There was uproar and outrage among the Washington Post’s current and former staffers and other notable figures in the world of American media after the newspaper’s leaders on Friday chose to not endorse any candidate in the US presidential election.

The newspaper’s publisher, Will Lewis, announced on Friday that for the first time in over 30 years, the paper’s editorial board would not be endorsing a candidate in this year’s presidential election, nor in future presidential elections.

After the news broke, reactions came flooding in, with people criticizing the decision, which, according to some staffers and reporters, was allegedly made by the Post’s owner, billionaire Jeff Bezos.

Karen Attiah, a columnist for the Washington Post who writes a weekly newsletter, called the decision an “absolute stab in the back”.

“What an insult to those of us who have literally put our careers and lives on the line, to call out threats to human rights and democracy,” she added.

In a statement, the union representing editorial staff and reporters at the Washington Post expressed that they were “deeply concerned” by the decision “especially a mere 11 days ahead of an immensely consequential election”.

“The role of an Editorial Board is to do just this: to share opinions on the news impacting our society and culture and endorse candidates to help guide readers,” the statement reads.

It also concerns that “management interfered with the work of our members in Editorial” they said, adding that according to the newspapers reporters and staffers, an endorsement for the vice-president, Kamala Harris, had already been drafted, and the decision to not publish was made by Bezos.

The union added that since the decision was announced, they are “already seeing cancellations from once loyal readers” and Semafor reported that in the 24 hours ending on Friday afternoon, about 2,000 subscribers had already canceled their subscriptions.

In a statement on X, Marty Baron, the former executive editor of the Washington Post, called the paper’s decision “cowardice, with democracy as its casualty”.

Donald Trump, Baron said, would “see this as an invitation to further intimidate the owner” of the Washington Post – Bezos. “Disturbing spinelessness at an institution famed for courage”, Baron added.

David Maraniss, a Pulitzer-winning reporter and editor at the Post, added: “The paper I’ve loved working at for 47 years is dying in darkness.”

Another former editor at the paper, Robert McCartney, said: “Given the choice this year, it’s appalling.”

Multiple outlets have also reported that Robert Kagan, the newspaper’s editor at large, has decided to resign from the editorial board following the announcement of the paper not to endorse in the presidential race.

Susan Rice, the former US ambassador to the United Nations and former domestic policy adviser for the Biden administration, called the decision “hypocritical”.

“So much for ‘Democracy Dies in Darkness’,” she said, referring to the newspaper’s official slogan, adopted in 2017 under Bezos’s ownership. “This is the most hypocritical, chicken-shit move from a publication that is supposed to hold people in power to account.”

On Friday afternoon, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” and “WaPo” were trending on X, and NPR’s media correspondent, David Folkenflik, was reporting that “the furor” at the Washington Post was so much that its chief tech officer was getting engineers to block questions from readers about its decision to not make an endorsement.

A Nasa astronaut who just returned from the International Space Station has been hospitalized for an unspecified medical condition but remains stable, according to the US space agency.

The four-member Crew-8 mission splashed down off the coast of Florida early on Friday after nearly eight months aboard the orbital laboratory.

On its way back to Earth, the SpaceX Dragon executed a normal re-entry and splashdown, and recovery of the crew and spacecraft was without incident, Nasa said in a blog post.

But during routine medical assessments on the recovery ship, an “additional evaluation of the crew members was requested out of an abundance of caution”, it added, without elaborating.

The Nasa astronauts Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt and Jeanette Epps, and the Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin were all flown to Ascension Sacred Heart Pensacola.

Three were subsequently released, while one of the Nasa astronauts remains at the hospital “under observation as a precautionary measure”.

Nasa said it would not disclose specific medical information to protect the crew member’s privacy but would provide updates as available.

For the first time in over 30 years, the Washington Post announced on Friday its editorial board would not be making an endorsement of a candidate in a presidential election.

“We are returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates,” Will Lewis, the newspaper’s publisher and chief executive officer said in a statement on Friday, less than two weeks before the 2024 presidential election.

The Washington Post editorial board has endorsed a candidate for almost every presidential election since it endorsed Jimmy Carter in 1976. Jeff Bezos, the billionaire owner of Amazon, bought the Post in 2013.

The decision by the Post’s leaders not to endorse any candidate in an election widely seen as the most consequential in recent US history triggered outrage among some prominent current and ex-staffers, and other notable figures.

Marty Baron, the former executive editor of the Washington Post, criticized the newspaper’s decision, calling it “cowardice, with democracy as its casualty”.

Donald Trump, Baron said, will “see this as an invitation to further intimidate the owner” of the Washington Post, the billionaire Jeff Bezos. “Disturbing spinelessness at an institution famed for courage,” he added.

