STOP WAR ON GAZA
Airport protests in NYC, LA force some travelers to walk to terminals

John Bacon and Jorge L. Ortiz, USA TODAY
Updated Thu, December 28, 2023 

Roads leading to two of the nation’s busiest airports in New York and Los Angeles were temporarily blocked Wednesday by pro-Palestinian demonstrators demanding an end to the war in Gaza, prompting some travelers to reach terminals by foot.

In the middle of the hectic holiday travel season, traffic on the expressway to John F. Kennedy Airport in New York came to a halt for 20 minutes as protesters locked arms and held banners.

Video posted on social media showed passengers, some carrying suitcases, leaving vehicles behind and stepping over barriers onto the highway median. Officials later arranged for buses to take stranded travelers to the airport.

At around the same time, activists snarled driving conditions on the road that feeds into Los Angeles International Airport by dragging blocks of concrete, tree branches, construction debris and other objects into the roadway, according to L.A. police. Police said in a social media post that protesters threw an officer to the ground and attacked uninvolved passersby in their vehicles, adding that "this was not a peaceful demonstration.''

Authorities said 26 people were arrested at the JFK protest and 36 at LAX, including one for battery of a police officer. Both airports ranked among the nation’s top-six in boardings last year with more than 26 million each.

NYC protesters for Gaza ceasefire hold mock funeral


AFP
Thu, 28 December 2023 

People gather and mourn in front of 500 baby dolls wrapped in a shroud, in remembrance of children killed in the Gaza Strip, in New York on December 28, 2023. (Charly TRIBALLEAU)

Hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters took to the streets of New York on Thursday, staging a mock funeral in a demonstration against Israel's continued heavy bombardement of the besieged Gaza strip.

Holding banners demanding an immediate ceasefire, the activists gathered in Manhattan's Bryant Park while some briefly stood in the middle of the busy Sixth Avenue in the heart of New York's Midtown district.

Several women shrouded in black held baby dolls swaddled in white cloths to represent the toll the fighting has taken on children in the coastal territory.


The mock funeral procession headed to New York's iconic Times Square where the protest continued with giant electronic advertisements as a backdrop.

"Today's action is to draw attention to the fact that, as of now, almost 10,000 children, just children alone, not counting everybody, not counting all Palestinians, have been killed... in Gaza," said archivist Grace Lile, 64.

The war, which started with Hamas's October 7 attack on Israel, has devastated much of northern Gaza, and the bombardment and fighting has intensified especially in the southern city of Khan Yunis.

Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas in retaliation for the October 7 attack, which left about 1,140 people dead, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.

Israel's relentless aerial bombardment and ground invasion have killed at least 21,320 people, mostly women and children, according to Hamas-run Gaza's health ministry.

New York City has seen dozens of protests since the October 7 attack and Israel's military response, with both pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel demonstrators taking to the streets.

abr-gw/mdl

UN report calls on Israel to ‘end unlawful killings’ in West Bank

Lauren Irwin

THE HILL
Thu, December 28, 2023 

A United Nations report published Thursday details the “rapidly deteriorating human rights situation” in the West Bank and called on Israel to end the “unlawful killings” against Palestinians.

The report, published by the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), called for an “immediate end to the use of military weapons and means during law enforcement operations” and an end to the “arbitrary detention and ill-treatment of Palestinians.”

The report found that from Oct. 7 — when Hamas invaded Israel in a surprise attack — until Dec. 27, there have been 291 Palestinian deaths in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, by the Israel Security Forces (ISF). A majority of the deaths were men, but at least 79 children have been killed in the West Bank.

At least 105 deaths were recorded during ISF law enforcement operations using airstrikes or other military tactics, and 201 were recorded during ISF operations or confrontations not involving an exchange of fire, the report said.

There were nearly 5,000 arrests that were “regularly accompanied” by physical, psychological and sexual abuse.

According to The Associated Press, over 500,00 Israelis live in settlements built in the occupied West Bank. The U.N. report found that settlers “took advantage of the permissive environment” after Oct. 7 “to accelerate displacement” and violence against Palestinian communities and expand Israeli control.

“The violations documented in this report repeat the pattern and nature of violations reported in the past in the context of the long-standing Israeli occupation of the West Bank,” U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, said in a statement. “However, the intensity of the violence and repression is something that has not been seen in years.”

The report urged Israel’s government to take steps to end the killing of Palestinians in the West Bank to ensure use of force complies with international law. It asked that Palestinians arrested be released and to end and reverse settlement activities.

The report asked for the international community — including the Security Council, the Human Rights Council and the General Assembly — to ensure that “those responsible for settler violence are appropriately held to account” and to prevent the “further deterioration of human rights” in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

OHCHR has also called the casualties in Gaza “appalling” and urged Israeli forces to avoid targeting civilians.

The U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution calling for a cease-fire in Gaza, where Israel has focused much of its military attention and killed approximately 20,000 people. The U.N. Security Council, which can pass legally-binding resolutions, tried to move a measure demanding Israel ceases-fire, but it was blocked by the United States.

UN report deplores 'rapid deterioration' of rights in West Bank

Reuters
Updated Thu, December 28, 2023 

Volker Turk, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, attends a news conference at the United Nations in Geneva

GENEVA (Reuters) -A United Nations report published on Thursday deplored what it called a "rapid deterioration" of human rights in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and urged Israeli authorities to end violence against the Palestinian population there.

The report by the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said 300 Palestinians had been killed in the West Bank since Oct. 7, the day Hamas gunmen went on a deadly rampage into southern Israel from Gaza and took hostages back to the Palestinian enclave.

Most of the West Bank killings occurred during operations by Israeli security forces or confrontations with them.

At least 105 deaths could be attributed to Israeli operations involving air strikes or other military tactics in refugee camps or other densely-populated areas. At least eight people were killed by Jewish settlers, it said.

Tal Heinrich, a spokesperson for the Israeli Prime Minister's Office, dismissed the report as "quite ridiculous".

"It completely belittles the major security threats to Israelis emerging from Judea and Samaria," she said, referring to the West Bank by its Hebrew biblical names.

"Yes, we arrested hundreds of terror suspects in that area and we will continue to do whatever it takes to maintain our security."

Volker Turk, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, said the use of unnecessary or disproportionate force against Palestinians in the West Bank was "extremely troubling".

"I call on Israel to take immediate, clear and effective steps to put an end to settler violence against the Palestinian population, to investigate all incidents of violence by settlers and Israeli security forces, to ensure effective protection of Palestinian communities," he said.

