In a poor Caracas neighborhood, the letter “X” is appearing on people’s homes – crude chest-high slashes of paint that residents say amount to a threat.

“There are some fifty homes in my street, and thirty-two have been marked,” said one resident, who asked to use the alias “Pablo”, due to fear of retaliation for speaking out.

The Xs appeared in Pablo’s neighborhood days after Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro claimed victory at the polls on July 28 – a result disputed by the opposition and questioned by foreign observers.

Members of a Venezuelan paramilitary unit took photos of his neighbors as they stood outside their homes and called for Maduro to step down by banging pots. The next morning, “we woke up and all the houses were marked with a cross,” Pablo said.

“The following days, they would ride around the street saying this mark is for cowards and that they would come back with guns if anyone protested,” he said.

Paramilitary groups have historically been used by the Maduro regime to intimidate or attack opposition supporters. In many of Caracas’ poorest neighborhoods, they are the only law.

Another resident of the same neighborhood said her home was not grafittied, but that she is now too intimidated to join planned anti-government protests on Saturday. She is fearful of a crackdown by the government, which has already detained hundreds of opposition supporters for protesting against Maduro or casting doubt about his disputed victory.

She says that paramilitary groups have installed surveillance cameras in her area, and she does not know who to trust. The Venezuelan government recently repurposed an app originally intended to report public administration malfunctions to allow anonymous charges against opposition supporters.

“This is the app to snitch on the fascists,” Maduro himself told a recent rally, presenting the new service. It has since been blocked on Apple’s App store but is still available on Google Play.

She believes that about 80% of the area she lives in would be in favor of Venezuela’s political opposition – but are too intimidated to make their voices heard.

“A couple days after the election, two young protesters were taken away, there’s no trust among neigbhbors also because of the app,” Valentina said.

A pattern of repression

Venezuelans have felt this fear before. In 2019, when opposition leader Juan Guaido declared himself to be the interim president of Venezuela, with widespread popular support, motorcycle riding colectivo members terrorized anti-government rallies with gunfire and prevented opposition lawmakers and journalists from entering the National Assembly.

That pattern of repression appears to be ramping up today.

Pablo accuses colectivo members of making threats, such as being taken to prison, blacklisting for vital government benefits for cheap gasoline and food handouts. There have also been threats of overt violence in the past few days, though he maintains he will keep protesting.

“Young people are [taken] out of their houses, houses are marked with a cross at their doors.  Journalists have been detained, four of them have been accused of terrorism. This is happening as we speak,” she said.

Since the contested election, Maduro has been at the forefront of the government crackdown, ordering the opening of two new prisons to accommodate detained protesters and openly calling for everyone in the streets to be imprisoned.

Maduro has also endorsed what is informally referred to as “Operation Knock-Knock,” that has seen security services knocking at opposition members’ doors.

“Knock Knock! Don’t be a crybaby… You’re going to Tocorón (a jail)” Maduro shouted at a rally last week.

Even after Venezuela’s electoral and judicial authorities announced the victory of Maduro, they have not shown detailed results and electoral records to support it, prompting anger and concern across the country and abroad.

Meanwhile, the team of opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia has released independently collected polling station data that, although partial, appears to suggest that Maduro lost.

Numerous countries say they will not recognize the official election result until the vote tallies are published in full.

In a report shared Tuesday, a panel of experts from the United Nations said the presidential election lacked “basic transparency and integrity.” They also strongly criticized the National Electoral Council (CNE) for announcing the winner without revealing the tabulated results from each of the country’s polling stations, saying it had “no precedent in contemporary democratic elections.”

“The note … from the UN is giving us a lot of hope. The world must know that we have a neo-Nazi for president,” Pablo said.

Harry and Meghan, Duke and Duchess of Sussex, arrived in the Colombian capital of Bogotá on Thursday, for a visit to support initiatives that protect children from online harm.

The four-day visit came together following an invitation from Vice President Francia Márquez, the first Afro-Colombian to hold executive powers.

The couple were warmly greeted to Bogotá by Márquez and her partner, Rafael Pinillo. The meeting lasted around 30 minutes, during which the group had drinks and pan de bono (Colombian cheese bread) before exchanging gifts.

The two parties held talks at the residence of the vice president, who said that the “Sussexes share the same ideals and goals when it comes to championing a better, safer digital future and mental health landscape for our children and the world,” according to a journalist traveling with the Sussexes.

