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The bodies of a couple who were on a sailing trip across the Atlantic Ocean have been found on a life raft that washed up on a remote Canadian island almost six weeks after they were last seen.

Briton Sarah Packwood, 54, and her Canadian husband, Brett Clibbery, 70, are thought to have abandoned their yacht and died before washing up on Sable Island – known as the “graveyard of the Atlantic” – east of Nova Scotia in Canada on 12 July.

One theory investigators are exploring is that the yacht was struck by a passing cargo ship that did not notice the collision, according to Canadian news website Saltwire.

Brett proposed to me in the main cabin of the boat.” The couple then married on Theros in 2016 and Packwood moved to Canada in 2018, purchasing land with Clibbery on Salt Spring Island.

In a video posted to their YouTube channel, Theros Adventures, on 12 April the pair named the trip the Green Odyssey, and explained how it would rely on sails, solar panels, batteries and an electric engine repurposed from a car.

In what would be their final post, the pair wrote on Facebook: “Captain Brett and First Mate Sarah set sail on the 2nd leg of The Green Odyssey on board Theros – GibSea 42 foot sailboat.

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The date for the introduction of the EU’s new entry-exit system has been pushed back again until November, allaying fears of long queues at the border during the October half-term holidays.

The launch of the new biometric checks for foreign travellers, including Britons, entering the EU, has been delayed from 6 October until at least 10 November, with many smaller airports yet to have facilities in place.

The move will again raise questions over the readiness of a system that has been long delayed from the planned 2021 start, with the French insisting the additional border controls should not be introduced before the Paris Olympics.

Under the entry-exit system (EES), non-EU citizens will have to register their biometric information – including fingerprints and facial scans – at the border, under the supervision of an EU officer, on their first visit.

There have been warnings of long queues at British points of entry – including the Port of Dover, and Eurostar’s St Pancras terminal – where the French and EU border is physically located in England, before passengers board ferries or trains.

The cross-Channel train operator said the process would add only a few seconds to border queues and not cause chaos, although passengers would have to ensure they arrived in time for the additional layer of biometric checks.

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Scientists have for the first time discovered a cave on the Moon.At least 100m deep, it could be an ideal place for humans to build a permanent base, they say.It is just one in probably hundreds of caves hidden in an “underground, undiscovered world”, according to the researchers.Countries are racing to establish a permanent human presence on the Moon, but they will need to protect astronauts from radiation, extreme temperatures, and space weather.Helen Sharman, the first British astronaut to travel to space, told BBC News that the newly-discovered cave looked like a good place for a base, and suggested humans could potentially be living in lunar pits in 20-30 years.But, she said, this cave is so deep that astronauts might need to abseil in and use “jet packs or a lift” to get out.Lorenzo Bruzzone and Leonardo Carrer at the University of Trento in Italy found the cave by using radar to penetrate the opening of a pit on a rocky plain called the Mare Tranquillitatis.It is visible to the naked eye from Earth, and is also where Apollo 11 landed in 1969.The cave has a skylight on the Moon’s surface, leading down to vertical and overhanging walls, and a sloping floor that might extend further underground.It was made millions or billions of years ago when lava flowed on the Moon, creating a tunnel through the rock.The closest equivalent on Earth would be the volcanic caves in Lanzarote, Spain, Prof Carrer explains, adding that the researchers visited those caves as part of their work.

When you make these discoveries and you look at these images, you realise you’re the first person in the history of humanity to see it,” Prof Carrer said.Once Prof Bruzzone and Prof Carrer understood how big the cave was, they realised it could be a good spot for a lunar base.

“After all, life on Earth began in caves, so it makes sense that humans could live inside them on the Moon,” says Prof Carrer.The cave has yet to be fully explored, but the researchers hope that ground-penetrating radar, cameras or even robots could be used to map it.Scientists first realised there were probably caves on the Moon around 50 years ago.

Then in 2010 a camera on a mission called the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter took pictures of pits that scientists thought could be cave entrances.But researchers did not know how deep the caves might be, or if they would have collapsed.Prof Bruzzone and Prof Carrer’s work has now answered that question, although there is much more to be done to understand the full scale of the cave.“We have very good images of the surface - up to 25cm of resolution - we can see the Apollo landing sites - but we know nothing about what lies below the surface.

There are huge opportunities for discovery,” Francesco Sauro, Coordinator of the Topical Team Planetary Caves of the European Space Agency, told BBC News.The research may also help us explore caves on Mars in the future, he says.

