The world’s attention must “stay on Ukraine” as the Russian invasion continues, a former Nato secretary-general has warned. Lord George Robertson said Russian president Vladimir Putin would be emboldened to extend the attacks beyond Ukraine if foreign governments stop providing weaponry. It comes amid a four-day pause in the Israel-Hamas conflict, with the situation in the Middle East dominating much of the news agenda. Lord Robertson, who was in the top Nato role between 1999 and 2003, welcomed the temporary ceasefire in Gaza, but he told the PA news agency: “I think it is inevitable that because we’re seeing the television from Gaza every day, that people are paying less attention to Ukraine, but that must change. “We have got to keep the world’s attention focused on Ukraine because they are involved in a fight with Russia that has got huge implications for all of us as well. “Vladimir Putin is not simply interested in subjugating Ukraine. He has got a much bigger agenda in the future, and if he succeeds in Ukraine, who knows where he is going to stop.” The stakes are enormously high because if Putin succeeds, he won’t stop at Ukraine Lord Robertson The conflict in Ukraine has now surpassed 640 days – the invasion began in February 2022 – and Lord Robertson urged Nato member states to continue to press Russia amid Mr Putin’s “miserable failure”. He added: “We cannot allow the Ukraine conflict to go down the attention span. That suits Vladimir Putin and nobody else. “The fact is that most of his objectives have actually turned to dust. He wanted to stop Nato enlargement, and it is now bigger. He wanted to divide Europe and divide Europe from America, he failed in that respect. “He wanted to take over the whole of Ukraine and now he is stuck in the Donbas. There’s a miserable failure there by the one man who made the decision to invade Ukraine. “We have got to change the mind of that one man by staying absolutely united and making sure that Ukrainians get the weaponry and the ammunition they need, when they actually need it. “That is the only way we’ll change Vladimir Putin’s mind. The stakes are enormously high because if Putin succeeds, he won’t stop at Ukraine.” Meanwhile, the Labour peer called for a long-term solution to resolve the conflict in the Middle East. He said: “I think gradually the countries in the region will need to come together to find a long-term solution so that the Israelis and the Palestinians can live in harmony together. “The present conflict will go on and on for years unless there is a long-term solution.” Read More Reform UK denies offering ‘lot of money’ to Tory MP Lee Anderson to defect ‘Very chilly’ on Sunday after overnight temperatures fall below zero What the papers say – November 26 Relief as latest set of Hamas hostages released Irish-Israeli girl reunited with father who feared she was dead after Hamas attacks Kemi Badenoch unveils £4.5bn funding plan for British manufacturing

Forty-five bags containing human remains with characteristics matching seven missing call center staff has been discovered in a ravine in a suburb of Guadalajara, according to the state prosecutor's office in Jalisco.

Virgin Galactic has completed a final test flight before taking paying customers on brief trips to space

The UK is sending missiles to Ukraine – but how could Storm Shadows change its fight against Russia?

The White House is continuing to brace for a possible government shutdown this weekend, including making preparations for many junior personnel being furloughed starting on October 1.

In what will be a marathon month for interest-rate decisions in Africa, its biggest economies are set to

Nvidia Corp soared to a trillion-dollar market value on Tuesday as shares continued to surge after a bumper

The FBI has offered to show top lawmakers next week a bureau document that purports to relate to President Joe Biden and his family following weeks of demands by congressional Republicans and a contempt threat against Director Christopher Wray

The animosity has reached a boiling point, and fans are eagerly anticipating the showdown

Mizkif Rinaudo shared advice he receieved from Twitch streamer Pokimane

The 58-year-old pled guilty a slew of crimes, including drug trafficking, tax fraud, and lying to secure Social Security disability benefits

The meaning of life is the ultimate mystery – why do we exist? And is there a point to… well… anything? These are questions to which we may never find answers, but at least we can define what “life” means in scientific terms. And yet, our understanding of what life is is changing all the time, thanks to space exploration. As scientists continue to hunt for life beyond our own world, biologists are having to rethink the meaning of the word “life” itself. Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Generally, biologists explain “life” as connoting a self-sustaining chemical system which is capable of performing functions such as eating, metabolising, excreting, breathing, moving, growing, reproducing, and responding to external stimuli. This definition works pretty well here on Earth (although there are some important exceptions, such as viruses), but experts have pointed out that if life exists elsewhere in the universe, it may not display the same properties that we’re used to. Indeed, it might be unrecognisable as life as we know it (forget those little green men). In which case, how will we spot it if it ever crosses our path? Astrobiologist Sara Imari Walker and chemist Lee Cronin think they’ve come up with a solution. The pair are now arguing that highly complex molecules found in all living creatures can’t exist thanks purely to chance. Therefore, they say, the universe must have a way of creating and reproducing complex information and retaining a “memory” of all of this.. In an interview with New Scientist, Walker, of Arizona State University, explained their radical idea on how objects come into existence. The concept, known as Assembly Theory, explains why certain complex objects have become more abundant than others by considering their histories. If the theory proves correct, it will redefine what we mean by “living” things and show that we’ve been going about the search for extraterrestrial life all wrong. In the process, we could even end up creating alien life in a laboratory, she stressed. In her discussion with New Scientist, Walker pointed out: "An electron can be made anywhere in the universe and has no history. You are also a fundamental object, but with a lot of historical dependency. You might want to cite your age counting back to when you were born, but parts of you are billions of years older. "From this perspective, we should think of ourselves as lineages of propagating information that temporarily finds itself aggregated in an individual." Assembly theory predicts that molecules produced by biological processes must be more complex than those produced by non-biological processes, as Science Alert notes. To test this, Walker and her team analysed a range of organic and inorganic compounds from around the world and outer space, including E. coli bacteria, urine, meteorites and even home-brewed beer. They then smashed up the compounds into smaller pieces and used mass spectrometry to pinpoint their molecular building blocks. They calculated that the smallest number of steps required to reassemble each compound from these building blocks was 15. And whilst some compounds from living systems needed fewer than 15 assembly steps, no inorganic compounds made it above this threshold. "Our system … allows us to search the universe agnostically for evidence of what life does rather than attempting to define what life is," Walker, Cronin, and others wrote in a 2021 Nature Communications article. The handy thing about this building block system – which they’ve dubbed the “'molecular assembly index” – is that it doesn’t rely on carbon-based organic materials to be identified. In other words, an alien could be made of entirely different stuff entirely and we’d still be able to spot it as life using the index. It also works regardless of what stage of “life” an extraterrestrial being is in – whether it is still in its infancy or has moved into a technological stage beyond our understanding. That’s because all of these states produce complex molecules which couldn’t exist in the absence of a living system. If all of this is hurting your head, let’s just get back to the basics: if there is a secret to life, it might all be down to what we do, not what we are. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.