Márquez, who also serves as the nation’s minister for equality, told reporters Thursday: “This is their first visit to Latin America. The goal is to build bridges and open doors to attend an issue that affects the whole of humanity: cyber harassment and online discrimination.”

She pointed to her own background – as an environmental defender of African heritage – as part of the reason she is pushing for a safer digital landscape.

“Cyber harassment is a problem that doesn’t affect us only around racial issues, but also for gender and political issues. Women who want to do politics today are exposed to a level of violence on social media that affects us as human beings, affects our dignity,” she explained. “And this is not only happening to women, but the most worrisome aspect of cyber harassment is also that it’s affecting children and teenagers.”

Marquez also reiterated the importance of the Invictus Games, launched by Prince Harry a decade ago, saying the couple will meet the Colombian delegation on Friday.

“Colombia is the only country in Latin America taking part in these Games and we’re preparing for the next edition to be held in Canada in 2025,” she added.

Because of over 60 years of almost permanent civil conflict, Colombia has hundreds of thousands of military veterans, some of whom suffer from long-term injuries or chronic condition at the result of their services.

During their stay in the South American nation, the couple are expected to travel beyond the capital and visit the cities of Cartagena and Cali in the days ahead.

Prince Harry and Meghan will see these “vibrant locations,” while engaging with “leaders, youth, and women who embody the aspirations and voices of Colombians committed to progress,” the vice president’s office said when announcing the visit earlier this month.

While the trip could bare a resemblance to a traditional royal visit, it is not an official state visit as the couple are not visiting on behalf of the UK government. The Sussexes stepped back as working royals in 2020.

The couple’s visit to Colombia – their third international trip this year following Canada and Nigeria – comes ahead of the first Global Ministerial Conference on Ending Violence Against Children in November.

The vice president has previously emphasized the need to confront “issues such as cyberbullying, online exploitation, and the mental health impact of these threats.”

Youth online safety is a key priority of the duke and duchess’ Archewell Foundation and the royal couple will be keen to learn about Colombia’s efforts in that area.

Harry and Meghan recently launched “The Parents’ Network,” a support network for those whose children have been negatively affected by social media.

“Is Botox a sin?” A bearded man wearing a traditional white Muslim cap reads the question from a sheet of paper, then looks up to address his TikTok audience.

“Yes, it is a sin,” he smirks. “You must accept that you will age. Do you still want to look like you are 20, when you are 80? No one will believe you.”

Abul Baraa, a German-speaking Salafi preacher, is reaching thousands of followers with Q&A clips like this, which counterterrorism experts say can eventually leave followers ripe for recruitment by terror groups. Salafism is an ultra-orthodox, puritanical strain of Islam followed by a minority of Muslims.

The preacher’s casual and relatable style has helped him amass a following of more than 82,000 on TikTok and tens of thousands more on other social media platforms, where he has published more than 2,000 videos.

“The most commonly known influential preacher in the German-speaking world right now, the ‘It’ model, so to say, is Abul Baraa,” Nicolas Stockhammer, a counterterrorism expert at the University of Vienna, explains.

“TikTok radicalization – it is a new term for this phenomenon… And ISIS-K is one of the profiteers of this dynamic. They appeal specifically to those very young adolescents.”

In light of an alleged terror plot on a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna, there is renewed concern about online extremism among youth. The 19-year-old alleged mastermind of the attack was radicalized online, Austrian authorities say, although it is unclear how.

Abul Baraa, a 51-year-old German citizen, has repeatedly denied any connection to ISIS or any other jihadi groups.

But his content is seen as the first stop on the path to extremism, according to Kaan Orhon, a deradicalization case worker at the Green Bird association in Bonn, Germany. He says Abul Baraa’s name comes up as a common denominator in the radicalization of almost every youngster he works with.

“He is the rock star of the Salafist scene in Germany,” Orhon explains. “He is extremely popular with young people because he caters to needs, questions, interests that young people have, but that are not picked up by any other Islamic theological institutions.”

‘Like a gateway drug’

Questions answered by Abul Baraa may be as benign as “Is it okay to play Fortnite?”– a popular video game.

Abul Baraa answers this one in a two-minute stylized clip, with images of the video game in his backdrop.

“These games are not to be played. We are Muslims. We love Allah and we hate pluralism,” he says.

