A backlash over data centres is another threat to the AI juggernaut. Businesses could be barred from non-essential water use amid supply threat | Water. Three water companies are seeking to impose severe restrictions on businesses as the drought continues across most of England, putting rivers and wildlife under huge pressure. Golf clubs and private schools could be barred from using mains water to irrigate playing fields and courses, and commercial car washes stopped from operating, under “non-essential use bans” being sought by the companies. Eleven areas of England are still in drought, rivers are suffering from low flows, groundwater levels are declining and reservoir levels are at 54% – 21% below what is expected in the autumn. Yorkshire was the latest area to move into drought status on 9 October.
Parts of Wales are experiencing the first signs of drought recovery after the whole country was declared in drought in July. Nineteen reservoirs or reservoir groups in England and Wales are less than 50% full, and eight are exceptionally low, up from five in August. Pressure on wildlife and the environment from the drought is continuing. 'A window into its soul': The rare elephant behaviour that reveals the depths of their emotions. Gromit finally gets a voice … and it’s Martin Freeman | Television & radio. He has been on screen for 37 years, but he has never uttered a word. Now, Gromit will speak for the first time – with the voice of the Hobbit star Martin Freeman.
The claymation dog, who has partnered with his eccentric inventor-owner Wallace in a series of Oscar-winning films including The Wrong Trousers, A Close Shave and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, is releasing an autobiography this month – including an audiobook edition. “When you create a character who has no voice and whose facial expressions are everything, what do you do when your publisher reminds you there’ll be an audiobook?” Said Nick Park, the animator and film-maker who created the series. “The more I thought about it, the more I realised Martin Freeman was the obvious choice, really. Freeman previously honed the role of put-upon sidekick in his Bafta- and Emmy-winning turn as Dr John Watson to Benedict Cumberbatch’s unpredictable detective in Sherlock.
Citroen revives the 2CV for an electric age. Life in Gaza after 12 months of ‘ceasefire’ It’s one year since the US-brokered ceasefire for Gaza formally came into effect. On October 9 2025, Hamas handed over the 20 remaining hostages and the bodies of four Israelis who had died while being held captive. In return, Israel released almost 2,000 Palestinians held in Israeli jails. At the time, the US president hailed it on his TruthSocial platform as “a moment of true historic proportion”. Yet 12 months on, the Israeli army continues to occupy Gaza, the Palestinian death toll continues to climb, and there is no sign of any lasting resolution.
By any possible metric, the situation in Gaza is catastrophic. There’s a plague of rats and other vermin biting children and spreading disease. Much of Gaza remains in ruins. The UN has estimated that clearing the rubble alone could take 20 years – while the cost of rebuilding Gaza is estimated at more than US$70 billion (£53 billion). Ceasefire in name only When the agreement was announced, Trump said it would end “3,000 years” of war. Affaire Cornell : aux États-Unis, les fraternités étudiantes pointées du doigt. La colère ne retombe pas, à Cornell comme sur d'autres campus américains, après la plainte d'une jeune femme contre cette université et sept hommes. Elle accuse ces sept membres d'une fraternité de viol lorsqu'elle était étudiante en 2024, et Cornell d'avoir minoré sa première plainte déposée après les faits, auprès de la police de l'université. L'affaire est perçue comme un symbole d'une culture masculiniste régnant dans les fraternités.
La justice a rouvert il y a un mois cette enquête sur des faits de viol en réunion, après que la victime a saisi la justice civile. Agée de 20 ans au moment des faits, elle affirme avoir été violée par sept étudiants, tous membres de la fraternité Chi Phi, alors qu'elle avait consommé de l'alcool et de la kétamine. A l'époque, sa première plainte n'avait pas été suivie de poursuitesOuverture dans un nouvel onglet. Depuis, des manifestations ont lieu tous les jours ou presque sur le campus, pour soutenir, celle que l'Amérique appelle "Jane Doe". AI fears are growing – and unsettling new film Artificial puts them, and the future of humanity, centre stage. Rhinos and elephants can cause huge problems if reintroduced badly – here’s how to get it right. Moving large animals around is a seductive idea in conservation. If there are plenty of animals in one place and too few in another, moving some between the two seems an obvious solution.
