The US ports strike that shut down shipping on the east and Gulf coasts for three days came to an end on Thursday after dock workers struck a tentative deal with port operators.

The International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) announced that the union had reached an agreement with the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX) on wages, suspending their walkout until January. Work would resume immediately, the union said.

The strike – which involved 45,000 workers across 36 ports, from Texas to Maine – was the first to hit the east and Gulf coast ports of the US since 1977.

The tentative agreement is for a wage hike of around 62%, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters. Both sides said in a statement they would return to the bargaining table to negotiate all outstanding issues.

Concern had been mounting about the potential economic impact of the strike, and the threat of shortages. JP Morgan analysts estimated the walkout could cost the US economy as much as $5bn a day.

After it emerged that the strike had ended, Joe Biden told reporters: “By the grace of God and goodwill of neighbors, it’s going to hold.”

“Today’s tentative agreement on a record wage and an extension of the collective bargaining process represents critical progress towards a strong contract,” the US president said in a statement. “I want to thank the union workers, the carriers, and the port operators for acting patriotically to reopen our ports and ensure the availability of critical supplies for Hurricane Helene recovery and rebuilding.

“Collective bargaining works, and it is critical to building a stronger economy from the middle out and the bottom up.”

Kamala Harris also praised the agreement, echoing Biden’s sentiment about the power of collective bargaining.

“As I have said, this is about fairness – and our economy works best when workers share in record profits. Dockworkers deserve a fair share for their hard work getting essential goods out to communities across America,” Harris said in a statement.

Negotiations between ILA and USMX had broken down in June after the union accused USMX of violating the contract by introducing automation at some ports.

Both sides had accused the other of refusing to bargain, with the ILA demanding significant wage increases in line with the profits the industry has made in recent years.

Among the outstanding issues left in the contract that will be negotiated before the current contract extension until 15 January is the union seeking improved protections for automation in ports. The union opposes the introduction of automation that would result in any job losses.

The launch of a strike so soon to the election prompted scrutiny of key figures’ political views. ILA president Harold Daggett faced questions about his relationship with Donald Trump, while the Guardian uncovered social media posts by David Adam, chair and CEO of USMX, that were staunchly critical of Democrats.

An executive representing ports where tens of thousands of workers went on strike this week made a series of critical and crude remarks about Joe Biden, tied Kamala Harris to concerns about over-taxation, and appeared to endorse a rightwing conspiracy theory.

David Adam, chairman and chief executive of the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX), attacked prominent Democrats in a string of social media posts uncovered by the Guardian.

It comes after about 45,000 dockworkers at ports along the US east and Gulf coasts walked off the job – the first such strike since 1977 – as part of a dispute between the USMX and the International Longshoremen’s Association over pay and automation.

The sweeping strike, disrupting 36 ports from Maine to Texas, has already raised fears of supply shortages and price increases on the eve of November’s election.

A month ago, when a LinkedIn user suggested that “everything Biden has touched in the past is turning to shit!”, Adam replied: “The runny kind….”

It was part of a discussion about how Biden’s student-debt relief plan was being held up in the courts. In another comment on the thread, Adam wrote: “If ya can’t get an American Democrat to pay what they borrrowed [sic], how you gonna get a California illegal immigrant to pay back their $150K loan the CA Dems are offering?”

Three months ago, another user appeared to endorse a popular conspiracy theory surrounding the emergence of a totalitarian world government while commenting on a video of Biden discussing immigration. “Did I miss the vote America took in agreement of One World Order? Treasonous actions have consequences!” they wrote.

“I think Kerry and Gates voted two thumbs up on that a few years ago …” Adam replied.

John Kerry was the Democratic presidential candidate in 2004, and served as secretary of state under Barack Obama and Biden’s climate envoy. Bill Gates co-founded Microsoft. Both men have been tied to debunked conspiracy theories surrounding secret global regimes.

USMX did not respond to multiple requests for comment on Adam’s posts.

Just a few weeks ago, Adam commented on a meme that claimed the US has a 48% fuel tax, which was debunked in 2022 by Politifact, when the same post was shared in Canada with the same claim.

He seemed to suggest responsibility lay with the Biden administration and Harris, however, writing: “Someone ask Kamala to explain why this is such and is she gonna fix it?!”

Earlier this year, when another user suggested Biden had smiled while walking away from a question, Adam commented: “Actually I thought he looked like he just sharted himself.”

When the strike began on Tuesday, Biden urged the port operators – represented by USMX – to give workers a “meaningful increase” in pay. Trump, meanwhile, blamed the strike on high inflation under Biden and Harris.

The timing of the strike, just weeks before the election, also raised questions about the ILA’s relationship with Trump. A photograph of the union’s president, Harold Daggett, meeting Trump in November resurfaced on social media this week.

After an assassination attempt on Trump in July, the ILA released a statement describing the 2023 meeting as “wonderful” and “productive”, and hailing Daggett’s “long relationship” with the former president.

The union has not made an endorsement ahead of next month’s presidential election. It backed Biden in 2020, declaring him to be “a true friend of the ILA and working men and women across America”.

An executive representing ports where tens of thousands of workers went on strike this week made a series of critical and crude remarks about Joe Biden, tied Kamala Harris to concerns about over-taxation, and appeared to endorse a rightwing conspiracy theory.

David Adam, chairman and chief executive of the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX), attacked prominent Democrats in a string of social media posts uncovered by the Guardian.

It comes after about 45,000 dockworkers at ports along the US east and Gulf coasts walked off the job – the first such strike since 1977 – as part of a dispute between the USMX and the International Longshoremen’s Association over pay and automation.

The sweeping strike, disrupting 36 ports from Maine to Texas, has already raised fears of supply shortages and price increases on the eve of November’s election.

A month ago, when a LinkedIn user suggested that “everything Biden has touched in the past is turning to shit!”, Adam replied: “The runny kind….”

