The pan-Arab Al Jazeera TV said the family members of its correspondent in Gaza – his wife, daughter and son – were killed in an Israeli air strike on Gaza on Wednesday night.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military on the incident.

The channel posted lived footage of its reporter Wael Al Dahdouh crying as he saw them laying lifeless in hospital.

A Molotov cocktail, called ‘petrol bomb’ in local parlance, was lobbed by a man in front of the Raj Bhavan’s main gate on Wednesday, an incident which drew the opposition’s ire over the handling of law and order by the ruling DMK in Tamil Nadu.

The Raj Bhavan asserted it was “attacked” and that “miscreants carrying bombs tried to barge in through the main gate.” “However, alert sentries prevented and assailants hurled two petrol bombs inside Raj Bhavan and escaped,” a post on Raj Bhavan’s official ‘X’ handle claimed.

Opposition AIADMK and BJP slammed the government over the incident that happened outside the official residence of the State Governor.

There was no damage, injuries to anyone and there was no security lapse, a senior police official said, adding the man who threw the petrol bomb was immediately overpowered. He was identified as ‘Karukka’ Vinoth, a man with many pending cases against him.

On Sardar Patel Road, on the opposite side of the Raj Bhavan, the man tried to throw a bottle by around 3 PM and it was immediately noticed by policemen on duty near the main gate, Prem Anand Sinha, Additional Commissioner of Police (South), told reporters.

While alert police personnel were apprehending him, the man hurled the bottle which landed in front of the barricade placed before the main gate of the Raj Bhavan and there was no damage and no one was injured.

“There was no fire…there was some flame only on the wick, the bottle fell down and broke. He was caught and he had some more bottles and these were seized,” ‘Karukka’ Vinoth, aged 42, faces 14 criminal cases and he was out on bail recently. He is a resident of Teynampet here, a City Police release said.

Vinoth was the accused in two similar incidents, including the one relating to the BJP office here over a year ago.

Within the past one week, he was freed from jail after he secured bail. Before the incident on Wednesday, he consumed liquor and he is being questioned on his motive, Sinha said.

“Only one petrol bomb was used; it did not create any impact the way the accused expected,” he said and ruled out any security lapse.

A case has been registered and the accused was remanded in custody.

Asked if he had any idea about the Governor’s ‘movement’ outside of the Raj Bhavan and whether he had come prepared anticipating any such thing, the official said ‘it does not appear to be so.’ Opposition parties strongly condemned the incident and criticised the government over ‘deterioration’ of law and order.

Leader of Opposition and AIADMK chief, Edappadi K Palaniswami said a scenario of ‘insecurity’ prevailed for the Raj Bhavan itself, meant to be a high-security campus. Expressing shock, he said the incident illustrated ‘deterioration’ of law and order in Tamil Nadu.

Former chief minister O Panneerselvam also blamed the alleged deterioration of law and order. VK Sasikala, confidante of late chief minister J Jayalalithaa said the incident was tantamount to intimidating the Governor.

BJP state president K Annamalai said on X: “Incidentally, it is the same person who attacked @BJP4TamilNadu headquarters in Chennai in Feb 2022, is held responsible for the attack on Raj Bhavan today, ” he added.

Union Minister L Murugan also slammed the DMK government vis-a-vis law and order.

A Molotov cocktail is an incendiary device, usually filled with petrol and a piece of cloth is used as a wick to light it. 

Seismic waves generated by a meteorite impact on the other side of Mars from where NASA’s InSight lander sits have provided new clues about the Red Planet’s deep interior, prompting scientists to reappraise the anatomy of Earth’s planetary neighbour.

The new seismic data indicates the presence of a hitherto unknown layer of molten rock surrounding a liquid metallic core – the planet’s innermost component – that is smaller and denser than previously estimated, researchers said on Wednesday.

Waves generated by quakes – including those caused by meteorite impacts – vary in speed and shape when journeying through different materials inside a planet. Data from InSight’s seismometer instrument has enabled the planet’s internal structure to come into focus.

The meteorite impact that occurred in a Martian highland region called Tempe Terra on Sept. 18, 2021, triggered a magnitude 4.2 quake and left a crater about 425 feet (130 meters) wide. It occurred on the opposite side of Mars from InSight’s location in a plains region called Elysium Planitia.

“The importance of the far side impact was to produce seismic waves that traversed the deep interior of the planet, including the core. Previously, we had not observed any seismic waves that had transited the core. We had only seen reflections from the top of the core,” said planetary scientist Amir Khan of ETH Zurich in Switzerland, lead author of one of two scientific papers on the new findings published in the journal Nature.

The behaviour of the waves indicated that previous assessments of the Martian interior were missing something – the presence of a molten silicate layer about 90 miles (150 km) thick surrounding the core. This molten region sits at the bottom of the interior portion of the planet called the mantle.

The researchers also recalculated the size of the core, finding that it has a diameter of about 2,080 miles (3,350 km), with a volume about 30% smaller than previously thought.

The researchers said the mantle – a rocky layer sandwiched between the planet’s outermost crust and core – extends about 1,055 miles (1,700 km) below the surface. Unlike Mars, Earth has no molten layer around its core. One of the two studies published on Wednesday indicates this layer is fully molten, with the other indicating that most of it is fully molten, with the top portion partially molten.

“The molten and partially molten layer is essentially composed of silicates (rock-forming minerals) that are enriched in iron and in radioactive heat-producing elements compared to the overlying solid mantle,” said Henri Samuel, a planetary scientist with the French National Research Organization CNRS working at Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris and lead author of the second study.

The Martian core is made up mostly of iron and nickel but also has some lighter elements such as sulfur, oxygen, carbon and hydrogen. The researchers concluded that these lighter elements make up about 9-15% of the core’s composition by weight, lower than previously estimated.

“This amount of light elements is not unlike that of the Earth’s core, which is estimated to be around 10%,” Khan said.

Mars, the fourth planet from the sun, has a diameter of about 4,220 miles (6,791 km), compared to Earth’s diameter of about 7,926 miles (12,755 km). Earth is almost seven times larger in total volume.

NASA retired InSight in 2022 after four years of operations.

“We have learned a lot about Mars by studying the unique seismic record provided by the InSight mission,” Samuel said. “Planets are rich and complex systems because they are a place where many different types of processes coexist and act on various spatial and temporal scales, and Mars is no exception.”