Sometimes it is. But with animals as large, mobile and socially complicated as elephants and rhinos, the move itself can turn out to be the straightforward part. This autumn, 12 rhinos are due to be moved from a well-established reserve in North West Province in South Africa to another protected area, in the Waterberg region, as part of efforts to establish and strengthen secure rhino populations. But there are lessons from past projects that we have to bear in mind. What happened after release was much messier. In 2025, lawyers representing people living around Kasungu in Malawi and neighbouring Zambia began preparing legal action against the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), one of the organisations involved in the translocation. Elephants bring additional biological complexity. England made organ donation the default, so why are fewer families saying yes? England changed its organ donation law in 2020. All eligible adults are now presumed willing to donate their organs after death unless they opt out.
The change was intended to increase the supply of donated organs, but 8,746 people in the UK are still waiting for a transplant, and just 1,650 transplants have taken place since April 2026. This year, NHS Blood and Transplant, which manages organ donation in England, issued an urgent appeal after donation fell by 9%. So why has opt-out not delivered? Opt-out is often held up as one of nudge theory’s big successes. To understand why the change has not had the expected effect, it helps to look at how the law works. It is also a “soft” opt-out, which means your family has the final say. The figures show what happens in practice. That last group is important because families often rely on what they know about the person’s wishes.
Across all cases, family consent has fallen from 69% in 2020–21 to 59% in 2024–25. Why do families say no? TfL to tackle hate crime through VR bystander experiences. Next UK banknotes to feature barn owls, bumblebees, puffins and hedgehogs | Bank of England. Bees, barn owls, puffins and hedgehogs have been picked to feature on the next generation of banknotes, the Bank of England has announced.
The quartet of creatures were selected after a large-scale consultation settled on wild animals as the theme, with members of the public then asked to pick their favourites out of 18 options divided into three categories. The buff-tailed bumblebee got the most votes in the insects, fish and amphibian group; the barn owl won the bird division; and the European hedgehog was named top mammal. The Atlantic puffin was added to celebrate Britain’s coastline, the Bank said. It is as yet undecided which species will adorn which banknote. An image of King Charles will continue to be represented on the other side of the £5, £10, £20 and £50 notes, which are expected to take several years to design. With their numbers declining, the bird is classified as “vulnerable” on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s red list of threatened species. Wildlife populations have declined 73% since 1970 – but many of the world’s animals still aren’t being counted. Wildlife populations around the world have declined by an average of 73% since 1970.
That’s according to the WWF’s new 2026 Living Planet Index – a major estimate, updated every two years, of the changing state of nature. This does not mean that 73% of the world’s animals have disappeared. Rather, it is the average decline in the size of wildlife populations that is being monitored. The index is one of the metrics used to track progress towards the UN’s biodiversity goals and shapes narratives of biodiversity loss across the world. But the data behind that 73% headline, one of the most comprehensive available, is still far from complete. Very few, outside of those of us working at the coalface of handling biodiversity data, understand just how poorly wild animal populations are monitored.
What this means is that, relative to the data we do possess, there are far, far more wildlife populations that no one is counting. So why does the Living Planet Index show such a strong overall decline? Margaret Hamilton, trailblazer whose software powered Apollo 11 moon landing, dies at 90 | Space. Margaret Hamilton, the computer pioneer whose software powered the first moon landing, has died, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) announced on Wednesday.
She was 90. In an era before titles such as software engineer and computer scientist became mainstream, Hamilton, who died on 30 September, learned to program under the tutelage of a renowned MIT meteorologist. She continued to perfect the craft in an MIT laboratory, writing software that could detect enemy aircraft. When the institute received a Nasa contract to develop the Apollo onboard flight software, she jumped at the opportunity. “I was attracted both by the sheer idea and the fact that it had never been done before. In 1969, minutes before the Apollo 11 spacecraft was set to make history by landing on the lunar surface, an onboard computer’s alarm rang, indicating an emergency.
