Venezuela has lost its last remaining glacier after it shrunk so much that scientists reclassified it as an ice field.

It is thought Venezuela is the first country to have lost all its glaciers in modern times.

The country had been home to six glaciers in the Sierra Nevada de Mérida mountain range, which lies at about 5,000m above sea level. Five of the glaciers had disappeared by 2011, leaving just the Humboldt glacier, also known as La Corona, close to the country’s second highest mountain, Pico Humboldt.

The Humboldt glacier was projected to last at least another decade, but scientists had been unable to monitor the site for a few years due to political turmoil in the country.

Now assessments have found the glacier melted much faster than expected, and had shrunk to an area of less than 2 hectares. As a result, its classification was downgraded from glacier to ice field.

“Other countries lost their glaciers several decades ago after the end of the little ice age but Venezuela is arguably the first one to lose them in modern times,” said Maximiliano Herrera, a climatologist and weather historian who maintains a chronicle of extreme temperature records online.

According to Herrera, Indonesia, Mexico and Slovenia are next in line to become glacier-free, with Indonesia’s Papua island and Mexico having experienced record-high warmth in recent months, which is expected to accelerate the glaciers’ retreat.

“The glacier at Humboldt does not have an accumulation zone and is currently only losing surface, with no dynamic of accumulation or expansion,” said Luis Daniel Llambi, an ecologist at Adaptation at Altitude, a programme for climate change adaptation in the Andes.

“Our last expedition to the area was in December 2023 and we did observe that the glacier had lost some 2 hectares from the previous visit in 2019, [down from 4 hectares] to less than 2 hectares now.”

The world has recently been experiencing the El Niño climate phenomenon, which leads to hotter temperatures and which experts say can accelerate the demise of tropical glaciers.

“In the Andean area of Venezuela, there have been some months with monthly anomalies of +3C/+4C above the 1991-2020 average, which is exceptional at those tropical latitudes,” said Herrera.

Llambi said Venezuela is a mirror of what will continue to happen from north to south, first in Colombia and Ecuador, then in Peru and Bolivia, as glaciers continue to retreat from the Andes.

“This is an extremely sad record for our country, but also a unique moment in our history, providing an opportunity to [not only] communicate the reality and immediacy of climate change impacts, but also to study the colonisation of life under extreme conditions and the changes that climate change brings to high mountain ecosystems.”

In a last-ditch attempt to save the glacier, the Venezuelan government has installed a thermal blanket to prevent further melting, but experts say it is an exercise in futility.

“The loss of La Corona marks the loss of much more than the ice itself, it also marks the loss of the many ecosystem services that glaciers provide, from unique microbial habitats to environments of significant cultural value,” said Caroline Clason, a glaciologist and assistant professor at Durham University.

Venezuelan glaciers had a limited role in water provision for the region, in contrast with countries such as Peru, where tropical glaciers are much more extensive.

“The biggest impact for me of the disappearance of glaciers is cultural,” said Llambi. “Glaciers were a part of the region’s cultural identity, and for the mountaineering and touristic activities.”

Clason said: “That Venezuela has now lost all its glaciers really symbolises the changes we can expect to see across our global cryosphere under continued climate change. As a glaciologist, this is a poignant reminder of why we do the job and what is at stake for these environments and for society.”

More than 800,000 people in Europe and the US appear to have been duped into sharing card details and other sensitive personal data with a vast network of fake online designer shops apparently operated from China.

An international investigation by the Guardian, Die Zeit and Le Monde gives a rare inside look at the mechanics of what the UK’s Chartered Trading Standards Institute has described as one of the largest scams of its kind, with 76,000 fake websites created.

A trove of data examined by reporters and IT experts indicates the operation is highly organised, technically savvy – and ongoing.

Operating on an industrial scale, programmers have created tens of thousands of fake web shops offering discounted goods from Dior, Nike, Lacoste, Hugo Boss, Versace and Prada, as well as many other premium brands.

Published in multiple languages from English to German, French, Spanish, Swedish and Italian, the websites appear to have been set up to lure shoppers into parting with money and sensitive personal data.

However, the sites have no connection to the brands they claim to sell and in most cases consumers who spoke about their experience said they received no items.