It was part of a discussion about how Biden’s student-debt relief plan was being held up in the courts. In another comment on the thread, Adam wrote: “If ya can’t get an American Democrat to pay what they borrrowed [sic], how you gonna get a California illegal immigrant to pay back their $150K loan the CA Dems are offering?”

Three months ago, another user appeared to endorse a popular conspiracy theory surrounding the emergence of a totalitarian world government while commenting on a video of Biden discussing immigration. “Did I miss the vote America took in agreement of One World Order? Treasonous actions have consequences!” they wrote.

“I think Kerry and Gates voted two thumbs up on that a few years ago …” Adam replied.

John Kerry was the Democratic presidential candidate in 2004, and served as secretary of state under Barack Obama and Biden’s climate envoy. Bill Gates co-founded Microsoft. Both men have been tied to debunked conspiracy theories surrounding secret global regimes.

USMX did not respond to multiple requests for comment on Adam’s posts.

Just a few weeks ago, Adam commented on a meme that claimed the US has a 48% fuel tax, which was debunked in 2022 by Politifact, when the same post was shared in Canada with the same claim.

He seemed to suggest responsibility lay with the Biden administration and Harris, however, writing: “Someone ask Kamala to explain why this is such and is she gonna fix it?!”

Earlier this year, when another user suggested Biden had smiled while walking away from a question, Adam commented: “Actually I thought he looked like he just sharted himself.”

When the strike began on Tuesday, Biden urged the port operators – represented by USMX – to give workers a “meaningful increase” in pay. Trump, meanwhile, blamed the strike on high inflation under Biden and Harris.

The timing of the strike, just weeks before the election, also raised questions about the ILA’s relationship with Trump. A photograph of the union’s president, Harold Daggett, meeting Trump in November resurfaced on social media this week.

After an assassination attempt on Trump in July, the ILA released a statement describing the 2023 meeting as “wonderful” and “productive”, and hailing Daggett’s “long relationship” with the former president.

The union has not made an endorsement ahead of next month’s presidential election. It backed Biden in 2020, declaring him to be “a true friend of the ILA and working men and women across America”.

A 21-year-old woman kidnapped by Islamic State militants in Iraq more than a decade ago has been freed from Gaza in an operation led by the US.

The operation this week also involved Israel, Jordan and Iraq, according to officials.

The woman is a member of the Yazidi religious minority, which saw more than 5,000 members killed and thousands more kidnapped in a 2014 campaign that the UN has said constituted genocide.

Silwan Sinjaree, the chief of staff of Iraq’s foreign minister, said she was freed after more than four months of efforts including several attempts that failed because of the difficult security situation resulting from Israel’s military offensive in Gaza.

She has been identified as Fawzia Sido. Reuters could not reach the woman directly for comment.

Iraqi officials had been in contact with the woman for months and passed on her information to US officials, who arranged for her exit from Gaza with the help of Israel, according to a source familiar with the matter.

Officials did not provide details of how exactly she was freed, and Jordanian and US embassy officials in Baghdad did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The director of the digital diplomacy bureau at Israel’s foreign ministry, David Saranga, posted on X: “Fawzia, a Yazidi girl kidnapped by Isis from Iraq and brought to Gaza at just 11 years old, has finally been rescued by the Israeli security forces.”

The Israeli military said it had coordinated with the US embassy in Jerusalem and “other international actors” in the operation.

It said in a statement her captor had been killed during the Gaza war, presumably by an Israeli strike, and she then fled to a hideout in the Gaza Strip.

A US state department spokesperson said the US on Tuesday had “helped to safely evacuate from Gaza a young Yazidi woman to be reunited with her family in Iraq”.

The spokesperson said the woman was kidnapped from her home in Iraq when she was 11, then sold and trafficked to Gaza. Her captor was recently killed, enabling her to escape and seek repatriation, the spokesperson said.

Sinjaree said she was in good physical condition but was traumatised. She had been reunited with family in northern Iraq, he added.

More than 6,000 Yazidis were captured by IS militants in Iraq’s Sinjar region in 2014, with many sold into sexual slavery or trained as child soldiers and taken across borders, including to Turkey and Syria.

Over the years, more than 3,500 have been rescued or freed, according to Iraqi authorities, with about 2,600 still missing.

Liz Cheney, one of Donald Trump’s most prominent conservative critics, appealed to the millions of undecided Americans who could decide the outcome of the 2024 election, asking them to “reject the depraved cruelty” of the former president.

A former representative from Wyoming, Cheney cast the stakes in November as nothing less than the future of American democracy as she appeared alongside Kamala Harris in Ripon, Wisconsin, on Thursday, the symbolic birthplace of the modern Republican party.

The daughter of Dick Cheney, the Republican former vice-president, said she had never voted for a Democrat before, but would do so “proudly” to ensure Trump never holds a position of public trust again. Her father will join her in casting his ballot for Harris.

“I know that the most conservative of conservative values is fidelity to our constitution,” Cheney said, speaking from a podium adorned with the vice presidential seal. The crowd broke into a chant: “Thank you, Liz!” A large sign looming over them declared: “Country over Party.”

Harris praised Cheney’s “courage” for being willing to cross party lines to endorse – and campaign alongside – the Democratic nominee. During the event, a remarkable joint appearance that would have been unimaginable in the pre-Trump era, Cheney pitched Harris as a unifying leader who will safeguard American institutions.

Cheney and Harris agree on little politically – only that Trump should not be allowed to serve a second term. But their union is part of an effort by the Harris campaign to win over Republican voters who, like Cheney, believe in “limited government” and “low taxes” but are repelled by Trump and his Maga movement.

“No matter your political party, there is a place for you with us and in this campaign,” Harris said. “I take seriously my pledge to be a president for all Americans.”

Harris touts a growing collection of endorsements from prominent Republican leaders and ex-Trump administration officials, including Cassidy Hutchinson, a former Trump White House who testified against him in the January 6 House hearings, as well as Anthony Scaramucci, former White House communications director, and Stephanie Grisham, a former press secretary.