Keeping young people from engaging in the modern world is Abul Baraa’s objective, experts say. In promoting an anti-West, Salafi ideology, Orhon says, his content pulls viewers away from their communities, leaving their young minds vulnerable to extremist influence.

“What makes him dangerous is that he is like a gateway drug for more radical actors,” explains Orhon, who describes Baraa’s discouragement of activities and interests that are not religiously permissible as laying “a groundwork of isolation.”

In one short Q&A posted on YouTube, Abul Baraa asks: “Can you be friends with a kafir? That means that you are friends with someone who is not a Muslim. This is against our religion.”

Once isolated, the teenagers influenced by Abul Baraa may become ripe for the picking by radical groups like ISIS-K, an active affiliate of ISIS stemming from central Asia, say Stockhammer and Orhon.

“That’s the point where his distancing becomes insincere, because he knows that he lays the groundwork where other actors are picking his target audience up and leading them further into radicalization,” Orhon says.

‘Every time they try to find something new so they can silence us’

German security services have had Abul Baraa on their radar for years.

Born Ahmed Armih, the preacher grew up in Lebanon before moving to Germany around 2002.

He became the chief imam of Berlin’s As-Sahaba Mosque, where he built and maintained connections with violent jihadi figures, according to local German authorities. The mosque was searched by police in 2018 on suspicion of terrorist financing. It is now closed.

Baraa eventually moved his preaching to Lower Saxony, a state in northwestern Germany, where he joined an association of preachers known as the “German-speaking Muslim Community,” or DMG. He delivered sermons at the group’s mosque in Braunschweig until June of this year, when German authorities banned and dissolved the DMG for extremist activity.

“The ban on the DMG is a hard blow to the Salafist scene in Lower Saxony and beyond. By banning the scene, we are depriving German-speaking Salafist preachers of their most important platform for spreading their extremist ideology,” Daniela Behrens, Lower Saxony’s minister of the interior and sport, said in a statement announcing the ban.

The crackdown pushed Abul Baraa to establish and develop a presence on social media, where he remains a prolific producer of content. This week he responded to media reports linking him to the suspected Taylor Swift concert plot with a TikTok video and a livestream.

“Dear brothers and sisters, as you’ve observed, there is currently a massive campaign against us,” he says in the TikTok clip. “Every time they try to find something new so they can silence us.”

Abul Baraa’s followers are likely to be presented with more extremist content by social media algorithms built to fuel and feed their interests.

And groups like ISIS-K are ready to take advantage, actively seeking to recruit minors because it presents a challenge to law enforcement.

“The calculation of ISIS-K and those people who are behind this dynamic is that… it’s not so easy to prosecute them by law because they are too young,” Stockhammer says.

The suspected Taylor Swift concert plot was stopped, but European security officials fear ISIS-K is already recruiting for its next attack from the fringes of the internet, where young minds may be susceptible and alone.

Khawar was preparing to start medical school in Afghanistan when Taliban fighters swept into the capital Kabul, seizing power and imposing the world’s only ban on educating girls over 12.

Khawar had already bought a pile of textbooks, with dreams of becoming a cardiologist. But three years on, her days start at 4 a.m. for prayers and a long list of household chores.

But during her lunch break, she pivots to something different.

For a few hours before resuming her chores, the 22-year-old studies in secret for a degree in health sciences through the University of the People, a non-profit online university based in the United States that allows refugees worldwide, and women like Khawar, to study for free.

Alongside online schools, international efforts are ramping up to educate teenage girls and women, who are all but confined to their homes by a regime that sees them as a subservient underclass.

Some lessons occur in secret locations inside Afghanistan; others are online, on phones and on television and radio. They’re run by different people, but are all designed to reach as many Afghan girls and women as possible.

For the educators, sharing knowledge is a matter of urgency – an uneducated population is much easier to manipulate than one with a secret network of women and girls with the skills and conviction to one day lead the country.

‘A hope center’

Erfanullah Abidi was among the crush of people trying to flee Afghanistan in August 2021, in a chaotic evacuation after the United States and its allies ended their 20-year occupation of the country.

A former government employee and translator and cultural advisor for NATO, he and his family flew to Australia, where he became frustrated by the failure of online campaigns to push the Taliban to reopen schools for girls.

So, he contacted friends and recruited teachers. By February 2023, they held the first of what are now around 15 regular classes in secret locations around Afghanistan.