The first fake shops in the network appear to have been created in 2015. More than 1m “orders” have been processed in the past three years alone, according to analysis of the data. Not all payments were successfully processed, but analysis suggests the group may have attempted to take as much as €50m (£43m) over the period. Many shops have been abandoned, but a third of them – more than 22,500 – are still live.

So far, an estimated 800,000 people, almost all of them in Europe and the US, have shared email addresses, with 476,000 of them having shared debit and credit card details, including their three-digit security number. All of them also handed over their names, phone numbers, email and postal addresses to the network.

Katherine Hart, a lead officer at the Chartered Trading Standards Institute, described the operation as “one of the largest online fake shops scams that I have seen”. She added: “Often these people are part of serious and organised crime groups so they are harvesting data and may use it against people later, making consumers more susceptible to phishing attempts.”

“Data is the new currency,” said Jake Moore, a global cybersecurity adviser at the software company ESET. He warned such personal data troves could also be valuable to foreign intelligence agencies for surveillance purposes. “The bigger picture is that one must assume the Chinese government may have potential access to the data,” he added.

The existence of the fake shops network was revealed by Security Research Labs (SR Labs), a German cybersecurity consultancy, which obtained several gigabytes of data and shared it with Die Zeit.

A core group of developers appears to have built a system to semi-automatically create and launch websites, allowing rapid deployment. This core appears to have operated some shops themselves, but to have allowed other groups to use the system. The logs suggest at least 210 users have accessed the system since 2015.

SR Labs consultant Matthias Marx described the model as “franchise-like”. He said: “The core team is responsible for developing software, deploying backends, and supporting the operation of the network. The franchisees manage the day-to-day operations of fraudulent shops.”

‘It reeled me in …’

It was a few weeks before Christmas. Melanie Brown, 54, from Shropshire in England, was looking for a new handbag. She put the image of a leather item from one of her favourite German designers, Rundholz, into Google. Immediately a website appeared offering the bag at 50% off the usual £200 retail price. She added it to her cart.

“It reeled me in,” she said. After selecting the bag she spotted other designer clothes from a high-end brand she loves called Magnolia Pearl. She found dresses, tops and jeans, racking up a £1,200 bill on 15 items. “I was getting a lot for the money, so I thought it was worth it,” she said.

But Brown was being ripped off. Over nearly a decade, a network operating from Fujian province in China used what appears to be a single software platform to create tens of thousands of fake online shops.

There are the big global brands such as Paul Smith, haute couture houses such as Christian Dior, but also more niche, much sought-after names such as Rixo and Stella McCartney, and high street retailers like Clarks shoes. Not just clothes – there are fake stores selling quality toys, such as Playmobil, and at least one selling lighting.

About 49 people who say they were scammed have been interviewed for this investigation. The Guardian spoke to 19 from the UK and the US. Their evidence suggests these websites were not set up to trade in counterfeit goods. Most people received nothing in the mail. A few did, but the items were not the ones ordered. A German shopper paid for a blazer and received cheap sunglasses. A British customer received a bogus Cartier ring instead of a shirt and another was sent a non-branded blue jumper instead of the Paul Smith one they had paid for.

Strangely, many who tried to shop never lost money. Either their bank blocked the payment, or the fake shop itself did not process it.

However, all of those interviewed have one thing in common: they handed over their private data.

Simon Miller, the director of policy and communications for Stop Scams UK, said: “Data can be more valuable than sales. If you are hoovering up someone’s card details that data is invaluable then for a bank account takeover.”

SR Labs, which works with corporations to protect their systems from cyber-attacks, believes the scam is operating on two levels. First, credit card harvesting, in which fake payment gateways collect credit card data but do not take any money. Second, fake selling, where the criminals do take money. There is evidence the network took payments processed via PayPal, Stripe and other payment services, and in some cases directly from debit or credit cards.

The network used expired domains to host its fake shops, which experts say can help to avoid detection by websites or brand owners. It appears to have a database of 2.7m of these orphaned domains and runs tests to check which ones are best to use.

In Germany, the owner of a glass bead factory said she had received angry calls almost every day from shoppers asking where their Lacoste clothes were. She found out that an old website of hers, perlenzwoelfe.de, had been used for the scam. She was findable as content she had previously placed on at that address was visible in web archives. She reported the fraud to the police. “The officials just said there was nothing they could do about it.”

It was the same story for Michael Rouah who runs Artoyz, an online store and shop in central Paris selling handmade toys. His full catalogue of products was copied. “They changed the name and used another domain … They stole the images from our website and changed the prices, putting them – of course – much lower.”

