists to observe and film large black holes at the center of the Milky Way galaxy and beyond.

A link to the past

According to Christopher Reynolds, a professor of astronomy at the University of Maryland, College Park, finding actual evidence for the “plunging region” is an important step that will let scientists significantly refine models for how matter behaves around a black hole. “For example, it can be used to measure the rotation rate of the black hole,” said Reynolds, who was not involved in the study.

Dan Wilkins, a research scientist at Stanford University in California, calls it an exciting development, and points out that in 2018 there was an enormously bright outburst of light from one of the black holes within our galaxy, paired with an excess of high-energy X-rays.

“We had hypothesized at the time that this excess was from the hot material in the ‘plunging region,’ but we did not have a full theoretical prediction of what that emission would look like,” said Wilkins, who also was not involved with the new study.

This study actually performs that calculation, he added, using Einstein’s theory of gravity to predict what the X-rays emitted by material in the “plunging region” would look like around a black hole, and compares it with the data from that bright outburst in 2018.

“This will be prime discovery space over the next decade or so,” Wilkins said, “as we look towards the next generation of X-ray telescopes that will give us more detailed measurements of the innermost regions just outside the event horizons of black holes.”

The Vatican has tightened up its guidance on recognizing supernatural phenomena such as apparitions of the Virgin Mary and seemingly blood-soaked crucifixes.

The new guidelines replace rules drawn up in 1978 and say that bishops should no longer act independently over such sightings but instead consult the Vatican.

The changes made by the Vatican’s doctrinal office (DDF) aim to to bring the church up to date in responding to the swift spread of claims of apparitions online.

According to the document released by the Vatican Friday, the new procedure will allow for “faster decisions while respecting popular devotion” when it comes to assessing claims of supernatural phenomena, which could include the appearance of stigmata and other purported miracles.

Under the previous guidelines, a local bishop could rapidly declare a phenomenon’s supernatural nature, the Vatican said, “only for the Holy Office to express a different decision later.” In other instances a bishop might decide whether or not an occurrence was supernatural only for his successor to conclude the opposite, the statement continued.

The new Vatican guidelines say “as a rule” bishops and church officials will not declare whether alleged phenomena are supernatural or not, leaving this decision to the Pope.

The head of the DDF, Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernandez, told reporters that often these events “have led to a great richness of spiritual fruits, growth in faith, devotion, fraternity, and service. In some cases, they have given rise to shrines throughout the world that are at the heart of many people’s popular piety today.”

Speaking at a Vatican press conference, the cardinal cited Lourdes, the Marian shrine in the southwest of France visited by those with physical and spiritual ailments, as a positive example.

However, he went on to add that some alleged events which derive from the pursuit of “profit, power, fame, social recognition, or other personal interest” may harm the faithful, potentially even to the extent of “exerting control over people or carrying out abuses.”

Bishops will now generally be expected to issue a “nihil obstat” which will allow for worship but will leave open the issue of formal recognition of “supernatural” activity to the Vatican. However, Fernandez said that this recognition would be “very exceptional”.

Other options available to the bishops include the option to formally reject an experience as supernatural, as well as steps to ban or limit worship of phenomena regarded with suspicion. The guidelines state that those spreading false claims can face sanctions, including formal church penalties.

Positive criteria that will be considered by the Church when making a conclusion include the credibility and reputation of those reporting the occurrence, while negative criteria include possible errors, overt pursuit of personal interest, and “any psychosis (or) collective hysteria.”

One site of alleged Marian apparitions still under review by the Vatican is Medjugorje, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, with Cardinal Fernandez telling reporters the claims would be studied according to the new norms.

The idea of coming face to face with a spider-like creature unexpectedly is enough to fill any arachnophobe with horror, let alone encountering one with large, spiky legs.

But that is exactly what roamed around what’s currently northeast Illinois in the late Carboniferous Period about 300 million to 320 million years ago, according to a study published Friday in the Journal of Paleontology.

The newly discovered long-extinct species is described as a “large spider-like arachnid” with “distinctive large spines on the legs” by the study’s authors. They were unable to place the creature within any known arachnid order due to the specimen’s lack of mouthparts, which scientists use to classify them.

“We looked at it twice and said, ‘What are we looking at here?’”

Expert fossil preparator Bob Masek first discovered the specimen in the 1980s in the fossil deposits preserved at Illinois’ Mazon Creek Lagerstätte. (The German word is a term paleontologists use to describe an exceptional site with many perfectly preserved fossils.) However, it wasn’t until 2023 that it became apparent the specimen was a newfound species and fossil collector David Douglass, who had acquired it from Masek, donated it for research.

Researchers then examined and photographed the fossil using a camera attached to a microscope.

