Since the dawn of expense claims, workers have been adding a few extra drinks for themselves on the company card (legal disclaimer: of course never us).

But the possibilities for dodgy claims are getting much more sophisticated, with businesses warned to take note.

Image generation by AI is now so advanced that fake but convincing receipts can be created in seconds.

OpenAI released its latest image generation model last week, an update which caused so many people to create Studio Ghibli-style drawings that its servers ‘melted’.

But a less wholesome use case also emerged, as users showed how easy it is to create fake receipts.

Many companies ask employees to upload photos of invoices they need reimbursing for, before their expense claims are approved.

Metro quickly made our own fake receipt using ChatGPT, for an Italian restaurant called Mikey’s on West Street in London.

We had minestrone, lasagne, tiramisu and a bottle of house red according to the receipt, costing £63.80 including the service charge.

However, not only did we not really visit, but the restaurant doesn’t even exist.

Sure, you could work this out by googling it, or you might have suspicions from the commas and full stops being confused, but many times this would just be waved through.

Jon Clay, VP in threat intelligence at Trend Micro, told Metro that realistic AI images will take fraud and scams to the next level.

He said: ‘When you submit submit stuff for HR, if you’re an employee that’s a little shady, for example, you could potentially get some some money from fraudulent receipts.’

This isn’t the only headache for businesses, however, with business e-mail compromise attacks a lucrative target for scammers.

This is when a criminal gains access to a company email account with the intention to trick a worker with the ability to transfer funds, often a senior executive or account manager.

Jon explained: ‘A scammer could potentially impersonate an employee, submit a whole bunch of receipts, get payment for those receipts, and make money that way. They could definitely defraud businesses.’

Artificial intelligence expert Raphael Chenol shared photos on LinkedIn of a real receipt and a fake one he created with ChatGPT.

He said: ‘I just asked it to change the date and price… and my expense report entry application doesn’t see anything. It only takes a few seconds where before you needed Photoshop skills.’

Clarifying that he ‘wouldn’t risk being fired for fraud by my employer’ , he said he was sharing the images to denounce possible abuses of the technology.

Mr Chenol suggested that to avoid ‘montains of false invoices’, they should include a QR Code-style cryptogram as standard, or that they should be submitted with proof of purchase such as via Blockchain.

Meanwhile, to reduce the risk from scammers Mr Clay called on businesses to have a two step verification process by which someone is asked on a different platform if it is really them asking for money to be transferred.

He said that AI photos are becoming so realistic that it will be very difficult for people to spot them just by looking at them, and although metadata will say they were edited by AI, this is easy for scammers to strip out.

One way to reduce the risk would be to insist that AI generated images contain a visible watermark, potentially due to laws that insist on it.

‘As this technology gets out there and if there if we see a lot more abuses of the technology, we might see lawmakers start to recognise that,’ he said.

‘But then again, if I’m a bad actor, I’m not going to follow the law.’

The makers of Chat GPT, Open AI, explicitly ban the use of the service to harm others, including using any output to defraud or scam.

Spokesperson Taya Christianson told TechCrunch that their ‘goal is to give users as much creative freedom as possible’ and that fake receipts aren’t necessarily fraudulent as they could be used for ‘teaching people about financial literacy’ as well as for art.

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He’s a 6′ tall liquid-metal assassin capable of assuming or abandoning human form at will

This molten metal creature is made of ‘mimetic polyalloy’, an artificial liquid made from billions of units that can be programmed into shapes.

He’s the T-1000, a robot from Terminator 2: Judgment Day that rises out of chequerboard tiled floors in his mission to kill John Connor.

Sadly (or rather, thankfully), we’re not anywhere near this level of goo-bot. But Korean scientists have made a big step towards it.

A team from the Seoul National University College of Engineering say they have created a ‘liquid robot capable of transforming, separating, and fusing freely like living cells’.

Footage shows the robotised gunk, less than 10mm wide, pushing through metal bars and engulfing a small object.

The liquid robot can even move across the surface of water, the research published last month in the journal ScienceAdvances said.

And they can mate too. Well, kind of. In a third demonstration, the researchers had two differently coloured robots falling from a small ledge and morphing together.

As the clear and green coloured blobs merge, they induce a ‘chemical reaction’, the team said.

The ‘particle-armoured liquid robot’ is dusted with ‘unusually dense’ particles that repel water, called ‘hydrophobic powder’.

This coated water drop, called a ‘liquid marble’, can shapeshift and be controlled by an electric field. But these marbles are fragile and leak easily.

But the researchers tried something a little different.

‘When we first started developing the liquid robot, we initially considered encapsulating a spherical droplet with particles, just as adopted in making conventional liquid marbles,’ Hyobin Jeon, the first author of the paper, said.

‘However, by shifting our perspective, we came up with the idea of coating an ice cube with particles and then melting it, which significantly enhanced the stability of our robots.’

They called these roboblobs Particle-armored liquid roBots, or PBs, and are controlled using ultrasound.

Even they admitted that the PBs are ‘similar to the liquid robot T-1000 from the 1991 movie Terminator 2’.

‘This novel next-generation soft robot benefits from both the exceptional deformability of liquid and the structural stability of solid,’ the engineers added.

‘As a result, it can withstand extreme compression or high-impact drops, recovering its original shape like a droplet without breaking.’

The researchers said that a large goal of robot-makers is to replicate the most technical, sophisticated machines of all – those made by nature.

From humanoid bots to birds and bees, the researchers wanted to create a soft robot that could act much like a gooey cell does.

Professor Ho-Young Kim, the study’s co-author, said: ‘Building upon our current findings, we are now working on technologies that will allow the liquid robot to change shape freely using sound waves or electric fields.’

Co-corresponding author Professor Jeong-Yun Sun added: ‘We plan to enhance the material functionality of the liquid robot to enable broader industrial applications in the future.’

This includes delivering cargo and drugs and treating medical conditions within the human body.

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Customers were unable to get their Tesco groceries online due to a problem with the website and app today.

Shoppers posted online about how they were unable to complete their orders due to the issue, which began just before 10am and has now been resolved.

Rival supermarket Iceland wasted no time in trolling the retailer, posting: ‘Tesco’s website is down…April Fools, oh wait, it’s not a joke’

When another user responded that this was ‘cold’, their social media manager replied that it was ‘still a burn’.

Writing on X this morning, one user posted: ‘whats going on?? your website and app isnt working?’

Another wrote: ‘Your website is broken. I am due a delivery today. Ordered online. Will this affect it?’

Responding to customer complaints, Tesco said: ‘We are aware of issues with our app and website, I’m sorry for any inconvenience this has caused.

‘Our I.T teams are working hard to have this fixed as soon as possible, please keep checking back periodically and hopefully they will be working shortly.’

According to service status website Downdetector, hundreds of Tesco customers began reporting problems with both the firm’s website and app at about 9.45am, and more than 500 reports were logged with the site.

A Tesco spokesperson said: ‘We have fixed a technical issue that temporarily impacted customers using our website and app. We’re sorry for the inconvenience.’

The supermarket did not say what has caused the issue, or if it had affected deliveries.

In February the firm was hit by an online shopping glitch which caused items to be removed from customer baskets, or marked as unavailable, as they tried to complete an online shop.

Tesco said it had been caused by a ‘technical issue’ with some customer baskets.

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Space food is famously unpalatable, given it has to be rocketed up and stay safe for long periods without resupply.

Not only is the food itself mostly dehydrated powder, but the ability of astronauts to taste it is limited due to eating it in microgravity.

So it’s no surprise that one of the first questions stranded NASA astronauts Sunita ‘Suni’ Williams and Barry ‘Butch’ Wilmore were asked on their return home was about what food they missed most.

The pair gave their first press conference last night after splashing down on Earth two weeks ago and taking some time to rest and recover.

Butch didn’t seem keen to answer, but Suni knew exactly what food she wanted as a welcome back – and it’s a classic.

She said: ‘My father was a vegetarian, so I had a good grilled cheese sandwich when I got home. That reminded me of him.’

The comfort food is ‘just like home for me,’ she added.

Asked about the first thing she wanted to do after spending nine months in space – having planned for eight days – she said: ‘I wanted to hug my husband and hug my dogs. I’ll say in that order, but maybe not… No, i’m just joking.’

Butch added that he ‘certainly’ wanted to embrace his family again, but also was keen to ‘just to say thank you to a nation that got involved in all of this. It makes it special, not just for us, but I think for our nation as a whole, so thank you.’

The two said they were somewhat surprised by the levels of media attention, and were aware of the narrative that they were ‘stuck and marooned’ on the International Space Station after the Boeing Starliner they travelled there in malfunctioned.

They said that although it was technically true in some respects that they had got stuck there, they never felt lost, abandoned or in need of rescue, had prepared for all eventualities and just got on with the job.

Butch said he took some of the responsibility for the bungled test flight: ‘I’ll start and point the finger and I’ll blame me. I could have asked some questions and the answers to those questions could have turned the tide.’

But both astronauts said they would strap into Starliner again and would ‘fix it’ and ‘make it work’.

The retired navy captains ended up spending 286 days in space when they blasted off on Boeing’s first astronaut flight on June 5, which is 278 days more than planned.

Why does food taste bad in space?

Being in space has a significant affect on astronauts’ bodies, with the microgravity changing how they function.

Fluids shift towards the head, putting pressure on their eyes and giving them puffy faces and a blocked nose, which can affect the ability to taste as it is linked to smell.

They can even get ‘baby feet’ from the lack of walking around, meaning putting on shoes and going to the shops can even be agonising without the thick skin that should be there.

A study last year was the first to look at why astronauts often report that food tastes bland, and struggle to meet their daily nutrient requirements.

It found that some aromas smelled differently in space and on Earth, simulating the ISS environment with virtual reality goggles.

Mental effects of isolation and being in the same confined surroudings for so long could also have an experience on taste, it said.

That is all added to the fact that the food isn’t exactly gourmet to begin with.

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If you think about shark noise, it might go like: duunnn dunnn… duuuunnnn duun… duuunnnnnnnn dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dunnnnnnnnn dunnnn.

But they actually make more of a click click click sound.

Scientists have now recorded the first ever noises made by the predators.

They do not have voice boxes or obvious mechanisms to make sounds, so were previously thought to be mute, stalking the seas silently.

But now, we know that rig sharks, which can grow to 5ft-long and mainly eat crabs, appear to make sounds intentionally.

Listen to the video below if you want to hear the noise yourself. It’s not excactly scary, but it is a bit eerie, and definitely clicky – the last thing you’d hear over the surf as the predator swam up and clamped onto your torso?

The audio was detected by scientists at the University of Auckland, in New Zealand.

Carolin Nieder was working on shark hearing for her PhD, when she noticed there was a clicking sound coming from rig sharks she was handling as part of her work.

That pondering led to more investigations, and now she is among the authors of a research study in Royal Society Open Science called ‘Evidence of active sound production by a shark’.

It tells how the elasmobranch fish family, which includes sharks, skates and rays who have skeletons made from cartilage rather than bone, were not thought to be able to make deliberate sounds.

Until recently that is; studies in 2022 also showed wild stingrays and other rays making click noises when disturbed by divers.