He was alerted to the fraud by customers. “We generally can’t do much about it … We explored taking action with a lawyer, but it takes time and it costs money,” he said.

The network appears to have originated in Fujian province. Many of the IP (internet protocol) addresses can be traced back to China, some to the Fujian cities of Putian and Fuzhou.

Payroll documents found in the data suggest individuals were hired as developers and data harvesters and paid salaries through Chinese banks.

There were also three templates for employment contracts, where the employer is listed as Fuzhou Zhongqing Network Technology Co Ltd.

Officially registered in China, and issued with an official unique identifier number, the company gives its address as Fuzhou, the capital of Fujian. It is not clear what connection it has to the network.

The contracts set out strict working conditions. The employee is given a performance score and can increase their salary with a higher ranking. They are judged on whether they refrain from playing video games, watching movies, or sleeping while at work. If staff are sick or take a holiday, their salary is reduced for days missed unless they work overtime.

The data includes a spreadsheet describing the payment between January and October 2022 of 2,410,000 yuan (almost £266,000) in dividends to at least four shareholders of an unnamed company.

The Fuzhou Zhongqing company is now advertising for developers and data collectors via Chinese recruitment websites. The salary for a data collection specialist is 4,500-7,000 Chinese yuan (about £500 to £700) a monthand the business is described as a “foreign trade company that mainly produces sports shoes, fashion clothing, brand bags, and other series”.

The Fuzhou Zhongqing company did not respond to a request for comment.

Action Fraud, the UK’s reporting centre for cybercrime, said it would seek to have the fake web shops taken down.

Online scams are a growing problem. There were 77,000 cases of purchase fraud – where goods are paid for but never materialise – in the UK in the first six months of 2023, a 43% increase compared with the same period in 2022. In the US consumers lost nearly $8.8bn to fraud in 2022, an increase of more than 30% over the previous year. The second most commonly reported scam is related to online shopping fraud.

According to the TSB fraud spokesperson Matt Hepburn, purchase fraud is “the biggest driver” of online financial crime in the UK. He said technology companies should do more to protect consumers. “Search engines and tech platforms must prevent their users from being exposed to fake sites, and swiftly remove the scam content that is reported to them.”

Hester Abrams, the international engagement manager at the industry collaboration Stop Scams UK, said: “Consumers will only be better protected from criminal outfits exploiting digital systems if businesses and governments make scam prevention a genuine priority. Investigations like this show just how much impact we could have against scammers with a better coordinated international effort.”

Additional reporting from Helen Davidson and Chi-hui Lin

Republican John Hostettler has lost his House primary in Indiana, delivering a victory to pro-Israel groups who sought to block the former congressman from returning to Washington. The groups attacked Hostettler as insufficiently supportive of Israel at a time when criticism of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has hit new highs because of the war in Gaza.

When the Associated Press called the eighth district primary race at 7.49pm ET, less than an hour after the last polls closed in Indiana, Mark Messmer led his opponents with 40% of the vote. Messmer, the Indiana state senate majority leader, will advance to the general election in November, which he is heavily favored to win because of the district’s Republican leanings. The victor will replace Republican congressman Larry Bucshon, who announced his retirement earlier this year.

The primary concludes a contentious race in which pro-Israel groups poured millions of dollars into the district to attack Hostettler, who served in the House from 1995 to 2007. The groups specifically criticized Hostettler’s past voting record on Israel and some comments he made that were deemed antisemitic.

In a book that he self-published in 2008 after leaving Congress, Hostettler blamed some of George W Bush’s advisers “with Jewish backgrounds” for pushing the country into the war in Iraq, arguing they were distracted by their interest in protecting Israel.

Those comments, combined with Hostettler’s vote opposing a resolution expressing solidarity with Israel in 2000, after the start of the second intifada, outraged groups like the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) and United Democracy Project (UDP), a Super Pac affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

According to documents filed with the Federal Election Commission, UDP spent $1.2m opposing Hostettler while the RJC Victory Fund invested $950,000 in supporting Messmer.

One UDP ad attacked Hostettler as “one of the most anti-Israel politicians in America”, citing his vote against the resolution in 2000. The CEO of RJC, Matt Brooks, previously lambasted Hostettler for having “consistently opposed vital aid to Israel [and] trafficked antisemitic conspiracy theories”.