Adam Kinzinger, a former Illinois representative and the only other Republican to serve on the January 6 committee, also is backing Harris, and forcefully denounced Trump in a speech at the Democratic national convention in August.

In a reprisal of her role as the vice-chair of the House select committee investigating the 2021 attack on the US Capitol, Cheney on Thursday methodically recounted for the crowd how Trump had refused for hours to intervene on January 6, instead watching the violence unfold on television.

“After the Capitol had been invaded, he praised the rioters. He did not condemn them. That’s who Donald Trump is,” she said. Cheney rebuked Republicans who have sought to “minimize what happened” that day.

“Do not let anyone lie about what happened and what they did,” she said, adding: “Violence does not and must never determine who rules us. Voters do.”

Cheney was effectively exiled from her own party after she broke forcefully with the former president. But on Thursday, she said it was Trump, thrice chosen as the Republican nominee, who was failing to uphold the founding ideals of the “party of Lincoln”. With a dash of arch humor, she added: “I was a Republican even before Donald Trump started spray-tanning.”

Harris’s appearance with Cheney came one day after a judge unsealed new evidence in a federal case against Trump for his attempt to cling to power in 2020. In the court filing, federal prosecutors allege that he amplified false claims of voter fraud and “resorted to crimes” in his failed bid to overturn the results of an election he lost.

At a rally in Michigan earlier on Thursday, Trump repeated the false claim that he won the 2020 presidential election.

“We won. We won,” Trump said in Saginaw, a swing county in the midwestern battleground. “We have to be too big to rig.”

Harris will travel to Michigan on Thursday night, and campaign in Detroit on Friday, as the candidates battle for votes in the trio of “blue wall” swing states seen as the clearest path to the White House.

Leaving the White House on Thursday, Joe Biden said he was hardly surprised by the razor-thin margins.

“It always gets this close,” he told reporters. “She’s going to do fine.”

He also praised her running mate, Tim Walz, the Minnesota governor, for his performance against JD Vance, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, during Tuesday night’s debate in New York. Near the end of the 90-minute exchange, Walz turned to the subject of the 2020 election: had Trump lost? he asked Vance.

Vance replied that he was “focused on the future”.

“That is a damning non-answer,” Walz replied, adding that Vance’s loyalty to Trump above all else was the reason he and not the former vice-president, Mike Pence, was there on stage that night. The response was clipped and immediately re-packaged by the Harris campaign into a television ad.

On January 6, as protesters chanted: “Hang Mike Pence,” the then vice-president resisted pressure from Trump to reject the votes of the electoral college and returned to the Capitol after it was breached to certify Biden’s victory.

On Thursday, Cheney claimed Vance, in Pence’s shoes, would have “thrown out the votes of the people of Wisconsin” because they had voted to elect Biden as president in 2020. “That is tyranny, and that is disqualifying,” she said.

Cheney effectively ended her own political career by voting to impeach Trump over his role in stoking a mob of supporters that attacked the Capitol on 6 January 2021. She was one of just two Republicans willing to serve on the House select committee investigation into the attack that sought to hold Trump – and his Republican enablers – accountable for the sprawling effort to overturn his defeat.

She lost a 2022 Republican primary, but has remained a vocal critic of the former president. Before Biden stepped aside, Cheney said she was mulling a third-party bid.

But on Thursday, she made clear there was no other alternative to Trump. Cheney quoted from a letter that John Adams, the nation’s second president, wrote to his wife on the first night he spent in the White House: “May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof.”

“Now I am confident,” she said, her smile widening, “that John Adams meant women, too.”

When news broke on Wednesday evening that Melania Trump supports abortion rights – and apparently has for her entire adult life – it was greeted with surprise and confusion.

Melania’s husband, Donald Trump, is trying to rapidly recalibrate his approach to abortion as he races towards election day. Is his wife trying to help him? Hurt him? Or neither?

In her forthcoming memoir, Melania Trump went into extensive detail about her support for the procedure.

“Why should anyone other than the woman herself have the power to determine what she does with her own body?” she wrote. “A woman’s fundamental right of individual liberty, to her own life, grants her the authority to terminate her pregnancy if she wishes.”

Shortly after the Guardian broke the news, Trump uploaded a black-and-white video of herself to social media, set to stirring music.

“Without a doubt, there is no room for compromise when it comes to this essential right that all women possess from birth,” she said. “Individual freedom. What does my body, my choice really mean?”

The news of Melania Trump’s support for abortion rights comes at a time when her husband is striving to convince voters that he can be trusted to protect abortion rights.

In the years since the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022, abortion has become Republicans’ achilles heel. It cost Republicans victories in the 2022 midterms, while abortion rights supporters have won a string of ballot measures even in states as red as Kentucky, Kansas and Ohio.

Earlier on in his campaign, Trump attempted to be all-things-abortion to everybody, alternately bragging about his role in overturning Roe – by appointing three of the justices who voted for its demise – and grousing that hardline positions on abortion were costing the GOP elections. But since Kamala Harris, an extraordinarily effective messenger on abortion, became the Democratic nominee for president, he has abandoned that approach in favor of garbled support for abortion rights.

“WOMEN WILL BE HAPPY, HEALTH, CONFIDENT AND FREE!” Trump recently posted on Truth Social. “YOU WILL NO LONGER BE THINKING ABOUT ABORTION, BECAUSE IT IS NOW WHERE IT ALWAYS HAD TO BE, WITH THE STATES.”

Melania Trump’s revelation, then, could be intended to reassure undecided voters who are disinclined to vote for Harris but support abortion rights – as a majority of Americans do. But Tresa Undem, a pollster who has surveyed people on abortion for more than two decades, said the odds of such comments appealing to moderates or abortion-supporting conservatives were “fairly slim”.

After all, regardless of her personal convictions, it seems unlikely that Melania Trump has any real sway over her tempestuous husband’s policies. Her pro-abortion rights beliefs did not stop Donald Trump from helping to demolish Roe. It also doesn’t help that Melania and Donald Trump’s relationship is, at least in public, far from cozy. (He recently indicated, despite having written the foreword, that he hasn’t read the book.)