Susan Rice, the former US ambassador to the United Nations and former domestic policy adviser for the Biden administration, called the decision “hypocritical”.

“So much for ‘Democracy Dies in Darkness’,” she said, referring to the newspaper’s official slogan, adopted in 2017 under Bezos’s ownership. “This is the most hypocritical, chicken-shit move from a publication that is supposed to hold people in power to account.”

David Moraniss, a Pulitzer-winning reporter and editor at the Post added: “The paper I’ve loved working at for 47 years is dying in darkness.” Multiple outlets have also reported that Robert Kagan, the newspaper’s editor at large, has decided to resign from the editorial board following the announcement of the paper not to endorse in the presidential race.

A senior Post staffer, speaking to the Guardian on condition of anonymity, pointed out: “The Post’s editorial board just won a Pulitzer Prize for calling out authoritarianism and defending democracy around the world” adding, “How sad is it that we can’t do that at home?”

“There’s a lot of sadness and frustration among staff,” they added. “Most of all, it feels like a blow to WaPo’s long tradition of courageous coverage.”

The Washington Post’s decision comes after widespread shock over a similar decision from the billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Times, Patrick Soon-Shiong, earlier this week, to block a planned presidential endorsement of Kamala Harris. That move triggered high-profile resignations at the publication amid staff anger.

In his statement on the Post’s decision, Lewis cited times in the past when the newspaper’s editorial board chose not to endorse presidential candidates, citing independent journalism, which Lewis described as “right” and something the paper was now “going back to”.

“We recognize that this will be read in a range of ways, including as a tacit endorsement of one candidate, or as a condemnation of another, or as an abdication of responsibility,” Lewis said.

“That is inevitable,” he said, adding: “We don’t see it that way.”

Rather, Lewis said it was “consistent with the values” the newspaper has stood for, and what the newspaper hoped for in a leader: “character and courage in service to the American ethic, veneration for the rule of law, and respect for human freedom in all its aspects”.

Lewis added that not endorsing was, in his view, also a statement in support of readers’ ability to make up their own minds on the most consequential of American decisions – “whom to vote for as the next president”.

“Our job at the Washington Post is to provide through the newsroom non-partisan news for all Americans, and thought-provoking, reported views from our opinion team to help our readers make up their own minds,” he said, adding: “Most of all, our job as the newspaper of the capital city of the most important country in the world is to be independent.”

“And that is what we are and will be,” he concluded.

NPR reported that many Washington Post staffers were said to be “shocked” and their reaction “uniformly negative”.

The Washington Post Guild, the union that represents many of the paper’s staffers, said in a statement on Friday that it was “deeply concerned” by the newspaper’s decision, “especially a mere 11 days ahead of an immensely consequential election.

“The role of an editorial board is to do just this: to share opinions on the news impacting our society and culture and endorse candidates to help guide readers,” it added.

The Guild also said that according to the paper’s reporters and Guild members, the endorsement for Harris was already drafted and the decision not to publish was made by Bezos himself. The Guild said that they were already seeing cancellations from once loyal readers.

The Columbia Journalism Review also reported on Friday that the Washington Post’s editorial board had already drafted an endorsement of Harris, and said that even as of a week ago, the editorial page editor David Shipley told the editorial board that the endorsement was on track, leaving the board and staffers “stunned” when the announcement was made on Friday.

At the Los Angeles Times the decision not to endorse resulted in the head of the editorial board there, Mariel Garza, and several other members of the board to resign in protest.

“In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up. This is how I’m standing up,” Garza told the Columbia Journalism Review, regarding her decision to resign.

A journalist at the Los Angeles Times called their newspaper’s decision “unreal” and “cowardly”.

The Los Angeles Times publisher’s daughter even weighed in on her father’s decision not to have the newspaper endorse a candidate, and posted a series of statements on social media implying that the decision to not endorse a candidate was also connected to Harris’s position on the war in Gaza.

“This not a vote for Donald Trump,” she said, but rather a refusal to endorse Harris, who, she said “is overseeing a war on children”

Unlike the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post, in September, the editorial board at the New York Times endorsed Kamala Harris, calling her “the only choice” for president.

The Guardian has also endorsed Harris.

A new temporary bronze installation depicting a pile of feces on Nancy Pelosi’s desk was erected in Washington DC this week across from the US Capitol, appearing to satirically “honor” the people behind the January 6 insurrection.

The scatological statue, which was installed on Thursday, features a swirl somewhat resembling the common “poop” emoji sitting on a desk with Pelosi’s name.

“This memorial honors the brave men and women who broke into the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021 to loot, urinate and defecate throughout those hallowed halls in order to overturn an election,” the plaque under the statue reads.