The OHCHR said it had also recorded mass arbitrary detentions, unlawful detentions and cases of reported torture and other forms of ill-treatment of Palestinian detainees. It said some 4,785 Palestinians had been detained in the West Bank since Oct. 7.

"Some were stripped naked, blindfolded and restrained for long hours with handcuffs and with their legs tied, while Israeli soldiers stepped on their heads and backs, were spat at, slammed against walls, threatened, insulted, humiliated and in some cases subjected to sexual and gender-based violence," an OHCHR statement about the report said.

Israel's military has said it operates against suspected militants in the West Bank and that investigations have been launched into cases of possible ill treatment of detainees.

The West Bank had already been experiencing the highest levels of unrest in decades during the 18 months preceding the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas gunmen, but confrontations have risen sharply after Israel launched a ground invasion of Gaza.

(Reporting by Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber; additional reporting by Maayan Lubell; editing by Mark Heinrich)

The Jewish settlers 'living the American dream' in the West Bank


Rebecca Rommen
Thu, December 28, 2023

Women wave American and Israeli flags from a car window as they join a convoy to the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem to show support for U.S. President Donald Trump, ahead of the upcoming U.S. election, in Jerusalem October 27, 2020.REUTERS/Ammar Awad

Tens of thousands of US Jews live in West Bank settlements.


The October 7 Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel have sparked backlash in the West Bank.


Settler violence has been dubbed an "American problem."

"I'm living the American dream in Israel," Judith Segaloff told Business Insider.

Segaloff is a US-born settler living in the West Bank, a territory that Israel occupied after the Six-Day War in 1967. She was born into a Jewish family in New Jersey. She was brought up with Zionist values but did not visit Israel until she was in her 40s.

She said she finally felt she'd come home when she stepped off the plane on her first trip to Israel.

"This is where my protoplasm belongs," she said. "It's where I come from."

She and her family now live in Karnei Shomron, an Israeli West Bank settlement established in 1977. An Israeli flag is draped over the entryway of their house.

"We're in the suburbs," Segaloff said, "and it feels like a bedroom community."

She said her neighborhood was reminiscent of Westchester, New York, which she once called home.

"Like Westchester, we have a big house— much bigger than we would have anywhere else in the country," she said. "We have a lot of land, a big backyard, and there's people that speak English all over."

A new life in the West Bank does not mean Segaloff has shed her roots.

"I embrace my American background," she said. "I embrace my Americanism. But at the same time, I'm Israeli all the way."

Israeli settlers hold a protest march from Tapuach Junction to the Israeli settler outpost of Evyatar, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, April 10, 2023.NIR ELIAS/Reuters

US-born settlers are "overrepresented" in the West Bank, Sara Yael Hirschhorn, a historian and a political analyst working as a visiting professor at Israel's University of Haifa, said.

She told BI there's a higher proportion of residents with American roots in the West Bank settlements than in Israel proper — about 15% versus 1%.

While Segaloff presents the life of an American-born Jewish settler as idyllic, beyond the perimeter of Karnei Shomron — "a beautiful town in Western Samaria," the town's public-relations blurb says — a nightmare has been unfolding for some Palestinian residents of the West Bank.

The October 7 Hamas terrorist attacks on southern Israel have sparked a backlash in the West Bank. Violence against Palestinian communities by extremist Jewish settlers has surged, who committed more than 343 violent attacks and killed eight Palestinian civilians, prompting a rare international reaction.

Recently, Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, announced that the Biden administration would impose visa bans on extremist Jewish settlers complicit in violence against Palestinians in the West Bank. The UK government has followed with a similar measure.

Settler violence has been dubbed an "American problem," considering the significant number of US-born people living in Israeli settlements.

The totemic moment of the "American problem" was the Cave of the Patriarchs massacre that killed 29 Palestinians in 1994 in the West Bank city of Hebron, perpetrated by Baruch Goldstein, a Jewish doctor and settler extremist from Brooklyn, New York.

In an op-ed for The New York Times decrying "Israeli terrorists, born in the USA," Hirschhorn noted that in the aftermath of the Hebron massacre former Israeli President Chaim Herzog called the US "a breeding ground" for Jewish terror.

Accusations of settler violence are met with counterclaims of frequent attacks by Palestinians on Jews living beyond the Green Line (the pre-1967 Israeli border), including rocks thrown regularly at cars, ramming attacks, and drive-by shootings.
'Manifest destiny'

According to 2015 research by Hirschhorn for Oxford University, an estimated 60,000 American Jews lived in West Bank settlements.

Hirschhorn said that these figures didn't count suburban neighborhoods of Jerusalem over the Green Line and the number could be much higher.

An aerial view shows the Jewish settlement of Maale Adumim in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, June 25, 2023.REUTERS/Ilan Rosenberg

The attraction to the West Bank is partly associational, Hirschhorn told BI. Once Americans have relatives, friends, or former coworkers who have made aliyah to the West Bank, it seems a logical place for them to settle, too.

Segaloff's decision to move to Karnei Shomron was not just due to the quality of life the settlement could offer her but also because she wanted to live near her cousins who were already established there.

Hirschhorn, who wrote "City on a Hilltop: American Jews and the Israeli Settler Movement," said that US settlers brought ideas of pioneering and building utopian communities to the West Bank, in line with the "manifest destiny" ideology.

Manifest destiny was the 19th-century belief that the US was destined to take over the world and was used to justify the near-eradication of Native American society.

Segaloff said she and her husband described their fellow settlers as "plucky," akin to the American settlers who were "pushing out to Oregon and the West when Native Americans were attacking them."

The Jewish settlements are evocative of American expansionism, Hirschhorn said, with "Americanized" characteristics: The West Bank communities have familiar bagel shops, huge supermarkets, and all the amenities you would hope to find in an American suburb.

"They have all the kinds of creature comforts that you can imagine people might want, in America as much as in Israel," Hirschhorn said.

"You could get a lot for your money out here," Segaloff said. "It's like raising your kids in a small town, and it's a wonderful feeling."
Living in a bubble

Dror Sadot, a spokesperson for B'Tselem, a Jerusalem nonprofit addressing human-rights violations in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories, told BI that all settlements in the territories were illegal under international law but that Israeli law distinguished between legal and illegal settlements.

Sadot said settlers were exploiting Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza to complete their goal of dominating the West Bank, which the Jewish settlers refer to as Judea and Samaria, biblical descriptions.