Faced with a decision of whether to abort the mission, the spacecraft continued on. Israel marks 3 years since Oct. 7, asking if PM ignored warnings. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lays a wreath during a state memorial ceremony in memory of those killed in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel, at Mount Herzl cemetery in Jerusalem on Oct. 5. Debbie Hill/Pool UPI via AP hide caption Debbie Hill/Pool UPI via AP TEL AVIV, Israel — As Israel marks three years since Hamas launched its surprise Oct. 7 attacks, Israelis are reeling from new revelations in Israeli and U.S. media that the country had been repeatedly warned by its regional allies that Hamas was planning to attack.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was personally warned about a potential Hamas attack, and his security agencies were notified repeatedly, in the weeks and days leading up to Oct. 7, 2023, four people in the Middle East with direct knowledge of the warnings told NPR. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz, The New York Times and The Atlantic first reported about the warnings. A message from Hamas' leader in Gaza A telephone call from the Emirati leader. World’s largest penguin colony suffers ‘enormous population crash’ | Birds.
The world’s largest penguin colony has declined by two-thirds since 2011, most likely because of the climate crisis, a study has revealed. Scientists said the rapid demise of chinstrap penguins on Zavodovski, the northernmost of the South Sandwich Islands in Antarctica, increased the risk of a wider ecosystem collapse. “It is an enormous population crash, equivalent to half a million breeding individuals being lost from that island,” said the leader of the research, Prof Norman Ratcliffe, a penguin ecologist at the British Antarctic Survey. The Guardian revealed in 2020 that chinstrap penguin populations were decreasing on Low in the South Shetland Islands, prompting concerns among scientists that “something is broken” in the world’s wildest ecosystem. The island of Zavodovski had by far the biggest penguin colony in the world, with about 600,000 chinstraps and 90,000 macaroni penguins when the population was measured in 2011.
Student protests erupt at Cornell over mishandling of gang-rape allegations | US universities. Mass protests erupted at Cornell University on Monday, with students criticizing officials’ handling of gang-rape allegations, demanding the president’s resignation and painting “SMASH THE PATRIARCHY” on an administration building. Thousands of students and faculty gathered for a demonstration, sparked by the high-profile case of a former student known as Jane Doe, who said in a recent lawsuit that she was plied with drugs and raped at a fraternity house in 2024.
The case has prompted international outrage and intense scrutiny of college fraternities and sexual violence on US campuses. Protesters shouted, “Ban the frats” and held signs saying, “At Cornell, rapists are safer than women” and “Stop rape culture.” Some demonstrators directed their anger at Michael Kotlikoff, Cornell’s president, arguing he had failed to keep students safe and chanting, “Kotlikoff, resign!” The messages in red paint read “SMASH THE PATRIARCHY” and “AT CORNELL RAPISTS ARE PROTECTED PROTESTORS ARE EXPELLED”. People are using AI chatbots to help decide who to vote for. This illustration shows people chatting with a robot, symbolizing the use of AI chatbots. Getty Images hide caption Getty Images Stay up to date with our Politics newsletter, sent weekly.
On a September evening, Adam Johnson, 40, settled on his porch chair in Morgantown, West Virginia, to go over his ballot for the upcoming midterm election. Chatting through all the races and the different candidates, he worked to figure out who best represented his values. A graphic designer studying to be an illustrator, Johnson said ChatGPT is a significant part of his life. After prompting the AI-powered chatbot to make a list of all the races on his ballot this year, Johnson dug deeper. JohnsonA previous time I brought up politics you didn't seem to want any part of it. ChatGPTWe can discuss your guiding principles. Johnson is one of a growing number of voters using chatbots to research their ballots for the first midterm election since AI has taken the country by storm.
Concerns about AI. One in three Ukrainian civilians estimated to meet the criteria for PTSD or complex PTSD – new study. Resilience is a word frequently used to describe the way Ukrainian society has responded to the war with Russia. It’s a term that can inspire sympathy and mobilise support. But it also risks overshadowing effects of war that require both domestic and international attention to enable Ukraine to withstand Russia’s invasion and manage long-term recovery. The protracted conflict that started with Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, continued with the war in Donbas and escalated into Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022 has recently reached a new level of intensity through concerted Russian attacks on civilian targets. As a result, the effects of war at the level of individuals, communities and society at large are becoming ever more apparent.
