Joe Biden has carried out the largest act of presidential clemency on a single day in modern US history, commuting the sentences of almost 1,500 people and pardoning 39 Americans convicted of non-violent crimes.

In a statement issued on Thursday, the White House said that Biden’s sweeping act of clemency was designed to “help reunite families, strengthen communities, and reintegrate individuals back into society”.

The almost 1,500 commutations ordered by the president all relate to people who were released from prisons and placed in home confinement during the Covid pandemic. Thousands of prisoners were released to their homes as an emergency measure under the Cares Act to prevent the rapid spread of coronavirus through federal prisons.

Each individual included in the new commutations had been serving their sentences at home for at least a year and had shown they were reunited with their families and were committed to rehabilitation, the White House said.

“These commutation recipients have successfully reintegrated into their families and communities and have shown that they deserve a second chance,” they continued.

The commutations come at a time when Republicans in Congress have been pressing to send thousands of federal prisoners on home release back behind bars. Criminal justice reformers have protested that the home release program has been highly successful, with a rate of new offending at a mere fraction of the overall recidivism rate in federal prisons.

Under the commutations, the almost 1,500 Americans will retain their convictions but have their sentences reduced. The 39 people pardoned by Biden have had their guilty verdicts wholly erased.

The White House said the 39 were all individuals convicted of non-violent crimes, including drug offenses. Among them were a woman who led emergency response teams during natural disasters; a church deacon who had worked as an addiction and youth counsellor; a doctoral student in molecular biosciences; and a decorated military veteran.

“As president, I have the great privilege of extending mercy to people who have demonstrated remorse and rehabilitation, restoring opportunity for Americans to participate in daily life and contribute to their communities, and taking steps to remove sentencing disparities for non-violent offenders, especially those convicted of drug offences,” Biden said.

The sweeping act of clemency brings the number of pardons and commutations ordered by Biden during his four-year presidential term to almost 1,700. That is in range of Barack Obama, who showed clemency – mainly in the form of commutations – to 1,927 people across his two terms.

Obama can claim credit for having carried out the second-largest single-day act of clemency, having commuted the sentences of 330 federal inmates convicted of drug crimes as one of his final acts in office in 2017.

In his first presidency, Donald Trump pardoned only 144 people and commuted the sentences of 94. But many of those acts were highly controversial, including pardons for members of his extended family such as Charles Kushner, father of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner who has now been tapped to become US ambassador to France, and close advisers like Steve Bannon.

The president-elect has also vowed to pardon many of those convicted of crimes relating to the violent storming of the US Capitol on 6 January 2021.

Biden’s record on clemency is not without its own controversies. Earlier this month he issued a full pardon to his son Hunter Biden relating to federal gun and tax convictions, despite having repeatedly pledged not to do so.

The move prompted sharp criticism, even from Democratic supporters. The decision has proven to be deeply unpopular with Americans, with only about 20% giving their approval in a recent Associated Press poll.

The White House said that before Biden steps down on 20 January he intends to wield his presidential clemency power again: “In the coming weeks, the President will take additional steps to provide meaningful second chances and continue to review additional pardons and commutations.”

It is not clear whether Biden will use his pardon power to protect people who may face possible prosecution by Trump as an act of revenge by the returning president. Biden is taking the idea of such preemptive pardons seriously, according to Associated Press, but is concerned that it might set a damaging precedent.

Adam Schiff, the newly seated US senator from California who led the congressional investigation into the January 6 insurrection, has pushed back against the idea, saying that preemptive pardons do not make sense.

“I think this is frankly so implausible as not to be worthy of much consideration. I would urge the president not to do that. I think it would seem defensive and unnecessary,” he has said.

The knowledge that Biden has yet to complete his round of clemencies leaves a sliver of hope alive for the 40 men who are currently on federal death row in Terre Haute, Indiana, who are fearful about Trump’s return. In the final weeks of his first presidential term, Trump presided over the executions of 13 federal prisoners – more than the previous 10 presidents combined – and he has indicated a desire to execute all remaining federal capital prisoners once he is back in the Oval Office.

This week Pope Francis and hundreds of capital punishment advocates including Catholic leaders and Black pastors added to the call on Biden to use his executive powers to commute federal death row sentences to spare the lives of the men.

Joe Biden has carried out the largest act of presidential clemency on a single day in modern US history, commuting the sentences of almost 1,500 people and pardoning 39 Americans convicted of non-violent crimes.

In a statement issued on Thursday, the White House said that Biden’s sweeping act of clemency was designed to “help reunite families, strengthen communities, and reintegrate individuals back into society”.

The almost 1,500 commutations ordered by the president all relate to people who were released from prisons and placed in home confinement during the Covid pandemic. Thousands of prisoners were released to their homes as an emergency measure under the Cares Act to prevent the rapid spread of coronavirus through federal prisons.

Each individual included in the new commutations had been serving their sentences at home for at least a year and had shown they were reunited with their families and were committed to rehabilitation, the White House said.

“These commutation recipients have successfully reintegrated into their families and communities and have shown that they deserve a second chance,” they continued.

The commutations come at a time when Republicans in Congress have been pressing to send thousands of federal prisoners on home release back behind bars. Criminal justice reformers have protested that the home release program has been highly successful, with a rate of new offending at a mere fraction of the overall recidivism rate in federal prisons.

Under the commutations, the almost 1,500 Americans will retain their convictions but have their sentences reduced. The 39 people pardoned by Biden have had their guilty verdicts wholly erased.

The White House said the 39 were all individuals convicted of non-violent crimes, including drug offenses. Among them were a woman who led emergency response teams during natural disasters; a church deacon who had worked as an addiction and youth counsellor; a doctoral student in molecular biosciences; and a decorated military veteran.

“As president, I have the great privilege of extending mercy to people who have demonstrated remorse and rehabilitation, restoring opportunity for Americans to participate in daily life and contribute to their communities, and taking steps to remove sentencing disparities for non-violent offenders, especially those convicted of drug offences,” Biden said.

The sweeping act of clemency brings the number of pardons and commutations ordered by Biden during his four-year presidential term to almost 1,700. That is in range of Barack Obama, who showed clemency – mainly in the form of commutations – to 1,927 people across his two terms.

Obama can claim credit for having carried out the second-largest single-day act of clemency, having commuted the sentences of 330 federal inmates convicted of drug crimes as one of his final acts in office in 2017.

In his first presidency, Donald Trump pardoned only 144 people and commuted the sentences of 94. But many of those acts were highly controversial, including pardons for members of his extended family such as Charles Kushner, father of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner who has now been tapped to become US ambassador to France, and close advisers like Steve Bannon.

The president-elect has also vowed to pardon many of those convicted of crimes relating to the violent storming of the US Capitol on 6 January 2021.

Biden’s record on clemency is not without its own controversies. Earlier this month he issued a full pardon to his son Hunter Biden relating to federal gun and tax convictions, despite having repeatedly pledged not to do so.

The move prompted sharp criticism, even from Democratic supporters. The decision has proven to be deeply unpopular with Americans, with only about 20% giving their approval in a recent Associated Press poll.