But the groups’ interest in a Republican primary is a notable departure from their other recent forays into congressional races. So far this election cycle, UDP has largely used its massive war chest to target progressive candidates in Democratic primaries. UDP spent $4.6m opposing the Democratic candidate Dave Min, who ultimately advanced to the general election, and the group has also dedicated $2.4m to supporting Democrat Sarah Elfreth in Maryland, which will hold its primaries next week.

Aipac and its affiliates reportedly plan to spend $100m across this election cycle, so UDP may still get involved in other Republican congressional primaries. However, the groups will likely remain largely focused on Democrats, as Republican lawmakers and voters have generally indicated higher levels of support for Israel since the start of the war in Gaza.

A Guardian review of the statements of members of Congress after the start of the war found that every Republican in Congress was supportive of Israel. Even as criticism of Israel’s airstrike campaign in Gaza has mounted, one Gallup poll conducted in March found that 64% of Republicans approve of Israel’s military actions, compared with 18% of Democrats and 29% of independents who said the same.

Other polls have shown that most Americans support calls for a ceasefire in Gaza, and hopes for a pause in the war did briefly rise this week. Hamas leaders on Monday announced they would accept a ceasefire deal, but Israel soon dashed hopes of peace by launching an operation to take control of the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt.

Renewable energy accounted for more than 30% of the world’s electricity for the first time last year following a rapid rise in wind and solar power, according to new figures.

A report on the global power system has found that the world may be on the brink of driving down fossil fuel generation, even as overall demand for electricity continues to rise.

Clean electricity has already helped to slow the growth in fossil fuels by almost two-thirds in the past 10 years, according to the report by climate thinktank Ember. It found that renewables have grown from 19% of electricity in 2000 to more than 30% of global electricity last year.

“The renewables future has arrived,” said Dave Jones, Ember’s director of global insights. “Solar, in particular, is accelerating faster than anyone thought possible.”

Solar was the main supplier of electricity growth, according to Ember, adding more than twice as much new electricity generation as coal in 2023.

It was the fastest-growing source of electricity for the 19th consecutive year, and also became the largest source of new electricity for the second year running, after surpassing wind power.

The first comprehensive review of global electricity data covers 80 countries, which represent 92% of the world’s electricity demand, as well as historic data for 215 countries.

The surge in clean electricity is expected to power a 2% decrease in global fossil fuel generation in the year ahead, according to Ember.

“The decline of power sector emissions is now inevitable,” said Jones. “2023 was likely the pivot point – peak emissions in the power sector – a major turning point in the history of energy. But the pace of emissions falls depends on how fast the renewables revolution continues.”

Although fossil fuel use in the world’s electricity system may begin to fall, it continues to play an outsized role in global energy – in transport fuels, heavy industry and heating.

A separate study by the Energy Institute found last year that fossil fuels including oil, gas and coal made up 82% of the world’s primary energy.

World leaders are aiming to grow renewables to 60% of global electricity by 2030 under an agreement struck at the UN’s Cop28 climate change conference in December.

This would require countries to triple their current renewable electricity capacity in the next six years, which would almost halve power sector emissions.

It was a night when Borussia Dortmund penned one of the finest chapters in their history, a seemingly unremarkable team – low on stellar names – doing something utterly astonishing.

It has felt as though they have been written off repeatedly this season, starting with when they were plunged into the Champions League group of death. They won that with a measure of comfort, ahead of Paris Saint-Germain, Milan and Newcastle.

After they got past PSV Eindhoven in the last 16, Atlético Madrid were supposed to be too good for them in the quarter-finals – wrong again – while here, PSG were fancied to overturn a 1-0 deficit from the first leg of this semi-final.

Dortmund are at an awfully low ebb domestically, lagging fifth in the Bundesliga. But something has stirred in them whenever they have heard this competition’s aria, never more so than at the Parc des Princes. Dortmund looked like the royalty, the team that have regularly struggled to take the decisive step over the past decade or so, stunning PSG with their collective resolve, their bodies-on-the-line defending.

They rode their luck. It was always going to be a part of it at this pulsating venue. PSG had hit the woodwork twice in the first leg. Here, they did so a further four times – all of the near misses coming during a second half when they threw everything they had at Dortmund. It was incredible theatre.