To record the shark sounds, scientists placed rigs in a plastic tank equipped with a hydrophone to pick up noises underwater.

How and why do they make the clicks?

Sharks have strong teeth similar to bone, and these are thought be what is making the noise.

The study says: ‘We propose that forceful snapping of flattened teeth may be the sound producing mechanism.’

The study tells how clicks occured when they were disturbed by handlers, indicating it might be due to a stress or an attempt to defend itself.

Authors said: ‘Rigs handled for 20 seconds produced significantly more clicks during the first 10 seconds than during the subsequent 10 seconds, and both in the presence and absence of body movements.

‘Rigs were not observed to produce clicks during feeding or while free-swimming in the tank.

‘This may suggest that the initial handling triggers a stress or startle response, resulting in increased click activity.

‘As rigs become accustomed to the handling, the behavioural response likely diminishes, leading to fewer clicks over time.’

Other noises that surprised us

Hearing the sound of a shark and imagining a clicky close-up is pretty interesting, but it has nothing on the sound of the sun or the sound of a black hole as it hoovers up anything getting close to it, both of which scientists have recently sonified.

It’s always fun to have an extra element of immersivity to get creative with our nightmares.

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Microsoft has helped revolutionise computing in the last 50 years, and not just by always finding new ways to do our heads in with Teams.

As well as making Bill Gates one of the world’s top billionaires and bogeymen, the company developed software that helped make personal computers a reality.

While Microsoft’s repertoire has evolved since then – it released Xbox, bought Nokia, and slicked-up its screen displays – some things have stayed remarkably the same since the first iteration of Microsoft Windows.

Five desktop apps have survived the chopping block from the release of Windows 1.0 in 1985 to the present day.

What better time to look back on them than the 50th anniversary of Microsoft, officially celebrated on April 4.

1. Calculator

The calculator’s functions have expanded from the basic additions, subtractions, divisions and multiplications of the OG version.

But its endurance is testament to the appeal applications that are both useful and adaptable.

Now it has four modes – standard, scientific, programmer, and graphing, along with tools to convert units of measurement and currencies.

Microsoft says: ‘It’s the perfect tool to help you complete your math homework, manage your finances, plot and analyze equations on a graph, and evaluate algebra, trigonometry, and complex math expressions!

2. Paint

Generations have spent hours – even days – drawing, colouring, designing logos, editing images and creating elaborate art.

You don’t need to be a Da Vinci or a Picasso to get going, but there is little limit to what you can do on there.

It’s proven so popular, Microsoft caved to consumer demand and continues to include it in all its Windows updates.

Microsoft says: ‘Its simplicity and ease of use make Paint a valuable tool for quick and easy image editing.’

3. Notepad

Microsoft Notepad actually pre-dates the first iteration of Windows.

Introduced as a stripped-down version of Microsoft Word, it has none of the fancy functions of the mother app – just some fonts, sizes and a blank page, giving you room to make notes free of distractions.

‘This fast and simple editor has been a staple of Windows for years’, Microsoft says.

4. Clock

Just like the hands moving across its face, Microsoft’s Clock app has come full circle.

Starting life as simply ‘Clock’ in 1985, it was renamed ‘Alarms’ and then ‘Alarms & Clock’ as more features were added.

It shows the date and time, both where you are and across the world. It can track your speed with a stopwatch, stop your pizza from burning with a timer (if you’re paying attention), and wake you up in the morning with 20 or more alarms.

With the latest operating system – Windows 11, released in 2021 – app has returned to being called just ‘Clock’.

5. Control Panel

In a classic case of ‘doing what it says on the tin’, the Control Panel is exactly that – the panel where you can control your computer..

On there, you can add and remove software, add hardware, change user accounts and tweak accessibility options.

Various applets have been added to the app over the decade.

While many of the Control Panel’s functions have been re-allocated to the Settings app, the Control Panel has found a way to survive.

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A European rocket plummeted back to Earth just seconds into its flight, after smoke began billowing from its sides.

Footage shows the Spectrum rocket, developed by German start-up Isar Aerospace, being launched from the island of Andøya in northern Norway.

It lifted off from the pad at 12.30 pm (10.30 GMT) today and flew for less than half a minute before crashing into the Norwegian Sea in a powerful explosion.

It was the first time a rocket capable of reaching orbit was launched from continental Europe, Isar Aerospace said.

The 92-foot-long Spectrum is a two-stage launch vehicle designed to put small and medium satellites into orbit.

It is designed for small- and medium-sized satellites weighing up to one metric tonne, although it did not carry a payload on its first flight.

Despite the crash, the manufacturer confirmed the mission was a ‘success’ as it allowed them to gather a ‘substantial amount of flight data and experience to apply on future missions.’

‘After the flight was terminated at T+30 seconds, the launch vehicle fell into the sea in a controlled manner,’ it added in a statement.

Daniel Metzler, Isar’s chief executive and co-founder, added: ‘Our first test flight met all our expectations, achieving a great success.

‘We had a clean liftoff, 30 seconds of flight and even got to validate our Flight Termination System.’

The company had largely ruled out the possibility of the rocket reaching orbit on its first complete flight, saying that it would consider a 30-second flight a success.

The launch itself was subject to a number of factors, including weather and safety.

It was originally scheduled for Saturday and then Monday, but unfavourable winds meant that it had to happen earlier today.

Isar Aerospace aims to collect as much data and experience as possible on the first integrated test of all the systems on its in-house-developed launch vehicle.

Regardless of the crash, the flight is still considered a significant step for European ambitions to develop launch capabilities on the continents as it has no access to Russian space stations or launchers amid the war.

The European Space Agency’s director general, Josef Aschbacher, posted on X: ‘Success to get off the pad, and lots of data already obtained.

‘I am sure Isar Aerospace will learn a lot. Rocket launch is hard. Never give up, move forward with even more energy!’

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Your phone might hold the secret of eternal youth, and not because you can spend eternity scrolling through ever life hack and skincare routine you could think of.

If anything, all that time spent staring at a screen could be rapidly aging your brain.

While it won’t iron out your blemishes and wrinkles, turning off your phone’s internet could give you the attention span of someone 10 years younger.

That’s according to a study of 400 adults who downloaded an app blocking internet access on their smartphones, while still allowing calls and texts.

It forced them to spend time doing something other than doom scrolling – like going outside, touching grass, exercising, even socialising in person.

Screen time nearly halved – dropping from five hours and 14 minutes, to two hours and 14 minutes in one group. The results were remarkable.

Not only could people pay attention to a single subject for longer, their mental improved to – more than would be expected on two weeks of antidepressants.

‘Even those who did not fully comply with the intervention experienced significant, though more modest, improvements’, the team from Canada’s University of British Columbia said.

‘These findings suggest that constant connection to the online world comes at a cost, since psychological functioning improves when this connection is reduced.’

Published in the PNAS Nexus journal, the participants were split into two groups.

One downloaded the ‘Freedom App’ for the first two weeks and removed it for the second two. The other group did it in reverse.

Both saw their screen time plummet – even more so in the first group, although their usage did rebound to 15% below the pre-study level once the app was removed.

Could this mean those scheming to ban phones from schools, or whack legal age limits on social media, have a point? We might not like it, but it’s possible they do.

The Canadian researchers said: ‘Despite the many benefits mobile internet offers, reducing the constant connection to the digital world can have large positive effects.’ 

More than 100,000 people in the UK have signed a so-called ‘Parent Pact’ started by the Smartphone Free Childhood campaign.

As the name suggested, it was launched six months ago as a rallying cry for parents to delay giving their kids smartphones until they turn 14.

It says: ‘Every child deserves the chance to learn and grow free from toxic and addictive algorithms.’

With the backing of ex-footballer Jamie Redknapp, actor Benedict Cumberbatch and singer Paloma Faith, it also suggests holding off on social media until kids are 16.

That age would be in line with Ireland, Spain and Australia, which have all banned under-16s from social media.

‘We want our kids to have a childhood’, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said after lawmakers approved the ban last year.

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People are just getting an error message when trying to scroll their newsfeed on X.

Around 2,000 users reported problems on DownDetector this afternoon, saying they were struggling to access both the app and the website.

When we tried to access the site, we saw only this: ‘Something went wrong. Try reloading.’

This was followed by a button saying ‘retry’.

Problems began shortly before 3pm and were still continuing intermittently an hour later, with the blue ‘wheel of death’ just spinning around and only sometimes loading posts.

Commenting on the problems, one disgruntled user wrote: ‘It’s gone again. Musk is such a genius businessperson! He can’t help but crash TwiX and blow up rockets.’

The user was referring to the latest launches of SpaceX’s powerful Starship rocket, which have been hit with problems.

Debris rained down over the Caribbean after the test flights, which did not go to plan with an explosion in January and then again this month.

Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and chief executive of X, is trying to work out how to fly humans to Mars, though he must have a lot else on his plate with a reported 14 children, his role in politics, as well as stocks at Tesla tumbling.

Earlier this week, he announced the sale of X to xAI, the makers of chatbot Grok.

He said that the move will ‘unlock immense potential by blending xAI’s advanced AI capability and expertise with X’s massive reach’.

You might have noticed responses on Grok relying a lot on tweets – when. they load at least – and this is only set to increase.

The companies have been linked since Musk launched xAI a year after buying Twitter, so it’s not clear what if anything of the basic experience will change for users. Paying X already users have access to Grok, and the model is trained on the huge amount of posts exchanged.

Yesterday, he quoted a post from Grok saying it was ‘working overtime’ from high usage, with the caption: ‘Servers are running hot’ and a sweat emoji.

Musk said the deal values xAI at 80 billion dollars (£61.8 billion) and X at 33 billion dollars.

He bought Twitter for 44 billion dollars (£34 billion) in 2022, sacked many staff and massively loosened up its moderation policies on hate speech, misinformation and user verification.

He also jettisoned the name Twitter and renamed it X, though the verb ‘to tweet’ has been harder to shake.

Posting on the site about the move, he wrote: ‘xAI and X’s futures are intertwined. Today, we officially take the step to combine the data, models, compute, distribution and talent. This combination will unlock immense potential by blending xAI’s advanced AI capability and expertise with X’s massive reach.

‘The combined company will deliver smarter, more meaningful experiences to billions of people while staying true to our core mission of seeking truth and advancing knowledge.’

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Mother’s Day is meant to be about getting a lie-in, but there was little chance of that with the clocks going forward.

At 1am on March 30, the clock skipped forward to 2am, and the effects will be more far-reaching than just grumpily losing an hour of sleep.

While our watches and oven displays quickly adjust, our bodies do not – and scientists say the abrupt change is bad for us.

It essentially gives us ‘clock lag’ as a nation, as if we’d all taken an international flight.

Dr Jeffrey Kelu, an expert in circadian rhythms at King’s College London, told Metro that the health impacts of changing the time are profound.

This is because our sleep and waking are regulated by the 24-hour rhythms known as the body’s internal clock, as well as our metabolism and mood.

Dr Kelu said: ‘It’s not easy, but as scientists we want to put forward the evidence suggesting that removing Daylight Saving Time would be best for the general health of the public.’

While he believes more light in the morning would be better for health, even staying in summertime year round would be preferable to going backwards and forward every year.