They found that the creature was “evidently something very different from any previously described arachnid,” with spiny legs that resemble some modern harvestmen arachnids but with a different type of body.

The creature likely used its spines for defensive purposes rather than to attack other animals, similar to a hedgehog’s spines today, Dunlop said.

“It means if something tries to bite it, it catches the spines in its mouth. … We talk about handling time, which means if you want to eat something spiny, it takes longer because you’ve got to break the spines off or bite the bits that haven’t got spines on it,” he added.

“We can guess there were scorpions and other spiders around,” Dunlop said, as well as primitive lizardlike animals or large amphibians that would have hunted these arachnids, but it isn’t possible to know for certain.

Without the mouthparts, researchers cannot pinpoint its closest relative, but they hypothesize it could belong to a wider group including spiders, whip spiders and whip scorpions.

Paleontologists have only found this particular species in North America so far, but it could “turn up somewhere else” in Northern Europe too, Dunlop said.

“A huge area across a lot of what’s now Europe and North America was probably a kind of giant tropical rainforest and wherever coal is found today, you’ve got a reasonable chance of finding these fossils (of arachnids, plants and insects),” he added.

Ultimately, researchers named the species Douglassarachne acanthopoda. The genus name honors the Douglass family, who donated the specimen to Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History, and the species name references the spines that make this arachnid so distinctive.

The Israeli military announced Friday that it has recovered the bodies of three hostages from a tunnel in the Gaza Strip.

The hostages were identified as Shani Louk, Amit Bouskila, and Itshak Gelernter, IDF spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said in a press conference in Tel Aviv. All three were killed while escaping the Nova music festival and their bodies taken into Gaza, he said.

“They were celebrating life in the Nova music festival and they were murdered by Hamas,” he said.

The bodies were identified by authorities and the families have been informed, Hagari said.

The bodies were transferred to medical professionals for forensic examination. The families were then notified, he added.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed his grief in a post on X on Friday. “The heart breaks for the great loss. My wife Sara and I grieve with the families. All our hearts are with them in this hour of grieving,” he said.

“We will return all our hostages, the dead and the alive alike. I congratulate our brave forces who, with determined action, have returned our sons and daughters home,” he added.

Of the three hostages, only Louk had previously been confirmed dead by the Israeli government.

Her lifeless body was seen on video on the back of a Hamas truck after the music festival attack.

Around 240 people were taken hostage and moved to Gaza during Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel that also killed more than 1,200 people. A little more than 100 were freed during a release deal in November, but the IDF believes there are still 132 hostages being held in Gaza, 128 of whom were taken on October 7.

The IDF believed that of those 132 hostages, 40 are believed to be dead, including two who were taken in 2014.

A deal to secure the release of the remaining hostages has remained elusive for months, despite rounds of talks between Israeli and Hamas negotiating teams.

Last Friday, Hamas militants said Israel’s rejection of a ceasefire plan submitted by mediators at negotiations in Cairo had sent hostage release talks back to “square one.”

The statement came a day after the latest round of Gaza truce and hostage deal talks ended in Cairo, without a deal.

The militant group also accused Netanyahu of hindering the ceasefire talks, so as to use negotiations as a cover to attack the southern Gaza city of Rafah.

This is a breaking news story and will be updated

Despite her extraordinary success in Afrobeats music, Tiwa Savage has long harbored a secret aspiration: to pursue a career in acting.

At 44, the multifaceted, award-winning Nigerian artist has transformed her dreams into reality. On May 10, her much-anticipated debut film, “Water & Garri,” hit Prime Video, marking her leap into acting.

Executive produced by Savage and directed by her long-time music video director Meji Alabi, “Water & Garri” is a collaboration between Everything Savage, Unbound Studios, and JM Films.

The concept was born from Savage’s idea to create a visual album for her 2021 EP of the same name. Because of that, it “initially it was only supposed to be like a short film,” Savage said, “and then it grew on its own and took its own identity.”

Written by Comfort Emmanuel, the film is set in a fictional town on the Cape Coast of Ghana and follows a determined fashion designer named Aisha (Savage) who returns to her hometown due to a family tragedy after a decade in the US. However, upon her return home, she finds her once familiar surroundings altered by escalating violence and heightened tensions.

As she reconnects with her family, old friends, and a former flame, Aisha must confront her past and face the guilt of what she left behind – an experience Savage says drew parallels to her own life.

“We both felt like we had to go somewhere to chase our dreams,” said Savage, who spent two weeks in intensive training in London to prepare for the role of Aisha.

“It was just to break me out of my shell, to break me out of Tiwa Savage and just empty me out – and then just allow me to be or embody like a whole different character,” she added.

Experimenting with a new sound

As the production of the film pressed forward, Savage didn’t only shed her superstar persona, she moved on from the initial musical inspiration for the film, instead opting to create an original soundtrack for the movie.