Abdelazim Wadi holds up a poster commemorating his brother, Ibrahim Wadi, and his nephew, Ahmed Wadi, who were killed by Israeli settlers during a funeral procession on Oct. 12, in the rural Palestinian village of Qusra, West Bank.AP/Mahmoud Illean

Since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank has soared, according to B'Tselem. Israeli forces and settlers have also been forcing Palestinians out of their West Bank homes, reported the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Segaloff said that despite the increased violence in the West Bank, her family's suburbanlike utopia was intact.

"We haven't had any sirens here, thank God," she said. "We're living in, like, a bubble."

Naomi Kahn, a Jewish woman and the director of the International Division at Regavim — a pro-settler think tank and lobbying group — works on the legality of the settlements under Israeli jurisdiction.

Kahn was born, raised, and educated in the US. She studied at New York University and moved to Israel in 1984. She said she made aliyah because "this is where we belong, as the only place we've ever belonged and the only place that's belonged to us.

"So that's why I'm here," she added. "I want to be part of Jewish history and not a bystander watching it misreported in American media."

Kahn told BI that Regavim had "dialogue with anyone who will have dialogue with us." She added: "In general, the Palestinians in the region, in Area C, do not have dialogue with us. They have their own agenda, which is anathema to Israel's national interest."

Area C covers 60% of the West Bank and comprises 125 settlements, with about 325,500 settlers, according to B'Tselem. The area has about 180,000 to 300,000 Palestinian inhabitants.

Kahn disagreed with the term "settlements," saying: "There were never preexisting Arab settlements or communities of any kind on the land on which any of the Jewish communities of Judea and Samaria are built."

Nearly 1,000 Palestinians have been displaced from their homes in the West Bank amid intensified settler violence and increased movement restrictions since October 7, a November assessment from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said.

D'vora Brand, originally from Brooklyn, is a real-estate agent in the West Bank. She told BI that she had never sold a house that was forcibly taken from Palestinians.

Segaloff said of her home: "No Palestinian has ever lived in this house."
'This is the biblical heartland of Israel'

Sharon Rosenbluth, whose father was a Holocaust survivor, was born in a small Illinois town before relocating to Maryland.

"From the time I can remember, Israel was always the forefront," she said. Her parents were "extremely Zionistic," she added.

During her childhood, she and her family spent a year in Israel while her father taught at a university. They lived there during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, in which an Arab coalition led by Egypt and Syria attacked Israel.

"I was 5 years old," she said. "I remember going to school being escorted by soldiers."

Rosenbluth is a fellow resident of Segaloff's in Karnei Shomron. The community's website says the settlement includes "a 'North American' neighborhood, Neve Aliza," one of the largest concentrations of North American immigrants in Israel.

"We're not settlers because it's not possible," Rosenbluth said. "It's our own land. So we call ourselves citizens of the State of Israel because we firmly believe that this is the biblical heartland of Israel and that it belongs to us."

'Trump got us'

Hirschhorn said the West Bank settlements were "often considered to be a right-wing project" and recalled how the Trump campaign set up an ad hoc office in Karnei Shomron before the 2016 election.

President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital and ordered the US Embassy to relocate there, in a move that validated American Israelis in the region.

"Trump got us," Segaloff told BI's Joshua Zitser last year. "He understood us in a way that no other president ever did. He understands the Middle East mentality, the trading mentality, the negotiating mentality."

The settlers reject the idea that land can be traded for peace with the Palestinians.

"This is not an occupation," Kahn said. "And what we're up against is not something that can be solved by territorial compromise."

"I'll stay here no matter what," Segaloff said. "Pushing for a two-state solution is ridiculous because we can't live with people who want us dead."

Opinion: Are Latino voters really defecting in droves to Republicans? Not according to our data


Maria Cardona and Matt Barreto
Thu, December 28, 2023 

A supporter of Trump's first presidential campaign holds up a sign before a rally at the Anaheim Convention Center. (Jae C. Hong / Associated Press)

A widespread and misleading story about the Latino vote has taken hold in the media. It goes something like this: Latinos used to be monolithic base voters for Democrats, but now they are fracturing and increasingly fleeing to Republicans.

As longtime practitioners of Latino voter outreach, we’re skeptical of this herd narrative, and we have data to support our misgivings.

Read more: Opinion: Biden's struggle among Latino voters is real. Here's why and what he can do about it

Our community is dynamic, diverse and fast-growing. It includes primarily English-speaking, fifth-generation Mexican Americans, many of whom are proud veterans of our armed forces or lifelong union members; recently naturalized, largely Spanish-speaking Mexican and Central American immigrants, especially in the West and Southwest, for whom economic opportunity, education, healthcare and immigration policy are particularly important; large Puerto Rican and Dominican populations in the ever-critical battleground state of Pennsylvania; and long-established families and recently arrived refugees from Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua who live in Florida and care deeply about democracy.

It’s hyperbole to say that Latinos have traditionally been a Democratic Party base vote in the way that, for example, African Americans are. Black Americans typically vote for Democrats about 9 to 1; the Latino vote for Democratic presidential candidates is considerably less lopsided, about 2 to 1, with significant variations depending on the candidate.

In 2004, for example, George W. Bush won close to 40% of the Latino vote, helping him carry Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Florida and Virginia. Just eight years later, Barack Obama won more than 70% of Latinos’ votes, flipping five of those states.

Read more: Op-Ed: Latino voters are still in search of a working-class agenda

We have long argued that as a growing electorate with record numbers of first- and second-time voters, Latinos respond to both persuasion and mobilization campaigns — that is, efforts to win them over as swing voters and to turn them out as base voters. When Democrats invest early and heavily in communicating a message about hope, optimism and the American dream, Latinos support Democrats, and Democrats win.

In 2020, Biden won Latino voters by a 2-1 margin, which proved critical to his victories in Arizona and Nevada. While some Latinos moved toward Trump in South Florida and South Texas, the reports of Democrats hemorrhaging Latino voters have been greatly exaggerated.

The same myth was propagated in 2022: GOP operatives proclaimed that a majority of Nevada’s Latino electorate would vote Republican and send Adam Laxalt to the U.S. Senate. The actual result was the opposite: Nearly two-thirds of the state’s Latino voters supported Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto’s reelection and helped Democrats expand their majority in the Senate.

What about today? How are the parties’ positions on inflation, abortion, gun violence and the fate of democracy playing among Latinos?

A recent poll of 3,000 Latino voters by UnidosUS suggests it’s Republicans who are struggling with this demographic:


Only 25% of Latinos say they believe that the Republican Party cares a great deal about their community, down from 35% in 2022.


Seventy-one percent of Latino voters think abortion should be legal, putting them at odds with Republicans on the issue.