“It’s a face-to-face class, but each student [is] representing a group of four or five other students that we think should not attend” due to security concerns, he said.

He said it’s easy to find female teachers who are out of work due to the Taliban ban on women teaching boys, but it can be difficult to recruit ones in the right place who meet strict security requirements.

If a potential security breach is detected, classes are canceled – safety is their top priority.

Abidi says the secret classes offer more than education. “This is a hope center. This is a resilience center. This is a place where they see their future, or where they shape or form their future,” he said.

“[The Taliban] keep people uneducated, especially girls, because they will become mothers in the future. They will become parents in the future. Their ideology is to keep them uneducated so they can manipulate the children of the next generation for their terrorist ideology.”

1.4 million out of school

Three years after the Taliban takeover, UNESCO estimates 1.4 million girls are being deliberately deprived of a secondary school education.

The number of primary school students is also falling, due to a shortage of male teachers. Struggling families are also opting to send their children to work instead of school.

The Begum Organization for Women (BOW) hopes to reach girls and women inside their homes, with lessons on radio, online and on TV.

Afghan entrepreneur Hamida Aman founded BOW at the end of 2020 to defend the rights of Afghan women, but it’s become so much more than that.

From Kabul, Radio Begum broadcasts six hours of radio lessons a day, along with health, psychology and spiritual programs to women across most parts of Afghanistan.

“Our radio station is not tolerated in some provinces in the south, because they are very, very conservative. They even don’t want to hear women’s voices on the radio,” said Aman.

Every day between 10 and 20 women phone in to the station to seek advice from on-air doctors and psychologists about how to cope with life in Afghanistan, Aman said.

“Mothers are calling us to complain that their daughters are not eating anymore …. They seem depressed, they don’t talk, or they keep crying.”

Begum Academy also offers lessons online filmed in its studios thousands of miles away in Paris. The televised classes cover a wider array of subjects, presented by women for women – something that’s not allowed in Afghanistan under the Taliban.

“Right now, if you switch on the television in Afghanistan, when you pass from one channel to another, you see only men, mostly men, very few women, especially on the prime time on the evening program, only men, men, men,” Aman said.

Begum TV is also working to expand its programming to provide more light entertainment. “Our audience is asking us to have some entertainment because life is so sad, the situation is so sad, and there is nothing light and joyful,” Aman said.

Lessons from Rwanda

On August 15, 2021, Shabana Basij-Rasik, founder of the School of Leadership, Afghanistan (SOLA), locked the school’s doors, burned its records and rushed her students to the airport to relocate to Rwanda.

Each year they offer a limited number of scholarships to Afghan girls to board and study, but applications far exceed available places – and they had to find a way to reach more students.

An online version of the school – SOLAx – started in March, taking a revamped Afghan curriculum to around 8,000 students spread across 41 countries.

“It’s so sad, because Afghans are now everywhere,” said SOLAx co-founder Mati Amin. “But the majority (89%) still come from inside Afghanistan, from all 34 provinces.”

Thirty-minute lessons are delivered in English, Pashto and Dari via WhatsApp, with the support of tech company Meta, which is allowing SOLAx to use its application programming interface (API) for free.

“WhatsApp is the best way to reach these girls. And we see the traction when we get students coming back, requesting up to over 1,000 lessons in recent days,” said Amin.

Work is underway to add the full Afghan curriculum for grades 7 to 12, with some modifications to encourage critical thinking and to sustain the interest of the social media generation.

“There are educated Afghan women teaching English,” he said. “And I think that’s super important. That’s another way of giving them that hope that someday they could also be in this position.”

Khawar doesn’t speak to her old school friends anymore. All of them have left Afghanistan, some of them before the Taliban takeover to take up offers at universities elsewhere.

After they graduated from high school, five of her fellow students left to study medicine in Turkey. Her school principal had implored her to go with them, but she refused, preferring to attend Kabul University, like her relatives.

“Many times, the principal of the school told me that I would regret this decision. I didn’t believe it at the time, but now I truly do regret it,” she said.

Even if she passes health sciences, she knows Taliban restrictions mean she won’t be able to work in the health sector in Kabul, so she’ll have to move elsewhere.

“I wish [the Taliban] could experience the effort I’ve put in, studying day and night, dedicating my life to this,” she said.

“They may never understand us now, but one day, they will regret it.”

An assault by dozens of Israeli settlers has devastated a Palestinian town in the occupied West Bank, drawing blistering condemnation from top Israeli officials.