That could open the door to finding evidence of life on Mars, because if it did exist, it would almost certainly have been inside caves protected from the elements on the planet’s surface.The Moon cave might be useful to humans, but the scientists also stress that it could help answer fundamental questions about the history of the Moon, and even our solar system.The rocks inside the cave will not be as damaged or eroded by space weather, so they can provide an extensive geological record going back billions of years.The research is published in the scientific journal Nature Astronomy.Graphic by Gerry Fletcher

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CNN spoke with more than a dozen members of Congress, operatives and multiple people in touch with both Obama and Pelosi, many of whom say that the end for Biden’s candidacy feels clear and at this point it’s just a matter of how it plays out, even after Thursday night’s news conference.

When the history of this extraordinary two-week period of American politics is written, the fingerprints of Obama and Pelosi will be far more apparent than currently known, people familiar with the matter tell CNN, as the Democratic elders have served as a guidepost for a party in panic.

In conversations with some Democrats over the past two weeks, Obama has swatted away the notion that he could push Biden one direction or the other even if he wanted to, which underscores their long-running complicated, yet loyal, relationship.

Biden has written that he felt Obama was not encouraging of his jumping in late to the Democratic primaries in the months after his son Beau died in 2015.

Though Obama believes that he was trying to help his then-vice president focus on his grief and not wade into what would have been an incredibly hard primary campaign against Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, that may not be how another conversation would go.

The infamous video of Obama leading Biden off stage, people familiar say, was more a function of the former president wanting to leave.

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At a BBQ for Biden-Harris event, a small crowd of Democratic voters gathered recently for a quiet lunch in the parking lot of a Detroit church, where a swift Michigan wind carried away their polite applause.

At one table, a member of the United Auto Workers, the state’s powerful automotive union, told me that voting for President Biden was a duty he planned to perform.

In the days since the debate, Ms. Crockett — a criminal defense and civil rights attorney — has built a case for Mr. Biden that, though not inspiring, feels more honest than anything the president or his closest aides have come up with.

I ran out of paper,” the polished governor said of Mr. Trump with ease, delivering in seconds the kind of obvious, straightforward political punch Mr. Biden was unable to land over the course of a 90-minute debate.

Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, who supported a successful ballot initiative to enact abortion protections and who enjoys a roughly 61 percent approval rating in a politically fractious swing state, where a local militia plotted to kidnap her.

“When Democrats are in charge, women make their own damn decisions about their bodies!” Ms. Whitmer shouted at a Pride parade in Detroit recently, eliciting loud cheers.

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NEW YORK (AP) — He’s calling in to his favorite morning cable news show, bashing the “elites” of his party and dismissing unfavorable polls.

Trump has weathered a seemingly never-ending list of controversies, from the Access Hollywood tape that threatened to derail his candidacy weeks before the 2016 election, to his two impeachments, four indictments and conviction on 34 felony charges for falsifying business records.

Many congressional Democrats, worried about his prospects and their own in November, have declined to give him a full vote of confidence, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in an interview Wednesday.

She argues that Biden, in trying to hold onto the nomination, is “employing Trump-like tactics” with combative responses, cable news call-ins, pressure on lawmakers and an ‘I alone can fix it’ attitude.

This week began with Biden calling in to “Morning Joe,” a favorite cable news show, where he railed against his naysayers and insisted he will be his party’s nominee.

He dared those who doubt him to challenge him at the convention and dismissed those who have called for him to step aside as out of touch with rank-and-file voters, despite recent polling that shows widespread concerns about his age.

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They subscribe to social conservatism in a way that appeals to the growing numbers of gen Z males who believe feminism is harmful to men, and cast issues such as transgender rights, the climate crisis and racial justice as neoliberal distractions.

“One of the reasons for that is the decline in basic masculine virtues, the rise of a kind of effeminization, especially of men.” Hinkle has regularly made anti-trans comments on his own social media, making declarations such as: “We need to protect our youth from trans terrorists and propagandists.”

In a video debunking Maga communism published last year, the Marxist economist Richard Wolff noted that there’s precedent for nationalist movements co-opting communist rhetoric, particularly during times of social upheaval and economic hardship.

According to an infographic regularly recirculated by Hinkle, proposed Maga communist policies include “dismantling big tech”, banning “antifa street terrorism”, ending “woke academia” and subsidizing gyms in every community.