Latinos trust Democrats over Republicans on healthcare nearly 4 to 1, not surprisingly given Trump’s determination to undo Obamacare.


Across 19 policy issues, including the economy, inflation, small business, healthcare, abortion, gun violence, education and immigration, Latino voters have more confidence in Democrats by double-digit margins.

The poll also found that immigration is still important to this electorate. Latino voters strongly favor a path to citizenship for Dreamers and other long-present immigrants; favor better, more orderly, humane policies on asylum and other forms of legal immigration; and oppose cruel mass deportations.

Trump and other Republicans, meanwhile, are promising to end birthright citizenship, create detention camps and deport 12 million immigrants with no path to citizenship. Their positions could serve to make immigration more salient to Latino voters. Demonstrating a contrast with the GOP’s xenophobic rhetoric and record on this issue would help Democrats pick up critical votes, according to an Immigration Hub poll of Latino voters in battleground states and congressional districts.

What, after all, has Trump or his party proposed to lower costs for Latino families, increase their access to affordable healthcare, reduce gun violence in our communities, protect our rights and democracy, and respect our contributions to our country?

Latino voters are the fastest-growing electorate in America, and Biden and his party need to emphasize their strengths on the issues that matter to them. Democrats have a significant advantage among Latinos. They should use it.

Maria Cardona is a Democratic strategist and former communications director for the Democratic National Committee. Matt Barreto is a professor of political science and Chicano studies at UCLA, the president of BSP Research and a Democratic Party advisor.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

An unprecedented UFO report and other moments from 2023 that rivaled science fiction

Jackie Wattles and Ashley Strickland, CNN
Wed, December 27, 2023

This year held some truly out-there moments in the world of science and space travel.

With SpaceX’s Mars rocket erupting into a ball of flames over the ocean (twice) and a spacecraft swinging by Earth to drop off pieces of an asteroid that could contain solar system secrets — some events felt ripped from the pages of a science fiction novel.

These moments came as humanity embarks on a new push to explore the cosmos, both with scientific instruments on the ground and spacecraft among the stars.

The renewed effort not only comes from NASA and the US government but also from countries such as India and China. And there’s massive investment from private-sector businesses across the globe as well, a unique feature of the 21st century space race.

Here’s a look back at some of the biggest pinch-me moments in outer space from 2023.
The most powerful rocket ever constructed launches and explodes. Twice

SpaceX's Starship rocket, the largest launch vehicle ever constructed, took off from the company's facilities in South Texas on November 18, 2023. The test mission ended in an explosion. - Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images

SpaceX’s Starship, the rocket and spacecraft system that CEO Elon Musk envisions will carry the first humans to Mars, made two historic flight attempts this year.

The first, in April, ended when the vehicle began tumbling out of control, and SpaceX was forced to destroy it.

The second attempt, in November, saw the 400-foot (120-meter) vehicle make it much farther into flight — successfully firing all its engines and reaching outer space. But both the Starship spacecraft and rocket booster ultimately exploded.

The test launch mishaps weren’t huge setbacks for SpaceX. The company is known to embrace fiery failures in the early stages of rocket development.

But a lot is riding on Starship’s eventual success.

SpaceX is racing to get the vehicle ready to land astronauts on the moon for NASA as early as 2025. And Musk envisions Starship will put boots on Mars by 2029.

Starship remains controversial among some local residents in South Texas, where SpaceX has a private spaceport, after the company’s operations raised concerns about its environmental impact. Meanwhile, Musk — the owner and face of SpaceX — has found himself steeped deeper in unrelated controversy in 2023.
Moon landings: Failures and successes

An image from video provided by the Indian Space Research Organization shows the moon's surface as the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft prepares for landing on August 23, 2023. India became the first country to land a spacecraft in the moon's south pole region. - ISRO/AP

A new moon race is underway, and the participants so far have been robotic.

Mad dashes for the lunar surface kicked off in April when a private Japanese company, Ispace, attempted to land the first commercial vehicle — the Hakuto-R lander — on the moon. It ultimately crash-landed.

Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, followed with yet another blunt force impact when its Luna-25 mission crashed into the moon’s surface in August.

India’s space agency then swooped in days later with the successful touchdown of the Chandrayaan-3 lunar lander on August 23.

India became the fourth county to successfully land a spacecraft on the moon, following the United States, the former Soviet Union and China. India also became the first country to land a spacecraft in the moon’s south pole region.

So far in the 21st century, only China and India have had successful lunar landings. (Russia and the United States haven’t been back to the moon since the 1970s.)

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, also has a spacecraft headed for the lunar surface, with a landing attempt expected early next year.
Leaking spacecraft forced an astronaut to spend a year in space

NASA astronaut Frank Rubio works inside the International Space Station's Destiny laboratory module in May 2023. - NASA

NASA astronaut Frank Rubio expected to spend six months on the International Space Station.

But the Russian Soyuz spacecraft that carried him and two cosmonauts to the orbiting outpost in September 2022 sprang a coolant leak late that year. Russia was forced to send a replacement ride, and it delayed Rubio’s return by six months.

He touched back down on terra firma in September, logging 371 days in orbit — longer than any US astronaut has ever stayed in microgravity.

Rubio was candid about the arduous journey, noting that he “probably would have declined” the mission if he had known he would be stuck in space so long. But he said he spent only one day mourning the lost time on Earth before refocusing on the mission.

Now part of US space travel history, Rubio was also at the center of a lighthearted “scandal.” In the spring, he harvested one of the first tomatoes ever grown in orbit. After losing it on board the station, he faced some suspicion about whether he had eaten the valuable produce.

Colleagues exonerated Rubio in December, months after his departure, when they revealed they had located the missing tomato.
Space tourism kicks into high gear

People react as a passenger rocket plane operated by Virgin Galactic lifts off during the company's first commercial flight at the Spaceport America facility in New Mexico on June 29, 2023. - Jose Luis Gonzalez/Reuters

The world has rapidly entered an era in which a trip to space is possible for anyone who can afford it.

Space tourism kicked off in 2023 with the Axiom-2 mission, which launched in May, carrying decorated former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson and three customers to the International Space Station. The crew included two astronauts from Saudi Arabia, which financed their travel, as well as John Shoffner, an American who made his fortune in the international telecom business.

It marked the private sector’s second mission to the orbiting laboratory. And similar trips — estimated to cost about $55 million per seat — are expected in upcoming years.

Meanwhile, Virgin Galactic, the space tourism venture founded by British billionaire Richard Branson, began offering regular trips to the edge of space for wealthy thrill seekers — finally delivering on its promises after two decades.