The White House said that before Biden steps down on 20 January he intends to wield his presidential clemency power again: “In the coming weeks, the President will take additional steps to provide meaningful second chances and continue to review additional pardons and commutations.”

It is not clear whether Biden will use his pardon power to protect people who may face possible prosecution by Trump as an act of revenge by the returning president. Biden is taking the idea of such preemptive pardons seriously, according to Associated Press, but is concerned that it might set a damaging precedent.

Adam Schiff, the newly seated US senator from California who led the congressional investigation into the January 6 insurrection, has pushed back against the idea, saying that preemptive pardons do not make sense.

“I think this is frankly so implausible as not to be worthy of much consideration. I would urge the president not to do that. I think it would seem defensive and unnecessary,” he has said.

The knowledge that Biden has yet to complete his round of clemencies leaves a sliver of hope alive for the 40 men who are currently on federal death row in Terre Haute, Indiana, who are fearful about Trump’s return. In the final weeks of his first presidential term, Trump presided over the executions of 13 federal prisoners – more than the previous 10 presidents combined – and he has indicated a desire to execute all remaining federal capital prisoners once he is back in the Oval Office.

This week Pope Francis and hundreds of capital punishment advocates including Catholic leaders and Black pastors added to the call on Biden to use his executive powers to commute federal death row sentences to spare the lives of the men.

A majority of Britons who voted to leave the EU would now accept a return to free movement in exchange for access to the single market, according to a cross-Europe study that also found a reciprocal desire in member states for closer links with the UK.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Donald Trump’s election as US president had “fundamentally changed the context” of EU-UK relations, the report by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) thinktank said.

“There is a remarkable consensus on both sides of the Channel that the time is ripe for a reassessment of EU-UK relations,” it concluded, with closer relations being the most popular option in every country surveyed – and public opinion on the question well ahead of government stances.

Based on polling of more than 9,000 people across the UK and the EU’s five most populous countries – Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Poland – in the weeks after Trump’s election win in November, the ECFR study found the strongest enthusiasm for renewed ties were in Britain.

Perhaps the most striking finding was that 54% of Britons who voted leave, including 59% of voters in “red wall seats”, said in exchange for single market access they would now accept full free movement for EU and UK citizens to travel, live and work across borders.

This could be because the surge in net migration to the UK after 2016 meant that Brexit was no longer seen by its supporters as the answer on immigration, the report suggested.

Among all UK voters, 68% of respondents would now back free movement in exchange for single market access, with 19% opposed and majority support among supporters of every party apart from Reform UK (44% of whose voters also backed the idea).

A similar percentage of Britons supported a reciprocal youth mobility scheme for 18- to 30-year-olds, seen as a key ask for EU leaders in return for an improved Brexit deal but has so far been resisted by the British prime minister, Keir Starmer.

Given today’s global circumstances, the report said, the UK and EU should “go big and go fast” in restoring links. It added: “The EU and the UK are both very vulnerable to prevailing global events and a reset of relations is the single most effective way to make both sides stronger.”

The report argued that while EU politicians and officials have been sceptical about the idea of offering any special terms to the UK, and Starmer and his government are similarly cautious about pushing for improved ties, public opinion on both sides of the Channel appeared significantly different from those stances.

Among British voters, there was clear support for a closer relationship with the EU, with 55% saying they would back closer links with the bloc, against 10% preferring more distant ties and 22% wanting to keep them as they were now.

This belief was shared by many Conservative supporters, particularly over migration and security. It was mostly Reform UK voters who were more sceptical about the benefits of closer links to the EU.

Across the EU, pluralities in every country polled agreed: 45% of Germans said they wanted closer relations with the UK, as well as 44% of Poles, 41% of Spaniards, 40% of Italians and 34% of French.

“It is important to recognise that Brexit and the UK-EU future relationship matters more to UK respondents than to citizens of other states. But there is broad permission from European publics to recast relations,”the report said.

“There might be scepticism about special terms for the UK among EU officials and governments, but our poll suggests that public opinion is more pragmatic.”

Both UK and EU citizens, it continued, “are open to a much more ambitious and far-reaching reset than their governments have been envisaging”.

The report found about half of Britons believed greater engagement with the EU was the best way to bolster the UK economy (50%), strengthen security (53%), effectively manage migration (58%), tackle climate change (48%), allow Ukraine to stand up to Russia (48%), and for Britain to stand up to the US (46%) and China (49%).

There was similarly widespread backing among EU nationals for allowing some post-Brexit economic concessions in exchange for more cooperation on particularly important areas such as common security.

The polling found a majority of voters in Germany and Poland – and a plurality in France, Italy and Spain – thought the EU should be willing to make economic concessions to the UK in order to secure a closer security relationship. Majorities or near-majorities were also open to allowing the UK into the bloc’s research programmes.

This could extend to the idea of the UK “cherry picking” access to parts of the single market, with a majority of voters in Germany (54%) and Poland (53%) backing “special access”. Even in France, the least receptive to such ideas, 41% of respondents said they would back it, against 29% who would oppose it.

For EU citizens, the most important reasons for working more closely with the UK were to strengthen the bloc’s security (about 40% in Germany, Italy, Poland and Spain), and to stand up to the US and China.

Pluralities in all five EU countries said greater EU-UK cooperation was also the best way to increase the European economy (ranging from 38% in Spain to 26% in France), and manage migration efficiently (from 36% in France to 29% in Germany). Large numbers across the bloc felt Brexit had been bad for the EU.

While some Conservative and Reform politicians have suggested the UK should lean politically towards a Trump presidency at the expense of Europe, this did not seem to be a view shared by many voters. Asked whether the UK should prioritise relations with the US or with EU, 50% of Britons opted for Europe and only 17% for the US.

Europeans were similarly reluctant for their governments to follow Trump’s lead. “Donald Trump’s election and Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine have hit British and European politics like a double hammer blow,” said the ECFR director, Mark Leonard, who authored the report.

“The Brexit-era divisions have faded and both European and British citizens realise that they need each other to get safer. Governments now need to catch up with public opinion and offer an ambitious reset.”

More than 100,000 people are estimated to have fled into Kurdish-administered areas in northern Syria amid escalating factional fighting and fears of retaliatory attacks after the collapse of forces loyal to the former president Bashar al-Assad.

Tensions appear to be concentrated primarily on the town of Manbij, north-east of Aleppo, and the mixed Arab and Kurdish town of Deir Ezzour in eastern Syria.

After the collapse of Assadist forces last week, Kurdish and Arab units fighting under the banner of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have advanced, in some places clashing with the Turkish-backed rebel groups of the Syrian National Army, in an effort to secure swaths of territory in northern and eastern Syria.

In a gesture of unity, the Kurdish-backed administrations of north-eastern Syria declared they would fly the flag of independence long used by opposition forces across the country, in order to “affirm the unity of Syria and its national identity”.