More than 70 armed settlers invaded the town of Jit on Thursday, firing live bullets and tear gas at residents and setting several homes, cars and other property on fire, according to the head of Jit’s village council, Nasser Sedda.

Sedda said his cousin, Rashid Sedda, was killed in the attack. The Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Health confirmed the 23-year-old Palestinian died after sustaining a chest injury.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) also said that dozens of Israeli citizens, some masked, set fires and threw rocks and Molotov cocktails before being dispersed by Israeli security forces.

One person has been apprehended for questioning over the rioting, and authorities are looking into the death of the Palestinian resident, IDF said, without naming the resident.

It is launching a joint investigation into the attack with security agency ISA and Israeli Police.

‘A serious nationalist crime’

Videos of the attack on Jit showed vehicles on fire and flames on the ground floor of a two-story building. Another video shows three medics performing CPR on Rashid Sedda.

Residents of the town can be seen running toward the burning vehicles and putting out the flames with a fire extinguisher, while someone shouts, “The settlers attacked us and set fire to the cars.”

The Palestine Red Crescent Society said it treated three injuries from settler attacks in the town, including an elderly woman affected by gas inhalation and two young men injured by stones.

Disavowal and condemnation came quickly from top Israeli officials.

A statement from the office of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu condemned the attack, warning that he views the incident with “utmost severity.”

“Those responsible for any offense will be apprehended and tried,” it read.

Moshe Arbel, Israeli interior minister, called the attacks a “serious nationalist crime” that runs “contrary to the values of Judaism.”

And Defense Minister Yoav Gallant slammed the “violent, radical riots” as “the opposite of every code and value upheld by the State of Israel.”

Some West Bank settlement leaders also condemned the attacks, seeking to distance themselves from the rioters whom they said were “outsiders.”

For years, Israeli settlers have attacked Palestinian communities in the occupied territory.

From October 7, 2023 to August 5, 2024 alone, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has recorded at least 1,143 settler attacks against Palestinians.

Of those, at least 114 attacks “led to Palestinian fatalities and injuries,” according to OCHA.

The US imposed a series of sanctions this year on Israeli settlers accused of violence in the West Bank, blocking their financial assets and barring them from entering into the US.

“The United States remains deeply concerned about extremist violence and instability in the West Bank, which undermines Israel’s own security,” the State Department said in a statement last month.

Israeli settlements, primarily inhabited by Jewish Israeli citizens, are built on lands controlled by Israel since the 1967 Six-Day War. While the international community deems these settlements illegal under international law, Israel disputes this classification.

The controversial settler movement has grown in power over the years and is seen by the outside world as a major impediment to peace in the region.

Russian President Vladimir Putin made a big promise when he launched his war on Ukraine: conscripts would not be involved in combat. But as Moscow struggles to contain Ukrainian advances deeper into its territory, families of young soldiers deployed in the area are raising the alarm about their loved ones.

Messages shared in Russian Telegram channels and other social media over the past few days have revealed how unprepared Moscow was for this kind of attack, including the fact that its military had left poorly trained conscripts in charge of defending the border with Ukraine – the country Russia has been waging war on for more than 10 years.

“When the border was attacked at 3 a.m. by tanks, there were only conscripts defending themselves,” said one such message shared on Telegram by a woman who said she was a mother of a conscript soldier in Kursk, the border region that Ukrainian troops crossed into last week.

“They didn’t see a single soldier, not a single contract soldier — they didn’t see anyone at all. My son called later and said, ‘Mom, we’re in shock;,” the woman, identified only as Olga, said.

The deployment of conscripts is a thorny issue in Russia. That’s partly because of Putin’s repeated promises that they would not be sent to fight, but also due to fact that the mothers and wives of soldiers have traditionally been an influential voice inside the country where dissent is now almost nonexistent – and many are expressing their anger.

The independent Russian news outlet Verstka published an interview with Natalia Appel, the grandmother of one Russian conscript who was serving in Kursk and is now considered missing.

She said her grandson Vladislav had been stationed – without any weapons – in a village some 500 meters from the border. “What could the boys do? Go against (the Ukrainian soldiers) with a shovel?,” she was quoted as saying.

A petition calling on Putin to remove conscripts from the area has been shared online and dozens of messages from people who claimed to be family members of Russian conscripts who have gone missing in Kursk region have been posted on various social media, including the Russian network VKotante.