Circadian rhythms are influenced by the hours of light and darkness, developed during years of evolution when humans had to rely on a campfire when evening fell.

While most may feel they get used to the new time within a few days to a week or so, the physical effects could be longer lasting.

What benefits are there to stopping changing the clocks?

‘Shifting time forward for around half a year is linked to chronic circadian misalignment,’ Dr Kelu said. ‘It is compromising health.’

Disruption is linked to metabolic diseases such as obesity and diabetes, mood disorders, and even immunity.

He said it can take months for our bodies to adjust, with the worst affects seen in the spring – now – when we lose sleep and many struggle to get used to an earlier alarm.

A survey by YouGov this week found that the clock change in March has a big impact.

Over half of Brits said it affected key aspects of life, espoecally sleep, meal times, and energy levels. More than a third (35%) said their sleep schedule takes a hit, with 11% adjusting their bedtime in advance to cope.

Meanwhile, more than one in 10 (11%) struggle to know when to eat, while one in 20 (5%) snack more due to increased hunger.

The survey of 2,197 adults was conducted this month on behalf of recipe box Gousto, whose nutritionist Sarah Fancourt said clock changes can disrupt our hunger cues and meal times, ‘leading to more snacking, and cravings for quick-fix, less nutritious foods.’

Could the UK stop changing the clocks?

Such concerns have led to calls to drop DST altogether, although the topic is highly political, and plans to actually change things have been shelved for now.

Last time the clocks changed, in October last year, members of the British Sleep Society called for us to keep a permanent winter, at least when it comes to the time.

Dr Kelu said that sleep cycle experts almost all agree that GMT would be preferable to DST year-round becuase it allows for more light in the morning, aligning best with our own body clocks.

‘This is particularly important in modern societies, where prolonged indoor activity and evening exposure to artificial light tend to delay circadian rhythms, including sleep onset and natural waking, he said.

‘In the UK, for example, winter sunrises occur much later than in summer. Starting the day an hour earlier under permanent DST would further limit morning light exposure, compromising circadian regulation. This impact is particularly pronounced in northern regions of the UK, where shorter winter days are more extreme.

‘In summer, early sunrises largely mitigate concerns about reduced morning light, however, increased evening light under DST may delay sleep onset by suppressing melatonin and increasing alertness.’

Despite recent discussions focusing on the benefits of more light in the morning, previous moves to standardise time across the year have tended towards keeping summertime year round.

Keeping GMT constantly would be very unpopular with those who love long summer evenings, making the most of the sunshine post-work when they can enjoy it.

Traffic-related accidents go down slightly because of daylight savings, studies suggest, and crime overall such as break-ins and burglary goes down slightly with less cover of darkness.

What happened to the EU’s plan to stop changing the clocks?

Five years ago, there was thought to be an imminent change after the European parliament voted to scrap the custom of changing the clocks twice per year.

It came after a public consulation showed overwhelming support for choosing a time and sticking with it, with the time changes supposed to be ended by 2021.

The UK was expected to follow suit, with a leaked government email suggesting that the favoured time would be permanent summertime.

But here we are still tick tocking backwards and forwards, forcing our poor bodies to try and work out if we should be asleep or eating breakfast.

The plan ended up more complicated than it seemed, with arguments about whether summertime or wintertime should be favoured, and problems such as Brexit meaning the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland would be in different time zones.

Then the Covid-19 pandemic hit and discussions about clocks had to take a backseat to national lockdowns and travel bans.

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A newly identified wasp that buzzed among the dinosaurs had a bit of a unique way of catching prey.

Researchers studied 16 wasps frozen in 99-million-year-old Kachin amber in northern Myanmar, research published Thursday saidf.

But while the first half of these ancient insects could easily be mistaken for a modern wasp, the bottom half caught the palaeontologists off guard.

Meet Sirenobethylus charybdis, a wasp that the team half-jokingly called a ‘Cretaceous flytrap’ for its rear being shaped like the fly-gobbling plant.

‘Nothing similar is known from any other insect,’ the researchers wrote in the journal BMC Biology.

Lars Vilhelmsen, co-author of the study from the Natural History Museum of Denmark, said the wasp has a ‘small bear trap attached to the end of it’.

‘When I looked at the first specimen, I noticed this expansion at the tip of the abdomen, and I thought this must be an air bubble,’ Vilhelmsen added.

‘It’s quite often you see air bubbles around specimens in amber. But then I looked at a few more specimens and then went back to the first one. This was actually part of the animal.’

But rather than devouring creatures like a Venus flytrap, the team suspect that the wasp used its rump, lined with bristled hairs, to restrain prey.

Trapped in its bum flaps, the struggling insects would likely be unable to do anything as the prehistoric predator injects an egg inside it.

Over time, the egg would hatch inside, with the wasp larvae nibbling on it from the inside.

Scientists say they realised this after spotting that the wasp’s ovipositor, its egg-laying organ, is tucked between the maws.

The abdomen may also have been used to hold onto a mate – we guess it had a strong fear of being rejected.

Vilhelmsen and his colleagues from Capital Normal University in Beijing realised that the appendage could wiggle around as it was in different positions across all the specimens.  

‘Sometimes the lower flap, as we call it, is open, and sometimes it’s closed,’ he explained.

‘It was clearly a movable structure and something that was used to grasp something.’

If this is the case, sirenobethylus charybdis may have written the playbook that cuckoo wasps follow today.

Named after the wily cuckoo bird, these emerald-coloured critters lay their eggs in other wasps’ nests, so their young can feast on their new host’s larvae.

Amber has long been a vessel for prehistoric remnants, with everything from ancient plant ‘blood’ and lice to even crabs being found inside them.

The gem forms over millions of years as tree resin fossilises.

The authors said a fossil enthusiast purchased the amber containing Sirenobethylus charybdis and donated it to Capital Normal University’s Key Laboratory of Insect Evolution and Environmental Changes in 2016.

‘This is something unique, something I never expected to see, and something I couldn’t even imagine would be found,’ Vilhelmsen added.

‘It’s a 10 out of 10.’

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You might be forgiven for thinking it’s the end of the world today when the sun suddenly sprouts ‘devil horns’.

A partial solar eclipse will be visible in the UK and other parts of the Northern Hemisphere in the next few hours.

Partial solar eclipses happen when Earth, the moon and the sun are imperfectly aligned. The moon obscures only a chunk of the sun, a phenomenon that occurs every 18 months or so.

In cosmic terms, eclipses shouldn’t happen: the moon is 400 times smaller than the sun but 400 times closer to us, so they appear about the same size in the sky.

And they rarely happen in the UK, too. Since 2003, only 11 partial, annular, or total eclipses have been visible.

If the stars align (literally) the result can be a rarely seen crescent sun, bearing a striking resemblance to a pair of horns or a cheeky grin.

Here’s everything sky-watchers need to know about today’s partial solar eclipse.

When is the partial solar eclipse?

Parts of North America will see the eclipse at sunrise or shortly after. Afterwards, as the sun climbs upwards, it will be seen in Greenland, Iceland, Europe and northwest Africa.

The last people to see the eclipse will be Siberians. Quebec will have the best view, with 93.1% of the sun swallowed by the moon, forecasters from The Weather Channel say.

In the UK, it will start at approximately 10.07am, according to timeanddate.com, a website that shows the time, date, and major events worldwide.

The partial solar eclipse will last for about one hour and 53 minutes and be visible across most of the UK – including London.

The main event of the eclipse – when the moon takes a bite of the sun – will begin at 10.36am.

The biggest bite, called the maximum eclipse, will be at 11.03am.

You can use this tool by the online planetarium In-The-Sky.org to see how much of the sun will be covered by the moon.

‘When a partial solar eclipse happens during sunrise, the part of the sun that is above the horizon and is partially covered by the moon can look like horns rising,’ Sam Imperato, an astronomer with the Royal Museums Greenwich, told Metro.

‘The horns effect looks best when the part of the sun that is uncovered by the moon is below the horizon. 

‘This effect will not be visible in the UK during the March 29 partial solar eclipse because the eclipse will be visible between 10am-12 pm.

‘However, in North America, the partial eclipse will be visible at sunrise, so the horn phenomenon may be visible.’

The northeast of the US, eastern Canada and Greenland all have the best shot at seeing the sun grow a pair of horns.

The coastline of Forestville, Quebec and Saint Andrews, New Brunswick, both in Canada, will see the sun grin like the Cheshire Cat the most.

As will Quoddy Head State Park and South Lubec Flats in Maine.

How to watch the partial solar eclipse

For one, don’t just go out and look up. You should never look at the sun without special equipment to protect your eyes.

Inexpensive options for watching the eclipse include paper solar viewers and pinhole projectors.

You can even use a colander – yes, that thing in your kitchen. Place a piece of white paper on the floor or a plain surface and raise a colander above it so a shadow is cast.

As the sunlight streams through each of the holes, they act like teeny tiny suns, so you’ll slowly see the moon take a bite of them.

But don’t look through an optical device like a camera, binoculars or telescope directly at the eclipse, even while wearing a pair of paper glasses. It’s not safe, according to the Royal Astronomical Society.

Instead, eclipse chasers should buy a special solar filter for their viewing equipment.

‘If you have a telescope and are projecting the image, or are viewing it using a safe solar filter, you may notice that there are dark spots on the Sun: sunspots,’ the society adds.

‘These are places where the sun’s magnetic field restricts its light output.’

‘Also look at the edge of the moon (known as the limb) and you might see that it isn’t completely smooth, as you can see mountains or valleys on the limb silhouetted against the sun,’ it adds.

Coastal areas, elevated terrains and places with an unobstructed horizon are the ideal viewing spots. You can use map services like Peak Finder to find the flat land near you,

But if you’re sadly stuck at work or the skies are clogged with clouds, Royal Observatory Greenwich is running a live-stream of the eclipse on YouTube.

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Thousands of X users have reported outages with the popular social media app.

Just after 6.30 pm, a spate of users logged issues on Down Detector, with many saying the app wasn’t loading at all.

As of 7:00 pm, more than 12,000 reports have been logged.

Metro contacted X for comment.

Today’s outage comes after earlier this month, the website went offline and prompted billionaire owner Elon Musk to blame a ‘massive cyber attack’ on Ukraine – with no backing.

‘We get attacked every day’, Musk said at the time. ‘But this was done with a lot of resources. Either a large, coordinated group and/or a country is involved. Tracing …’

A cybersecurity expert has warned it was ‘dangerous’ to point the finger at Ukraine.

Jake Moore, global cybersecurity adviser at software security firm Eset, told PA he is ‘confident’ it was a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, which involves multiple IP addresses flooding a server or website with internet traffic.

Mr Moore added that a ‘simple analysis’ of the IP addresses would point towards their location, but that this can be ‘tampered with’ to make it seem that the origin is in a different country.

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More than 1,500,000 photographs shared on LGBTQ+, fetish and sugar daddy dating apps have been ‘leaked’, researchers say.

Sensitive information, including passwords, was published in the code of five mobile dating apps.

This information, called ‘secrets’, can be used by hackers to crack open the Google Cloud Storage bucket where an app user’s photos are stored.