“Nothing Republicans say will distract the American people from the reality they see with their own eyes: story after story of victims of rape and incest being forced into pregnancy, doctors forced to turn away patients during miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies and women literally dying because of Trump’s abortion bans,” Emilia Rowland, Democratic national committee press secretary, said in a text.

Melania Trump’s disagreement with her husband is also not as novel as it may seem. Betty Ford, the wife of the Republican president Gerald Ford, was an adamant supporter of abortion rights, said Mary Ziegler, a University of California Davis school of law professor who studies the legal history of reproduction. It didn’t end up making much of a difference in Gerald Ford’s campaign.

“I think people understand that Melania and Donald Trump are very different people,” Ziegler said. “I could see independent and swing voters saying: ‘Wow. It’s bad that even Donald Trump’s wife doesn’t like Donald Trump’s position.’”

What Melania Trump’s news seems to have done is anger the anti-abortion activists who have made up some of Trump’s most reliable supporters. These activists were already annoyed by Trump’s recent attempts to paint himself as an abortion rights champion.

“Melania Trump’s support of abortion is anti-feminist and clearly outside the teaching of our Catholic faith. She is wrong,” Kristan Hawkins, president of the pro-life organization Students for Life of America, posted on X. “What a lost opportunity to inspire a generation of young women.”

Melania Trump’s strategy, such as it is, may be much more straightforward than activists and politicos may think. She has never seemed particularly interested in being first lady, and she doesn’t appear to be invested in winning the job back, seeing as she has largely disappeared from the 2024 campaign trail.

But Trump does seem interested in doing at least one thing: selling books. Suggesting that there is controversy within her memoir’s pages probably helps move copies.

Or not. In her post, Hawkins added: “I won’t be buying Melania’s book.”

Bruce Springsteen has officially thrown his support behind Kamala Harris, endorsing her for president and simultaneously opposing Donald Trump, calling him “the most dangerous candidate for president in my lifetime”.

The Born to Run singer made the announcement in a video posted to his Instagram on Thursday evening (US time) in which he described the upcoming election as “one of the most consequential elections in our nation’s history”.

“Perhaps not since the Civil War has this great country felt as politically, spiritually and emotionally divided as it does at this moment. It doesn’t have to be this way.”

Springsteen, who was a vocal supporter of Barack Obama and Joe Biden in their respective presidential campaigns, is the latest high-profile endorsement for Harris, joining Taylor Swift, Oprah Winfrey and Barbra Streisand.

In the video, he praised Harris and Walz’s commitment to “a vision of this country that respects and includes everyone, regardless of class, religion, race, your political point of view or sexual identity, and they want to grow our economy in a way that benefits all, not just a few like me on top”.

“That’s the vision of America I’ve been consistently writing about for 55 years.”

Trump, by contrast, “doesn’t understand the meaning of this country, its history or what it means to be deeply American”, the singer said.

“His disdain for the sanctity of our constitution, the sanctity of democracy, the sanctity of the rule of law and the sanctity of the peaceful transfer of power should disqualify him from the office of president ever again.”

Concluding, Springsteen said: “Now, everybody sees things different, and I respect your choice as a fellow citizen. But like you, I’ve only got one vote, and it’s one of the most precious possessions that I have. That’s why come November 5 I’ll be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. Thanks for listening.”

The massive asteroid that brought about the end of the reign of the dinosaurs when it crashed into Earth 66m years ago was not a one-off, researchers say.

Detailed scans of an underwater crater off the coast of Guinea in West Africa suggest that it was created when another large asteroid smashed into the planet around the same time at the end of the Cretaceous period.

The violent impact between 65m and 67m years ago produced a crater more than five miles across, the scans reveal, with scientists estimating that the asteroid measured a quarter of a mile wide and struck Earth at nearly 45,000mph.

Though smaller than the asteroid that sparked the mass extinction, it was still large enough to leave scars on the face of the planet. “The new images paint a picture of the catastrophic event,” said Dr Uisdean Nicholson, a marine geologist at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, who first discovered the Nadir crater in 2022. At the time, the details of the impact were unclear.

To understand more about the impact, the scientists used 3D seismic imaging to map the crater rim and geological scars that lie 300 metres beneath the ocean floor. “There are around 20 confirmed marine craters worldwide, and none of them has been captured in anything close to this level of detail,” said Nicholson. “It’s exquisite.”

The collision appeared to have set off intense tremors that liquefied sediments beneath the ocean floor causing faults to form below the seabed, the researchers found. The impact triggered landslides with traces of damage visible for thousands of square miles beyond the crater rim, and unleashed a vast tsunami more than 800metres high that would have travelled across the Atlantic. Details are published in Nature Communications Earth & Environment.

The researchers cannot pinpoint when the asteroid struck Earth, but the discovery of the crater and its approximate age have prompted speculation that it may have belonged to a cluster of impacts at the end of the Cretaceous period. The asteroid linked to the extinction of the dinosaurs was far larger than the rock that produced the Nadir crater. It left a crater 100 miles wide in what is now Chicxulub on the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico.

“The closest humans have come to seeing something like this is the 1908 Tunguska event, when a 50-metre asteroid entered Earth’s atmosphere and exploded in the skies above Siberia,” Nicholson said. “The new 3D seismic data across the whole Nadir crater is an unprecedented opportunity to test impact crater hypotheses, develop new models of crater formation in the marine environment and understand the consequences of such an event.”

The massive asteroid that brought about the end of the reign of the dinosaurs when it crashed into Earth 66m years ago was not a one-off, researchers say.

Detailed scans of an underwater crater off the coast of Guinea in West Africa suggest that it was created when another large asteroid smashed into the planet around the same time at the end of the Cretaceous period.

The violent impact between 65m and 67m years ago produced a crater more than five miles across, the scans reveal, with scientists estimating that the asteroid measured a quarter of a mile wide and struck Earth at nearly 45,000mph.