That’s included sharing gruesome images of dead children among rubble in Gaza, posting AI self-portraits in combat gear with the caption “FREE PALESTINE” and hawking coffee mugs with the words “Zionist Tears”, sold at $16.99 a pop.

The event drew together a curious amalgam of far-right and far-left personalities – including Matthew Heimbach, one of the organizers of white supremacist “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, and the former Green party presidential candidate Jill Stein.

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It’s a brazen effort to transform religious congregations — which are technically supposed to keep electoral politics out of the pulpit — into a campaign powerhouse for the former president.

He spent much of the recent holiday weekend attempting to trash the legacy of a storied Christian reverend, Martin Luther King, Jr.)

The law is rarely enforced, and has been skirted by churches of all political orientations — whether by pastors who make their personal endorsements public or by congregations organizing turnout-boosting efforts like “souls to the polls.”

But Trump has made clear he won’t punish churches that violate the Johnson amendment in 2024, even vowing on a Christian nationalist broadcast last May that he’ll abolish the prohibition if reelected.

During his podcast, Wallnau insisted that the Courage Tour will also be working with right-wing women’s groups including Moms for America — which touts “truth, family, freedom and the Constitution” — and Concerned Women for America, a group dedicated to “Biblical values and Constitutional principles.” Wallnau insisted: “We’re creating a broad net.”

The movement poses a danger to democracy because it “sees no room for compromise,” Andrew Whitehead, author of Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States has told Rolling Stone.

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In a Thursday note, the bank’s top stock strategist Marko Kolanovic said 80% of consumers, a group that accounts for nearly two-thirds of consumption, has already depleted any savings cushion they may have built during lockdowns.

“It is likely that only the top 1% of consumers by income will be better off than before the pandemic,” Kolanovic wrote, pointing to the growing signs of credit card and auto loan delinquencies, as well as Chapter 11 filings.

The chart below shows how, by June 2024, every income group except the top 1% is on pace to dip below their March 2020 levels of inflation-adjusted liquid assets, in the form of deposits and money market funds.

“Consumers are facing tighter credit conditions and rising rates, wind-down of Covid-era stimulus and relief programs, declining excess savings and liquidity, and multiple years of above average inflation,” JPMorgan strategists wrote at the time.

Older millennials — a demographic of Americans born in the 1980s that holds significant influence on the US economy — have had to navigate the 2008 financial crisis in addition to the pandemic during critical working years of their lives.

The two economic storms, as well as mounting childcare costs and sticky inflation, have made it difficult for the sizable cohort to own a house, save for retirement, and comfortably spend money within their means.

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Science fiction author Charlie Stross found many more examples of confabulation in a recent blog post.

It seems Gemini Pro is loath to comment on potentially controversial news topics, instead telling users to… Google it themselves.

Interestingly, Gemini Pro did provide a summary of updates on the war in Ukraine when I asked it for one.

Google emphasized Gemini’s enhanced coding skills in a briefing earlier this week.

And, as with all generative AI models, Gemini Pro isn’t immune to “jailbreaks” — i.e. prompts that get around the safety filters in place to attempt to prevent it from discussing controversial topics.

Using an automated method to algorithmically change the context of prompts until Gemini Pro’s guardrails failed, AI security researchers at Robust Intelligence, a startup selling model-auditing tools, managed to get Gemini Pro to suggest ways to steal from a charity and assassinate a high-profile individual (albeit with “nanobots” — admittedly not the most realistic weapon of choice).

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Tags — basically hashtags with a twist — are now rolling out globally on Threads, Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced on Thursday.

Tags work a little differently than hashtags do on platforms like Instagram and X (formerly Twitter).

When composing a Threads post, you start a tag by tapping the # symbol and then typing out your topic.

“If you share on Threads, [tags are] a great way to help connect with people who are interested in the topics you’re talking about,” Mosseri says.

I like Meta’s implementation here, even the single-tag limit, as it seems like a smart way to prevent annoying hashtag spam.

That said, we’ll have to wait and see if users actually adopt the tags so that they can become a useful way to find conversations about a topic.

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After Sam Altman was fired from OpenAI late last month, the startup’s employees threatened to leave and accept a blanket offer from Microsoft to hire them all.

After the sudden ouster of their CEO, hundreds of OpenAI employees signed an open letter demanding Altman’s reinstatement and the resignation of the board.

At the time, their main source of leverage was a plan to all quit and join Altman and President Greg Brockman at a new AI group within Microsoft.