In 2023, Virgin Galactic made six trips to the edge of space with its suborbital rocket-powered space plane, carrying company employees, test pilots and customers. Its flights cost about $450,000 per seat (though some early ticket purchasers spent less).

Meanwhile, Jeff Bezos’ space tourism company, Blue Origin, just got its suborbital rocket back in the air after the 2022 failure of an uncrewed rocket on a science mission.
NASA picked astronauts who will fly by the moon

Astronauts Jeremy Hansen (from left), Victor Glover, Reid Wiseman and Christina Koch appear during an April 3, 2023, announcement event in Houston. The four were selected for the Artemis II mission, which is set for a lunar flyby in 2024. - Mark Felix/AFP/Getty Images

The four astronauts who will helm the first crewed moon mission in five decades were revealed in April. The historic Artemis II lunar flyby is set for takeoff in November 2024.

The astronauts are NASA’s Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch and the Canadian Space Agency’s Jeremy Hansen.

“It’s so much more than the four names that have been announced,” Glover said during an April 3 announcement ceremony at NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston. “We need to celebrate this moment in human history. … It is the next step in the journey that will get humanity to Mars.”

The Artemis II lunar flyby is expected to be the first crewed journey in a long line of missions that NASA has planned, including the establishment of a permanent outpost on the moon where astronauts can live and work. Eventually, the space agency hopes those efforts will pave the way for crewed missions to Mars.
NASA releases its first UFO report

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson appears at a September 14, 2023, media briefing in Washington to discuss the findings from a team of experts studying unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAPs. - Aubrey Gemignani/NASA

The US space agency made history when it set up a team of experts to study unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAPs — more commonly referred to as UFOs. And the group revealed its first findings in a September report.

The group sought to determine whether and how the mysterious phenomena can be studied scientifically.

“Recently, many credible witnesses, often military aviators, have reported seeing objects they did not recognize over U.S. airspace,” the report noted. “Most of these events have since been explained, but a small handful cannot be immediately identified as known human-made or natural phenomena.”

The group found no hard evidence that the unexplained occurrences come from intelligent alien life.

But the report said that NASA should use satellites and other instruments — including artificial intelligence and machine learning — to seek more information about the phenomena.

In response, NASA announced it was appointing its first director of UAP research, with the agency’s chief saying the move was the first concrete step NASA had ever taken to seek an explanation for UFOs.

These developments came as the US Defense Department races to get a handle on the phenomena, with the Pentagon receiving dozens of UFO reports each week.
OSIRIS-REx’s special delivery

Astromaterials processors Mari Montoya (left) and Curtis Calva use tools to collect asteroid particles from the base of the OSIRIS-REx science canister. - NASA

In September, an out-of-this-world delivery landed in the Utah desert, and the contents of the capsule have presented astronomers with a cosmic puzzle they will be piecing together for years.

After successfully collecting a sample from the near-asteroid Bennu in 2020, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission safely dropped off the capsule containing the precious rocks and dust within as it flew by Earth on September 24. It wasn’t long before scientists realized the capsule contained a wealth of material that exceeded their goals.

A preliminary analysis revealed that the rocks and dust contain water and a large amount of carbon, suggesting that asteroids may have delivered the building blocks of life to Earth.

And it’s just the first of many insights waiting to be teased from the asteroid sample. The interior of the canister contains “a whole treasure chest of extraterrestrial material,” said OSIRIS-REx principal investigator Dante Lauretta.

Meanwhile, the newly named OSIRIS-APEX mission continues flying through space, ready to rendezvous with the asteroid Apophis during the space rock’s close approach of Earth in 2029.
Space rock surprise

A diagram shows the trajectory of the Lucy spacecraft (red) during its flyby of the asteroid Dinkinesh and its satellite (gray). "A" marks the location of the spacecraft at 12:55 p.m. ET on November 1, 2023, and an inset shows the image captured at that time. "B" marks the spacecraft's position a few minutes later at 1 p.m. ET. - NASA/Goddard/SwRI

The small asteroid Dinkinesh was only meant to test the systems aboard NASA’s Lucy spacecraft as the mission zooms on its way to survey the swarms of Trojan asteroids around Jupiter in the late 2020s. But the space rock was full of surprises that continue to intrigue astronomers.

Lucy flew by Dinkinesh, located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, on November 1. In the days following the flyby, images captured by the spacecraft were returned to Earth — and they revealed that Dinkinesh is orbited by a smaller asteroid that is a contact binary, or two small space rocks that touch each other.

“It’s truly marvelous when nature surprises us with a new puzzle,” said Tom Statler, Lucy program scientist at NASA, in a statement. “Great science pushes us to ask questions that we never knew we needed to ask.”

Dinkinesh, which means “marvelous” in the Amharic language of Ethiopia, is truly living up to its name.

This wild, futuristic space plan could help save the world. But some say it’s too far-fetched


Laura Paddison, CNN
Wed, December 27, 2023 

Ali Hajimiri has spent a decade researching how to put solar panels in space and beam the energy down to Earth. Yet when the Caltech electrical engineering professor talks about his work, people always have three questions, usually in this order: Why not just put solar panels on Earth? Are you going fry birds in the sky? Are you building a Death Star?

Hajmiri jokes he plans to have the answers printed on a card. “I’m going to have it in my wallet to show people,” he said.

Originally a space solar skeptic, Hajimiri’s interest was piqued when he started looking more closely at the idea. “On average, you get about eight times more power in space” compared with solar on Earth, he told CNN. The beam won’t kill animals either. And as for the Death Star? The beam won’t be powerful enough to be weaponized, he added.

This year, Hajimiri and his team made a step towards making space-based solar a reality.

In January, they launched Maple, a 30-centimeter-long space solar prototype equipped with flexible, lightweight transmitters. The aim was to harvest energy from the sun and transfer it wirelessly in space, which they did, managing to light up a pair of LEDs.

But the “stretch goal” was to see if Maple could also beam down detectable energy to Earth. In May, the team decided to launch a “dry run” to see what would happen. On a rooftop on the Caltech campus in Pasadena, California, Hajimiri and the other scientists were able to pick up Maple’s signal.

The amount of energy they detected was tiny, too small to be useful, but they had succeeded in wirelessly beaming down power from space. “It was only after the fact that it dawned on us a little bit that, OK, well, this was something very special,” said Hajimiri.

Space-based solar may sound a wild, futuristic idea, but it is not new. As far back as 1941, it was described in a short story by science fiction writer Isaac Asimov. In the decades since, countries including the US, China and Japan have explored the idea — but for years it was written off. “The economics were just way out,” said Martin Soltau, CEO of the UK-based company Space Solar.