The SDF commander, Gen Mazloum Abdi, said US mediation had helped broker a ceasefire agreement in Manbij, but that his forces “continue to resist and stop the growing attacks from the west of the Euphrates”, as Turkish-backed rebel groups attempted to take control of the town. Despite the ceasefire, reports continued of fighting in the centre of Manbij.

“Our goal is to cease fire throughout Syria and enter into a political process for the future of the country,” said Abdi.

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the Islamist faction that is in control of much of Syria, has not clashed with Kurdish-led forces. Rebel forces in eastern Syria, however, drove Kurdish fighters out of Deir Ezzour amid confusion about who controls the town and rising fears about the presence of Islamic State (IS) fighters in the area.

Turkey, which regards the SDF and associated Kurdish fighters as terrorist groups, has also launched attacks on Kurdish troops. Ankara-backed forces struck a Kurdish convoy that it said was carrying heavy weapons looted from Syrian government arsenals.

The SDF said its forces were “repelling an attack” by Turkish-aligned forces at the Tishreen dam, near Manbij. “Fierce clashes continue amid fears for the dam,” it said, blaming bombardment by Turkish warplanes and tanks.

An estimated 900 US troops remain in eastern Syria to back Kurdish forces and other rebel factions battling to prevent a resurgence by IS.

Abdi told Sky news that his forces had been forced to pause the fighting against IS in eastern Syria due to mounting attacks by Turkish forces, prompting fears of an escape or prison break by jihadist militants held in camps in the east of the country.

IS “is now stronger in the Syrian desert. Previously, they were in remote areas and hiding, but now they have greater freedom of movement since they face no issues with other groups and are not engaged in conflict with them,” he told Sky News.

His forces have witnessed an increase in IS activities in areas under SDF control, he added, including killing several members of the SDF near Al Hasakah.

Amid the chaos and fighting, rights groups warned that civilians were suffering the most.

“The situation is exacerbating an acute and longstanding crisis, with overcrowded camps and severely damaged infrastructure and a lack of water, power, healthcare, food and weather-appropriate shelter,” said Human Rights Watch.

The non-profit organisation also warned of widespread ill-treatment by Turkish-backed rebel groups in the area, including unlawful detentions, sexual violence and torture, land theft and extortion.

Adam Coogle, the deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, said: “Amid the extraordinary events taking place in Syria, intense fighting and fear of retaliation and violence by armed groups is displacing thousands of civilians to areas unprepared for such an influx.”

An American citizen found in the suburbs of Damascus on Thursday says he was detained after crossing into the country by foot on a Christian pilgrimage seven months ago.

The man in question was identified later as Travis Pete Timmerman, aged 29, from Missouri, last seen in the Hungarian capital, Budapest, in late May.

He appears to be among the thousands of people released from Syria’s notorious prisons after rebels reached Damascus over the weekend, toppling President Bashar al-Assad and ending his family’s 54-year rule.

As video of Timmerman emerged online on Thursday, he was initially mistaken by some for Austin Tice, an American journalist who went missing in Syria 12 years ago. The footage showed a group of men gesturing at a shaken-looking, pale man with a beard who was lying on the floor, identifying him as “an American journalist”.

In the video, Timmerman could be seen lying on a mattress under a blanket in what appeared to be a private house. A group of men in the video said he was being treated well and would be returned home safely.

There was no immediate comment from US officials travelling with the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, in Jordan.

A spokesperson for the US state department said: “We’re aware of reports of an American found outside of Damascus and seeking to provide support. Out of respect for his privacy, we have no further information to provide at this time.”

According to reporters at the scene, Timmerman, who appeared relaxed, said he went to Syria on a pilgrimage. He said he had crossed the border from Lebanon on foot before being detained, and imprisoned for seven months. Locals reported finding him naked and barefoot in the Damascus suburbs, while the Turkish state news agency Anadolu said he had been released from the notorious Sednaya prison.

Video shared by Syria television showed Timmerman saying a Syrian man had helped him and a woman escape the prison where they had been held following the collapse of the regime. Timmerman told Al Arabiya that he had heard others being tortured while he was in detention, but he had not been mistreated.

“It was OK. I was fed. I was watered. The one difficulty was that I couldn’t go to the bathroom when I wanted to,” he said. “I was not beaten and the guards treated me decently.”

The discovery of one US citizen sparked hopes among some that those combing Syria’s expansive network of detention centres, jail cells, and military hospitals used to detain and torture people could locate others long disappeared under the reign of Bashar al-Assad.

Assad’s brutal regime collapsed rapidly amid a sweeping insurgent advance less than a week ago, with Syrians rushing to detention facilities to force open the doors and liberate those inside. Foreign nationals, including Lebanese and Jordanians, walked free among the tens of thousands of Syrians, including some who had been detained in unknown locations for decades.

Family and supporters of Austin Tice have long said they believe he is still alive, after he was captured in the Damascus suburb of Daraya in August 2012 while working as a freelance journalist for CBS, the Washington Post and McClatchy newspapers.

Multiple sources including a former Czech ambassador to Damascus, long the only point of contact between Syria and the western world, said Tice was being held by the Syrian state despite a video released in late 2012 that purported to show him in the captivity of an armed group.

Jacob Tice, Austin’s brother, told Christiane Amanpour of CNN earlier this week: “We have heard from sources that have been vetted by the US government that Austin is alive and he has been well taken care of, those reports are recent, they are fresh and we have every confidence that they are accurate.”

The FBI has offered a reward of up to $1m for information that could facilitate Tice’s safe return, as investigators search the country. The US government’s chief hostage negotiator, Roger Carstens, is reportedly in Beirut, while the US has conveyed messages to the insurgent group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham now in charge in Syria that locating Tice is a priority.

Mouaz Moustafa, who heads the DC lobby group the Syrian Emergency Task Force (SETF), which liaises with both rebel groups and the US government, is in Damascus and scouring sites across Syria to try to locate Tice or trace his recent journey.

Maria Cure, of SETF, said: “He has made it a priority while he’s there to find all Americans wrongfully detained in Syria, including Majd Kamalmaz, Austin Tice and others whose names are not public.”

The US is mounting a fresh diplomatic effort in the Middle East, hoping to end the war in Gaza and push rebels who have taken power in Syria to form a “credible, inclusive, and non-sectarian governance”.

Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, met Jordan’s King Abdullah in the Red Sea town of Aqaba on Thursday – the first stop of a short regional tour.

The future of Syria after the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad dominated discussions, as well as issues including the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles, humanitarian aid, and “preventing Syria from being used as a base for terrorism or posing a threat to its neighbours”, a spokesperson said.

Blinken, who has made multiple trips to the Middle East since the war in Gaza began 14 months ago, was due to head to Turkey later on Thursday. So far any ceasefire in Gaza has been elusive, and, despite the fragile agreement concluded last month that has ended hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, US prestige in the region has been harmed as a result.

The rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which the US and several other western states call a terrorist organisation, took power in Damascus after it led a lightning offensive to oust Assad, ending the 50-year rule of the family dynasty after 13 years of civil war.

