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A fish under a roof. A stick figure without a head. A series of lines that look like a garden rake.

These symbols are part of an entirely undeciphered script from a sophisticated ancient civilization thousands of years old. And they remain an enduring mystery that has sparked heated debates, death threats to researchers, and cash prizes for the coveted answer.

The latest such prize was offered last month by the chief minister of one Indian state: $1 million to anyone who can decode the script of the Indus Valley civilization, which stretched across what is now Pakistan and northern India.

READ MORE: World leaders turn their back on Trump after Zelenskyy meeting

"A really important question about the pre-history of South Asia could potentially be settled if we are able to completely decipher the script," said Rajesh P. N. Rao, a computer science professor at the University of Washington who has worked on it for more than a decade.

If deciphered, the script could offer a glimpse into a Bronze Age civilization believed to rival ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. Some believe this vast domain held millions of people, with cities that boasted advanced urban planning, standardised weights and measures, and extensive trade routes.

Perhaps more importantly, it might help answer fundamental questions about who the Indus Valley people and their descendants were – a politically fraught debate about the disputed roots of modern India and its indigenous inhabitants.

"Whichever group is trying to claim that civilization would get to claim that they were among the first to have urban planning, this amazing trade, and they were navigating seas to do global trade," Rao said.

"It has a lot of cachet if you can claim that, 'Those were our people who were doing that.'"

Though the script has remained unsolved since its earliest samples were published in 1875, we do know a little about Indus Valley culture itself – thanks to archaeological excavations of major cities like Mohenjo-daro, located in what is now Pakistan's Sindh province, about 510 kilometres northeast of Karachi.

These cities were designed along a grid system like New York City or Barcelona, and were equipped with drainage and water management systems – features which at that point were "unparalleled in history," one paper said.

Throughout the second and third millennia BC, Indus merchants traded with people across the Persian Gulf and the Middle East, their ships bringing copper ingots, pearls, spices and ivory. They crafted gold and silver jewelry, and built faraway settlements and colonies.

Eventually around 1800 BC – still more than 1,000 years before the birth of ancient Rome – the civilization collapsed and people migrated to smaller villages. Some believe climate change was the driving factor, with evidence of long droughts, shifting temperatures, and unpredictable rainfall that could have damaged agriculture in those final few centuries.

But what we know about the Indus civilization is limited compared with the wealth of information available about its contemporaries, such as ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Maya. That is largely because of the undeciphered script, which was found on artifacts such as pottery and stone seals.

There are a few reasons it's been so hard to decode. First, there aren't that many artifacts to analyze – archaeologists have only found about 4000 inscriptions, compared with an estimated 5 million words available in ancient Egyptian, which includes hieroglyphics and other variants.

Many of those Indus relics are very small, often stone seals measuring one square inch – meaning the script on them is short, most sequences containing only four or five symbols.

Crucially, there isn't yet a bilingual artifact containing both the Indus Valley script and its translation into another language, as the Rosetta Stone does for ancient Egyptian and ancient Greek. And we don't have clues such as names of recognised Indus rulers that could help crack the script – the way the names of Cleopatra and Ptolemy helped decipher ancient Egyptian.

There are some things that experts largely agree on. Most believe the script was written from right to left, and many speculate it was used for both religious and economic purposes, such as marking items for trade. There are even some interpretations of signs that multiple experts agree on – a headless stick figure representing a person, for instance.

However, until a Rosetta Stone equivalent is found, these remain unproven theories. "No unanimity has been reached even on the basic issues," wrote Indus experts Jagat Pati Joshi and Asko Parpola in a 1987 book that catalogued hundreds of seals and inscriptions.

Even decades later, "not a single sign is deciphered yet," said Nisha Yadav, a researcher at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai, who worked with Rao on the project and has studied the script for nearly 20 years.

Controversial theories

For some people, solving the script isn't just about intellectual curiosity or academic study – it's a high-stakes existential question.

That's because they believe it could settle the controversy of who exactly the Indus people were, and which way migration flowed, in or out of India.

There are two main groups vying to claim the Indus civilization. One group argues the script has links to Indo-European languages such as ancient Sanskrit, which spawned many languages now spoken across northern India.

Most scholars believe Aryan migrants from Central Asia brought Indo-European languages to India. But this group argues it was the other way around – that Sanskrit and its relatives originated in the Indus Valley civilization and spread out toward Europe, said Rao.

He described their claim as: "Everything was within India to begin with … Nothing came from outside."

Then there's a second group that believes the script is linked to the Dravidian language family now largely spoken across South India – suggesting Dravidian languages were there first, widely spoken across the region before being pushed out by the arrival of Aryans in the north.