That may now be changing as the cost of launching satellites falls sharply, solar and robotics technology advances swiftly, and the need for abundant clean energy to replace planet-heating fossil fuels becomes more urgent.

There’s a “nexus of different technologies coming together right now just when we need it,” said Craig Underwood, emeritus professor of spacecraft engineering at the University of Surrey in the UK.

The problem is, these technologies would need to be deployed at a scale unlike anything ever done before.
What is space-based solar?

At its heart, space-based solar is a fairly straightforward concept. Humans could harness the enormous power of the sun in space, where it’s available constantly — unaffected by bad weather, cloud cover, nighttime or the seasons — and beam it to Earth.

There are different concepts, but it would work roughly like this: huge solar power satellites, each more than a mile long in diameter, would be sent into a very high orbit.

Because of the colossal size of these structures, they would be made up of hundreds of thousands of much smaller, mass-manufactured modules, “like lego bricks,” Soltau told CNN, which would be assembled in space by autonomous robotic assembly machines.

The satellite’s solar cells would capture the sun’s energy, convert it into microwaves and beam it down to Earth wirelessly via a very large transmitter, able to hit specific points on the ground with precision.

With the International Space Station and the tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa, shown for scale, this illustration demonstrates how massive the CASSEioPia array would be. - CNN

The microwaves, which can easily travel through clouds and bad weather, would be directed to a receiving antenna (or “rectenna”) on Earth made of mesh — “think of a sort of fishing net hung on bamboo poles,” Soltau said — where the microwaves would be converted back into electricity and fed into the grid.

Power would be transmitted wirelessly in the form of microwaves to dedicated receiver stations on Earth, called "rectennas," which convert the energy back into electricity and feed it into the local grid. - ESA

The rectenna, approximately 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) in diameter, could be built on land or offshore. And because these mesh structures would be nearly transparent, the idea is the land underneath them could be used for solar panels, farms or other activities.

A single space solar satellite could deliver up to 2 gigawatts of power, roughly the same amount as two average nuclear power plants in the US.
An idea whose time has come?

There’s “nothing science fiction” about space-based solar, Underwood, the UK professor, told CNN. The technology is mature, he said. “The big stumbling block has been simply the sheer cost of putting a power station into orbit.”

Over the last decade, that has begun to change as companies such as SpaceX and Blue Origin started developing reusable rockets. Today’s launch costs at around $1,500 per kilogram are about 30 times less than in the Space Shuttle era of the early 1980s.

And while launching thousands of tons of material into space sounds like it would have a huge carbon footprint, space solar would likely have a footprint at least comparable to terrestrial solar per unit of energy, if not a smaller, because of its increased efficiency as sunlight is available nearly constantly, said Mamatha Maheshwarappa, payload systems lead at UK Space Agency.

Some experts go further. Underwood said the carbon footprint of space-based solar would be around half that of a terrestrial solar farm producing the same power, even with the rocket launch.

But that doesn’t mean space-based solar should replace terrestrial renewables, he added. The idea is that it could provide “baseload” power that can be called upon around the clock to fill in the gaps when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine on Earth. Currently, baseload power tends to be provided by power plants running on fossil fuels or nuclear energy, which are able to operate with little interruption.

The power would be “very portable,” said Peter Garretson, a senior fellow in defense studies at the American Foreign Policy Council. It could be beamed from space to the top of Europe, for example, and then to the bottom of Africa.

Many advocates point to the potential it could offer developing countries with deep energy needs but a lack of infrastructure. All they would need is a rectenna. “It will provide real democratization of abundant affordable energy,” Soltau said.

Space-based solar could also help power remote Arctic towns and villages that lie in almost complete darkness for months each year, and could beam power to support communities experiencing outages during climate disasters or conflict.
The challenges

There is still a huge gulf between concept and commercialization.

We know how to build a satellite, and we know how to build a solar array, the UK Space Agency’s Maheshwarappa said. “What we don’t know is how to build something this big in space.”

She gives the example of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the tallest building in the world, which stands at around 830 meters, or roughly 2,700 feet. “The structures that we are talking about are twice that,” Maheshwarappa told CNN. “So we have not even built something this big on the ground, let alone in space.”

Scientists also need to figure out how to use AI and robotics to construct and maintain these structures in space. “The enabling technologies are still in a very low technology readiness,” Maheshwarappa said.

Then there’s regulating this new energy system, to ensure the satellites are built sustainably, there’s no debris risk, and they have an end-of-life plan, as well as to determine where rectenna sites should be located.

Public buy-in could be another huge obstacle, Maheshwarappa said. There can be an instinctive fear when it comes to beaming power from space.

But such fears are unfounded, according to some experts. The energy density at the center of the rectenna would be about a quarter of the midday sun. “It is no different than standing in front of a heat lamp,” Hajimiri said.

And to build a satellite capable of doing harm to people, it would have to be many times bigger than the concepts currently being developed, Hajimiri said. “Anyone who tries to start building that, everyone else would know.”

That doesn’t mean questions shouldn’t be asked, he said. The idea is “to benefit humanity, and if it doesn’t, there’s no point.”

An artist’s impression of what a solar power satellite could look like - ESA

For some, however, the whole concept of space-based solar is misplaced.

Amory Lovins, a physicist and adjunct professor at Stanford University, said the world would be far better focusing on terrestrial renewables. The extra energy in space and the ability to harvest it nearly 24 hours a day “is not valuable enough to pay for the cost to collect it and beaming the energy down,” he told CNN.

For Lovins, promises that the system would be a great source of baseload power don’t hold up either. There are techniques to match energy demand to supply, rather than the other way around, without consumers even noticing. Having a huge power source that is producing all the time is “undesirably inflexible,” he said.

“Why spend money on something that has no chance of a business case if you succeeded, whose need will have been met before you could build it and whose most optimistic future cost estimates are the same as the current price of terrestrial solar power plus batteries?” he asked.
The future

But governments and companies around the world believe there is huge promise in space-based solar to help meet burgeoning demand for abundant, clean energy and tackle the climate crisis.

A development program able to demonstrate proof of concept is about five or six years away, Soltau said. It will then take another five or six years to industrialize and scale up the gigawatt-scale system to be fully operational.

Strong government support will be key, he said. “It’s an ambitious thing to create a brand new energy technology.”

In the US, the Air Force Research Laboratory has plans to launch a small demonstrator called Arachne in 2025, and the US Naval Research Laboratory launched a module in May 2020 aboard an orbital test vehicle, to test solar hardware in space conditions.