Blinken said earlier this week that Washington would recognise a future Syrian government that amounted to a credible, inclusive and non-sectarian governing body. The top US diplomat will also meet the Jordanian foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, on Thursday and will discuss Israel’s conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon during his trip, the state department said.

The Biden administration has urged HTS not to assume automatic leadership of Syria but instead form a transitional government, according to two US officials and a congressional aide briefed on the first US contacts with the group.

Blinken has said the transition in Syria should be consistent with UN security council resolution 2254, approved in 2015, which calls for a Syrian-led process facilitated by the United Nations, establishing within six months non-sectarian governance and setting a schedule for a process of drafting a new constitution. It also calls for free and fair elections.

On Thursday, Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, is due to arrive in Israel for talks with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and then on to Egypt and Qatar, which, along with the US, have sought to mediate a deal to end the war in Gaza.

The UN general assembly overwhelmingly approved resolutions on Wednesday demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and expressing support for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees that Israel has moved to ban. General assembly resolutions are not legally binding, although they reflect world opinion.

Israel has faced growing international criticism over its conduct in Gaza as it fights Hamas militants, especially when it comes to humanitarian aid for desperate people in the besieged and heavily destroyed territory.

Israeli airstrikes in northern and central Gaza killed at least 33 people overnight and into Wednesday, Palestinian medical officials said. Hospital records show one Israeli strike in northern Gaza killed 19 people in a home, including a family of eight – four children, their parents and two grandparents.

The Israeli military said it targeted a Hamas militant in the vicinity of the hospital, part of its ongoing offensive in Gaza’s isolated and heavily destroyed north.

The war in Gaza began when Hamas-led militants stormed into Israel on 7 October 2023, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250 people, including children and older adults. About 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, at least a third of whom are believed to be dead.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 44,800 Palestinians in Gaza, according to local health officials.

Hamas has also been blamed for the failure to reach a ceasefire agreement but has been weakened by the losses sustained by Iran-backed Hezbollah and the fall of Assad, a key ally of Tehran.

A western diplomat in the region, however, confirmed a deal was taking shape but said it would likely be limited in scope, involving the release of only a handful of hostages and a short pause in hostilities.

President-elect Donald Trump has demanded that militants of the Palestinian Hamas group release the hostages held in Gaza before he takes over from Biden on 20 January . Otherwise, Trump has said, there will be “hell to pay”.

Trump’s designated hostage envoy, Adam Boehler, has said he too is involved in mediation, having spoken already to Biden and to Netanyahu.

Citing Trump’s threat of “hell to pay”, Boehler told Israel’s Channel 13 news last week: “I would appeal to those people that have taken hostages: make your best deal now. Make it now because every day that passes, it is going to get harder and harder and more Hamas lives will be lost.”

Although Biden and Trump are working separately, their efforts overlap and both stand to gain from a deal. A US official said Trump’s public statements about the need for a swift ceasefire “have not been harmful”.

The official said the priority was to get the hostages home, whether it was at the end of the Biden term or the start of the Trump administration.

In the occupied West Bank overnight, violence continued, with a child around the age of 12 killed in a suspected Palestinian shooting attack on an Israeli bus, Israeli emergency services said.

Indian teenager Gukesh Dommaraju capped a stunning ascent to the pinnacle of chess by dethroning China’s Ding Liren to become the youngest ever world chess champion on Thursday in Singapore.

The 18-year-old from Chennai snatched the decisive victory from a dead-drawn position in the final game of their best-of-14-games showdown when Ding made one of the worst blunders in the 138-year history of world championship matchplay. The 32-year-old defending champion resigned moments later after a game that lasted 58 moves and just over four hours, sealing Gukesh’s 7½-6½ win in the $2.5m match and rendering moot the widely expected prospect of tiebreaker matches on Friday afternoon.

Gukesh said he didn’t initially recognize Ding’s rook move as a blunder. It took a few seconds to realize that his opponent’s bishop was trapped.

“When I realized it, it was probably the best moment of my life,” said Gukesh, who brings home the $1.35m (£1.06m) winner’s share of the $2.5m prize fund along with the sport’s most prestigious title.

Ding, playing with the white pieces, was better out of the opening but Gukesh was able to unlock his pieces and stabilize in the middlegame. The draw appeared inevitable when material starting coming off the board in bunches starting with move 19.

But a game that appeared bound for a peaceful result suddenly became complicated when Ding sacrificed a pawn in exchange for a simple endgame. That left Gukesh with no choice but to fight on and he was more than happy to punish his foe in a grueling endgame under mounting time pressure.

That’s when Ding finally cracked.

“I was totally in shock when I realized I made a blunder,” Ding said. “His facial expression showed that he was very happy and excited and I realized I made a blunder. It took some time to realize it.”

Indian prime minister Narendra Modi was among the first to congratulate Gukesh after he became only the second world champion from India along with Viswanathan Anand, who held the crown from 2017 through 2013.

“Historic and exemplary!” Modi wrote on X. “Congratulations to Gukesh D on his remarkable accomplishment. This is the result of his unparalleled talent, hard work and unwavering determination.”

After Ding resigned, the tears flowed as Gukesh sat the board overcome by emotion while hundreds of his supporters set off scenes of jubilation in the spectators’ area.

“I probably got so emotional because I did not really expect to win from that position,” Gukesh said. “I was going to press it for as long as it as I could possibly press, but I thought, ‘It’s OK. We are going to play for five, six hours. It’s going to end in a draw, and let’s focus on the tiebreaks.’

“But then suddenly after Rf2 and I saw [the game] was actually done. I was already preparing myself to go through that huge tiebreak fight and suddenly it was all over and I had achieved my dream. I’m not someone who shows a lot of emotions, but I think this one can be forgiven.”

Last year Ding became the first men’s world chess champion from China by defeating Russia’s Ian Nepomniachtchi in Kazakhstan, capturing the title abdicated by longtime world No 1 Magnus Carlsen of Norway. But he’d played very sparingly in the 19 months since then amid a well-documented bout with depression, including a nine-month hiatus to prioritize his mental health.

He entered the title match having gone 28 classical games without a win, a dreadful run of form that saw him drop to 23rd in the world rankings and prompted the oddsmakers to install him as roughly a 3-1 longshot in the match. But he sprang a major surprise in Game 1 by winning as black, ending the 304-day winless streak with a riveting opening salvo.

Game 2 was a quiet draw, before Gukesh roared back with a win in Game 3. The fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth and 10th games were each draws. Gukesh won on Sunday in Game 11 before Ding struck back in Monday’s Game 12. The 13th game on Wednesday saw Ding hold on in a high-wire draw, leaving the score at 6½-all entering Thursday’s finale at Resorts World Sentosa, an island resort off Singapore’s southern coast.

While Ding had been regarded as the underdog in the match due to his unremarkable form, he would have gone off as a slight favorite if Game 14 was drawn and the match was settled on Friday with a series of tiebreak games with faster time controls.

“Champions always step up to the moment,” Gukesh said. “Obviously the past two years he hasn’t been in great shape, but he came here. He was obviously struggling during some of games. He was probably not at his best physically. But he fought in all games. He fought like a true champion.”