Trauma is an unavoidable effect of war. Measuring the psychological effects of trauma in countries following war and conflict can be difficult. Our findings reveal the extraordinary scale of trauma Ukrainian civilians have been exposed to. The dawn of the age of the exoskeleton. This year, members of Seattle Mountain Rescue have been setting off into the wilds of the US Pacific north-west wearing an unusual piece of kit. They’ve been hiking into the wilderness with powered assistive devices attached to their hips and legs. Designed to increase lower-body strength when climbing or carrying heavy loads, these pieces of equipment are being tested to see if they can boost rescuers’ speed and endurance when it matters most – during searches for stranded people. Devices like these are called human exoskeletons. They attach to parts of the body to create an external – or “exo” – mechanical structure.
In physically demanding fields, workers are increasingly using these devices during strenuous tasks. Technology that boosts people’s physical and mental abilities is no longer the preserve of science fiction. In Finland, a recent project called ExoPELA assessed whether exoskeletons could reduce muscle load and strain in rescue and firefighting work. How they work. Trump cancels public execution, but a line may already have been crossed. ***If the Nidal Hasan Execution Is Livestreamed, We Are a Barbaric Nation | The New Republic. Execution TV? Pete Hegseth has taken the once ‘greatest democracy’ to a horrific new low | Paul Daley. Trump approves firing squad execution of Fort Hood shooter. JD Vance casts doubt on firing squad execution and says he would not watch it.
Navi Pillay’s Nobel peace prize is a vote of confidence in a global legal order under fire. Navi Pillay wins Nobel Peace Prize 2026 | BBC News. Nobel Peace Prize awarded to South African human rights lawyer Navi Pillay. The NOBEL PEACE PRIZE > explainer. S. Adenot : « On n’est pas prêts pour aller sur Mars » (13/10/26) Crew-12 splashdown with S. Adenot (ESA LIVE broadcast, 08/10/26) Capsule chauffée à 1900°C : retour à haut risque pour Sophie Adenot. Beyond the airlock : Sophie Adenot's three spacewalks (video, ESA) ESA Astronaut Sophie Adenot Makes History as First Frenchwoman to Perform A Spacewalk - SpaceWatch.GLOBAL. Les expériences françaises de Sophie Adenot dans l'ISS (mission Epsilon) | CNES. What’s really happening with plague in Russia? What is Russia saying about death of woman linked to plague lab? US 'watching closely' after plague researcher dies in Russia.
The Bayeux tapestry and the hidden history of the women who embroidered it (02/07/26) The Bayeux Tapestry: A Masterpiece of Storytelling - with Alice Loxton. The Bayeux tapestry is really an embroidered comic strip. Why is Britain going crazy over a medieval embroidery? | The European Correspondent. Bayeux tapestry loan symbolises ‘entente amicale’ between France and UK, says King Charles | Bayeux tapestry. Watch King Charles' speech as he unveils Bayeux Tapestry at British Museum. The Bayeux Tapestry’s Long Journey Home. Bayeaux Tapestry at the British Museum (after nearly 1,000 year absence) (UK) 2/Sep/2026. How is the Bayeux Tapestry still here after 1000 years? The Bayeux Tapestry's risky journey across the Channel • FRANCE 24 English. Why loaning the Bayeux Tapestry to Britain has triggered a 1066-style battle among experts.
The Bayeux Tapestry in London: Here's what you need to know | BBC News. U.N. backs new world map showing Africa in true relative size. UN to vote on adopting new world map that shows Africa’s true scale | Africa. Le pouvoir des cartes pour représenter le monde - Portail IGN - IGN. Planisphère : la fabrique du centre du monde (France Culture) King Charles III enlists creature couriers to congratulate David Attenborough on his 100th birthday.
As David Attenborough turns 100, four experts explore his legacy, from science to storytelling. 100 years of David Attenborough (New Yorker, 08/05/26) David Attenborough at 100 (CNN, 08/05/26) Attenborough’s 10 most memorable wildlife encounters (BBC Earth) Attenborough’s 100 most spectacular TV moments (Guardian, 08/05/26)
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