Mats Hummels got the goal that meant everything to Dortmund, the 35-year-old rising unchallenged to head home from a corner shortly after the interval. He is a veteran of the club’s previous Champions League final appearance – the 2013 loss to Bayern Munich at Wembley. Dortmund are heading back there again and they could even meet Bayern, who are locked at 2-2 against Real Madrid in the other semi-final ahead of Wednesday night’s second leg.

The Dortmund celebrations exploded like a firecracker upon the full-time whistle, the players streaming over to the section by one of the corner flags that housed their supporters, a seething mass of euphoria. The players bounced up and down in front of them for what seemed like an age; they did not want to tear themselves away. The idea now will be to emulate the Class of 97 – Matthias Sammer, Paul Lambert, Karl-Heinz Riedle, Lars Ricken et al, who conquered Juventus to collect the club’s lone European Cup.

Dortmund’s joy contrasted vividly with PSG’s dejection. Luis Enrique’s team have sewn up the Ligue 1 title and they will face Lyon in the French Cup final. The treble had been on. This is a new-look team, with an emphasis on the collective in the post-Lionel Messi and Neymar era, even if one shining star has remained. Kylian Mbappé, though, will depart in the summer, the dream send-off having turned to dust.

The PSG president, Nasser al-Khelaifi, had claimed when he appointed Luis Enrique last summer that the Champions League was no longer “the obsession … that is over”. It was about building a new identity, a new culture. The bottom line was that this would have cut him to the core, together with everyone at the club, even if the diehards on the Virage Auteuil mustered a tremendous ovation for their beaten players when it was all over. PSG still cannot bend this competition to the force of their desire.

All that PSG could see in the first half was a yellow wall, the Dortmund players closing the spaces, moving as one. Edin Terzic had demanded his players cede nothing in between the lines and, with Hummels and Nico Schlotterbeck setting the example in defensive terms, PSG created nothing of clearcut note before the interval.

When PSG had the flicker of a final pass or shooting opportunity, they rushed things, Ousmane Dembélé’s slash off target in the 31st minute a good example. That was probably as close as PSG came in the first half because Dembele had been well placed. It was not very close.

The feeling nagged that Dortmund could land a counterpunch. They were composed on the ball, especially Julian Brandt, while Jadon Sancho also enjoyed some nice moments. They almost did on 36 minutes after Mbappé had failed to make a clean connection on a half chance. It was Karim Adeyemi who flicked on the afterburners, tearing the length of the field and unloading a low drive. Gianluigi Donnarumma threw out a big left hand to save.

PSG battled to master the occasion. Warren Zaïre-Emery hit a post from a tight angle upon the second-half restart; he seemed to have enough of the goal to aim at after an Mbappé cross. And when Marquinhos conceded a corner with a loose back-pass, the scene was set for Hummels. Where was the marking on Brandt’s corner? Lucas Beraldo was the closest defender to Hummels and he was nowhere near tight enough.

PSG ran on emotion, driven by increasing desperation. Gonçalo Ramos wasted a couple of half chances either side of a Nuno Mendes blast that slammed into the far post. The margins were against PSG, the feeling reinforced when Hummels fouled Dembélé on the very edge of the area and the referee, Daniele Orsato, opted for a free-kick rather than a penalty.

It was excruciatingly tight. Ditto when Mbappé and Vitinha both struck the crossbar in the closing stages, the latter with a rasping drive from distance. Something extraordinary has driven Dortmund. The ultimate prize is in sharp focus.

A security guard at the mansion of Canadian hip-hop artist Drake has been “seriously injured” in a shooting outside the musician’s Toronto home.

The victim, an adult male, was rushed to a Toronto hospital with serious but non-life-threatening injuries following the shooting early on Tuesday morning.

Paul Krawczyk of the city’s police service told reporters on Tuesday that investigators had little information and were studying surveillance footage for leads.

The assailant was reportedly spotted fleeing the area in a vehicle.

Drake, whose legal name is Aubrey Graham, has in recent sparred publicly with the California rapper Kendrick Lamar in a series of “diss tracks”.

Krawczyk said police were aware of the tension between the two rappers but didn’t link the high-profile spat to the shooting.

“It is so early in the investigation that we don’t have a motive at this time,” Krawczyk said.