Though smaller than the asteroid that sparked the mass extinction, it was still large enough to leave scars on the face of the planet. “The new images paint a picture of the catastrophic event,” said Dr Uisdean Nicholson, a marine geologist at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, who first discovered the Nadir crater in 2022. At the time, the details of the impact were unclear.

To understand more about the impact, the scientists used 3D seismic imaging to map the crater rim and geological scars that lie 300 metres beneath the ocean floor. “There are around 20 confirmed marine craters worldwide, and none of them has been captured in anything close to this level of detail,” said Nicholson. “It’s exquisite.”

The collision appeared to have set off intense tremors that liquefied sediments beneath the ocean floor causing faults to form below the seabed, the researchers found. The impact triggered landslides with traces of damage visible for thousands of square miles beyond the crater rim, and unleashed a vast tsunami more than 800metres high that would have travelled across the Atlantic. Details are published in Nature Communications Earth & Environment.

The researchers cannot pinpoint when the asteroid struck Earth, but the discovery of the crater and its approximate age have prompted speculation that it may have belonged to a cluster of impacts at the end of the Cretaceous period. The asteroid linked to the extinction of the dinosaurs was far larger than the rock that produced the Nadir crater. It left a crater 100 miles wide in what is now Chicxulub on the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico.

“The closest humans have come to seeing something like this is the 1908 Tunguska event, when a 50-metre asteroid entered Earth’s atmosphere and exploded in the skies above Siberia,” Nicholson said. “The new 3D seismic data across the whole Nadir crater is an unprecedented opportunity to test impact crater hypotheses, develop new models of crater formation in the marine environment and understand the consequences of such an event.”

A hair and makeup artist has accused the country singer Garth Brooks of sexual assault and battery in a civil lawsuit filed in Los Angeles, claims the musician has strongly denied.

The anonymous accuser, referred to in the complaint as “Jane Roe”, alleges that Brooks raped her during a work trip to Los Angeles in 2019, and that he repeatedly groped her and made sexually explicit comments while she was doing his hair or makeup throughout 2019.

In a statement, Brooks called the allegations “lies” and said he was “incapable” of the behavior he was accused of committing.

“I trust the system, I do not fear the truth, and I am not the man they have painted me to be,” he said.

Roe, the accuser in the case, is represented in the case by Douglas Wigdor, an attorney known as a “leading #MeToo lawyer” who previously represented women who accused Harvey Weinstein, Bill O’Reilly and Joe Biden of sexual misconduct.

Wigdor and the plantiff’s other lawyers allege that Brooks took advantage of the makeup artist while she was experiencing financial hardship, first offering her more frequent paid work, and then engaging in a pattern of sexual harassment and sexual assault, which they describe in the lawsuit in graphic detail.

“The complaint filed today demonstrates that sexual predators exist not only in corporate America, Hollywood and in the rap and rock and roll industries but also in the world of country music,” Wigdor and two other attorneys for the plantiff, Jeanne Christensen and Hayley Baker, said in a statement to the Guardian.

In his statement on Thursday and in a separate lawsuit he filed in Mississippi in September, Brooks said the allegations of sexual assault and sexual harassment were false and designed to extort money from him.

“For the last two months, I have been hassled to no end with threats, lies, and tragic tales of what my future would be if I did not write a check for many millions of dollars. It has been like having a loaded gun waved in my face,” Brooks said in a statement.

“Hush money, no matter how much or how little, is still hush money. In my mind, that means I am admitting to behavior I am incapable of – ugly acts no human should ever do to another.”

According to her California complaint, the woman accusing Brooks of sexual assault is a stylist who has worked in the music industry for more than 30 years, including doing hair and makeup for celebrities appearing in Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair and other publications. She was first hired in 1999 to do hair and makeup for Trisha Yearwood, another country music star and Brooks’s wife, and began to do the same for Brooks in 2017.

In the complaint, the woman alleges that Brooks forcefully raped her in a Los Angeles hotel room in May 2019, when she accompanied him from Nashville to California for a tribute performance honoring R&B legend Sam Moore. Afterwards, she did his makeup so he could get to the event on time, the complaint alleges.

After that assault, she had to visit her OB-GYN because of her injuries, and the assault also left her with severe back and neck pain and emotional trauma, according to the complaint.

Over the following months, the woman alleges, Brooks continued to sexually harass her and assault her, including subjecting her to sexually explicit comments, and repeatedly groping her breasts, including while she was styling him for public appearances.

Brooks did this with such frequency “that it was inevitable that other employees of Brooks’s likely saw or heard instances of the unwanted physical groping of her breasts while she was styling his hair and doing his make-up”, the complaint alleges.

In 2020, during a styling session, Brooks “surreptitiously took her phone and deleted most of the text messages that he had sent to her containing explicit sexual content”, the complaint alleges.

Attorneys for “Jane Roe” said that Brooks filed a federal lawsuit against her in Mississippi last month, in an attempt to block her from publicizing her allegations against him.

CNN previously reported on a “highly unusual legal battle” in Mississippi, in which an anonymous celebrity plaintiff asked a federal court “to declare a sexual assault accuser’s allegations untrue and stop her from further publicizing them”. The plaintiff in that case alleged that the accuser was “attempting to extort and defame him with ‘false allegations’ that would ‘irreparably harm’ his reputation and career”, CNN reported.

In his Mississippi complaint from September, which a representative for Brooks shared, Brooks said that “Jane Roe” had worked with him professionally as an independent contractor for “approximately fifteen years”.

His complaint alleged that when she moved to Mississippi in early 2020, she encountered financial difficulties and asked him for help, and that he “complied out of loyalty, friendship, and a desire to improve Defendant’s condition”.

Over time, her “demands for financial assistance only increased”, Brooks’ complaint alleges, “with Defendant ultimately asking Plaintiff for salaried employment and medical benefits”. When Brooks declined to provide these, the woman “responded with false and outrageous allegations of sexual misconduct”.

