More than 100 charity and human rights groups say that Israel’s blockade and ongoing military offensive are pushing Palestinians in the Gaza Strip toward starvation. Israeli strikes meanwhile killed another 21 people overnight and into Wednesday, according to local health officials. The Trump administration’s Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff was set to meet with a senior Israeli official about ceasefire talks, a sign that lower-level negotiations that have dragged on for weeks could be approaching a breakthrough. Experts say Gaza is at risk of famine because of Israel’s blockade and offensive, launched in response to Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack.

No one had spotted the world’s smallest known snake for nearly two decades. Some scientists worried that maybe the Barbados threadsnake had become extinct. But Connor Blades lifted a rock in a tiny forest in Barbados and held his breath one sunny morning. The project officer with the eastern Caribbean island's environment ministry had already spent more than a year looking for the snake. The species can fit comfortably on a coin. The specimen in front of him was too tiny to identify with the naked eye. So he analyzed it several hours later in front of a microscope at the University of the West Indies. And it was a Barbados threadsnake.