Researchers from the independent news outlet Cybernews found that this bucket was not password protected.

This meant the images inside, which included profile pictures, public posts, privately sent photos and even images used to verify a user’s identity, were publicly accessible to those who knew where to look.

The affected iOS apps – BDSM People, CHICA, TRANSLOVE, PINK, and BRISH – are all owned by MAD Mobile Apps Developers Limited, a London-based software company.

The lead researcher, Aras Nazarovas, told Metro that the team are not aware of any third parties accessing this information.

MAD has not yet commented.

Why user photos were exposed is a simple one. MAD uses the same architecture for the five apps, Nazarovas, a junior information security researcher at Cybernews, told Metro.

‘The affected dating apps were developed in an insecure manner, storing all user-uploaded images in a public Google Cloud Storage bucket,’ he said.

‘This issue was left unnoticed until the Cybernews research team found these publicly accessible cloud storage buckets after scanning 156,000 iOS apps for sensitive information.’

Nazarovas said that the leaky storage bucket doesn’t mean scammers could access a person’s username, email or messages.

But they could track down a user’s identity by using OSINT, or open-source intelligence techniques, such as reverse image searching. Something especially troubling for LGBTQ+ users who may not be open about their identity.

‘Images accessed by bad actors could have been used for blackmail and intimidation,’ Nazarovas warned.

‘Finding out that these images were leaked would likely cause distress, trust issues, as well as other harm to the user’s mental health. Especially when approached with a blackmail demand.’

App developers, the team found, stored user secrets as ‘plaintext credentials’, a way of storing private info akin to writing down a password on a sticky note.

Among the apps was BDSM People, ‘a private app for those looking for something more than just a date’, its App Store description says.

The app is for people interested in bondage, discipline, dominance, submission and sadomasochism, or BDSM.

Yet the secrets tucked away in its application code allowed access to 1,600,000 files and 128GB of data, including 541,000 images.

CHICA, meanwhile, is an app for ‘sugar-dating’. This involves a ‘sugar baby’ connecting with a ‘sugar daddy’ in a relationship that offers financial support in exchange for companionship and possibly sex.

Researchers said CHICA’s code contained ways for people to access almost 45GB of data, including 133,000 images of app users.

Three apps tailored to LGBTQ+ people, TRANSLOVE, PINK and BRISH, were also vulnerable. Each of their buckets contained 142,000, 620,000 and 404,000 leaks, respectively.

PINK, a lesbian dating app, says its team verifies profiles and moderates the app to keep it ‘secure’.

But according to Cybernews, 45,000 blurred pictures, 43,000 pictures sent through chat, 1,000 pictures posted on comment sections, 12,000 images removed by moderators, 112,000 photos included in posts, 363,000 profile pictures and 44,000 photos used to verify profiles were all exposed.

‘The results of this investigation show that some apps can be incredibly insecure, exposing private user data to the open internet and leaving it completely unprotected,’ said Nazarovas.

‘While some other apps employ better cybersecurity practices, these apps are also not without dangers, as private information could be shared without permission by the person you’re chatting with.’

Nazarovas said that app developers and distributors alike need to do more to protect user data.

App stores, he suggested, could scan submitted apps for basic security issues and loopholes.

‘While it may not catch 100% of such vulnerabilities, it would significantly reduce such cases,’ Nazarovas added.

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The Stelios Foundation Young Entrepreneurs Awards 2025 winners have been announced: three rising stars in future technologies and social housing construction. 

Ayan Mohamed, an entrepreneur living in Manchester, has clinched the £150,000 top prize with her company Digitech Oasis. The business is already making waves in the tech industry by deploying autonomous robots aimed at enhancing business efficiency.​

Ayan’s journey is nothing short of inspiring. At 17, she moved from Nairobi, Kenya, to the UK to pursue higher education at Leeds University. It was during her university years that she developed a passion for technology, teaching herself to code and eventually securing a competitive internship.

A self-funded trip to China exposed her to cutting-edge AI and tech innovations, which she brought back to the UK, laying the foundation for Digitech Oasis.​

‘Manchester has really inspiring entrepreneurs. The whole collaborative spirit of the city is what makes it so great,’ Ayan remarked, explaining her decision to base her company in the city known as the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution and the first computer.​

‘I want to build something big’

The £150,000 prize money will be instrumental in Ayan’s ambitious plans to establish a manufacturing plant in Manchester, aiming to employ around 100 people in the North West.

This move not only underscores her commitment to job creation but also her vision of transforming Manchester into a tech hub reminiscent of Silicon Valley.​

‘I want to build something big with my business, and winning this award will really help us scale up and grow,’ she stated.

Ayan also looks forward to mentorship from Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou, founder of easyJet and the Stelios Philanthropic Foundation, expressing her excitement about the journey towards making Digitech Oasis Manchester’s next unicorn company.​

The Stelios Philanthropic Foundation’s Young Entrepreneur Awards, now in their second year, received an impressive 180 applications in 2025. The initiative, spearheaded by Sir Stelios, aims to support young entrepreneurs in the UK by providing substantial financial backing and mentorship.

‘Direct investment into future generations’

In second place, receiving £100,000, is Dorian Payne of Castell Group, a social housing development company based in South Wales.

Dorian’s entrepreneurial journey began with assisting his parents in their property ventures, eventually leading him to identify a gap in the market for affordable housing.

With over £200m worth of housing stock in the pipeline, Dorian plans to use the prize money to unlock more social housing projects, emphasising the long-term benefits of investing in permanent, safe housing solutions.​

‘Investing in social housing is direct investment into future generations,’ he says. ‘If you manage to get people into permanent, safe housing, it reduces the cost of temporary accommodation for the government, which they spend billions a year on.

‘No one teaches you this stuff’

Third place and a £50,000 prize went to Andy Evangelou, founder of Plug In Stations. Starting his career as an electrician, Andy recognised the growing demand for electric vehicle (EV) charging stations.

In 2019, he took the risk of establishing a business specialising in bespoke EV charging solutions for both domestic and commercial clients across the UK. The prize money will aid in acquiring a commercial unit, further solidifying Plug In Stations’ presence in the market.​

As for his ongoing relationship with Sir Stelios, he finds it ‘unbelievable’ to just have an email chain with him.

‘For entrepreneurs, it’s quite a lonely place. It’s difficult. No one teaches you this stuff. Someone like Sir Stelios can actually help me massively.’

Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou’s commitment to fostering entrepreneurship is evident through these awards. By offering not only financial support but also invaluable mentorship, the Stelios Philanthropic Foundation aims to empower young entrepreneurs to become significant contributors to the UK’s economy.

The success stories of Ayan, Dorian, and Andy serve as a testament to the potential and resilience of young business minds in the UK.​

More on The Stelios Foundation: UK, Greece, Cyprus and beyond

Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou isn’t just a business mogul—he’s a philanthropist with a mission. Since 2010, the easyJet founder has donated more than €84 million through the Stelios Philanthropic Foundation, backing causes that range from education to environmental protection and entrepreneurship.

His foundation’s impact is widespread. In Greece and Cyprus alone, 35 million free snacks, worth a staggering €35 million, have been distributed to those in need since 2013.

Meanwhile, his commitment to education has seen €8.8 million allocated in scholarships, benefiting around 300 students at top universities such as the London School of Economics and City University.

Entrepreneurship remains at the heart of Sir Stelios’ vision. His foundation has awarded €7.2 million in cash prizes to support start-ups and job creation—an initiative that has helped ambitious business owners like Ayan Mohamed, Dorian Payne, and Andy Evangelou turn their visions into reality.

Beyond business, Sir Stelios is also tackling environmental challenges, having invested €2.5 million in sustainability initiatives in collaboration with WWF and the Prince Albert II Foundation.

All of this is made possible by the easyGroup empire, which funds these initiatives while continuing to launch new easy-branded businesses. With a legacy built on innovation and a philanthropic arm dedicated to giving back, Sir Stelios is proving that success isn’t just about profits—it’s about making a lasting impact.

Discover more about the charity at stelios.foundation

Spring is around the corner – British Summer Time begins this weekend, the flowers are blooming – but it seems England can’t quite shake the winter bugs floating around.

New figures have shown that norovirus levels in England remain ‘stubbornly high’ for this time of year with no clear sign of a post-winter fall in numbers.

An average of 903 hospital beds were filled each day last week by patients with norovirus symptoms – almost unchanged from 899 the previous week.

While the total is down from a record 1,160 patients in mid-February, it is the first time in four weeks there has not been a small decrease.

It is also the highest number of norovirus patients recorded in England for this point in March and is well above the equivalent total at this stage from the past three years.

Earlier this month, NHS England said visits to its norovirus webpage had risen by 40% in one week – from 53,052 to 74,324 – as patients turned to Google for advice.

The flu is still rampant too, with some 50 flu patients in critical care, down from 60 the previous week.

Professor Sir Stephen Powis, NHS England’s national medical director, said: ‘While the worst of winter is no doubt over for NHS staff, virus rates in our hospitals remain stubbornly high and we are still feeling the pressure – the green shoots of spring for the NHS aren’t showing just yet.

‘Hospitals continue to run at near capacity, while the added pressure from almost one in seven beds taken up by patients who don’t need to be in hospital hasn’t relented for 12 weeks and counting.

‘It’s vital that the public continue to use 999 and A&E in life-threatening emergencies and use NHS 111 – and 111 online – if you need advice and support for other conditions.’

Amy Douglas, lead epidemiologist at the UKHSA, said earlier this month: ‘Norovirus levels are still exceptionally high and now with multiple genotypes spreading at the same time, people could end up getting infected more than once this season.

‘We are seeing the biggest impacts in health and social care settings, such as hospitals and care homes.’

What are the symptoms of norovirus?

If you have been infected with norovirus, you will experience:

• Feeling sick (nausea)
• Diarrhoea
• Being sick (vomiting)
• These last two may even occur at the same time, which gives norovirus its notoriety as an illness you don’t want to get

You may also have:

High temperature

Headaches

Aching arms and legs

There are around 80 deaths each year from norovirus in the UK, typically older adults and immunocompromised patients.

Anyone who has symptoms are urged to avoid visiting the hospital until they have been symptom free for 48 hours.

According to the NHS, washing hands frequently with soap and water is the best way to stop the vomiting bug from spreading.

Avoiding close contact with someone who has the virus, and eating food handled or prepared by them also limits risk.

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Did the CIA locate the Ark of the Covenant?

(No, it’s not in a nondescript crate and stored in a colossal warehouse filled with numerous other identical crates. Well, maybe not.)

Resurfaced declassified CIA documents suggest that US officials tracked down the biblical ark using psychic intelligence techniques.

Biblical texts describe the ark, a holy relic said to contain the stone tablets of the Ten Commandments that Moses brought down from Mount Sinai.

In the 10th century BC, King Solomon was said to have installed the ark in the temple he built in Jerusalem.

As to its final fate, the Bible does not say. Some believe it was looted by Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian king, in 597 BC.

The CIA hoped to answer this. A ‘remote viewer’ told agents on December 5, 1988, that the ‘target is a container’ with ‘another container inside’.

‘This target is located somewhere in the Middle East as the language spoken by individuals present seemed to be Arabic,’ the paper, viewer *032, said.