The fact that Russia was relying on conscripts to defend the border is likely why Ukrainian troops managed to advance into Russian territory with such apparent ease when they first launched the incursion last Tuesday.

Ukrainian military chief Oleksandr Syrskyi has said that Ukrainian troops have advanced 35 kilometers (21.7 miles) through Russian defenses since the incursion started.

“We have taken control of 1,150 square kilometers of territory and 82 settlements,” Syrskyi told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during an on-camera staff meeting Thursday.

Limited training, no weapons

All healthy men in Russia are subject to conscription and, if drafted, required to serve one year in the military.

The country’s military usually runs two drafts a year, one in the spring and one in the fall, conscripting well over 100,000 young men each time. Draft avoidance is a crime and can be punished with a prison term.

The treatment of conscripts has been a political third rail in the past for Russia. During the Soviet war in Afghanistan in the 1980s and Russia’s war in the breakaway republic of Chechnya, the mothers of conscripts mobilized to campaign against the abuse of conscripts.

While Russian civil society has largely been defanged under Putin, the treatment of conscripts is still a sensitive issue for families. Avoiding the draft is easier for the sons of the wealthier and politically privileged.

Last year, Putin ordered the conscription age to increase by three years to 30, so that anyone between the ages of 18 and 30 could be drafted.

Unlike professional soldiers, conscripts receive only limited training before they are sent to their posts, as the law prohibits their deployment overseas and they are not meant to participate in combat operations.

Instead, the Russia has often stationed conscripts along its long borders, not expecting them to ever come under attack. But when Ukraine launched its recent surprise incursion, these conscripts suddenly found themselves on the frontline, completely unprepared to defend themselves.

The deployment of conscripts to the border was also criticized by Russian opposition leaders.

The Anti-War Committee of Russia, a group formed by exiled Russians, issued a statement on Wednesday criticizing the Russian president. It said “the absence of any significant military units of the Russian Federation on the border at the time of the attack and the simultaneous continuous conduct of aggressive military operations for more than 900 days on the territory of sovereign Ukraine is the best proof that Putin is lying again about ‘protecting Russia.’ He doesn’t care about Russia, he is only protecting himself.”

At least some of the conscripts appear to have been taken as prisoners and brought to Ukraine.

Zelensky confirmed earlier this week that Kyiv’s forces were taking prisoners of war as they continued to advance into Kursk. The Ukrainian military also released several videos and photos of men they claimed were Russian prisoners of war – some of whom appeared to be very young men.

On Thursday, the Ukrainian Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, a government department, said a company of Russian soldiers surrendered in the Kursk region and was taken prisoners after being abandoned by reinforcements.

A video captured by Agence France-Presse near the border showed a Ukrainian military truck carrying a group of blindfolded men wearing what appear to be Russian military uniforms.

But while there seems to be outrage over their deployment, this is not the first time Russian conscripts were found to be fighting in Putin’s war on Ukraine.

Shortly after Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, Russia’s Ministry of Defense admitted that conscripts were “discovered” in Ukraine after Kyiv announced that some of the prisoners of war it took were not professional soldiers.

The Russian military then claimed the conscripts had been withdrawn and returned to Russia. It said the commanding officer responsible for the deployments had been punished.

A giant panda has given birth to twins after more than a decade of trying to mate successfully, becoming the oldest known first-time panda mother.

Ying Ying delivered the cubs in the early hours of Thursday on the eve of her 19th birthday – equivalent to age 57 in human years, a spokesperson for Hong Kong’s Ocean Park said.

Photos released by the theme park showed Ying Ying just before she went into five hours of labor, and her palm-sized, pink-colored twins – the first giant pandas born in Hong Kong.

The cubs, a female weighing 122 grams (4.2 ounces) and a male at 112 grams (nearly 4 ounces), finally arrived following years of unsuccessful efforts by Ying Ying to mate with her partner Le Le after they were gifted to the city in 2007 by the Chinese government.

“This birth is a true rarity, especially considering Ying Ying is the oldest giant panda on record to have successfully given birth for the first time,” said Paulo Pong, chairman of Ocean Park Corporation, in a statement.

But visitors will have to wait a few months for the cubs’ official debut as the newborns receive round-the-clock intensive care.

“Both cubs are currently very fragile and need time to stabilize, especially the female cub who has a lower body temperature, weaker cries, and lower food intake after birth,” the park said.