The China Academy of Space Technology, a spacecraft designer and manufacturer, is aiming to send a solar satellite into low orbit in 2028 and into high orbit by 2030, according to a 2022 South China Morning News report.

An illustration of what a space solar satellite could look like. Governments around te world are investing in programs to research and develop the concept. - Andreas Treuer/ESA

There’s been a burst of activity from the UK government. It commissioned an independent study which reported in 2021 that space-based solar was technically feasible, highlighting designs such as the UK-led CASSIOPeiA, a satellite 1.7 kilometers (1 mile) in diameter that aims to deliver 2 gigawatts of power. In June this year, the government announced nearly $5.5 million in funding to universities and tech companies “to drive forward innovation” in the space-based solar sector.

And Europe has its Solaris program, to establish the technical and political viability of space-based solar, in preparation for a possible decision in 2025 to launch a full development program.

“Obviously, before you build something, everything is speculation,” said Garretson, “but there are strong reasons to think that this might actually be economically possible and viable.”

Back in California, Hajimiri and his team have spent the last six months stress testing their prototype to extract data to feed into the next generation of design.

Hajimiri’s ultimate vision is series of lightweight, flexible sails, that can be rolled up, launched and unfurled in space, with billions of elements working in perfect synchronization to send energy where it is needed

He views their project as “part of this long chain of people who build upon each other’s work and help each other,” he said. “So we are taking an important step, perhaps, but it is not the last step.”

Why the Fed should treat climate change's 0B economic toll like other national crises it's helped fight


Jennie C. Stephens, Northeastern University

 Martin Sokol, Trinity College Dublin
Thu, December 28, 2023

THE CONVERSATION


Climate disasters are now costing the United States US0 billion per year, and the economic harm is rising.

The real estate market has been disrupted as home insurance rates skyrocket along with rising wildfire and flood risks in the warming climate. Food prices have gone up with disruptions in agriculture. Health care costs have increased as heat takes a toll. Marginalized and already vulnerable communities that are least financially equipped to recover are being hit the hardest.

Despite this growing source of economic volatility, the Federal Reserve – the U.S. central bank that is charged with maintaining economic stability – is not considering the instability of climate change in its monetary policy.

Earlier this year, Fed Chair Jerome Powell declared unequivocally: “We are not, and we will not become, a climate policymaker.”

Powell’s rationale is that to maintain the Fed’s independence from politics and political cycles, it should use its tools narrowly to focus on its core mission of economic stability. That includes price stability, meaning keeping inflation low and maximizing employment. In Powell’s view, the Fed should stay away from social and environmental concerns that are not tightly linked to its statutory goals.

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell testifies before the House Committee on Financial Services on June 21, 2023. Win McNamee/Getty Images

However, it is getting increasingly difficult for central banks to ensure stability if they do not integrate climate instability into their monetary policies.

As researchers with expertise in climate justice and central banks, we recently published a paper reviewing the monetary policy tools available to central banks around the world that could help slow climate change and reduce climate vulnerabilities.

With the new U.S. National Climate Assessment and other research making clear that U.S. policies and actions are insufficient to minimize climate instability and manage the growing economic costs, we believe it’s time to reconsider the role of central banks in responding to the climate crisis.
Rethinking interest rates

One thing central banks could do is set lower interest rates for renewable energy development. The Bank of Japan has used this strategy.

The Fed’s aggressive increases in interest rates in response to rising inflation have slowed the transformation toward a more sustainable society by supporting fossil fuels and making investments in renewable energy infrastructure more expensive. Offshore wind power has been particularly hard hit, with multiple multibillion-dollar projects canceled as higher interest rates raised the projects’ costs.

Offshore wind turbines are under construction off Massachusetts, but high interest rates raised the cost of projects so much that some companies have put plans on hold. AP Photo/Charles Krupa

One way to introduce differentiated rates would be to create a special lending facility under which commercial banks could borrow money from the central bank at preferential interest rates if used for renewable energy deployment or other climate-friendly investments. Whether the Fed already has authorization to do that depends on interpretation of its current mandate.

While the U.S. Federal Reserve has not done it before, China’s central bank has used similar tools to incentivize renewable energy, and the Bank of Japan’s lending facility offers zero-interest loans for green investments.
Nudging banks to rethink investments

Despite the Fed’s proclaimed efforts not to pick winners and losers, its monetary policies have taken steps that favor established industries and companies, including the fossil fuel industry.

For example, the Fed supported the financial sector unconditionally during the COVID-19 pandemic to keep credit available to limit economic harm. Its massive purchases of corporate bonds resulted in subsidies to the fossil fuel sector.

Our analysis suggests two ways to help manage climate change now: The Fed can reinterpret its current statutory duties and start viewing climate action as a critical part of its role in maintaining economic stability within its existing mandate, as the European Central Bank has done, or the mandate of the Fed can be changed by Congress to explicitly include “green” transformation objectives, similar to the U.K.’s mandate for the Bank of England.

Either of these options could empower the Fed to address climate change and support the government, businesses, banks, households and communities in financing climate mitigation and adaptation efforts.

Rising temperatures exacerbate climate risks, including droughts, wildfires and extreme storms. Global temperatures have already warmed by more than 1 degree Celsius (1.8 Fahrenheit) compared to preindustrial times. The projected changes with 2 C (3.6 F) of warming, which the world is on pace to exceed this century, are relative to the 1991-2020 average. Fifth National Climate AssessmentMore

The Fed could also discourage banks and investors from investing in assets that ultimately harm the economy – for instance, by setting collateral requirements for banks that would reduce the attractiveness of holding carbon-intensive assets. The European Central Bank recently announced that it would tilt purchases of corporate bonds toward “green” assets.

The Fed has recently taken steps to push large financial institutions to monitor climate-related risks in their portfolios, drawing the ire of Republicans, who claimed the bank had no authority to consider climate change. Whether this risk management approach will pressure banks to change their lending patterns is not yet clear.

The Fed and other central banks could go further and mandate energy transition planning with an eye toward economic stability. The European Union developed a whole new sustainable finance framework designed to discourage investment in economic activities that do not support an energy transition along the lines of the European Green Deal, which aims to turn Europe into a climate-neutral continent with no one left behind. The European Central Bank is obligated to support EU economic policies, including the green transition.

The Fed has used creative tools before

Many times in its 110-year history, the Fed has provided financial support to the U.S. government during major crises, such as wars and recessions, by offering direct lines of credit or by directly purchasing Treasury bonds. During the pandemic, it took extraordinary steps to keep U.S. businesses running.