‘Visuals of surrounding buildings indicated the presence of Mosque Domes… The target is hidden — underground, dark and wet were all aspects of the location of the target.’

This was part of a secret Cold War-era programme called ‘Project Sun Streak’, a name all too well known to conspiracy theorists and truth-seekers that saw intelligence agents employ ‘remote viewers’.

This was certainly not the first time that the fabled ark has been found.

Where could the Ark of the Covenant be?

It depends on who you ask.

Some scholars will say it’s very much in the ‘Holy Land’. Others have placed the Ark as far away as Zimbabwe.

Rosslyn Chapel in Edinburgh has widely been thought to be the final resting place of the ark, thanks to a conspiracy peddled by the Knights Templar, a powerful medieval order of Christians.

As is the Chartres Cathedral in France. Carvings on a pillar hint that the knights excavated Solomon’s temple and found the ark in 111.

The ark is being transported to the cathedral by wheelbarrow – under some interpretations, at least.

But showing that the ark may have clocked in some serious air miles in the centuries since it vanished, some experts suspect it’s hidden somewhere in Mount Tsurugi in Japan.

A ‘real-life Japanese Indy Jones’, Masanori Takane, believed ancient Israelis hid the ark on the Iya mountain – though Takane’s two decades of digging came out fruitless in the 1930s.

In what would be further bad news for an Indiana Jones-type’s lower back is hiking Mt Nebo in Jordan, said to be where Moses saw the Promised Land – and where he hid the ark in a cave.

Temple of Edfu, deep in the Egyptian city of the same name, is another top contender. Biblical scholars say that the Ark of Edfu, which honours the Egyptian god of healing Horus, might have ‘might have drawn on descriptions’ of the Ark of the Covenant.

Antakya, too. The city in Turkey, standing where the ancient city of Antioch once did, is where the Shi’a sect of Islam once said that a Messiah-like figure will appear in the end times and offer the ark. At least, according to some traditions.

The Dead Sea Scrolls, ancient parchments considered the oldest copies of biblical books in the world, may also hold the keys to the ark.

A translation of one of the scrolls speaks of hidden riches, with one being the ark – but there’s a catch, given that its location ‘shall not be revealed until the day of the coming of the Messiah son of David’.

Ark hunters have also proposed that the relic is in Zimbabwe. The Lemba, a Black southern African tribe with Jewish roots, once owned a replica of the ark called the ‘ngoma lungundu’, or ‘the drum that thunders’.

Other spots where the glistening ark may be include Temple Mount, said to stand where Solomon’s temple once did, and Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion.

The church in Aksum, Ethiopia, has openly claimed the ark is in their possession – outsiders can’t see it. Though, fact-checkers dispute this, saying it’s only as replica.

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This weekend is prime time for the Sunday Scaries, because you’ll know Monday’s alarm will go off even earlier than it usually does.

But putting the clocks forward will have effects more far reaching than just grumpily losing an hour of sleep.

While our watches and oven displays quickly adjust, our bodies do not – and scientists say the abrupt change really messes with us.

It essentially gives us ‘clock lag’ as a nation, as if we’d all taken an international flight.

Dr Jeffrey Kelu, an expert in circadian rhythms at King’s College London, told Metro that the health impacts of changing the time are profound.

This is because our sleep and waking are regulated by the 24-hour rhythms known as the body’s internal clock, as well as our metabolism and mood.

Dr Kelu said: ‘It’s not easy, but as scientists we want to put forward the evidence suggesting that removing Daylight Saving Time would be best for the general health of the public.’

While he believes more light in the morning would be better for health, even staying in summertime year round would be preferable to going backwards and forward every year.

Circadian rhythms are influenced by the hours of light and darkness, developed during years of evolution when humans had to rely on a campfire when evening fell.

This Sunday is the day we lose an hour of sleep in order to give us more hours of daylight in the evening. (In a cruel irony, it also happens to be Mother’s Day, the day mums most deserve a lie-in.)

But while most may feel they managed to get used to the new time within a few days to a week or so, the physical effects could be longer lasting.

What benefits are there to stopping changing the clocks?

‘Shifting time forward for around half a year is linked to chronic circadian misalignment,’ Dr Kelu said. ‘It is compromising health.’

Disruption is linked to metabolic diseases such as obesity and diabetes, mood disorders, and even immunity.

and he said it can take months for our bodies to adjust, with the worst affects seen in the spring, when we lose sleep and many struggle to get used to an earlier alarm.

A survey by YouGov this week found that the clock change in March has a big impact.

Over half of Brits said it affected key aspects of life, espoecally sleep, meal times, and energy levels. More than a third (35%) said their sleep schedule takes a hit, with 11% adjusting their bedtime in advance to cope.

Meanwhile, more than one in 10 (11%) struggle to know when to eat, while one in 20 (5%) snack more due to increased hunger.

The survey of 2,197 adults was conducted this month on behalf of recipe box Gousto, whose nutritionist Sarah Fancourt said clock changes can disrupt our hunger cues and meal times, ‘leading to more snacking, and cravings for quick-fix, less nutritious foods.’

Could the UK stop changing the clocks?

Such concerns have led to calls to drop BST altogether, although the topic is highly political, and plans to actually change things have been shelved for now.

Last time the clocks changed, in October last year, members of the British Sleep Society called for us to keep a permanent winter, at least when it comes to the time.

Dr Kelu said that sleep cycle experts almost all agree that GMT would be preferable to BST year-round becuase it allows for more light in the morning, aligning best with our own body clocks.

‘This is particularly important in modern societies, where prolonged indoor activity and evening exposure to artificial light tend to delay circadian rhythms, including sleep onset and natural waking, he said.

‘In the UK, for example, winter sunrises occur much later than in summer. Starting the day an hour earlier under permanent DST would further limit morning light exposure, compromising circadian regulation. This impact is particularly pronounced in northern regions of the UK, where shorter winter days are more extreme.

‘In summer, early sunrises largely mitigate concerns about reduced morning light, however, increased evening light under DST may delay sleep onset by suppressing melatonin and increasing alertness.’

Despite recent discussions focusing on the benefits of more light in the morning, previous moves to standardise time across the year have tended towards keeping summertime year round.

Keeping GMT constantly would be very unpopular with those who love long summer evenings, and say that it lets them spend more time in the sun as post-work is when they can enjoy it.

Traffic-related accidents go down slightly because of daylight savings, studies suggest, and crime overall such as break-ins and burglary goes down slightly with less cover of darkness.

What happened to the EU’s plan to stop changing the clocks?

Five years ago, there was thought to be an imminent change after the European parliament voted to scrap the custom of changing the clocks twice per year.

It came after a public consulation showed overwhelming support for choosing a time and sticking with it, with the time changes supposed to be ended by 2021.

The UK was expected to follow suit, with a leaked government email suggesting that the favoured time would be permanent summertime.

But here we are still tick tocking backwards and forwards, forcing our poor bodies to try and work out if we should be asleep or eating breakfast.

The plan ended up more complicated than it seemed, with arguments about whether summertime or wintertime should be favoured, and problems such as Brexit meaning the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland would be in different time zones.

Then the Covid-19 pandemic hit and discussions about clocks had to take a backseat to national lockdowns and travel bans.

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New photos of Neptune’s glowing auroras are the most detailed ever captured by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope – but has also left astronomers with more questions.

Auroras can happen on any planet, and occur when electrically charged particles from space enter and collide with molecules in the atmosphere, creating a series of reactions that emit light.

On Earth, auroras tend to occur near the polar regions, producing spectacular northern and southern lights.

But on Neptune, the auroras are in very different areas. Hints of auroras were first faintly detected in ultraviolet light when the Voyager 2 spacecraft flew past Neptune in 1989.

Now, the Webb telescope has captured Neptune’s shimmering lights in infrared light, providing direct evidence they exist.

‘Neptune has always been elusive,’ University of Reading planetary scientist James O’Donoghue, co-author of the new study, told Metro.

‘If you were to overlay where Neptune’s Aurora occurs on the Earth, the southern aurora would fall just over Argentina and the northern Aurora would fall north of Japan,’ he added.

‘To see the auroras on Earth, we typically try to go as high a latitude as possible close to the poles, whereas if we had near Aurora, like Neptune, we would be rushing over to Argentina and the north of Japan.’

Dr O’Donoghue also told Metro that after taking a photograph of Neptune’s aurora, scientists also found that Neptune cooled down a great deal more than they expected.

‘Based on observations taken by Voyager in the 1980s, the upper atmosphere was around 750 Kelvin (476.85C). But we measured it to be at 370 Kelvin (96C), which doesn’t sound like a large numerical difference, but it is,’ he explained.

‘The thing that fascinates me is the amount of light we see from the Aurora on Neptune mostly depends on temperature – so the fact that it’s cooled down that much does explain why we haven’t been able to see it with anything until now.’

‘We’ve used the world’s biggest telescopes over the last two decades to years to try and find this aurora, and we did not manage to find it until now.

‘It was a long-running saga, but what excites me is trying to figure out what it is that makes temperature change in the upper atmosphere of Neptune,’ he said.

Dr O’Donoghue added: ‘Temperature mysteries are everywhere in this field – I mainly look at Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus. It may be seasonal variations in the upper atmosphere temperatures, but it’s a very big mystery.’

Scientists have studied auroras on Saturn and Jupiter for decades, but Neptune, the farthest planet from the sun, has been harder to see up close.

Its auroras ‘had only been seen by Voyager, and we’ve been trying to see it again ever since’.

Neptune’s auroras occur near the mid-latitudes of the planet, not the polar regions, because of differences in its magnetic field, Mr O’Donoghue said.

The researchers also revealed that Neptune’s atmosphere has cooled significantly since the 1980s, which may have dimmed the light of the auroras.

If you’re looking for some spectacular stargazing this week, you may not be able to see Neptune’s auroras, but you could see the Earth’s.

The Northern Lights will transform the typically gloomy skies above the UK with streaks of pink, purple and green this week.

The night sky phenomenon, or aurora borealis, are flashes of colour that mainly appear in the northernmost regions of the planet, like Canada.

But a geomagnetic storm that has raged for months has made this celestial fireworks display visible further south – even in London.

The Met Office says a burst of solar activity means the aurora will dance above northern Scotland.

On the weather agency’s ‘space weather’ forecast (yes, really), it says: ‘There is a chance of aurora sightings at times across northern Scotland this week, given clear night-time skies, with a slight chance of sightings across Southern Scotland and similar latitudes.’

Enjoy those starry skies!

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In 1924, scores of New Yorkers flooded the streets armed with telescopes to see the alien civilisation above their heads.

Mars, the red planet to our blue marble, was believed to be home to extraterrestrial life within its dusty mountains.

‘The fact of their existence is a natural conclusion from observations of their planet,’ one astronomer said at the time.

Well over a century later, it seems pretty clear that Martians aren’t moseying around our planetary neighbour.

But that doesn’t mean they never did. Nasa’s Curiosity rover has found the largest organic compounds ever seen on the planet.

The material was found inside a 3.7 billion-year-old rock in Yellowknife Bay, which may have once been a habitable freshwater lake.