In his September complaint, Brooks claims that he first learned of “Jane Roe’s” allegations of sexual assault and misconduct in a 17 July letter from her, and said that none of the allegations had any basis in fact.

His complaint alleges that her July letter was accompanied by a “draft civil complaint”, and that Roe “threatened” to “publicly file” the complaint unless he “agreed to pay [her] millions of dollars not to file the suit”.

According to his complaint, her accusations against him in the 17 July letter initially included “a belief that Plaintiff planned to hire someone to murder her”.

“I want to play music tonight. I want to continue our good deeds going forward. It breaks my heart these wonderful things are in question now,” Brooks said in the statement on Thursday, after the allegations were made public.

In her complaint, the woman’s lawyers describe Brooks’s anonymous Mississippi lawsuit as an attempt to bully his accuser, and say he claimed she was threatening to file a complaint against him in California “only because Brooks refused to give her a raise and pay for health insurance”.

• Nato’s chief Mark Rutte has told Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy that his goal as head of the military alliance is to ensure that “Ukraine prevails”. In a major show of support for Kyiv, Rutte went to the Ukrainian capital for his maiden trip as secretary general of the alliance. Rutte said he chose Kyiv as his first trip “to make crystal clear to you, to the people of Ukraine and to everyone watching, that Nato stands with Ukraine”.

• In a joint media appearance with Rutte, Zelenskyy blasted western delays over supplying long-range weapons. “We need sufficient quantity and quality of weapons, including long-range weapons, that, in my opinion, our partners are already dragging out,” Zelenskyy said. The Ukrainian leader also called on Nato members to take a more active role in helping his country to fend off Russian aerial attacks. “We will continue to convince our partners of the need to shoot down Russian missiles and drones,” Zelenskyy said, adding “what works in the skies of the Middle East and helps Israel defend itself can also work in the skies of our part of Europe.”

• Asked to respond on Zelenskyy’s comments, deputy Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh said, “we have a limited supply of long-range missiles” and “we’re not dragging it out”.

• Ukraine has opened its first recruitment office in Poland aiming to enlist citizens for its fight against Russia’s invasion. The move comes as Kyiv is scrambling to bolster its ranks to stave off Moscow’s invasion. Ukraine announced its plans to recruit a “Ukrainian Legion” in July, hoping to convince thousands of men who have fled the country to avoid the war to enlist. The government estimates that about 300,000 people of combat age are living in Poland.

• Thousands of people in Berlin demonstrated against Germany’s military support for Ukraine during a rally organised by a radical leftwing collective. Participants gathered in the German capital and brandished placards reading “Negotiations! No weapons!”, “No to war” and “Pacifism is not naive”. Some also held anti-American signs. One of their main demands was for Germany to stop sending weapons to Ukraine. Far-left populist leader Sahra Wagenknecht, who attended the Berlin protest, has long called for an end to weapon deliveries to Kyiv and opposes a plan to deploy US long-range missiles in Germany. Germany has been the second-largest contributor of military aid to Ukraine after the United States, but plans to halve its budget for that aid next year.

• Ukraine has said a Russian drone attack killed three people, including a young child, in its northern Chernigiv border region. Russian drones hit a gas truck that was making deliveries to households in a border village, Ukraine’s national police force said on Telegram. “The truck exploded and residential buildings caught fire.” Three people were killed in the blast, including a child born in 2018, the police said. Four others were hospitalised, including two children, aged four and 13.

• Russia’s defence ministry confirmed reports that its forces had taken control of the eastern Ukrainian town of Vuhledar, crediting what it called decisive action taken by units in its “East” military grouping. The town, which Russia calls Ugledar, had resisted Russian assaults for more than two years.

• Croatia will host a Balkans leaders summit on Ukraine next week that will also be attended by Zelenskyy, Croatia’s prime minister said on Thursday. The aim of the meeting, to be held in the southern Adriatic resort of Dubrovnik, is that the “whole region supports Ukraine and the Ukrainian people in the fight for freedom”, Andrej Plenkovic said during a regular government session. The meeting will take place on Wednesday, a government statement said.

The UK has agreed to hand over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, ending years of bitter dispute over Britain’s last African colony.

The agreement will allow a right of return for Chagossians, who the UK expelled from their homes in the 1960s and 1970s, in what has been described as a crime against humanity and one of the most shameful episodes of postwar colonialism.

However, there will be an exception for the key island of Diego Garcia, which is home to a joint UK-US military base, and which will remain under UK control. Plans for the base were the reason the UK severed the Chagos Islands from the rest of Mauritius when it granted the latter independence in 1968 and forcibly displaced up to 2,000 people.

There was a mixed reaction to the announcement from Chagossians, not all of whom are happy that sovereignty has been handed to Mauritius.

But Olivier Bancoult, chair of the Chagos Refugee Group, who was four years old when his family was deported to Mauritius, welcomed it, describing it as “a big day”.

“This has been a long struggle lasting more than 40 years and many of our people have passed away,” said Bancoult, who had mounted a series of legal challenges over the sovereignty of the islands in the UK courts since 2000. “But today is a sign of recognition of the injustice done against Chagossians who were forced to leave their homes.”

He said it was not yet clear how many Chagossians would like to return to the islands, many of which are uninhabitable. While acknowledging that those born on the largest island – Diego Garcia – would not be able to return, he expressed hope that Chagossians could be prioritised for jobs there.

Bancoult, who was part of a historic 2022 trip to the islands, which included the Mauritian ambassador to the UN, Jagdish Koonjul, raising his country’s flag above the atoll of Peros Banhos in a ceremony, added: “If Mauritius will not fulfil its responsibilities to us of course we will raise our voices.”

The first of 13 rounds of negotiations began in 2022, representing an abrupt change of approach after years of the UK defying court rulings – including a 2019 advisory opinion from the UN’s highest court – and UN general assembly vote, which all said it should return the islands to Mauritius. The agreement is subject to a treaty that the parties will seek to conclude as soon as possible.

An attempt to halt the negotiations, on the basis that the Chagossians were not consulted or involved, failed.