The letter itself was drafted by a group of longtime staffers who have the most clout and money at stake with years of industry standing and equity built up, as well as higher pay.

While OpenAI staffers would have followed through with their threat and joined Microsoft, they probably would have left at the first opportunity for other AI startups such as Anthropic, Hugging Face, and Cohere, the employee added.

Another former OpenAI employee agreed, saying people working at the San Francisco-based startup “look down on what they consider legacy companies” and “see themselves as innovators who are radically changing the world.”

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The White House’s plan to boost electric vehicle adoption came under heavy fire in Congress on Wednesday.

Five Democratic Representatives joined the Republican majority to pass a bill that would prohibit the US Environmental Protection Agency from enacting stricter new corporate average fuel efficiency regulations that would require automakers to sell many more EVs by the year 2032.

But burning fewer hydrocarbons has become anathema to the modern Republican Party, and former President Donald Trump’s administration focused some of its attention on undermining the EPA’s ability to regulate tailpipe emissions or cut gasoline dependence.

A pair of Texas Democrats (Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzales), as well as Jared Golden (D-Maine), Donald Davis (D-N.C.), and Mary Peltola (D-Alaska) all voted with the Republican Party.

It says the EPA cannot “finalize, implement, or enforce” new vehicle pollution regulations that are meant to go into effect in 2027.

The White House strongly condemned the legislation, which it says would “catastrophically impair” the EPA’s ability to regulate vehicle pollution, and President Joe Biden has threatened to veto the bill should it pass the Senate and be sent to his desk.

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Zieschang previously said her ministry had sent a decree to all Saxony-Anhalt municipalities informing them of the policy in late November.

The decree instructs authorities to pay close attention to whether an applicant exhibits antisemitic attitudes and states that “obtaining German citizenship requires a commitment to Israel’s right to exist.”

In a letter to local authorities, the Saxony-Anhalt state Interior Ministry said naturalization is to be denied to foreigners who engage in activities directed at Germany’s liberal democratic order as outlined in the country’s Basic Law.

Local authorities have been instructed to deny an applicant’s naturalization request if they refuse to sign the declaration.

Germany, which claims a special historical responsibility to protect Jews after the horrors of the Holocaust — in which Germany’s then Nazi government organized the industrial-scale murder of over 6 million European Jews during the Second World War — has called Israel’s security its own “Staatsräson,” or “reason of state,” as then Chancellor Angela Merkel proclaimed in an address to the Israeli parliament in 2008.

There has been considerable discussion in Germany regarding the issue of antisemitic attitudes among migrants who harbor resentment against Israel, with pro-Palestinian demonstrations across the country becoming flashpoints for antisemitic behavior in the wake of the October 7 Hamas terror attacks in southern Israel.

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Tags — basically hashtags with a twist — are now rolling out globally on Threads, Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced on Thursday.

Tags work a little differently than hashtags do on platforms like Instagram and X (formerly Twitter).

When composing a Threads post, you start a tag by tapping the # symbol and then typing out your topic.

“If you share on Threads, [tags are] a great way to help connect with people who are interested in the topics you’re talking about,” Mosseri says.

I like Meta’s implementation here, even the single-tag limit, as it seems like a smart way to prevent annoying hashtag spam.

That said, we’ll have to wait and see if users actually adopt the tags so that they can become a useful way to find conversations about a topic.

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The EU executive has decided to buy time pushing back to 2026 a decision on whether to introduce an EU-wide ban on the keeping and killing of animals for fur.

The announcement came on Thursday (7 December) in response to a European Citizens Initiative (ECI) which gathered 1.5 million signatures calling to prohibit livestock farming for the sole or main purpose of fur production, as well as selling farmed animal fur and products containing it within the EU.

Citizen initiatives allow petitions that reach the one million signatures threshold to be discussed by the European Commission, which can decide to put forward a legislative proposal on the matter.

According to a senior EU official, the Commission will in the meantime “not just talk on the phone with member states” but take some practical steps, which will include on-site visits to fur farms.

“It is deeply frustrating and worrying that the Commission is side-stepping its responsibility for decisive action to end the outdated and unnecessary fur trade,” said Joanna Swabe, senior director at Human Society International/Europe adding that leading virologists warn that fur farms present a very real pandemic disease risk.

However, for the animal welfare campaign group Four Paws, the Commission has now made it clear that it is open to an EU-wide ban on fur farming, and it is “confident that an independent scientific opinion from [EU food safety body] EFSA will conclude that the current housing systems in fur farms are incompatible with animal welfare.”

