Pics du jour

🏆 The Nobel Prizes for Peace and Economics were unveiled. Nihon Hidankyo, a Japanese grassroots movement of atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki (☝️ left), won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for “its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons.” And yesterday, in the final 2024 Nobel announcement, the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences was awarded to a trio of US scientists (☝️ right) for their research on how institutions are formed and affect differences in prosperity between countries.

🌕🌱 NASA is searching for signs of life on Jupiter's moon Europa. Europa is unique among Jupiter's 95 moons in that it harbors a salty ocean beneath its icy crust, making it an attractive location to search for extraterrestrial life, according to planetary scientists. Yesterday, NASA officially launched its Europa Clipper probe – the largest spacecraft it’s ever built – as part of the two-decade, $5.2 billion mission.

🇨🇳🇹🇼 China conducted large-scale military drills around Taiwan yesterday. The drills involved a record-high 125 aircraft, along with China’s Liaoning aircraft carrier and ships, in an exercise that simulated a blockade of Taiwan’s main and outlying islands. Chinese officials said the military drills were intended to punish Taiwan over President Lai Ching-te’s comments last week, in which he rejected Beijing’s claim of sovereignty over the self-governed island.