Gukesh, commonly known as Gukesh D, became the third-youngest grandmaster in history at 12 years and seven months. In April, at 17, he stunned the chess establishment by winning the eight-man Candidates tournament in Toronto to become the youngest ever challenger for the world championship, finishing top of a stacked field that included Nepomniachtchi, Hikaru Nakamura and Fabiano Caruana.

That Gukesh was even playing for the world title was a historic achievement. Until April, teenagers had had an indifferent record in the Candidates over the years. Only Bobby Fischer in 1959 and Carlsen in 2006, both then 16, were younger than Gukesh, and both were also-rans.

“My journey, it’s been since the time I started playing chess at six and a half, seven [years old],” Gukesh said. “I’ve been dreaming about this moment for more than 10 years. Every chess player wants to experience this moment and very few get the chance. To be one of them is … I think the only way to explain it is I am living my dream.”

Indian teenager Gukesh Dommaraju capped a stunning ascent to the pinnacle of chess by dethroning China’s Ding Liren to become the youngest ever world chess champion on Thursday in Singapore.

The 18-year-old from Chennai snatched the decisive victory from a dead-drawn position in the final game of their best-of-14-games showdown when Ding made one of the worst blunders in the 138-year history of world championship matchplay. The 32-year-old defending champion resigned moments later after a game that lasted 58 moves and just over four hours, sealing Gukesh’s 7½-6½ win in the $2.5m match and rendering moot the widely expected prospect of tiebreaker matches on Friday afternoon.

Gukesh said he didn’t initially recognize Ding’s rook move as a blunder. It took a few seconds to realize that his opponent’s bishop was trapped.

“When I realized it, it was probably the best moment of my life,” said Gukesh, who brings home the $1.35m (£1.06m) winner’s share of the $2.5m prize fund along with the sport’s most prestigious title.

Ding, playing with the white pieces, was better out of the opening but Gukesh was able to unlock his pieces and stabilize in the middlegame. The draw appeared inevitable when material starting coming off the board in bunches starting with move 19.

But a game that appeared bound for a peaceful result suddenly became complicated when Ding sacrificed a pawn in exchange for a simple endgame. That left Gukesh with no choice but to fight on and he was more than happy to punish his foe in a grueling endgame under mounting time pressure.

That’s when Ding finally cracked.

“I was totally in shock when I realized I made a blunder,” Ding said. “His facial expression showed that he was very happy and excited and I realized I made a blunder. It took some time to realize it.”

Indian prime minister Narendra Modi was among the first to congratulate Gukesh after he became only the second world champion from India along with Viswanathan Anand, who held the crown from 2017 through 2013.

“Historic and exemplary!” Modi wrote on X. “Congratulations to Gukesh D on his remarkable accomplishment. This is the result of his unparalleled talent, hard work and unwavering determination.”

After Ding resigned, the tears flowed as Gukesh sat the board overcome by emotion while hundreds of his supporters set off scenes of jubilation in the spectators’ area.

“I probably got so emotional because I did not really expect to win from that position,” Gukesh said. “I was going to press it for as long as it as I could possibly press, but I thought, ‘It’s OK. We are going to play for five, six hours. It’s going to end in a draw, and let’s focus on the tiebreaks.’

“But then suddenly after Rf2 and I saw [the game] was actually done. I was already preparing myself to go through that huge tiebreak fight and suddenly it was all over and I had achieved my dream. I’m not someone who shows a lot of emotions, but I think this one can be forgiven.”

Last year Ding became the first men’s world chess champion from China by defeating Russia’s Ian Nepomniachtchi in Kazakhstan, capturing the title abdicated by longtime world No 1 Magnus Carlsen of Norway. But he’d played very sparingly in the 19 months since then amid a well-documented bout with depression, including a nine-month hiatus to prioritize his mental health.

He entered the title match having gone 28 classical games without a win, a dreadful run of form that saw him drop to 23rd in the world rankings and prompted the oddsmakers to install him as roughly a 3-1 longshot in the match. But he sprang a major surprise in Game 1 by winning as black, ending the 304-day winless streak with a riveting opening salvo.

Game 2 was a quiet draw, before Gukesh roared back with a win in Game 3. The fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth and 10th games were each draws. Gukesh won on Sunday in Game 11 before Ding struck back in Monday’s Game 12. The 13th game on Wednesday saw Ding hold on in a high-wire draw, leaving the score at 6½-all entering Thursday’s finale at Resorts World Sentosa, an island resort off Singapore’s southern coast.

While Ding had been regarded as the underdog in the match due to his unremarkable form, he would have gone off as a slight favorite if Game 14 was drawn and the match was settled on Friday with a series of tiebreak games with faster time controls.

“Champions always step up to the moment,” Gukesh said. “Obviously the past two years he hasn’t been in great shape, but he came here. He was obviously struggling during some of games. He was probably not at his best physically. But he fought in all games. He fought like a true champion.”

Gukesh, commonly known as Gukesh D, became the third-youngest grandmaster in history at 12 years and seven months. In April, at 17, he stunned the chess establishment by winning the eight-man Candidates tournament in Toronto to become the youngest ever challenger for the world championship, finishing top of a stacked field that included Nepomniachtchi, Hikaru Nakamura and Fabiano Caruana.

That Gukesh was even playing for the world title was a historic achievement. Until April, teenagers had had an indifferent record in the Candidates over the years. Only Bobby Fischer in 1959 and Carlsen in 2006, both then 16, were younger than Gukesh, and both were also-rans.

“My journey, it’s been since the time I started playing chess at six and a half, seven [years old],” Gukesh said. “I’ve been dreaming about this moment for more than 10 years. Every chess player wants to experience this moment and very few get the chance. To be one of them is … I think the only way to explain it is I am living my dream.”

In a row likely to generate more debate than many of their exchanges over the dispatch box, the prime minister has hailed the humble sandwich as “a great British institution” after Kemi Badenoch denounced the lunchtime staple as “not real food”.

In an interview with the Spectator, the leader of the opposition channelled her inner Gordon Gekko to declare: “Lunch is for wimps. I have food brought in and I work and eat at the same time. There’s no time…Sometimes I will get a steak,” she said.

Desperate for a slice of the action, Starmer’s official spokesperson weighed in to respond, saying the prime minister was “surprised” to hear that Badenoch had a steak brought in for lunch and he instead preferred a cheese toastie.

Badenoch had earlier made clear her distaste for bread-based snacks. “I’m not a sandwich person, I don’t think sandwiches are a real food, it’s what you have for breakfast,” she told the Spectator. “I will not touch bread if it is moist.”

Starmer’s spokesperson responded: “I think he was surprised to hear that the leader of the opposition has a steak brought in for lunch. The prime minister is quite happy with a sandwich lunch.”

Asked what the prime minister’s favourite sandwich was, they added: “I think he enjoys a tuna sandwich and occasionally a cheese toastie.”