Onboard tests detected molecules suspected to be remnants of fatty acids, which are produced by living creatures to form cell membranes.

‘Our study proves that, even today, by analysing Mars samples we could detect chemical signatures of past life, if it ever existed on Mars,’ said Caroline Freissinet, the lead study author and research scientist at the French National Centre for Scientific Research.

Researchers stressed these molecules, though described as organic, could have also formed in chemical reactions that did not involve life.

They were also careful to stress they can’t say for sure that these molecules are traces of dead microbial Martians, called ‘biosignatures’.

The new findings, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, mark the first major clue that Mars’ organic chemistry might have reached the complexity needed for life to begin.

Scientists know Mars was once a habitable place with blue seas, gushing rivers and clear skies. But no slam-dunk evidence of Martians has ever been found.

Curiosity has been exploring Mount Sharp, located within an ancient meteor impact crater called Gale, since 2012.

‘There is evidence that liquid water existed in Gale Crater for millions of years and probably much longer, which means there was enough time for life-forming chemistry to happen in these crater-lake environments on Mars,’ said Daniel Glavin, senior scientist for sample return at Nasa and a study co-author.

Trundling along in the following year, the rover drilled into a sample of mudstone from a rock nicknamed ‘Cumberland’.

Between finding the ruins of a spaceship and this rock, only one of the two might seem tantalising.

But Freissinet and her team have been seriously excited by Cumberland. They and other scientists have, among other things, identified Martian organic molecules, clay minerals that hint at water and nitrates, which on Earth are essential to the health of wildlife inside of it.

Now the team have discovered inside it three large organics – decane, undecane and dodecane – that may have once been fatty acids that converted to alkanes when heated.

The enzymes that build fatty acids on Earth do so two carbon atoms at a time, meaning the compounds contain more even numbers of carbon than odd.

‘Cumberland is teasing us,’ Freissinet said. ‘The one in the middle with 12 carbons is more abundant than the other two.’

Curiosity rifles through rock samples by drilling them into grit, popping them in quartz cups and baking them at temperatures up to 1100°C. Any gases coughed up are identified with a high-tech tool called a gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer.

But Curiosity is no laboratory. So experts back on Earth have to run experiments under Mars-ish conditions to help make sense of what Curiosity finds.

Freissinet and Glavin’s team’s experiments suggest that the fatty acids contained in the rock are 3,700,000,000 years old – roughly when life is thought to have began on Earth.

For now, the next step is hauling all the rock samples to Earth to finally ‘settle the debate about life on Mars’, said Glavin.

‘It’s been a long journey to this point,’ he added. ‘This is really searching for a needle in a haystack.

‘There’s no question about it. We have three needles.’

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If your inbox is full of dubious group chats about crypto, you might think scams are already widespread.

But the levels we see are about to go ‘crazy’, as criminals increasingly turn to scam bots to do their work for them.

At a conference on cybercrime in Westminster today, industry professionals gathered to hear about how the world needs to ‘build an army of fraud fighters’ to take on the scammers, who are tooling up and often linked to global organised crime. 

Scam expert Jon Clay, who will be giving the keynote speech at the Global Anti-Scam Summit tomorrow, told Metro he was wary of spreading ‘FUD’ – ‘fear, uncertainly, and doubt’ – but felt in this case it is warranted because people need to be aware.

The VP in threat intelligence at Trend Micro said this army of scam bots will be here as early as 2026 or 2027, and warned people to create a ‘safe phrase’ as the best way to verify if they are really speaking to their loved ones.

The threat is not just from deepfakes, which can fool people with convincing video and audio. It’s a revolution in the whole way scammers do business, with things they used to manually outsource, like scouring data, now easily automated. 

Artificial intelligence will scout out victims and create personally targeted emails to fool people to part with their money, free of the spelling errors which currently plague scam messages.

The buzz word here is ‘agentic AI’, which means a type of artificial intelligence which can operate independently, without constant human instruction.

Once unleashed with a mission to defraud, these autonomous scam bots could work night and day to fool us and take our money.

Jon told Metro: ‘The agents will basically do everything. It will allow them to scale fraud to no end.

‘You can’t work 24 hours as a scammer: you have to eat and sleep. But if I have something doing it for me in the background, I can do what I want, even go to a movie and have something doing my scam for me. 

‘Why wouldn’t you invest in that?’

Tech savvy criminals will even sell the programmes they create to others, making it easy to to automate crime even for those who don’t know much about computing.

Jon told how ‘face swapping’ is an increasingly prevalent scam, where someone can appear in real-time video as somebody completely different, such as a man appearing as a woman with a female voice, reading from a script.

Fraud is already the most prevalent crime in the UK, making up around 41% of all crime reports, and costing an estimated £6.8bn each year in England and Wales alone. 

The summit heard how globally, over a trillion dollars was lost in scams last year  – over 1% of the world’s GDP  – with a quarter of the global population losing money.

Trend Micro is among the companies fighting AI with AI, using machine learning to spot red flags and advise users accordingly.  

They demonstrated their new ScamCheck app which can automatically block spam calls, allow people to check video calls for deep fakes in real time, and analyse screenshots of messages to see if they can be trusted.

Also exhibiting was Feedzai, software used to detect financial scams which is now already used by Mastercard and Amazon to flag suspicious transactions. 

In today’s keynote address, Sir David Hanson unveiled a new Fraud Strategy from the Home Office to ‘beef up’ the current approach.

The UK’s first dedicated minister for fraud said this would give more protections to businesses and the public, with new proposals including data sharing, improving online safety education and tackling the newest AI scam threats.

This must be an international approach, he stressed, as scams do not respect borders and can come from anywhere in the world, with little chance of those responsible being caught.

He said: ‘It’s not going to be something we can resolve, but I think we have a responsibility in all of our sectors to step up to the plate.’

Lord Hanson also announced next year’s Global Fraud Summit will take place in Vienna, jointly hosted by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime and Interpol.

He pledged ‘significant funding’ for the summit in hopes to ‘secure a global public private agreement to effectively block fraud from reaching citizens.’

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You might be forgiven for thinking it’s the end of the world on Sunday when the sun suddenly sprouts ‘devil horns’.

On March 29, a partial solar eclipse will be visible in the UK and other parts of the Northern Hemisphere.

Partial solar eclipses happen when Earth, the moon and the sun are imperfectly aligned. The moon obscures only a chunk of the sun, a phenomenon that occurs every 18 months or so.

In cosmic terms, eclipses shouldn’t happen: the moon is 400 times smaller than the sun but 400 times closer to us, so they appear about the same size in the sky.

And they rarely happen in the UK, too. Since 2003, only 11 partial, annular, or total eclipses have been visible.

If the stars align (literally) the result can be a rarely seen crescent sun, bearing a striking resemblance to a pair of horns or a cheeky grin.

Here’s everything sky-watchers need to know about Saturday’s partial solar eclipse.

When is the partial solar eclipse?

Parts of North America will be able to see the eclipse at sunrise or shortly after. Afterwards, as the sun climbs upwards, it will be seen in Greenland, Iceland, Europe and northwest Africa.

The last people to see the eclipse will be Siberians. Quebec will have the best view, with 93.1% of the sun swallowed by the moon, forecasters from The Weather Channel say.

In the UK, it will start from approximately 10.07am, according to timeanddate.com, a website that shows the time, date and major events in places around the world.

The partial solar eclipse will last for about one hour and 53 minutes and be visible across the majority of the UK – including London.

The main event of the eclipse – when the moon takes a bite of the sun – will begin at 10.36am.

The biggest bite, called the maximum eclipse, will be at 11.03am.

You can use this tool by the online planetarium In-The-Sky.org to see how much of the sun will be covered by the moon.has sent this explanation:

‘When a partial solar eclipse happens during sunrise, the part of the sun that is above the horizon and is partially covered by the moon can look like horns rising,’ Sam Imperato, an astronomer with the Royal Museums Greenwich, told Metro.

‘The horns effect looks best when the part of the sun that is uncovered by the moon is below the horizon. 

‘This effect will not be visible in the UK during the March 29 partial solar eclipse because the eclipse will be visible between 10 am-12 pm.

‘However, in North America, the partial eclipse will be visible at sunrise, so the horn phenomenon may be visible.’

The northeast of the US, eastern Canada and Greenland all have the best shot at seeing the sun grow a pair of horns.

The coastline of Forestville, Quebec and Saint Andrews, New Brunswick, both in Canada, will see the sun grin like Cheshire Cat the most.

As will Quoddy Head State Park and South Lubec Flats in Maine.

How to watch the partial solar eclipse

For one, don’t just go out and look up. You should never look at the sun without special equipment to protect your eyes.

Inexpensive options for watching the eclipse include paper solar viewers and pinhole projectors.

You can even use a colander – yes, that thing in your kitchen – by standing with your back to the sun, holding it between the sun and a piece of paper.

But don’t look through an optical device like a camera, binoculars or telescope directly at the eclipse, even while wearing a pair of paper glasses. It’s not safe, according to the Royal Astronomical Society.

Instead, eclipse chasers should buy a special solar filter for their viewing equipment.

‘If you have a telescope and are projecting the image, or are viewing it using a safe solar filter, you may notice that there are dark spots on the Sun: sunspots,’ the society adds.

‘These are places where the sun’s magnetic field restricts its light output.’

‘Also look at the edge of the moon (known as the limb) and you might see that it isn’t completely smooth, as you can see mountains or valleys on the limb silhouetted against the sun,’ it adds.

Coastal areas, elevated terrains and places with an unobstructed horizon are the ideal viewing spots. You can use map services like Peak Finder to find the flat land near you,

But if you’re sadly stuck at work or the skies are clogged with clouds, Royal Observatory Greenwich is running a live-stream of the eclipse on YouTube.

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Some Google Maps users are unhappy after seeing ‘years’ of their data deleted after a ‘technical issue’.

The problem affects those who had the Timeline feature turned on for the maps app.

It allows people to save their location data, as a record of where they have been, as well as including photos taken during your day.

This could be helpful for logistics, like remembering routes, or for sentimental reasons, like remembering visits on a trip abroad.

Users on Reddit were first to flag that there had been a problem.

In r/GooglePixel, a disgrunted Maps user shared an email they had received from Google Maps saying: ‘We’re reaching out as your account may have been impacted.

‘We understand that this can be frustrating if you use Timeline to remember places that you’ve visited, and we are taking steps to improve our systems for the future.’

They added that after taking the steps advised, ‘lo and behold, I’ve only got the last fortnight of Timeline history’.

Another user said that they had lost their saved information, describing it as ‘years of travel and memories gone’.

A Google spokesperson said: ‘We briefly experienced a technical issue that caused the deletion of Timeline data for some people.

‘Nearly everyone with encrypted Timeline backups will be able to restore their data; unfortunately those who did not have backups enabled will not be able to recover lost data.’

Timeline is turned off by default, as not everyone wants their every move to be recorded.

But for those who do, services have been restored and people should now see new visits in their Timeline.

How can I restore my Google Maps timeline data?

If you have encrypted backups enabled, you may be able to restore your data:

• Make sure you have the latest version of Google Maps, then go to your Timeline. 
• Tap the cloud icon near the top of your screen and choose a backup to import your data. 