Now that the U.S. is facing rising costs from the climate crisis, we believe the Fed should treat climate change with the same urgency and importance.

In our analysis of the tools available to central banks, we took a climate justice perspective, looking beyond greenhouse gas emission reductions to incorporate social justice and economic equity. Instead of focusing on supporting corporate interests and the financial sector in the short term to stabilize markets, we believe central banks could prioritize longer-term stability by funneling investments toward vulnerable communities and people.

The Bank of England, the European Central Bank and other central banks are already implementing some pro-climate measures. At the Fed, Powell seems more concerned with political backlash than the economic damage to the U.S. economy outlined in the latest climate assessment.

We believe it is past time that the Fed consider climate destabilization as a major economic crisis and use more of the tools in the central bank toolbox to tackle it.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world.Like this article? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter.

It was written by: Jennie C. Stephens, Northeastern University and Martin Sokol, Trinity College Dublin.

Read more:

Jerome Powell keeps his job at the Fed, where he’ll be responsible for preventing inflation from spiraling out of control – without tanking the economy

The next big financial crisis could be triggered by climate change – but central banks can prevent it

Transformational change is coming to how people live on Earth, UN climate adaptation report warns: Which path will humanity choose?

Jennie C. Stephens is affiliated with the Climate Social Science Network and is a Radcliffe-Salata Climate Justice Fellow at Harvard University for the 2023-2024 academic year.

Martin Sokol received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant No. 683197.

Pregnant mummy may have hid ‘negative’ secret from embalmers. Now, researchers spot it

Brendan Rascius
Wed, December 27, 2023 



A pregnant mummy may have kept a secret for thousands of years — one that went undiscovered by ancient embalmers and 20th century archaeologists.

But now, upon re-examining the mummy, researchers revealed she had been carrying a second, hidden fetus, according to a study published on Dec. 21 in the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology.

The mummy was unearthed at the Bagawat Cemetery in southern Egypt during a 1908 archaeological expedition and dates to the Late Dynasty, which spanned from 404 to 343 B.C.

It was found wrapped in sheets and layered with “a great quantity of salt,” researchers said.

Estimated to have been between 14 and 17 years old, the mummy was found with a partial fetus lodged in her pelvic cavity surrounded by numerous bandages.

Researchers determined the woman died during childbirth, when the baby’s head became stuck in the birth canal.

“This is a rare find,” Francine Margolis, one of the study authors, told McClatchy News. “There are several examples of women dying during childbirth in the archaeological record (one was a twin pregnancy). However, there has never been one found in Egypt.”

The second, previously unidentified fetus was found mysteriously lodged in the mummy’s chest cavity using CT scans and radiographs.

It’s not clear how it ended up there, but researchers ventured a hypothesis.

“One possibility is that the second fetus was not known to exist to anyone at the time, including the embalmers,” researchers said. “It was uncommon in this later Dynastic period to remove organs during the mummification process.”

The unknown fetus could have been unknowingly mummified alongside the mother’s internal organs. During the process — which involved dissolving the diaphragm and other connective tissue — the fetus could have “migrated” into the chest cavity.

The discovery emphasizes how dangerous childbirth was during ancient Egyptian times, researchers said.

Twins, in particular, were considered to be “negative” and were hoped to be avoided.

“We hypothesized that the Egyptians knew twin births carried more risk and complications and therefore tried to protect against it,” Margolis said.

In fact, a spell found on an ancient papyrus said, “We shall (cause her) to conceive male children and female children. We shall keep her safe from a Horus-birth, from an irregular birth and from giving birth to twins.”

Other ancient cultures too, including the Babylonians and Greeks, considered twins to be a bad omen, according to “The Newborn: A Cultural Medical History.”

“Reasons included the infants’ morbidity and prematurity, the difficulty of breastfeeding two infants for longer, and the belief in superfecundation: more than one father was held responsible for procreating twins,” the authors said.

‘Tree lobsters’ — the rarest insects on Earth — are on exhibit at a US zoo. 

Don Sweeney
Tue, December 26, 2023 

A California zoo has put the rarest insects on Earth — also known as “tree lobsters” — on exhibit to the public as part of a breeding program, officials said.

Lord Howe Island stick insects — so named for their stick-like appearance — were once thought to be extinct before they were rediscovered on the nearby Ball’s Pyramid volcano in 2001, the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance said in a Dec. 19 news release.

The insects are now on exhibit to the public at the San Diego Zoo, which is the only U.S. zoo working with the Melbourne Zoo on a breeding program to save the critically endangered insects.

Critically endangered Lord Howe Island stick insects, the rarest insects on Earth, are on exhibit at the San Diego Zoo in California.

“San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance is committed to invertebrate conservation, and bringing our guests close to this rare and iconic species is a great way to raise awareness for the lesser-known animals that run the world,” Paige Howorth, McKinney Family director of invertebrate care and conservation for the zoo, said in the release.

“In so many ways — pollination, decomposition, predation, and simply as food for other animals — invertebrates make life possible for us all,” Howorth said.

The stick insects are native to the Lord Howe Island group, off the eastern coast of Australia, zoo officials said. They are nocturnal and flightless, and grow up to 6 inches long.

“They are called tree lobsters because they superficially resemble lobsters with their shiny exoskeletons and jointed appendages,” Howorth told McClatchy News, adding they are mostly seen on trees in the daytime.

The insects forage at night for food on host plants, such as Moreton Bay fig and wooly tea tree, and spend their days “resting in tree hollows and other retreats,” zoo officials said.

In the exhibit, the insects “are maintained within a reversed light cycle so that guests can view them during the day under red light, which is invisible to the insects and simulates night, their active time,” the zoo said.

In the wild, they are threatened by invasive plants and predators, including rats, which originally drove them into extinction on Lord Howe Island, the zoo said.

Rats, which are not native to the islands, arrived aboard the SS Makambo, a trade ship grounded there in 1918, Howorth told McClatchy News.

“Sightings of the stick insects (and numerous other plants and animals) decreased dramatically in just two years due to the rats’ activity,” she said. The stick insects were presumed extinct sometime between 1920 and 1930.

Their new home on Ball’s Pyramid also faces threats from catastrophic weather and a shortage of host plants, and supports a limited number of stick insects.

Rats now fill the ecological niche once occupied by stick insects “as primary consumers of plant material and food for other native wildlife,” the zoo said.

A rat eradication program began on the islands in 2019, “involving the reappearance of many other rare or presumed extinct plant and animal species that once fell prey to introduced rats,” zoo officials said.