“President Trump celebrates these heroes of January 6th as ‘unbelievable patriots’ and ‘warriors.’ This monument stands as a testament to their daring sacrifice and lasting legacy.”

The statue does not indicate who the artist is or who created it. However, according to the Washington Post, the National Park Service approved a permit request from Julia Jimenez-Pyzik of Civic Crafted LLC to install a statue on the National Mall until 30 October.

The Park Service added that when issuing permits it “does not consider the content of the message being presented”, and that “as federal land and America’s premier civic space, the National Mall serves as a forum where citizens can exercise their Constitutional rights to speech and assembly”.

In the permit, obtained by NBC News, Civic Crafted LLC said the desk “represents the heart of democracy, where decisions are made, voices are heard, and the future is shaped”.

“Here, the power of the people finds its expression through the diligent efforts of those who serve the public good,” it said. “When rioters broke in to destroy these ideals, this desk stands firm, so too must the principles of equality, justice, and freedom that it represents.”

It added that the statue is named The Resolute Desk.

Social media reaction ranged from “tasteless” and a “total embarrassment” to “awesome”. “Welcome to America, where a bronze poop statue honoring the people who tried to break our democracy currently stands on the National Mall,” one user posted.

According to NBC News, the permit indicates that another statue, depicting a hand emerging from a stone base and holding a tiki torch, will be installed next week between the Capitol and the White House.

Their brazen chip-snatching, swooping and aggressive squawking has earned seagulls a reputation as the scourge of seaside towns, terrorising unsuspecting tourists and enraging residents alike.

And as the marauding birds have ventured inland and established urban colonies, towns have deployed spikes, netting and even birds of prey as deterrents. Now Worcester city councillors appear to be contemplating a new escalation in the battle: bird contraceptives.

Inspired by experimental pigeon-control schemes in Barcelona and Venice, the Labour councillor Jill Desayrah described the approach as “safe sex for seagulls”. “I am concerned that the increasing numbers of gulls are getting out of hand,” she said, according to a report in the Mirror.

Contraceptives have been used with varying degrees of success as a humane approach to containing populations of kangaroos, wild horses, prairie dogs, grey squirrels and rats on the New York subway. But experts are sceptical about the approach being a risk-free quick fix.

First, the perception of gulls as an out of control pest species may not match reality. “While it may appear as though gull species are thriving because of their increasing numbers in some urban areas, they are not faring well elsewhere,” a Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) spokesperson said. “People will be surprised to learn that many species of gulls are red- and amber-listed across the UK – the highest levels of conservation concern – including herring gulls and lesser black-backed gulls, which are both declining nationally.”

The annual gull population survey in Blackpole, the area of Worcester that has been floated as a potential location for a pilot, found that 376 pairs were living on retail parks and industrial estates. The majority are lesser black-backed gulls, which is a protected species.

“We would therefore be concerned about any action taken to reduce productivity of the birds without reference to Natural England, the government’s scientific adviser and wildlife regulator,” the RSPB spokesperson said.

There is also the question of efficacy: gulls would need to take the pill daily. But with scraps of discarded food widely available there is no guarantee the council’s contraceptive-laced provisions would be favoured.

“Seagulls can eat many things,” said Cecilia Soldatini, a senior scientist at La Paz University in Mexico, whose research focusses on seabird ecology. Her team uses cheesy fries to lure gulls, but the birds refuse fries that have become soggy in the rain.

“They’re not forced to eat what you’re giving to them,” said Soldatini, who has previously investigated the use of contraceptives in feral pigeons in Venice and found the approach to be of limited utility.

Gulls also have a feeding range of 10-15km (6-9 miles), according to Soldatini, meaning they are not reliant on resources from a tightly defined area. The key, she said, was to eliminate the resources attracting gulls in the first place. “Don’t make food available to them, work on the collection of rubbish. This is the only way.”

Dr Giovanna Massei of the University of York, who is Europe director of the Botstiber Institute for Wildlife Fertility Control, said that “hard scientific evidence” should be sought before any rollout – research she said councils ought to fund if they wished to explore this option. “If you put something out and then there are lots of fish and chips lying around it’s difficult for [the gulls] to get the dose they need.”

She added: “I understand that some councils are desperate to find a solution.”

Kay Haw, the director of UK Squirrel Accord (UKSA), said injectable contraceptives had been used successfully in herd species, such as wild horses in the US. UKSA is investigating oral squirrel contraceptives jointly with the government’s Animal and Plant Health Agency. “There are about 3 million grey squirrels in the UK,” she said. “You can’t catch them all and inject them.”

However, extensive research and fieldwork has had to be carried out over several years before the planned distribution of medicated food can proceed. “It’s not a quick process,” she said.