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Paramyxoviridae, picornaviridae, and orthomyxoviridae.

You might not have heard of them, but these are among virus families at high risk of causing the next pandemic, according to a threat list released by the government.

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has published a new tool to guide priorities for research, setting out which bacteria and viruses are most likely to cause a public health risk.

They range from the wellknown (who could forget Covid-19, with us for five years now), to the more obscure (you probably won’t catch Crimean Congo Haemorrhagic fever at a UK toddler group).

The ‘priority pathogens’ list is designed to help scientists and researchers focus their efforts where they are most needed, for example with vaccine development and medication.

The list of 24 pathogen families is also the first to consider global health threats, as well as threats specific to the UK population.

Each group was given a rating of high, medium or low risk for a pandemic and localised epidemic.

As well as viruses, bacteria are assessed in the list, and given a rating of how resistant they are to drugs such as antibiotics.

Among the viral families classed as high risk for both epidemics and pandemics are coronaviridae, which includes Covid-19, and the orthomyxoviridae family, which includes bird flu.

It also includes paramyxoviridae, which causes Nipah virus, outbreaks of which have mostly been found in South East Asia, but which has the potential to spread worldwide.

Dr Isabel Oliver, chief scientific officer for UKHSA, said: ‘We live at the time of increasing challenges and increasing risks from infectious diseases.

‘But at the same time we have got, thanks to scientific advancement, better tools than we’ve ever had to protect health against these threats.

‘Having said that there are areas where we still need more or better diagnostics, vaccines and medicines and therapeutics, and this tool has been designed to help inform the work of government research funders, but also our partners in industry and academia who are critical to the development of these tools that we so desperately need.’

Experts assessed the pandemic and epidemic potential of each viral family by looking at the severity of disease, routes of transmission and previous pandemics among known pathogens in the family.

Dr Oliver added: ‘We haven’t ranked because the situation is constantly evolving, as you can imagine, and one of the things that we do in the UKHSA is undertake surveillance and monitor threats.

‘I think it is fair to say that we are concerned about all of the families in this and not exclusively so.

‘This is an important lesson from from the Covid-19 pandemic, is that it is really important that we consider the breadth of potential threats to health, and that we continue to monitor the situation and flexibly respond to those.

‘So our approach is very much to increase our resilience against all families of of concern and to work with partners to advance resilience across all of these.’

Among the UKHSA’s concerns is the spread of disease-causing mosquitoes and ticks due to climate and environmental change.

She added that some diseases on the list, like Ebola, may not be present in the UK but have an impact globally.

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Thousands of young users in the UK and other western countries have joined twisted chat networks about abusing other children, the UK’s top crime agency warned.

In a report publised today, parents were warned that their teens could be part of ‘sadistic and violent’ groups where teens are encouraged to harm themselves or others of the same age or younger.

Operating on standard social media or instant messaging apps rather anything harder to access, the groups ‘routinely share harmful content and extremist or misogynistic rhetoric’.

The National Crime Agency report warns: ‘Extreme and illicit imagery depicting violence, gore, and child sexual abuse material is frequently shared amongst users, normalising and desensitising participants to increasingly extreme content and behaviours.’

They referred to the gangs as so-called ‘com’ networks, which use ‘extreme coercion’ to manipulate young victims into harming or abusing themselves, their siblings, or pets.

The warning comes as the UK has been gripped by Netflix drama Adolescence, which depicts a 13-year-old boy arrested for the murder of a classmate, having been radicalised online.

With over 24 million views, the series has broken British records, suggesting a wide concern about the issues raised.

Today’s report shows how easy it is to find violent and abusive content online, with the problem getting much worse in recent years.

Described as an ’emerging threat’, reports increased six-fold in the UK from 2022 to 2024.

Analysts estimate that thousands of users – offenders and victims – based in the UK and other western countries have exchanged millions of messages online relating to sexual and physical abuse.

This Is Not Right

On November 25, 2024 Metro launched This Is Not Right, a year-long campaign to address the relentless epidemic of violence against women.

With the help of our partners at Women's Aid, This Is Not Right aims to shine a light on the sheer scale of this national emergency.

You can find more articles here, and if you want to share your story with us, you can send us an email at vaw@metro.co.uk.

Read more:

• Introducing This Is Not Right: Metro's year-long violence against women campaign
• Remembering the women killed by men in 2024

Members are usually young men motivated by status, power, control,
hatred of women, sexual gratification, or an obsession with extreme material.

They often want to gain notoriety by inflicting the most harm on their victims or sharing the most disturbing content, while others are paedophiles who sell material to other sex offenders.

The gangs are ‘causing some individuals, especially younger people, to develop a dangerous propensity for extreme violence,’ the report warns.

Scale of child sexual abuse ‘increasing’

The report warned that ‘the scale, severity, and complexity of child sexual abuse is increasing and continues to cause substantial long-lasting harm to victims’.

Criminals are turning to AI to create ‘large volumes’ of child sexual abuse material, including ‘sadistic or extreme’ images.

Online, abuse is ‘almost certainly becoming more monetised’ with sexual extortion of children, particularly affecting boys.

Attackers indiscriminately target large numbers of victims, including children, with online ‘how to’ guides to sextortion available on the internet.

With chatbots becoming better known and more widespread, AI is set to have a bigger impact on abuse in the UK.

The report warned that convincing child personas can be created using generative AI, using software to make their voices sound like a child’s voice to disguise the true person behind it.

Editing software can also be used to create fake nude images of children, used to threaten them for financial extortion.

Last month, Richard Ehiemere was convicted of fraud and indecent images of children offences, committed when he was just 17 and linked to a prolific online harms group.

In January, 19-year-old Cameron Finnegan was jailed for assisting suicide, possession of indecent images of children, a terror offence, and criminal damage.

Director general of the NCA Graeme Biggar said: ‘Young people are being drawn into these sadistic and violent online gangs where they are collaborating at scale to inflict, or incite others to commit, serious harm.

‘It is especially concerning to see the impact this is having on young girls who are often groomed into hurting themselves and in some cases, even encouraged to attempt suicide.’

Jess Phillips, minister for safeguarding and violence against women and girls, said the scale of child sexual abuse in the report is ‘absolutely horrific’, urging parents to have open conversations with their children and tech companies to ensure platforms are safe.

Alastair Simpson, national policing lead for Child Sexual Exploitation, said: ‘The role of undercover online officers is vital in this space, and my message to anyone who is exploiting children online: remember that there is no space where criminals operate that we cannot go, and investigations into these networks have already begun.’

Anna Edmundson, from children’s charity the NSPCC, said: ‘What is reported to be going on within these ‘Com’ networks is degrading, dangerous and criminal and must be stopped before even more children’s lives – both those who are victims and those young people who are harming others  – are damaged or destroyed.

‘At the same time it is incumbent on all of us to challenge and change this ‘macho’ culture that so many young boys are being exposed to and influenced by.

‘But first and foremost, tech companies must take proactive steps to tackle the abuse that is flourishing on their services – including through private messaging. This must also be shored up by Ofcom taking robust action to ensure platforms are held accountable for delivering safe and healthy online experiences for all children.’

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Grindr is overhauling its app to roll out a game-changing new feature in London and fourteen other world cities.

Metro has been given an exclusive video of the LGBT dating app’s ‘Right Now’ tool, soon to be available for gay daters in London.

Right Now adds a real-time feed, separate from the iconic Grindr grid, designed to provide immediate hook ups.

The feature is one of a number of new Grindr services hitting users this year, which aim to diversify the app’s offering on travel fun and finding relationships.

Grindr is a location-based dating app used primarily by gay men, and almost one million Brits and 14.5million people world wide.

Right Now is being launched today in London, as well as New York City, Paris, Madrid, Milan, Amsterdam, and Sao Paulo.

Keen Londoners who get the updated app can get Right Now on both iOS and Android.

The separate feed can be found via the main navigation bar, side bar, and a floating action button on the main grid.

Those looking for a quick fling will have ten hour-long sessions per week to find their nearby hook up.

Once those have been used people will be able to purchase additional Right Now sessions.

Speaking exclusively to Metro, AJ Balance, Chief Product Officer at Grindr, said: ‘Grindr is the the Global Gayborhood in Your Pocket. Casual dating is where we started in 2009, it was the origin.

‘Bu the culture has changed, we have grown to be a global product.

‘A lot of people have gotten a lot of value out of it and now get a lot of other things out of the app.

‘Too often, people start a conversation only to realize they’re looking for different things – one person wants a date, the other a quick connection.

‘Right Now makes it clear who’s available and what they’re looking for, in real time.’

Right Now is targeting those based in London and other key cities, but Grindr are hoping to roll it out globally by the end of the year.

It was first piloted last year in Australia and the Washington D.C. area.

‘Our users really liked it,’ AJ added.

‘We are now in early testing for our other features. Some of our lucky users will get them early this years, others later this year.’

‘We are very proud of the mission and we are fulfilled by serving our users every day.

‘It is an immense responsibility. We constantly want to be doing even more and doing more for our users all the time.’

Grindr also wants to promote the building of relationships and deeper connections on their app, which is already known for hook-ups.

To do this they plan to introduce a ‘For You’ tab of AI chosen potential matches for users.

Grindr also want to help more gay men hook up abroad. They will soon be launching a new ‘heatmap’ to reveal the liveliest gay areas in a city.

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‘We have 1,028 days left.’

This is the simple message scrawled onto a white t-shirt worn by Alizée, a then-22-year-old climate change campaigner.

On June 3, 2022, she strolled onto Court Philippe-Chatrier, Paris, during the French Open semi-final and glued herself to the net.

Alizée sat there for some 10 minutes as Norway’s Casper Ruud and Croatia’s Marin Čilić left the court and the cameras kept rolling.

Along the neckline of the t-shirt were the words, ‘Dernière Rénovation’, the French climate group Alizée was a member of behind the stunt.

Campaigners created a website at least a few days after the stunt, according to internet archives, that features a simple countdown.

At the time of writing, the ticking clock reads: ’00 days. 06 hours. 52 minutes. 15 seconds.’

So, if all goes to plan, the countdown will finish at 10pm tonight.

But what exactly did the group mean by: ‘We have 1,028 days left’?

Other than a statement on the day from Dernière Rénovation that spoke of ‘1,028 days we have to determine the future of humanity’ and March 28, 2025, being ‘the date on which citizens entered into civil resistance’, campaigners have never exactly said what will happen when the clock runs out.

After all, the deadline seems almost reminiscent of the Doomsday Clock that estimates – in the stark terms of ‘minutes to midnight’ – how close humanity is to annihilation. As of January, it’s 89 seconds to midnight.

But it’s unlikely that the countdown signals a prophesied end of the world, the arrival of aliens or World War III breaking out.

It’s something simpler – but just as ominous.

‘We have 1,028 days left’ till what?

Climate change, largely caused by the burning of fossil fuels in rich nations, has pushed global temperatures to new highs.

‘What will happen? It’s already happening,’ said a spokesperson from Just Stop Oil, a group that wants to prevent new oil and gas licensing in the UK.

A weeks-long 40°C spring heat wave that closed schools in India.Supercharged hurricanes across the US and cyclones in the Philippines.

