BRUSSELS — Two Swedish nationals were shot to death and a third person was wounded in central Brussels on Monday night, and a man who identified himself as a member of the Islamic State claimed responsibility in a video posted online.

The suspected assailant fled the scene after the shooting as a football match between Belgium and Sweden was about to start, triggering a massive manhunt and prompting Belgium to raise its terror alert to the highest level.

A Belgian federal prosecutor said there was no evidence that the attacker, who was still on the loose, had any link to the recent renewed conflict between Israel and Palestinian militants.

The likely motive for the attack was the Swedish nationality of the victims, the prosecutor said.

Sweden in August raised its terror alert to the second-highest level, warning of an increase in threats against Swedish interests abroad, after Koran burnings and other acts in Sweden against Islam’s holiest text outraged Muslims and triggered threats from jihadists.

The suspected assailant, calling himself Abdesalem Al Guilani, claimed in a video on social media that he was a fighter for Allah. The federal prosecutor said the third victim, who was wounded but whose condition was not life-threatening, was a taxi driver. The prosecutor called on Brussels’ residents to stay indoors until the threat was over. European Commission staff were also advised to stay indoors.

Belgian Prime Minister Alexander de Croo confirmed on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, the victims were Swedish.

“I have just offered my sincere condolences to the Swedish PM following tonight’s harrowing attack on Swedish citizens in Brussels,” Mr. De Croo said on X.

“Our thoughts are with the families and friends who lost their loved ones. As close partners, the fight against terrorism is a joint one,” he said.

Sweden’s Justice minister, Gunnar Strommer, told Reuters the government was working intensively with Belgian authorities to get more information about what happened.

All Swedes in Belgium will receive a text message sent to their phones urging them to be vigilant and to follow instructions from Belgian authorities, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said.

Belgium’s interior minister said the investigation was in the hands of a federal prosecutor because of “a possible terrorist motive.”

One Belgian newspaper said it was likely that the victims were two soccer supporters. Belgium were hosting Sweden in a Euro 2024 qualifying match on Monday evening. The match was suspended at halftime because of security reasons.

The shooting comes at a time of heightened security concerns in some European countries linked to the Israel-Hamas conflict. France is deploying 7,000 extra troops onto its streets after a teacher was fatally stabbed on Friday in an attack President Emmanuel Macron condemned as “barbaric Islamic terrorism.”

Video footage of the Brussels attack posted on the Het Laatste Nieuws newspaper website showed a man in an orange jacket on a scooter at a street intersection with a rifle first firing two shots, then three more, then running into a building, firing two more shots, leaving, taking a few steps back again and shooting one more time.

One Belgium newspaper said a witness said the shooter shouted “Allahu Akbar” before the shots were fired.

According to a media transcript of the video message recorded by the self-declared perpetrator, he said:

“Islamic greeting Allahu Akbar. My name is Abdesalem Al Guilani and I am a fighter for Allah. I am from the Islamic State. We love who loves us and we hate who hates us. We live for our religion and we die for our religion. Alhamdulah. Your brother took revenge in the name of Muslims. I have killed 3 Swedes so far Al hamdoulelah. 3 Swedish, yes. Those to whom I have done something wrong, may they forgive me. And I forgive everyone. Salam Aleykoum.”

France is tightening controls at the border with Belgium after the deadly attack in Brussels, Belgian media said.

Belgium’s crisis center warned the public not to make any unnecessary trips in the capital. — Reuters

WASHINGTON — When British naturalist Charles Darwin sketched out his theory of evolution in the 1859 book On the Origin of Species — proposing that biological species change over time through the acquisition of traits that favor survival and reproduction — it provoked a revolution in scientific thought.

Now 164 years later, nine scientists and philosophers on Monday proposed a new law of nature that includes the biological evolution described by Darwin as a vibrant example of a much broader phenomenon, one that appears at the level of atoms, minerals, planetary atmospheres, planets, stars and more.

It holds that complex natural systems evolve to states of greater patterning, diversity and complexity.

“We see evolution as a universal process that applies to numerous systems, both living and nonliving, that increase in diversity and patterning through time,” said Carnegie Institution for Science mineralogist and astrobiologist Robert Hazen, a co-author of the scientific paper describing the law in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Titled the “law of increasing functional information,” it holds that evolving systems, biological and non-biological, always form from numerous interacting building blocks like atoms or cells, and that processes exist — such as cellular mutation — that generate many different configurations. Evolution occurs, it holds, when these various configurations are subject to selection for useful functions.

“We have well-documented laws that describe such everyday phenomena as forces, motions, gravity, electricity and magnetism and energy,” Mr. Hazen said. “But these laws do not, individually or collectively, describe or explain why the universe keeps getting more diverse and complex at scales of atoms, molecules, minerals and more.”

In stars, for instance, just two elements — hydrogen and helium — were the main ingredients in the first stellar generation following the Big Bang about 13.8 billion years ago that initiated the universe.

That first generation of stars, in the thermonuclear fusion caldrons at their cores, forged about 20 heavier elements such as carbon, nitrogen and oxygen that were blasted into space when they exploded at the end of their life cycles. The subsequent generation of stars that formed from the remnants of the prior generation then similarly forged almost 100 more elements.

On Earth, living organisms acquired greater complexity including the pivotal moment when multicellular life originated.

“Imagine a system of atoms or molecules that can exist in countless trillions of different arrangements or configurations,” Mr. Hazen said. “Only a small fraction of all possible configurations will ‘work’ — that is, they will have some useful degree of function. So, nature just prefers those functional configurations.”

Mr. Hazen added that “function” might mean that a collection of atoms makes a stable mineral crystal that can persist, or that a star maintains its dynamic structure, or that “a life form learns a new ‘trick’ that allows it to compete better than its neighbors,” Mr. Hazen added.

The authors proposed three universal concepts of selection: the basic ability to endure; the enduring nature of active processes that may enable evolution; and the emergence of novel characteristics as an adaptation to an environment.

Some biological examples of this “novelty generation” include organisms developing the ability to swim, walk, fly and think. Our species emerged after the human evolutionary lineage diverged from the chimpanzee lineage and acquired an array of traits including upright walking and increased brain size.

“I think this paper is important because it describes a view of the cosmos rooted in function,” said Carnegie Institution astrobiologist and planetary scientist Michael Wong, the paper’s lead author.

“The significance of formulating such a law is that it provides a new perspective on why the diverse systems that make up the cosmos evolve the way they do, and may allow predictions about how unfamiliar systems — like the organic chemistry on Saturn’s moon Titan — develop over time,” added co-author Jonathan Lunine, chair of Cornell University’s astronomy department, referencing a world being scrutinized for possible extraterrestrial life. — Reuters