M. K. Stalin, the southern Tamil Nadu state leader offering the $1 million prize, is among those who believe the Indus language was a Dravidian ancestor – which Rao described as the more "traditional" theory, though there are respected scholars on both sides.

Then there are some like Indus expert Iravatham Mahadevan, who argued there's little point in the debate since the distinction between northern Aryans and southern Dravidians isn't clear anyway.

"There are no Dravidian people or Aryan people – just like both Pakistanis and Indians are racially very similar," he said in a 1998 interview.

"We are both the product of a very long period of intermarriage, there have been migrations … You cannot now racially segregate any element of the Indian population."

Still, the question is fraught. In a 2011 TED Talk, Rao said he received hate mail after publishing some of his findings. Other researchers have described receiving death threats – including Steve Farmer, who along with his colleagues stunned the academic world in 2004 by arguing the Indus script doesn't represent a language at all, but is merely a set of symbols like those we'd see on modern traffic signs.

How they're trying to crack it

Despite these tensions, the script has long enamored researchers and amateur enthusiasts, with some dedicating their careers to the conundrum.

Some, like Parpola – one of the eminent experts in the field – have tried figuring out the meaning behind certain signs. For instance, he suggests, in many Dravidian languages the words for "fish" and "star" sound the same, and stars were often used to symbolise deities in other ancient scripts – so Indus symbols that look like fish might represent gods.

Other researchers, like Rao and Yadav, are more focused on finding patterns within the script. To do this, they train computer models to analyse a string of signs – then take away certain signs until the computer can accurately guess what the missing symbols are.

This is useful for several reasons: We can better understand patterns in how the script works – like how the letter "Q" is most often followed by "U" in English – and it can help researchers fill in the gaps for artifacts with damaged or missing signs.

Significantly, knowing these common patterns can help identify sequences that don't follow the rules. Yadav pointed to seals found in West Asia, far from the Indus Valley; while they used the same Indus signs, they followed entirely different patterns, suggesting the script may have evolved to be used across different languages, similar to the Latin alphabet.

Then there are your average Joes, fans of the puzzle who want to try their hand at solving it. With the announcement of the $1 million prize – though no clear information about where people can apply for it – amateurs have flocked to experts to eagerly share their theories.

"I used to get about one or two emails a week. But now, after the prize was sent out, I pretty much get emails every day," Rao said. They come from all sorts of people around the world, writing in different languages – with even families working on the puzzle together.

After so many years, Rao swings between optimism and resignation. Any further breakthrough would require international multi-disciplinary teamwork, massive funding, and even political negotiations to allow excavations in border areas disputed by India and Pakistan, he said.

But on good days, he's still hopeful. So is Yadav, who has been fascinated by the Indus Valley civilization since learning about in the fourth grade. Even without the promise of a solution, the beauty of the task draws her back year after year.

"I look forward to working on the problem every day," she said. "If we decipher the script, it will open a window into the lives and ideology of Indus people. We will get to know a lot of things about our ancestors … what they were thinking, what were they focused on?"

These details are "just hiding from us today," she added. "That keeps me glued to the problem rather than anything else."

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The crash ended the man’s run from police from Dominion Rd in Auckland, through Waikato.

The crash involved a motorbike at the intersection of Birch Hill Rd and Yaxley’s Rd.

President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order designating English as the official language of the United States, according to the White House.

The order will allow government agencies and organizations that receive federal funding to choose whether to continue to offer documents and services in a language other than English, according to a fact sheet about the impending order.

Trump had been expected to sign the order today. But by Friday night, the White House had not announced the order had been signed and did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

READ MORE: World leaders turn their back on Trump after Zelenskyy meeting

The executive order will rescind a mandate from former President Bill Clinton that required the government and organizations that received federal funding to provide language assistance to non-English speakers.

Designating English as the national language "promotes unity, establishes efficiency in government operations, and creates a pathway for civic engagement," according to the White House.

More than 30 states have already passed laws designating English as their official language, according to US English, a group that advocates for making English the official language in the United States.

For decades, lawmakers in Congress have introduced legislation to designate English as the official language of the US, but those efforts have not succeeded.

Within hours of Trump's inauguration last month, the new administration took down the Spanish language version of the official White House website.

Hispanic advocacy groups and others expressed confusion and frustration at the change. The White House said at the time it was committed to bringing the Spanish language version of the website back online. As of Friday, it was still not restored.

The White House did not immediately respond to a message about whether that would happen.

Trump shut down the Spanish version of the website during his first term. It was restored when President Joe Biden was inaugurated.