“It was supposed to include the first five songs on the EP; by the time we finished filming, it just took on a whole different identity, and we just created a whole new soundtrack,” the singer explained.

The album served as a platform for Savage to push her vocal boundaries and delve into new musical genres.

“I feel like I’ve been boxed to a certain sound because I’ve done it for over 10 years,” Savage said.

The 10-song soundtrack included collaborations with French Nigerian singer Asa on the folk song “Emotions,” American gospel artist Zacardi Cortez on “I Need You,” and Richard Bona & The Cavemen on the jazz track “Water & Garri.”

“Creating the soundtrack allowed me to explore those different genres, and I think I didn’t feel like I would have been able to do that as Tiwa Savage,” she said. “(So) I was able to explore those pockets of my talent.”  

The singer admits she has always loved Jazz, R&B, and gospel music, but after acting in “Water & Garri” and performing the soundtrack, she says has discovered how much she has grown as an artist and feels encouraged to be limitless in her creativity.

“I’m not limiting myself to the sound that people know me for; I’ve definitely grown even in a performance – like I used to have a lot of dances and do routines,” the singer-turned-actress explained.

“Now I think I’m more about vocal delivery,” she added. “Going forward from that … I feel like I can do anything.”

Trucks carrying humanitarian aid into Gaza have begun moving ashore after arriving through the floating pier built by the US military, according to the US Central Command (CENTCOM).

The pier was anchored to a beach in Gaza on Thursday and will be used to funnel aid from various countries into the besieged strip, with most border crossings to the enclave closed and a catastrophic humanitarian disaster unfolding inside.

No US troops went ashore in Gaza, according to CENTCOM.

The goal is to get about 500 tons of humanitarian assistance into Gaza through the pier daily, according to Adm. Brad Cooper, the commander of CENTCOM. That means about 90 trucks worth of aid a day, and the goal is to build up to 150 trucks a day.

The maritime corridor is coming at a critical moment – with the Rafah border crossing to Gaza having been closed for more than a week, preventing aid from getting through. That crossing was the only one between Gaza and Egypt – with all other border points in the strip controlled by Israel

Here’s what we know about the new aid route.

How was the pier built and how will it work?

The US began building the floating pier in late April at a cost of $320 million and with the help of some 1,000 US soldiers and sailors. The US said that it is only a temporary measure that is “entirely humanitarian in nature.”

Pieces for the pier were loaded aboard ships on the East Coast of the US and then “transported 6,000 miles across the ocean,” according to CENTCOM’s Cooper. The pieces were assembled off the coast of Gaza, with final assembly taking place in the Israeli port of Ashdod.

The aid delivered via the pier will go through several steps before reaching Gaza. It will arrive to Cyprus by either air or sea where it will be screened by the US and Israel and palletized before being brought by ship to a floating platform near the Gaza coast. Then it is finally transported to the floating pier and loaded onto trucks to distribute on land.

The UN’s World Food Programme will be responsible for receiving and distributing the aid in Gaza.

Why is aid being shipped this way?

Most land crossings into Gaza remain either shut or congested due to lengthy inspections by Israel. That has led the US and other countries to start air-dropping aid into Gaza, which human rights organizations have criticized as ineffective.

The UN has warned of famine setting in in parts of Gaza, calling on Israel to open more land crossings for aid. USAID Administrator Samantha Power, the top US humanitarian official, has also assessed it is “credible” that famine is already occurring in parts of Gaza.

The US State Department warned that only 50 humanitarian aid trucks made it through to Gaza on Sunday, down from hundreds per day in previous weeks, adding that the number is “not nearly enough.”

The UN estimates that 500 trucks are needed per day to alleviate the suffering of Gazans.

In March, the first batch of humanitarian aid by sea was delivered in an operation separate from the US pier project.

Today, only the Israeli-controlled Kerem Shalom crossing and the “Western Erez” Crossing in northern Gaza are open, although the amount of aid trickling through them is nowhere close to what Gaza needs.

The Rafah crossing with Egypt, the entry point for nearly a quarter of all aid into Gaza, was closed last week after Israel seized it as part of a ground offensive into the city.

Police have shot dead an armed attacker who was trying to set fire to a synagogue in the northern French city of Rouen, according to authorities.

A male suspect entered the building early Friday morning and threw what appeared to be a Molotov cocktail, the local mayor said.

The man climbed on top of a trash bin and got to the second floor of the synagogue, then threw the projectile into the building causing a fire, Rouen mayor Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol told journalists at the scene.

“He was [quickly] brought down by security forces before trying to wrestle with them. He then tried to assault security forces with a knife, a long knife,” the mayor said, adding it was then when security forces opened fired and killed the suspect.