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Dec 7 (Reuters) - Kyiv has agreed with two American firms to jointly manufacture vital 155mm artillery shells in Ukraine, a Ukrainian minister said on Thursday, although production will not start for at least two years.

“We have agreements with two leading American companies to jointly produce, in Ukraine, 155-calibre ammunition,” Oleksandr Kamyshin, minister for strategic industries, said in televised comments.

The announcement follows a two-day Ukraine-U.S. defence conference held in Washington, which included bilateral meetings to discuss Ukraine’s battlefield plans for 2024 and measures to make it happen.

Kyiv and Washington signed a letter of intent at the forum to speed up weapons co-production and technical data exchange to meet the urgent needs of the Ukrainian army in air defence systems, maintenance, and production of critical ammunition.

Ukraine’s defence sector, which for decades was dogged by underinvestment, red tape and corruption, is trying to compete with Russia’s far more advanced military industry and high budget support.

On Wednesday, Republicans in the U.S. Senate blocked an emergency bill that would provide about $60 billion in military and economic support for Ukraine, threatening hopes that the badly needed funds can be approved by the end of the year.

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Denmark’s parliament has banned the “inappropriate treatment” of religious texts - with a bill widely known in the country as the Quran law.

Denmark and neighbouring Sweden have recently seen a number of street protests over such incidents, raising security concerns in Scandinavia.

During Thursday’s heated debates in Denmark’s 179-strong parliament, the Folketing, many opposition MPs argued against the bill.

“History will judge us harshly for this, and with good reason… What it all comes down to is whether a restriction on freedom of speech is determined by us, or whether it is dictated from the outside,” Inger Stojberg, leader of the Denmark Democrats, was quoted as saying by Reuters news agency.

But the country’s centre-right coalition government of Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen argued that criticising religion would remain legal, as the bill would only have a marginal impact.

Back in August, when the government was proposing the changes, ministers said they wanted to send a signal to the world after witnessing over a few weeks 170 demonstrations, including Quran burnings in front of foreign embassies.

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The practice of coercing people in pre-deportation detention centres to sign contracts for army service in Ukraine is not new, but the numbers swelled as foreign migrants arrived at Russia’s 1,340-km (833-mile) border with Finland.

Finland temporarily closed all eight of its Russian border crossings, accusing Moscow of channelling migrants and asylum seekers there as part of a destabilisation campaign after the government in Helsinki joined Nato earlier this year.

Analysis of court hearings in Karelia, one of three Russian regions bordering Finland, showed that in the past three weeks, 236 people were arrested for staying in Russia without valid visas, destined for deportation.

Awad told the BBC that he hired a taxi on 14 November and, along with another Somali migrant, was driven for several hours from St Petersburg to Lakhdenpokhya, a town in Karelia 30km from the Finnish border.

Separately, an Iraqi man who was also arrested close to Finland’s border told human rights activists that he too was being pressured to sign an army contract as a way to void the deportation order.

Awad said officials at the camp threatened them with long prison sentences for breaching military laws, but later retreated, saying that the job offers would be cancelled and deportation procedures would resume.

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Fulton county prosecutors have signaled they want prison sentences in the Georgia criminal case against Donald Trump and his top allies for allegedly violating the racketeering statute as part of efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, according to exchanges in private emails.

The previously unreported emails, between Willis and defense lawyers, open a window on to the endgame envisioned by prosecutors on her team – which could inform legal strategies ahead of a potential trial next year, such as approaches toward plea deal negotiations.

Prosecutors are not presently expected to offer plea agreements to Trump, his former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and his former election lawyer Rudy Giuliani, but left open the possibility of talks with other co-defendants, the Guardian previously reported.

The emails also underscore the increasing breakdown in trust with a growing number of defense lawyers who have regarded prosecutors’ tactics – including Willis assuming she will win – as inappropriately aggressive and presumptuous given the case remains months from a potential verdict.

The district attorney raised the prospect of defendants in prison in a 29 November exchange, which started with Trump’s lawyer Steve Sadow complaining about an incomplete Giuliani transcript the defense received in discovery, according to two people with direct knowledge of the emails.

The Fulton county superior judge Scott McAfee, who is presiding in the case, ultimately agreed to impose a protective order governing the release of discovery materials marked as “sensitive”, though the threat to only have proffer videos available in the district attorney’s offices was dropped.

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