In recent days, the superstars have made increasingly provocative and unsubstantiated allegations against each other. Lamar’s most recent track, Not Like Us, features a satellite image of Drake’s 50,000 square foot mega-mansion – the same property that was cordoned off with police tape after Tuesday’s shooting.

The ongoing dispute between the two rappers, which has made headlines, has benefited at least one local business in Toronto. After Lamar, a Pulitzer-prize winner, referenced the Chinese restaurant New Ho King, business more than tripled and the eatery, established in the 1970s, was flood with rave reviews.

“Kendrick recommended … did not disappoint … mans knows good food excellent service,” wrote one reviewer.

A British woman has pleaded guilty to being part of a global monkey torture network.

Holly LeGresley, 37, from Kidderminster in Worcestershire, admitted uploading 22 images and 132 videos of monkeys being tortured to an online chat group.

She was charged after an investigation by the BBC into the torture of monkeys overseas. The investigation exposed a global network involving a private online group paying people in Indonesia to kill and torture baby monkeys on video.

The BBC said LeGresley used the username “The Immolator” and ran a poll for members of the group on which method of torture should be inflicted upon an infant monkey.

LeGresley pleaded guilty to charges of publishing obscene articles and intentionally encouraging animal cruelty at Worcester magistrates court on Tuesday.

The court heard West Mercia police charged LeGresley after being informed by the National Wildlife Crime Unit, a UK police department.

A second defendant, Adriana Orme, 55, of Ryall, near Upton-upon Severn, Worcestershire, did not indicate any plea to similar charges.

The court was told the women had “not carried out monkey torture themselves”.

The prosecutor, Angela Hallan, told the court LeGresley had been charged after being identified as having been part of online chat groups, after the BBC was involved in “exposing the trade”.

Orme is alleged to have published an obscene article by uploading one image and 26 videos of monkey torture between 14 April and 16 June 2022, and to have encouraged or assisted the commission of unnecessary suffering by making a £10 payment to a PayPal account on 26 April 2022.

LeGresley, who left court in a face mask, admitted uploading images of monkey torture between 25 March and 8 May 2022, and making a payment of £17.24 to a PayPal account to encourage cruelty on 25 April of the same year.

LeGresley will be sentenced on 7 June. The case against Orme was transferred to the crown court, where she was ordered to appear on 5 June.

Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced former chief executive of the blood-testing company Theranos, has had her federal prison sentence shortened again, new records show.

The 40-year-old Holmes is now scheduled for release on 16 August 2032 from a federal women’s prison camp in Bryan, Texas, according to the US Bureau of Prisons website.

Holmes’s sentence was reduced by more than four months, as her previous release date was set for 29 December 2032.

A spokesperson for the Bureau of Prisons confirmed Holmes’s amended sentence to the Guardian but said he could not comment further due to “privacy, safety and security reasons” for inmates.

This is the second time that Holmes has had her sentence shortened. In July, was reduced by two years.

People incarcerated in the US can have their sentences shortened for good conduct and for completing rehabilitation programs, such as a substance abuse program.

The latest reduction of Holmes’s sentence still meets federal sentencing guidelines. Those guidelines mandate that people convicted of federal offenses must serve at least 85% of their sentence, regardless of reductions for good behavior.

In 2022, Holmes was sentenced to 11 years and three months in prison after being convicted on four counts of defrauding investors.

She was also ordered to pay $452m in restitution to those she defrauded, but a judge delayed those payments due to Holmes’s “limited financial resources”.

Holmes’s lawyers have already begun attempts to get her conviction overturned. Oral arguments for her appeal are set to begin on 11 June in a federal appeals court in San Francisco, California, NBC News reported.

Holmes founded Theranos, a multibillion-dollar biotech startup that claimed it could run blood tests with only a single drop of blood.

Once hailed as a biotech innovator, Holmes as well as Sunny Balwani, her co-executive and former romantic partner, faced legal consequences after reporting from the Wall Street Journal and others found that the technology used by Theranos was fraudulent.

Balwani was convicted in a separate trial for his actions in the Theranos scheme, and he was sentenced to 13 years in prison.

He also had two years reduced from his sentence in July and will be released from federal prison on 1 April 2034, according to the prisons bureau website.

Dancing for worms may seem an odd pursuit, but an environment charity is calling for people across the UK to charm the creatures from the depths in order to count them.

The Soil Association is trying to get a nationwide picture of worm abundance, to track their decline and see where they need the most help.