Ying Ying had previously suffered a series of miscarriages – and her five-month pregnancy wasn’t easy, the park added.

“Giant pandas have a notoriously difficult time reproducing, especially as they age,” the statement said. “As a first-time mother, Ying Ying was understandably nervous throughout the process. She spent much of her time lying on the ground and twisting.”

Giant pandas have one fertile period throughout the year, lasting just one to three days, and their preference to live alone in their natural habitats means they rarely mate.

Native to southwest China, Beijing has spent decades attempting to boost the population of the iconic bears, creating sprawling reserves across mountain ranges in an effort to save them from extinction.

Giant pandas are infamously hard to breed in captivity, but after years of decline, their numbers in the wild have increased in recent years.

In 2017, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) upgraded the species from “endangered” to “vulnerable” after their population grew nearly 17% over the previous decade.

It is estimated that around 1,800 pandas remain in the wild, mostly in the mountains of Sichuan, western China. There are around 600 pandas in captivity and Beijing loans some of them to about 20 countries.

Thailand’s parliament voted on Friday for Paetongtarn Shinawatra to be the country’s next prime minister, thrusting another member of the kingdom’s most famed and divisive political dynasty into the top job.

The vote came two days after Thailand’s Constitutional Court removed former Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin from office, in a surprise decision that plunged the kingdom into further political uncertainty and raised fresh concern over the erosion of democratic rights.

Paetongtarn, 37, won 319 votes in the House of Representatives, after being nominated as the sole candidate by her Pheu Thai party’s ruling coalition to replace Srettha. She still needs to be endorsed by King Maha Vajiralongkorn before she can officially take office and appoint a Cabinet.

Paetongtarn will be Thailand’s second female prime minister, after her aunt Yingluck Shinawatra – and the youngest to hold the position.

A political newcomer, Paetongtarn was one of three prime ministerial candidates for Pheu Thai ahead of national elections in May last year and made international headlines when she gave birth just two weeks before the vote.

Her appointment adds another twist to a years-long saga that has shaken up Thailand’s already-turbulent political landscape.

Paetongtarn is the youngest daughter of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a 2006 military coup. Thaksin is one of Thailand’s most influential figures, whose economic and populist policies enabled him to build up a political machine that has dominated Thai politics for the past two decades.

Challenges ahead

Srettha’s dismissal on Wednesday was the latest blow to the Thaksin-backed Pheu Thai, which has frequently run afoul of Thailand’s conservative establishment – a small but powerful clique of military, royalist and business elites.

Political parties allied to Thaksin have struggled to hold on to power, having been forced out due to coups or court decisions.

Paetongtarn’s aunt Yingluck was removed from office before the military seized power in a 2014 coup, and her father Thaksin went into self-imposed exile in 2006 for more than 15 years to escape corruption charges after the military toppled his government.

Thaksin, a telecoms billionaire and former owner of Manchester City Football Club, returned to Thailand from exile in August last year.

He has retained an outsized grip on Thai politics and many saw him as continuing to influence the Pheu Thai party – firstly through his sister Yingluck and now through his daughter.

Thaksin’s dramatic return coincided with the Senate’s vote to appoint Srettha as the country’s 30th prime minister. Experts believe Thaksin struck a deal with the Thai establishment for his return and Srettha’s appointment, a claim he denies.

In a stunning about-face to win that vote, Pheu Thai joined with its former military rivals and became head of a multi-party governing coalition. The progressive Move Forward Party, which pulled off a stunning election victory last year with its hugely popular reform agenda, was prevented from forming a government and forced into opposition.

Last week, the Constitutional Court accused Move Forward of “undermining the monarchy” and ordered it to be disbanded, in a blow to the vibrant progressive movement and effectively disenfranchising 14 million people.

The former members have since reconstituted the party under a new name.

On Wednesday, the same court ruled Srettha breached ethics rules set in the constitution by appointing a lawyer – and Thaksin aide – who had served prison time to the Cabinet.

The two decisions were widely seen by observers as judicial overreach that sent a chilling message to those pushing for meaningful reform.

“In light of recent rulings, Thailand should be seen as semi-autocratic at best because people’s votes practically don’t matter.  The conservative establishment has the power to veto and manipulate to get preferred outcomes,” said Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a professor of political science at Chulalongkorn University.

This is a developing story and will be updated.