The most destructive wildfires in the history of Los Angeles. Torrential rain that turned streets into rivers and killed 232 people in October.

These are just a few of the 151 unprecedented extreme weather events in 2024 identified by climate scientists.

Carbon dioxide emissions hit a record that year, and it was the hottest year in recorded history.

What happens next?

These ‘tragedies’, the spokesperson said, are being ‘repeated daily’. Flooding tore through Italy and Argentina earlier this month, which scientists say was ‘strengthened by human-driven climate change’.

‘This month, Spain has seen three consecutive weeks of torrential rains that have flooded streets, washed away bridges, paralysed transport and inundated crops,’ Just Stop Oil added.

‘None of us are ready for what is coming next.’

Alizée, however, had an idea even back in 2022 of what was coming next. She told Le Monde that wearing the t-shirt was an ‘act of desperation’.

‘We are all going to die if we don’t act on the climate crisis,’ she added.

What is being done to combat climate change?

Dernière Rénovation had hoped politicians would act. ‘France has been condemned by its own courts for climate inaction,’ it said.

‘The future of this country is literally destroyed. To waste time is to perish.’

For the past decade, the world has sought to squash – and, these days, slow down – climate change.

Nations signed the 2015 Paris agreement to limit warming to 1.5°C by investing more in renewable energy, reducing emissions and working towards carbon neutrality within the next few decades.

This, however, is now all but impossible. Nations would have to slash carbon emissions at an almost impossible pace to keep it anything around 1.6°C, scientists say.

And Chris Wright, the new US energy secretary, promised oil and gas executives earlier this month a ‘180 degree pivot’ from the previous Biden administration’s green energy policies.

The former fracking boss is one of US President Donald Trump’s loudest supporters of fossil fuels – and critics of almost any federal policy that aims to tackle climate change.

‘Our broken politics is failing to address the physical reality,’ Just Stop Oil explained.

‘Flirting with dangerous ideologies, promoted by hedge fund and tech bro billionaires, our politicians are prioritising endless growth, corporate profits and the wealth of the super rich over the wellbeing of ordinary people.’

Dernière Rénovation’s countdown continues to tick.

While one singular thing might not happen when it hits zero tonight, Just Stop Oil says it hopes people ‘put their bodies on the line’ by helping to fight climate change – and far sooner than tonight.

‘We need to resist the politics of hate and come together to decide how we address the existential crisis we face,’ the spokesperson said.

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The company which owns social media platform Facebook says it could launch paid-for subscriptions to the site in the UK.

Meta says both Facebook and Instagram are ‘free for British consumers because of personalised advertising’.

This is when adverts shown in your news feed are tailored to your interests and other adverts and posts you’ve interacted with before, in the hope you are more likely to make a purchase.

But Meta has recently agreed to stop targeting adverts at a human rights campaigner who took the business to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

Tanya O’Carroll filed a lawsuit against Facebook for using her personal data for direct marketing purposes – which the ICO agreed she should be able to object to under General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Calling personalised adverts ‘surveillance ads’, Tanya celebrated her ‘victory’ and said she believes this will pave the way ‘for the right to object to be used to stand up to surveillance-advertising across the web’.

But a Meta spokesperson said the company ‘fundamentally disagrees’ with Tanya’s claims, saying ‘no business can be mandated to give away its services for free.

The company already offers an advert-free subscription to EU users, and it may now extend this to the UK.

A spokesperson for Meta said it is ‘pleased to draw a line under this long-running case’, adding: ‘We take our UK GDPR obligations seriously and provide robust settings and tools for users to control their data and advertising preferences.

‘Facebook and Instagram cost a significant amount of money to build and maintain, and these services are free for British consumers because of personalised advertising.

‘Like many internet services, we are exploring the option of offering people based in the UK a subscription and will share further information in due course.’

Following the ruling, Tanya said: ‘In settling my case, Meta has agreed to stop processing my personal data for direct marketing purposes. In non-legalese, that means I will no longer be shown surveillance-ads on Facebook.

‘I believe this is a victory not just for me but for every UK and EU citizen as it paves the way for the right to object to be used to stand up to surveillance-advertising across the web.

‘I applaud the ICO for their rational and principled application of the law in their intervention in my case and for publicly confirming they will back up other UK citizens who wish to exercise their right to object in the context of online targeted ads.’

An ICO spokesperson said: ‘People have the right to object to their personal information being used for direct marketing, and we have been clear that online targeted advertising should be considered as direct marketing.

‘Organisations must respect people’s choices about how their data is used. This means giving users a clear way to opt out of their data being used in this way.

‘If people believe that an organisation is not complying with their request to stop processing their data, they can file a complaint to us. We will continue to engage with Meta on this issue.’

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Could there be a ‘vast underground city’ beneath the Pyramids of Giza?

Egypt’s desert holds many secrets, even after centuries of excavation and graverobbing.

The last undiscovered tomb of the Tutankhamun dynasty was only confirmed to belong to pharaoh Thutmose II earlier this year.

Around half of the known pharaoh’s burial sites are yet to be found.

Even the river that allowed the pyramids to be built along its banks has vanished into the sand.

That made the way two-and-a-half million 2.5 ton blocks of granite were moved to build the Great Pyramid of Giza seem mysterious, until the older course of the River Nile was mapped last year much further to the west than it runs today.

Lingering questions of where, how and why have fuelled speculation that the pyramids could point towards alien intervention or lost civilisation, and advanced technologies of which we can only imagine.

Now researchers claim they have discovered ‘the legendary halls of Amenti’ – in other words, the underworld of Egyptian mythology – right beneath the pyramids of Giza.

Describing it as ‘a vast underground city’, they say the ‘unprecedented discoveries’ using synthetic aperture radar (SAR) include structures, rooms and corridors.

Listing their claimed discoveries, they said: ‘The discovery of an extensive network of vertical shafts estimated to extend at least 1km deep beneath each Great Pyramid, which appear to serve as access points to this underground system.

‘The existence of vast chambers beneath the earth’s surface, comparable in size to the pyramids themselves.

‘A remarkably strong correlation between the layout and characteristics of these underground chambers and the legendary Halls of Amenti, as described in ancient myths, including those associated with the god Thoth.’

New, unpublished research from Corrado Malanga from Italy’s University of Pisa, Filippo Biondi with the University of Strathclyde in Scotland and Egyptologist Armando Mei was shared with the MailOnline.

They said they have a confidence level ‘well above 85%’ that the ‘structures identified beneath the Pyramid of Khafre, as well as those beneath other pyramids on the Giza Plateau’ exist.

But not everyone sees what they do. Monica Hanna, a top Egyptologist and dean at the Arab Academy for Science, Technology & Maritime Transport, told Metro: ‘It is totally unfounded. A total scam.’

Professor Lawrence Conyers, a radar expert at the University of Denver,told MailOnline that the technology used doesn’t penetrate 1km into the ground.

‘My take is that as long as authors are not making things up and that their basic methods are correct, their interpretations should be given a look by all who care about the site,’ he said.

‘We can quibble about interpretations, and that is called science. But the basic methods need to be solid.’

The only way to prove the theory is to do targeted digs of the site, something that fact-checkers have long stressed.

Professor Lawrence Conyers, a radar expert at the University of Denver, said no claims can be made anytime soon that the structures exist.

But underground structures may exist beneath the pyramids as the site was once ‘special to ancient people’ such as the Mayans.

But these bold claims have captured the imagination of social media users who believe a range of conspiracy theories, including that aliens built the pyramids.

Another, that followers claim is proven by these researchers, is a highly advanced civilisation known as the Tatarian Empire developed infinite energy, world peace and elaborate buildings before being wiped out by mud floods and war, and then deliberately erased from history.

Devotees of this theory point to buildings as varied as the Pyramids of Giza, the White House and random churches all over the world as entry points to this supposedly lost civilisation buried beneath our feet.

Others have claimed the pyramids were ancient power plants, which one of the researchers – Corrado Malanga – appears sympathetic to.

Part of what has made this claimed discovery go viral is the proliferation of AI imagery, offering various interpretations of what hypothetical underground structures could look like.

While these latest claims lack credibility, there is some evidence of underground structures yet to be explored.

A 2024 study from Japanese and Egyptian researchers, published in Smithsonian Magazine, found what could be ‘a shallow structure connected to a deeper structure’ beneath the pyramids.

Whether it is empty or filled with sand and gravel, they do not know, but the evidence they found pointed to nothing ‘comparable in size to the pyramids themselves’, like the latest claims suggest.

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A tech expert has leaked what he claims is Apple’s iPhone 17 series – and if true, it’s safe to say they look fairly different.

A dummy phone is a non-working phone made to show what the real thing looks like.

Case manufacturers often obtain them well before the phone’s official release to ensure their accessories fit.

Sammy Dickson, a seasoned leaker, shared a photograph of ‘iPhone 17 dummies’ this week.

This includes the typical versions of the smartphone we’ve come to expect: iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro and Phone 17 Pro Max as well as what gadget gossipers have dubbed the ‘iPhone 17 Air’.

The Air is noticeably slimmer than the chunky Pro model, with rumours suggesting it will have no ports at all – even a USB-C connector – and will be just 5.5mm thick.

Unlike the regular iPhone 17 model, it seems the Pro and Slim have an elongated horizontal camera module, a big departure from older Apple mobiles.

‘Here’s your first look at a case for the iPhone 17 Air,’ Dickson added.

‘If you didn’t know an Air was coming, you’d swear it was a Google Pixel case.’

As sleek as the Air will be, the cutout on the case suggests it will still have the customisable Action button and a Camera Control button, a shortcut key for the camera that also lets you tweak photo settings.

According to MacRumours, the iPhone 17 Air will be launched in September. Among its features will be a 6.6-inch OLED display, a 48-megapixel camera and no physical SIM card slot.

Dickson shared another image of the alleged dummies on Thursday.

The iPhone 17 Pro dummy model features an outlined area on the back just below the camera module and extending to the bottom of the chassis.

This is ‘where the glass will change’, Dickson said. Leaker Fixed Focus Digital has previously claimed the iPhone 17 Pro will be made out of a patchwork of different materials, including glass for the logo.

All the models, according to the alleged dummies, will feature MagSafe.

The tech uses hidden magnets in the phone to align it with the charging components of accessories.

So you could simply slap your phone on top of a MagSafe charger, as indicated by the circular outline on the back of the phone dummies.

But it seems people aren’t sure what to feel about what the iPhone 17 line might look like.

‘These are the ugliest iPhones in history. Wow,’ said one X user.

Another user, Kevin Brown, added: ‘I’m not sure who Apple is making iPhones for anymore.’

How the upcoming line will still have the Camera Control button had a but of a mixed reaction.

‘Get rid of the stupid camera button, or at least move it to a more convenient area,’ said Drew.

‘I wish they’d just get rid of it,’ replied Nick.

Or as another user rather simply said: ‘Why do we still have the camera button?’

The Camera Control button was introduced on the iPhone 16 line, on the lower end of the smartphone’s side. Pressing it once pulls the Camera app up, while a second click acts as a shutter button.

Lightly or double touching the key brings up controls, such as adjusting exposure, depth or zoom.

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.

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