Badenoch swiftly attacked the prime minister’s response to her remarks in a post on social media, writing: “The PM has time to respond to my jokes about lunch … but no time for the farmers who produce our food.”

It is not the first time Westminster has been convulsed over sandwich choices. The then housing minister Dominic Raab hit the headlines during the last Conservative government when it was revealed that he bought exactly the same lunch every day – a Pret a Manger chicken and bacon baguette, a “superfruit” pot and a vitamin volcano smoothie.

A survey for Hovis earlier this year found that the nation’s favourite sandwich was a BLT, followed by chicken salad and tuna mayonnaise.

Lunch choices were not the only cultural dividing line that Badenoch sought to draw in the interview.

The Tory leader later attacked Starmer for saying that he might watch Love Actually over Christmas, adding that she prefers watching Die Hard over the festive period.

“There is a British prime minister who’s messing around and is not doing the foreign policy properly, people are cheating and there is a lot going on there if you move away from the smiley, happy, cheesy stuff,” she told the Spectator.

Luigi Mangione, the 26-year-old suspect in the New York murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, is agitated and irritated about his treatment since he was arrested on Monday and held in a Pennsylvania jail, according to his lawyer.

Thomas Dickey, a veteran Pennsylvania trial lawyer who began representing Mangione on Tuesday, said that his client’s angry outburst as he was being led into an extradition hearing earlier this week was a product of his frustration.

“He’s irritated, agitated about what’s happening to him and what he’s being accused of,” the attorney told CNN.

Mangione cried out cryptic words when he was outside the Blair county, Pennsylvania, courthouse where he faces extradition to New York on murder and other charges. Dressed in an orange jump suit, he shouted out: “It’s completely out of touch and an insult to the intelligence of the American people and their lived experience!”

Dickey said Mangione’s anger was in part because of his lack of legal representation until that moment. After the lawyer and Mangione met, his demeanor changed, Dickey told CNN.

“Look at the difference between when he went in and when he came out, once he … finally had legal representation and now he has a spokesperson and someone that’s going to fight for him.”

Thompson, 50, was killed on 4 December in midtown Manhattan as he was walking to attend UnitedHealthcare’s annual investors’ meeting. The commissioner of the New York police department, Jessica Tisch, announced that detectives have made a positive match between the ghost gun that the suspect had in his possession when he was arrested in Altoona, Pennsylvania, and three 9mm shell casings at the murder scene.

The casings had the words “delay”, “deny” and “depose” written on them in a possible echo of a 2010 book criticizing the healthcare insurance industry titled Delay, Deny, Defend.

Tisch has also said that police have made a match between Mangione’s fingerprints and those retrieved from a water bottle and snack bar wrapper found at the crime scene.

Dickey has questioned the credibility of police statements, urging the public to keep an open mind about his client. He told CNN that until he has seen the evidence and has had a chance to interrogate it, such claims should be treated with caution.

The match between the gun and the shell casings was made on the basis of fingerprints and ballistics, he said. “Those two sciences, in and of themselves, have come under some criticism in the past, relative to their credibility, their truthfulness, their accuracy.”

On the evidence, he said: “As lawyers, we need to see it. We need to see: How did they collect it? How much of it? And then we would have our experts … take a look at that, and then we would challenge its admissibility and challenge the accuracy of those results.”

Mangione is fighting extradition to New York. His next court appearance is scheduled for 23 December.

He is being held in a cell on his own, away from other inmates, at a Pennsylvania state institution, SCI Huntingdon. While News Nation was broadcasting live from outside the correctional facility on Wednesday, inmates screamed out of their cells to complain about the conditions they and Mangione are being held in.

“Conditions suck!” one inmate could be heard yelling.

“Free Luigi!” shouted another.

The NYPD’s ongoing investigation into the CEO’s murder is focusing on a possible motive. Law enforcement officials have said that when the suspect was arrested he was carrying a notebook that talked about killing an executive at a corporate event.

Officials told the New York Times that the notebook contained the passage: “What do you do? You wack the CEO at the annual parasitic bean-counter convention. It’s targeted, precise, and doesn’t risk innocents.”

Police say they also found on Mangione’s possession a three-page handwritten note which they have described as a manifesto.

Tens of thousands of people sheltering on Gaza’s exposed Mediterranean coastline face harsh winter conditions with inadequate shelter, food and fuel, as temperatures plunge in the devastated territory and a series of storms destroy their makeshift tents.

In recent weeks, bad weather has forced hundreds living in the coastal strip of Gaza around al-Mawasi to evacuate their shelters, ruining cooking utensils, clothes, stocks of food and precious firewood. Al-Mawasi was designated a “humanitarian zone” by Israeli military offensives and is packed with people displaced during 13 months of fighting, airstrikes and artillery bombardment.

Hisham al-Haddad, 30, described how he had been surprised by a sudden rush of sea water that crashed over his tent and those of his neighbours last week. His family of eight had been living near Deir al Balah on the coast in the humanitarian zone since fleeing the Israeli offensive into the southern city of Rafah in May.

“We had no choice but set up our tent right on the beach sand due lack of space, but there were were two lines of tents in front of us before the sea. All of them were swallowed completely by the sea in the storm and high tide. It was like a tsunami. I just grabbed my children and ran,” al-Haddad said.

“Everyone was busy saving himself. The waves swept out some people and children, but they were all rescued. Everyone was screaming and crying for help I wanted to go to help others, but I was busy saving myself and my family.”

The UN and other agencies have predicted acute hardship during winter months, when temperatures in Gaza can dip as low as 5C with an average minimum temperature of 10C. More than two-thirds of buildings in the territory have been damaged, and swathes rendered uninhabitable.

Last month, Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) said people in Gaza had been forced to burn plastic rubbish as a last resort to keep warm.

“Winter in Gaza means people will not only die because of airstrikes, diseases or hunger. Winter in Gaza means more people will die shivering because of the cold, especially among the most vulnerable including older people [and] children,” Lazzarini posted on X.

Aid agencies, the UN and individual governments have called for an improved flow of aid into Gaza, particularly to the north where an estimated 60,000 to 75,000 people have been cut off from humanitarian assistance for more than two months by a blockade imposed on several neighbourhoods by the Israeli military.

COGAT, the Israeli military body in charge of humanitarian aid to Gaza, said on X that it would continue to work with the international community to increase aid into Gaza through Kerem Shalom and other crossings, and said UNRWA coordinated less than 10% of the aid that entered Gaza in November.

October 2024 marked the worst month for humanitarian aid entering Gaza since the conflict began. According to COGAT, 90 trucks entered every day in November on average, up from 60 trucks a day in October.

“It’s so cold as we don’t have winter clothes to protect our bodies from the cold, and there are not enough covers, I used half of them to make the tent. My children have two pieces of warm clothes, they will wear it both to get warm, but it is also not enough. There is also no firewood to set fire to get some warmth, said Fida Eid, a 26-year-old mother of two children.

Eid, displaced from Jabalia, which is under Israeli siege and the site of fierce fighting, said five of her close relatives had been killed in the conflict.