Chagossian Voices, a community organisation for Chagossians based in the UK and in several other countries, said of Thursday’s announcement: “Chagossian Voices deplore the exclusion of the Chagossian community from the negotiations which have produced this statement of intent concerning the sovereignty of our homeland. Chagossians have learned this outcome from the media and remain powerless and voiceless in determining our own future and the future of our homeland.

“The views of Chagossians, the Indigenous inhabitants of the islands, have been consistently and deliberately ignored and we demand full inclusion in the drafting of the treaty.”

A joint statement from the UK and Mauritius governments said the agreement would “address wrongs of the past and demonstrate the commitment of both parties to support the welfare of Chagossians”.

The UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, said the UK government had secured the future of the military base, while the US president, Joe Biden, welcomed the agreement as a “clear demonstration that … countries can overcome longstanding historical challenges to reach peaceful and mutually beneficial outcomes”.

Despite Biden’s endorsement, and the fact that negotiations were begun under the Conservative government, all four Conservative leadership candidates – including James Cleverly, who as foreign secretary, announced the discussions – condemned the deal as being harmful to the UK’s interests.

The security of the Diego Garcia military base was further complicated by the fact that more than 60 Tamil refugees, hoping to reach Canada after setting sail in a boat from southern India, have been stranded on the island for three years. A ruling about whether or not they have been unlawfully detained there is expected imminently.

Human Rights Watch (HRW), which said in a report last year that the UK should pay full and unconditional reparations to generations affected by the forcible displacement of islanders, lamented the deal.

Clive Baldwin, senior legal adviser at HRW, said: “The agreement says it will address the wrongs against the Chagossians of the past but it looks like it will continue the crimes long into the future.

“It does not guarantee that the Chagossians will return to their homeland, appears to explicitly ban them from the largest island, Diego Garcia, for another century, and does not mention the reparations they are all owed to rebuild their future. The forthcoming treaty needs to address their rights, and there should be meaningful consultations with the Chagossians, otherwise the UK, US and now Mauritius will be responsible for a still-ongoing colonial crime.”

The UK has agreed to hand over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, ending years of bitter dispute over Britain’s last African colony.

The agreement will allow a right of return for Chagossians, who the UK expelled from their homes in the 1960s and 1970s, in what has been described as a crime against humanity and one of the most shameful episodes of postwar colonialism.

However, there will be an exception for the key island of Diego Garcia, which is home to a joint UK-US military base, and which will remain under UK control. Plans for the base were the reason the UK severed the Chagos Islands from the rest of Mauritius when it granted the latter independence in 1968 and forcibly displaced up to 2,000 people.

There was a mixed reaction to the announcement from Chagossians, not all of whom are happy that sovereignty has been handed to Mauritius.

But Olivier Bancoult, chair of the Chagos Refugee Group, who was four years old when his family was deported to Mauritius, welcomed it, describing it as “a big day”.

“This has been a long struggle lasting more than 40 years and many of our people have passed away,” said Bancoult, who had mounted a series of legal challenges over the sovereignty of the islands in the UK courts since 2000. “But today is a sign of recognition of the injustice done against Chagossians who were forced to leave their homes.”

He said it was not yet clear how many Chagossians would like to return to the islands, many of which are uninhabitable. While acknowledging that those born on the largest island – Diego Garcia – would not be able to return, he expressed hope that Chagossians could be prioritised for jobs there.

Bancoult, who was part of a historic 2022 trip to the islands, which included the Mauritian ambassador to the UN, Jagdish Koonjul, raising his country’s flag above the atoll of Peros Banhos in a ceremony, added: “If Mauritius will not fulfil its responsibilities to us of course we will raise our voices.”

The first of 13 rounds of negotiations began in 2022, representing an abrupt change of approach after years of the UK defying court rulings – including a 2019 advisory opinion from the UN’s highest court – and UN general assembly vote, which all said it should return the islands to Mauritius. The agreement is subject to a treaty that the parties will seek to conclude as soon as possible.

An attempt to halt the negotiations, on the basis that the Chagossians were not consulted or involved, failed.

Chagossian Voices, a community organisation for Chagossians based in the UK and in several other countries, said of Thursday’s announcement: “Chagossian Voices deplore the exclusion of the Chagossian community from the negotiations which have produced this statement of intent concerning the sovereignty of our homeland. Chagossians have learned this outcome from the media and remain powerless and voiceless in determining our own future and the future of our homeland.

“The views of Chagossians, the Indigenous inhabitants of the islands, have been consistently and deliberately ignored and we demand full inclusion in the drafting of the treaty.”

A joint statement from the UK and Mauritius governments said the agreement would “address wrongs of the past and demonstrate the commitment of both parties to support the welfare of Chagossians”.

The UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, said the UK government had secured the future of the military base, while the US president, Joe Biden, welcomed the agreement as a “clear demonstration that … countries can overcome longstanding historical challenges to reach peaceful and mutually beneficial outcomes”.

Despite Biden’s endorsement, and the fact that negotiations were begun under the Conservative government, all four Conservative leadership candidates – including James Cleverly, who as foreign secretary, announced the discussions – condemned the deal as being harmful to the UK’s interests.

The security of the Diego Garcia military base was further complicated by the fact that more than 60 Tamil refugees, hoping to reach Canada after setting sail in a boat from southern India, have been stranded on the island for three years. A ruling about whether or not they have been unlawfully detained there is expected imminently.

Human Rights Watch (HRW), which said in a report last year that the UK should pay full and unconditional reparations to generations affected by the forcible displacement of islanders, lamented the deal.

Clive Baldwin, senior legal adviser at HRW, said: “The agreement says it will address the wrongs against the Chagossians of the past but it looks like it will continue the crimes long into the future.

“It does not guarantee that the Chagossians will return to their homeland, appears to explicitly ban them from the largest island, Diego Garcia, for another century, and does not mention the reparations they are all owed to rebuild their future. The forthcoming treaty needs to address their rights, and there should be meaningful consultations with the Chagossians, otherwise the UK, US and now Mauritius will be responsible for a still-ongoing colonial crime.”