No one was hurt during the attempted attack, according to Mayer-Rossignol. Police arrived very quickly, partially because they saw the suspect on security cameras, he said.

The local prosecutor’s office has launched two inquiries, one into the arson and the other into the police firing of arms, Mayer-Rossignol said.

“We all have this worry inside of us, but when it actually happens, it is still shocking,” he added.

France’s Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin tweeted his support for the police who intervened.

“Early this morning, police officers in Rouen killed an armed individual clearly intent on setting fire to the city’s synagogue. I congratulate them on their responsiveness and courage,” Darmanin said.

Rouen authorities had increased police presence at the city’s synagogue following the October 7 attacks in Israel.

Security measures have ramped up at Jewish institutions across France in response to tensions around the ongoing Israel-Gaza war. Darmanin last month announced additional security at synagogues and Jewish schools.

“As Passover approaches and given the current international situation, I have told local officials to significantly step up security at places visited by our Jewish compatriots, especially with regards to synagogues and Jewish schools,” the minister wrote on X.

Six people were killed and two injured by gunfire at a political campaign event in Chiapas, Mexico on Thursday, according to a statement from the state Attorney General’s Office.

A preliminary investigation found that the deaths occurred after a confrontation between armed civilians during an electoral campaign event that was attended by a candidate for the municipal presidency of La Concordia for the Chiapas Popular Party, Lucero López Maza.

The statement did not specify if López Maza was among the victims. However political violence has spiked across the country as Mexico heads toward its largest election in history on June 2.

The Attorney General’s Office said three of the victims, one of whom was a minor, were women, and three men. All died from gunshot wounds.

The investigation is ongoing as police search for the identities and whereabouts of the perpetrators.

Violence has been on the rise in the southern state, which borders Guatemala, as cartels fight for control of lucrative routes for migrant and drug smuggling routes. Earlier this week, eleven people were killed in mass shootings in the neighboring municipality of Chicomuselo, the state prosecutor said.

The Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel have been engaged in a turf war in the area, with hundreds forced to flee their homes in January.

What is big, with a fluffy, cotton candy-like composition? Turns out, a planet.

An international coalition of astronomers has newly discovered an unusual planet, dubbed WASP-193b, that’s about 50% bigger than Jupiter and somehow still the second lightest planet ever found.

But WASP-193b, located beyond our solar system about 1,200 light-years from Earth, isn’t just a scientific oddity. The exoplanet could also be key to future research investigating atypical planetary formation, according to a study describing the find that published Tuesday in the journal Nature Astronomy.

This cotton candy planet isn’t alone; there are other similar planets belonging to a class scientists facetiously call “puffy Jupiters.” The lightest planet ever discovered is the superpuffy Kepler 51d, which is nearly the size of Jupiter but a hundred times lighter than the gas giant.

Puffy Jupiters have largely been a mystery for 15 years, said lead study author Khalid Barkaoui. But WASP-193b, because of its size, is an ideal candidate for further analysis by the James Webb Space Telescope and other observatories.

“The planet is so light that it’s difficult to think of an analogous, solid-state material,” said Barkaoui, a postdoctoral researcher of Earth, atmospheric and planetary sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in a news release. “The reason why it’s close to cotton candy is because both are mostly made of light gases rather than solids. The planet is basically super fluffy.”

Low-density planet presents big challenge

WASP-193b, which researchers think is made up of mostly hydrogen and helium, was a huge puzzle for researchers to piece together. Because the exoplanet’s density is so light for its size, calculating its mass became a challenge.

Usually, scientists determine mass using a technique called radial velocity, in which researchers analyze how a star’s spectrum, a graph that indicates the intensity of light emissions in wavelengths, shifts as a planet orbits it. The bigger the planet, the more the star’s spectrum can shift — but this didn’t work for WASP-193b, which is so light, it didn’t make any pull on the star that the team could detect.

Because of how small the mass signal was, it took the team four years to gather data and calculate WASP-193b’s mass, Barkaoui explained. Because the extremely low numbers they found were so rare, the researchers completed multiple trials of data analysis, just to be sure.

“We were initially getting extremely low densities, which were very difficult to believe in the beginning,” said co-lead author Francisco Pozuelos, a senior researcher at Spain’s Institute of Astrophysics of Andalucia, in a news release.

Eventually the team discovered the planet’s mass is a measly 14% that of Jupiter, despite being so much bigger.

But a bigger size means a bigger “extended atmosphere,” said study coauthor Julien de Wit, an associate professor of planetary science at MIT. That means WASP-193b provides an especially useful window into these puffy planets’ formation.

But it’s also not clear how WASP-193b even formed, Barkaoui said. The “classical evolution models” of gas giants don’t quite explain the phenomenon.

“WASP-193b is an outlier of all planets discovered to date,” he said.