The Wall Street Journal first reported on the order on Friday.

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Analysis: The sky felt like it split over Kyiv, writes Nick Paton Walsh.

On a horizon where drones and airstrikes have killed 47 civilians in Ukraine in the past 10 days, superlatives rained: the most consequential moment in the war since Russia's invasion; the ugliest personality clash — between a 48-year-old comedian turned wartime leader and a septuagenarian billionaire turned US president; the most significant turning point in European history since 1989 or even 1945.

After Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy found himself berated for lack of gratitude on live television by US President Donald Trump and his Vice President JD Vance , Ukraine seemed immediately unsure whether to be furious at his treatment – after their collective survival of three years of Russian bombardment and savagery – at the hands of wealthy American elites, or to seek remedy in Kyiv's relationship with the ally it likely cannot endure without.

READ MORE: World leaders turn their back on Trump after Zelenskyy meeting

Ukrainian military channels on Telegram fumed they would rather die on their feet, than beg on their knees. Kyiv officials exuded solidarity. But the carpet under their feet was suddenly gone.

There is "nothing we can do to fix this," a senior US official told me – adding that the fix must come from Zelenskyy. Trump-whisperer Sen. Lindsey Graham speculated Zelenskyy should fix it fast or step aside. US politicians are used to their words having an outsized impact, but today they rippled across the established norms of European security and made a continent, just about recovered from the horrific whiplash of the past 10 days, suddenly check their seatbelts again.

READ MORE: Trump demands Zelenskyy make immediate ceasefire with Russia after fiery meeting

Zelenskyy's task had been simple and almost complete, a draft agreement on a critical minerals deal waiting to be signed. The mood in his meeting was adequately convivial – not even derailed by his tough rhetoric on Putin. The wartime leader's wardrobe choices – a black, long-sleeved shirt that he's always worn – may not have been to Trump's liking, a US official told me, but did not overturn the apple cart. It took Vance – who often attends, but rarely speaks in, Trump's international meetings – to do that.

Misinformation is often the luxury of the privileged. The basic essentials of your life – electricity, food and water – must be in place to afford the privilege of propagating or believing untruths. When Zelenskyy was confronted with a vice-presidential lecture on Russian diplomacy – which since 2014 has openly advanced little but Moscow's military goals in Ukraine, he talked back. Well, he tried to.

When Trump later told him he had "no cards," Zelenskyy replied: "I am not playing cards." Ukrainians are not playing cards but dying in a rate less than the fantastical figures Trump keeps citing, though at an adequately horrific pace of hundreds a week, that they too want peace.

READ MORE: Zelenskyy told to leave after catastrophic shouting match with Trump

This is the gruesome gulf between the parties in the Oval Office. On one side, a country where the facts of war are personal as they involve relatives and friends who are never coming home, and homes that will never be returned to. On the other, America's right flank feeling scorned because its aid – given to defeat a decades-long adversary at no cost of American life – had not been received with enough gratitude.

"You're not acting at all thankful. And that's not a nice thing," said Trump, as though the cost of tens of thousands of Ukrainian lives was not somehow a sign of appreciation.

Zelenskyy later said in an interview with Fox News he didn't feel he owed Trump an apology, but he thought the relationship could be salvaged.

Trump and Vance have never seen war up close, but are still disgusted by it. They seem to have felt Zelenskyy, soaked in war's horror for three years, needed a lecture about the peace anyone who had seen war would yearn for. Moneyed ignorance loudly lectured exhausted experience.

Where do we go from here? Zelenskyy has probably endured the defining moment of his presidency. He must either magically heal this rift, somehow survive without America, or else step aside and let someone else try – the last perhaps the easiest. Yet stepping down from power, as Moscow would like, could spark a crisis on the front lines, eroding political clarity, and in the legitimacy of the government in Kyiv, where parliamentary processes or flawed wartime elections would likely stumble in producing a clean successor.

There are no good choices ahead, no sure bets. Yet one thing is comforting since I came back to Kyiv. Europe's security – after three daunting weeks of the Trump administration questioning democracy and alliances across the continent – may seem in crisis from the comfortable perspective in London, or Paris, or Munich. Somehow in Kyiv after three years, the doubts feel lighter. Waves of drones come nightly here, yet the city adapts, the people endure, the lights stay on.

This resilience makes Zelenskyy's bristling at being lectured by Vance on his nation's sacrifice and peril easier to understand. As one Ukrainian civilian summarized it last night: "Dignity is also a value. If Russia cannot destroy it, why does the US think it can?"

Incoming Dilworth School trust board chair Jonathan Mason issued the apology.