Melania Trump doubled down in her first public response to news of her passionate support for abortion rights, a position starkly at odds with that of her husband, Donald Trump, and the Republican party he leads.

“Individual freedom is a fundamental principle that I safeguard,” the former first lady said in a video released on Thursday. “Without a doubt, there is no room for compromise when it comes to this essential right that all women possess from birth. Individual freedom. What does, ‘My body, my choice’ really mean?”

Set to classical music and posted to social media, Trump’s words were a paraphrase of those in her forthcoming memoir, Melania, which the Guardian revealed on Wednesday.

On the page, Trump says: “It is imperative to guarantee that women have autonomy in deciding their preference of having children, based on their own convictions, free from any intervention or pressure from the government.

“Why should anyone other than the woman herself have the power to determine what she does with her own body? A woman’s fundamental right of individual liberty, to her own life, grants her the authority to terminate her pregnancy if she wishes.

“Restricting a woman’s right to choose whether to terminate an unwanted pregnancy is the same as denying her control over her own body. I have carried this belief with me throughout my entire adult life.”

News of that stance created a stir, a little over a month from election day in a campaign shaped by attacks on abortion rights by Donald Trump, the Republican party and their donors and supporters.

In June 2022, in the supreme court case Dobbs v Jackson, three hardline justices appointed by Trump voted to remove the federal right to abortion, marking a successful end to a 50-year crusade by religious conservatives. Draconian state bans followed – as did reports of women dying after being denied abortion care.

Trump has claimed credit but also tried to lessen electoral damage, given clear majority support for abortion rights that has fueled a succession of Democratic electoral wins since the Dobbs decision.

A spokesperson for the Republican nominee did not respond to a request for comment. Trump himself spoke to Fox News, while staging a rally in Saginaw, Michigan.

“We spoke about it,” he said, when asked about his wife expressing support for abortion rights in opposition to his record and platform.

“And I said: ‘You have to write what you believe.’ I’m not going to tell her what she should do. You have to write what you believe. She’s very beloved. People love our former first lady, I can tell you that. But I said: ‘You have to stick with your heart.’ I’ve said that to everybody, you have to go with your heart.”

Sarafina Chitika, a spokesperson for Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, said: “Sadly for women across America, Mrs Trump’s husband firmly disagrees with her and is the reason that more than one in three American women live under a Trump abortion ban that threatens their health, their freedom and their lives.

“Donald Trump has made it abundantly clear: if he wins in November, he will ban abortion nationwide, punish women and restrict women’s access to reproductive healthcare.”

Elon Musk has given tens of millions of dollars to rightwing groups in recent years, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, revealing his backing for Republican groups began earlier than was previously known.

Musk endorsed Trump earlier this year and has been a prolific booster of misinformation in support of the president’s re-election bid on X, the website he owns. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this year that Musk had said he planned to donate $45m each month to a Super Pac backing Trump (Musk has denied the report).

But the Wall Street Journal’s reporting on Thursday revealed that Musk has already been spending tens of millions of dollars to back conservative causes. In 2022, he spent more than $50m to fund anti-immigrant and anti-transgender advertisements by a group called Citizens for Sanity. The group’s officers are employees of America First Legal, a non-profit led by Stephen Miller, a close former Trump aide.

Musk also has donated millions to another rightwing group, Building America’s Future, Reuters reported on Thursday. The outlet reported the timeline and exact amount he has given were not clear.

The group has focused on reducing Kamala Harris’s support among Black voters, according to NBC News. The group has also launched advertising criticizing Joe Biden and Harris for their support at the border.

A Super Pac started by Musk, America Pac, has spent at least $71m on the presidential election, according to Bloomberg. The Trump campaign has largely outsourced its get-out-the-vote operation to the Pac.

In 2023, Musk also gave $10m to support the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, in his bid for president, the Wall Street Journal reported. Musk publicly said in 2022 he would support DeSantis for president.

“My preference for the 2024 presidency is someone sensible and centrist. I had hoped that would the case for the Biden administration, but have been disappointed so far,” he said at the time.

Musk’s donations to the groups were kept quiet, Reuters and the Wall Street Journal reported. He funneled money through social welfare groups that are not required to disclose their donors. People involved in his donations to Citizens for Sanity would use Signal, an encrypted messaging app, to discuss the transactions, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The Los Angeles district attorney’s office will review new evidence in the case of the Menéndez brothers, who were convicted of killing their parents in their Beverly Hills mansion more than 35 years ago.

George Gascón, the Los Angeles county district attorney, said during a news conference on Thursday that attorneys for Erik Menéndez, 53, and his 56-year-old brother, Lyle Menéndez, have asked a court to vacate their convictions.

Gascón said his office will review new evidence and decide whether the case should be considered for resentencing. A hearing was scheduled for 29 November.

The new evidence presented in a petition includes a letter written by Erik Menéndez that his attorneys say corroborates the allegations that he was sexually abused by his father. Gascón said his office had not yet made any decisions and did not know the “validity” of what was presented at the trial.

“We will evaluate all of it,” he said.

Lyle, who was then 21, and Erik, then 18, were given life sentences for fatally shooting their parents, José and Kitty Menéndez, in 1989. The brothers admitted they fatally shot their father, entertainment executive, and their mother, but said they feared their parents were about to kill them to prevent the disclosure of the father’s longterm sexual molestation of Erik.

Prosecutors argued the sons had been after their parents’ multimillion-dollar estate, and said there was no evidence of molestation.

Jurors rejected a death sentence in favor of life without parole.

The case has received renewed attention in recent years, particularly on TikTok, where supporters have argued the brothers did not receive a fair trial and have advocated for their release. In 2023, a member of the boy band Menudo said that José Menéndez had sexually abused him – allegations that were included in the petition from the brothers.

The killings were the subject of a Ryan Murphy show released last month, which was criticized by the Menéndez family as a “grotesque shockadrama”.