The war was triggered by a surprise attack launched by Hamas militants into southern Israel last October. About 1,200 were killed, mostly civilians, and 250 abducted. So far, about 44,800 have been killed in Gaza in the Israeli military offensive that followed, according to local health authorities, and about 106,300 wounded. Most are civilians. Thousands more are missing.

Food prices have soared in recent weeks, with basics too expensive for many. A 25kg bag of flour now costs more than $120 (£94), more than 10 times its pre-war price.

“We get only very little aid from the NGOs. The last time I got an aid package was a month ago which, as usual, only contained canned food, so we depend on the meals we get from the charity kitchens. For water, we queue for hours … This how our lives are,” al-Haddad told the Guardian.

Sabreen al-Atout lives with her husband and six daughters in a makeshift tent in al-Mawasi.

“Winter is coming … we don’t have any proper shelter that protects us from rain. We don’t have enough blankets, we don’t have winter clothes, and we’ve no way of keeping warm with any kind of heating,” she said

Al-Atout’s 12-year-old daughter, Rahaf, was killed in a bombing in November last year, and her twin sister’s lower legs are badly injured.

“Now she needs to get out of Gaza to receive the rest of the treatment, but that’s impossible, and with this freezing cold in winter, she suffers a lot from the impact of the injury, and there are no clothes or socks to warm her feet,” said al-Atout.

Tens of thousands of people sheltering on Gaza’s exposed Mediterranean coastline face harsh winter conditions with inadequate shelter, food and fuel, as temperatures plunge in the devastated territory and a series of storms destroy their makeshift tents.

In recent weeks, bad weather has forced hundreds living in the coastal strip of Gaza around al-Mawasi to evacuate their shelters, ruining cooking utensils, clothes, stocks of food and precious firewood. Al-Mawasi was designated a “humanitarian zone” by Israeli military offensives and is packed with people displaced during 13 months of fighting, airstrikes and artillery bombardment.

Hisham al-Haddad, 30, described how he had been surprised by a sudden rush of sea water that crashed over his tent and those of his neighbours last week. His family of eight had been living near Deir al Balah on the coast in the humanitarian zone since fleeing the Israeli offensive into the southern city of Rafah in May.

“We had no choice but set up our tent right on the beach sand due lack of space, but there were were two lines of tents in front of us before the sea. All of them were swallowed completely by the sea in the storm and high tide. It was like a tsunami. I just grabbed my children and ran,” al-Haddad said.

“Everyone was busy saving himself. The waves swept out some people and children, but they were all rescued. Everyone was screaming and crying for help I wanted to go to help others, but I was busy saving myself and my family.”

The UN and other agencies have predicted acute hardship during winter months, when temperatures in Gaza can dip as low as 5C with an average minimum temperature of 10C. More than two-thirds of buildings in the territory have been damaged, and swathes rendered uninhabitable.

Last month, Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) said people in Gaza had been forced to burn plastic rubbish as a last resort to keep warm.

“Winter in Gaza means people will not only die because of airstrikes, diseases or hunger. Winter in Gaza means more people will die shivering because of the cold, especially among the most vulnerable including older people [and] children,” Lazzarini posted on X.

Aid agencies, the UN and individual governments have called for an improved flow of aid into Gaza, particularly to the north where an estimated 60,000 to 75,000 people have been cut off from humanitarian assistance for more than two months by a blockade imposed on several neighbourhoods by the Israeli military.

COGAT, the Israeli military body in charge of humanitarian aid to Gaza, said on X that it would continue to work with the international community to increase aid into Gaza through Kerem Shalom and other crossings, and said UNRWA coordinated less than 10% of the aid that entered Gaza in November.

October 2024 marked the worst month for humanitarian aid entering Gaza since the conflict began. According to COGAT, 90 trucks entered every day in November on average, up from 60 trucks a day in October.

“It’s so cold as we don’t have winter clothes to protect our bodies from the cold, and there are not enough covers, I used half of them to make the tent. My children have two pieces of warm clothes, they will wear it both to get warm, but it is also not enough. There is also no firewood to set fire to get some warmth, said Fida Eid, a 26-year-old mother of two children.

Eid, displaced from Jabalia, which is under Israeli siege and the site of fierce fighting, said five of her close relatives had been killed in the conflict.

The war was triggered by a surprise attack launched by Hamas militants into southern Israel last October. About 1,200 were killed, mostly civilians, and 250 abducted. So far, about 44,800 have been killed in Gaza in the Israeli military offensive that followed, according to local health authorities, and about 106,300 wounded. Most are civilians. Thousands more are missing.

Food prices have soared in recent weeks, with basics too expensive for many. A 25kg bag of flour now costs more than $120 (£94), more than 10 times its pre-war price.

“We get only very little aid from the NGOs. The last time I got an aid package was a month ago which, as usual, only contained canned food, so we depend on the meals we get from the charity kitchens. For water, we queue for hours … This how our lives are,” al-Haddad told the Guardian.

Sabreen al-Atout lives with her husband and six daughters in a makeshift tent in al-Mawasi.

“Winter is coming … we don’t have any proper shelter that protects us from rain. We don’t have enough blankets, we don’t have winter clothes, and we’ve no way of keeping warm with any kind of heating,” she said

Al-Atout’s 12-year-old daughter, Rahaf, was killed in a bombing in November last year, and her twin sister’s lower legs are badly injured.

“Now she needs to get out of Gaza to receive the rest of the treatment, but that’s impossible, and with this freezing cold in winter, she suffers a lot from the impact of the injury, and there are no clothes or socks to warm her feet,” said al-Atout.

The date on which Mount Vesuvius erupted, wiping out the lives of thousands in ancient Pompeii and other nearby towns, has long divided scholars.

But a study by Pompeii experts suggests that the Roman author Pliny the Younger probably had it right all along: the volcano erupted on 24 August AD79 and not later in the year as has been suggested.

Pliny wrote about the eruption in two letters after having witnessed it from the home of his uncle, Pliny the Elder, in Miseno. His account of when Vesuvius unleashed its fury started to be disputed in the late 18th century, with 24 October AD79 becoming the mostly widely hypothesised date. A charcoal inscription, dated 17 October, excavated in Pompeii’s archaeological park in 2018, added credence to this theory.

Another written account of the eruption was provided by the Greek-Roman historian and senator, Cassius Dio, who referred to it occurring in the autumn, which in ancient Roman times began on 8 August.

Gabriel Zuchtriegel, the director of Pompeii archaeological park, said there was “no documented evidence” to confirm the theories on the later dates.

“Over the years, other dates have been hypothesised, based essentially on errors and misunderstanding,” he added. “Only in the second half of the 20th century did modern theology clearly establish that the oldest manuscripts have 24 August as the correct date. There are no alternatives and so it’s either you confirm Pliny or you have to simply assume that he made a mistake.”

The study also analysed climate change and agricultural practices in ancient Pompeii. Zuchtriegel said that finds of ancient plants and fruits at the site, for example chestnuts, which today are associated with ripening during autumn, tended to contrast with Pliny’s date.