Across May, the charity is asking people to dance on the soil, soak the earth with water or use the vibrations of a garden fork to draw worms up.

Using the data collected, specialists will create a worm map of the UK to show where the healthiest and most biodiverse soil is. Soil that is full of worms is an indicator that it is healthy.

Worms are vital for the soil; they produce a sticky mucus that binds it together, and this helps to alleviate flooding. Soil with worms is up to 90% more effective at soaking up water.

However, due to pesticides, excessive draining and the use of inorganic fertilisers, the worm population appears to have shrunk. A recent study found that earthworm populations had declined by a third over the past 25 years.

The Soil Association’s head of worms, Alex Burton, said: “It might sound wacky but dancing on the bare earth can help with science. Worm charming is fun and a little surreal, but scientists and farmers use worm counts to understand soil health. We depend on soils for 95% of our food production, and they hold more carbon than the atmosphere, so it is crucial for us to know what’s going on under the ground and worms help to tell us that.

“The data we get for the worm map will help us build a better understanding of the health of soils in gardens, allotments and green spaces across the UK. This will show where they need help to restore their numbers. Worms are in our news, films and our gardens, where children love uncovering them. We’re calling for people to become citizen scientists for our valuable pals, and if they don’t find as many as they were expecting, we have plenty of advice to help them improve the soil.”

The charity is working with the Falmouth worm charming championships, which will be handing out awards for the most worms charmed and the most creative ways of seducing them from the deep.

It can take as little as half an hour to find the worms and only requires a little piece of land, so the work can take place in gardens, farms or local parks. People interested in taking part can download the Worm Hunt Guide and get charming.

Chart-topping US rapper Macklemore has released a new track, Hind’s Hall, which gives robust support to Palestine as well as those protesting at US universities against Israel’s activity in Gaza.

Hind’s Hall is named after the Columbia University building, renamed from Hamilton Hall by occupying student protesters to reference Hind Rajab, a six-year-old child killed in Gaza.

“If students in tents posted on the lawn / Occupying the quad is really against the law / And a reason to call in the police and their squad / Where does genocide land in your definition, huh?” he raps, referring to the police crackdown against protests.

As well as condemning Israel’s campaign in Gaza, Columbia students are calling for their university to divest from companies linked to Israel – a call that has been repeated in other campuses across the US. Last week New York police arrested more than 100 people protesting at Columbia, including some occupying Hamilton Hall. More than 2,000 people have been arrested over US campus protests.

In Hind’s Hall, Macklemore characterises Israel as “a state that’s gotta rely on an apartheid system to uphold an occupying violent history been repeating for the last 75 [years]”, and says he has experienced support from Jewish people in solidarity with the pro-Palestine protests. “We see the lies in them, claiming it’s antisemitic to be anti-Zionist / I’ve seen Jewish brothers and sisters out there and riding in solidarity and screaming ‘Free Palestine’ with them”.

He addresses Joe Biden, saying “blood is on your hands”, and says he will not be voting for him later this year.

He had previously been a supporter of the Democrats, appearing alongside Barack Obama to discuss the opioid crisis and opposing Donald Trump with chants at concerts. He released a song, Wednesday Morning, after Trump’s 2016 election win with the lyrics: “No time for apathy, no more tears and no complaining / Gotta fight harder for the next four and what we’re faced with.”

Macklemore also criticises the music industry for not being more outspoken during the war in Gaza. “The music industry’s quiet, complicit in their platform of silence,” he raps, adding “I want a ceasefire, fuck a response from Drake” – a reference to the beef between Drake and Kendrick Lamar which has consumed the US music industry in recent weeks.

The tension between the rappers’ verbal conflict and the real conflict in Gaza has not gone unnoticed elsewhere: “It’s Hard to Care About a Rap War in the Middle of a Real One,” ran the headline of a Rolling Stone article last week.

Macklemore is perhaps still best known for lighthearted songs such as 2012’s Thrift Shop, which topped the US and UK charts, but he is also known for socially conscious material. His track Same Love voiced support for same-sex marriage and the LGBTQ+ community while criticising hip-hop culture for homophobia, while Wing$ lamented poverty and criticised consumerism.

He appeared incognito at Black Lives Matter protests and in 2016 examined his position as a white person at the protests and in rap culture more broadly – which had caused him to be accused of cultural appropriation – with the track White Privilege II.