“People have assumed that nature and climate were always more or less the same, but today we are very aware that this is not the case,” said Zuchtriegel.

“It’s likely that Pliny was right in dating the eruption to 24 August and that we might need to reconsider finds of fruits and plants that seem in contrast with this,” he said. “This could also tell us something about climate change, biodiversity and conservation techniques in the ancient world. For example, still today there is a kind of chestnut that ripens in August, so finding a chestnut in ancient Pompeii doesn’t necessarily prove Pliny wrong.”

Mineral water from several European nations has been found for the first time to be contaminated with TFA, a type of PFAS “forever chemical” that is a reproductive toxicant accumulating at alarming levels across the globe.

The finding is startling because mineral water should be pristine and insulated from manmade chemicals. The contamination is thought to stem from the heavy application of pesticides containing TFA, or compounds that turn into it in the environment, which are used throughout the world.

Pesticide Action Network Europe detected TFA in 10 out of 19 mineral waters, and at levels as much as 32 times above the threshold that should trigger regulatory action in the European Union. The findings underscore the need for “urgent action”, the paper’s authors wrote, and come as authorities there propose new limits for some TFA pesticide products.

“This has gone completely under the radar and it’s concerning because we’re drinking TFA,” said Angeliki Lysimachou, a co-author with Pesticide Action Network Europe. “It’s much more widespread than we thought.” She added that researchers do not blame mineral water producers because the issue is not their fault.

The finding comes as researchers try to get a handle on TFA pollution globally. Though they long ago established that PFAS pollution is ubiquitous, they have found TFA levels that are orders of magnitude higher than other forever chemicals.

Aside from use in pesticides, TFA is a common refrigerant that was intended to be a safe replacement for older greenhouse gases like CFCs, and it is often used in clean energy production. But recent research has also established it as a potent greenhouse gas that can remain in the atmosphere for 1,000 years. About 60% of all PFAS manufactured from 2019 to 2022 were fluorinated gas that turns into TFA.

It is an especially difficult chemical due to its high mobility and longevity in the environment. Meanwhile, filtration technology effective at removing other PFAS from water cannot can’t address TFA on an industrial scale.

Still, industry is ramping up its use of TFA, or chemicals that turn into it once in the environment, claiming they are a safe, naturally occurring and nontoxic replacement for older PFAS and refrigerants. Mounting evidence from independent researchers has refuted those claims.

In pesticides, TFA is likely used as a stabilizer or to otherwise improve efficacy – around 40% of all active ingredients added to pesticides in the US are PFAS.

The new paper follows research that found TFA in 93% of more than 600 Belgian water samples, and especially high levels in agricultural regions. Meanwhile, Swiss authorities found it to be ubiquitous in the nation’s groundwater. In the US, all rainwater samples checked in Michigan contained the chemical.

Still, the Environmental Protection Agency recently excluded TFA from classification as a PFAS, which subjects it to less scrutiny. Public health groups have said the EPA faces pressure because TFA is a significant moneymaker for chemical producers.

The EU commission, meanwhile, is proposing a ban on two common pesticides that contain TFA compounds, and it may soon be classified as a reproductive toxicant.

“The first step is to ban the most widespread sources of TFA, the PFAS pesticides,” Pesticide Action Network Europe’s paper states.

A growing share of deaths in Canada are from euthanasia, but the vast majority are for terminal illnesses, according to new government figures.

More than 15,000 people received medical assistance in dying in Canada in 2023, the highest figure on record. But federal statistics show the growth in cases has slowed significantly, with assisted death making up 4.7% of deaths, compared to 4.1% the previous year.

In both 2023 and 2022, roughly 96% of cases were those with a terminal condition, with cancer cited as the most common reason for accessing assisted death. The median age of someone requesting euthanasia is 78.

Canada is among a few countries that have introduced assisted dying laws in recent years, alongside Austria, Australia and Spain. The United Kingdom recently passed legislation on the issue.

While medically assisted death in Canada is only legal for people on the basis of a physical health condition, the government is considering possibly expanding eligibility to include advanced requests, which would permit people with conditions like Alzheimer’s and dementia to request their deaths before the effects of the illness set in.

Assisted death for those suffering from mental illness is also expected to be permitted by 2027, after years of delay.

In its fifth annual report on assisted dying, Health Canada found that the 15,343 people who received help to die last year represented a 15.8% increase from 2022, showing that growth had halved from an average annual growth rate of 31% from 2019 to 2022.

The report cautioned the federal health agency cannot draw “reliable conclusions” about whether the slower increase in demand indicates a “stabilization” of the number of cases over the long term.

Separately, Statistics Canada said overall deaths in the country dropped to 326,571 in 2023, a 2.4% decrease from the prior year. Cancer remains the most common cause of death. These preliminary figures suggest doctor-assisted deaths are not adding new deaths overall, but are instead supplanting deaths that would have likely been attributable to terminal illness.

They have written songs about looking for love in all the wrong places and hopeless ones. But now songwriters could have inspiration for a new number.

Marjorie Fiterman and Bernie Littman found love in their Philadelphia nursing home after their longtime spouses passed away. And, after dating for nine years, they became the world’s oldest newlywed couple, as Guinness World Records recently recounted on its website.

According to Guinness, whose organization curates a database of 40,000 records that is a constant source of fascination worldwide, Fiterman, 102, and Littman, 100, could have met decades earlier while both attended the University of Pennsylvania.

But she pursued teaching and he undertook an engineering career, so their paths never crossed. Each spent more than 60 years married to their first respective spouses before they became widowed and moved a few doors down from each other in the same senior living facility in the so-called city of Brotherly Love.

A costume party on their floor gave Fiterman and Littman the chance to meet, and their romance ignited soon thereafter.

The pair had their first date on the same day one of Littman’s great-granddaughters was born, Guinness noted. They bonded over shared meals and by participating in theater productions staged by their facility.

Guinness reported that Fiterman and Littman helped each other in particular during the Covid-19 pandemic, which disproportionately affected elderly people and their communities.

Littman’s granddaughter, Sarah Sicherman, told the Jewish Chronicle that he and Fiterman were “so lucky to have found each other and be a support to each other”.

So much so that the two decided to take their relationship to the next level and get married at a ceremony in their retirement community in May, defying assumptions about how they might choose to remain unwed because of their age.

“They both love each other’s humour and intellect,” Sicherman said to Guinness. “They keep each other young.”

The couple was ultimately entered for consideration of Guinness World Records’ mark for oldest couple to marry (aggregate age). They secured the title with a joint age of 202 years and 271 days.

Littman later attributed his longevity and ability to allow in happiness to reading and keeping himself current, the records organization said. For her part, Fiterman credited buttermilk.

The couple’s officiant, rabbi Adam Wohlberg, avoided offering them the usual advice he provides to newlyweds at their ceremony, he previously told Fox News.

Instead, he said: “It is safe to say each of you, what you know and understand about each other, is exactly what the future holds for you and your partner.

“And what you have determined you love about each other – well, those things are not about to change.”