A key requirement is ensuring the contraceptives only get to the target species – in this case through a special feeding device that red squirrels are unable to operate. Haw said the protein-based contraceptive being used breaks down so quickly that a predator would have to “eat 1,000 squirrels” to be affected.

“People aren’t necessarily as careful as they need to be about this,” she said. “They have issues on the Isle of Wight with red squirrels being poisoned by rat poison.”

Soldatini agreed that non-eaten food could pose an environmental risk. “If it rains, it can go into rivers, or seawater,” she said. “This same pills can affect the populations living there – fish, other birds, sea mammals.”

The squirrel project also has a different motivation: to support the growth of red squirrel populations and the health of woodlands, not simply to remove a species deemed to be a nuisance to humans. “We’re working on an invasive species problem – the [grey squirrels] should never have been here,” Haw said. “That’s a different angle to a native species.”

A Worcester city council spokesperson said: “An annual gull report will be presented to the city council’s environment committee on 5 November. This will provide councillors with an opportunity to consider a gull management programme for 2025.”

The actor Helen Mirren has lamented that Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain did not live long enough to be able to experience the excitement of tracking his location on his phone.

Speaking to the Evening Standard proprietor Evgeny Lebedev on his Brave New World podcast, Mirren, 79, said she considered herself lucky to have lived long enough to witness dramatic technological advances.

“I always say it’s so sad that Kurt Cobain died when he did,” she said, “because he never saw GPS, as it’s the most wonderful thing to watch my little blue spot walking down the street. I just find it completely magical and unbelievable.”

The actor has frequently referenced Cobain in the past when discussing the interface of technology and ageing. In 2014, she told Oprah Winfrey, “Look at Kurt Cobain – he hardly even saw a computer! The digital stuff that’s going on is so exciting. I’m just so curious about what happens next.”

The following year, she told Cosmopolitan, “I was thinking about Kurt Cobain the other day and he died without knowing the internet, and I’m totally blown away by that.”

And, in 2016, she told the Daily Mail, “If I’d died at 27, the age that Kurt Cobain died in 1994, I’d never have even known there was an internet! Incredible things are happening all the time and I can’t wait to see what comes next.”

However, the sentiments Mirren expressed this week to Lebedev – whose podcast focuses on “longevity, neuroscience, biohacking, and psychedelics” – were less cheerful. “From this point on,” Mirren predicted, “however long humanity survives, it will be a world of technology. And I’m so grateful that I was of a generation that knew the world before technology. And you know we will die out eventually.”

Ageing in the public eye, reflected Mirren, is “kind of OK” but “it’s not brilliant”. She continued: “But it wasn’t that brilliant to be 25 either. So it’s not a question of seeking youth at all. It’s a question of living the life you have as fully and positively and enjoyably and confusingly and everything that it was when you were younger. It’s just called life.”

A year before Cobain died, Nirvana recorded their Unplugged in New York set for MTV, which further popularised the band beyond their core grunge fanbase. A now-iconic photo from the early 1990s shows Cobain grinning broadly while talking on a brick-like mobile phone, suggesting he might well have been enthusiastic about Google Maps.

Four astronauts have returned to Earth after a nearly eight-month space station stay extended by Boeing’s capsule trouble and Hurricane Milton.

A SpaceX capsule carrying the crew parachuted before dawn on Friday into the Gulf of Mexico, just off the Florida coast, after undocking from the International Space Station earlier this week.

The three Americans and one Russian should have been back two months ago, but their homecoming was stalled by problems with Boeing’s new Starliner astronaut capsule, which came back empty in September because of safety concerns. Hurricane Milton then interfered, followed by a further two weeks of high wind and rough seas.

SpaceX launched the four astronauts – Nasa’s Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt and Jeanette Epps, and Russia’s Alexander Grebenkin – in March. Barratt, the only space veteran going into the mission, acknowledged the support teams back home that had “to replan, retool and kind of redo everything right along with us … and helped us to roll with all those punches”.

Their replacements are the two Starliner test pilots Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, whose own mission went from eight days to eight months, and two astronauts launched by SpaceX four weeks ago. Those four will remain in orbit until February.

The space station is back to its normal crew size of seven – four Americans and three Russians – after months of overflow.

AstraZeneca has said it may cut jobs at its UK operation if the government enforces a global push to make companies share profits derived from nature’s genetic codes, multiple sources have told the Guardian.

The alleged comments from the company came amid a concerted lobbying push by the pharmaceutical industry against the profit-sharing measures.

Sources told the Guardian that the British-Swedish biotech company – which made $5.96bn (£4.59bn) profit last year – made the comments during a Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs roundtable meeting last week to discuss a proposed new global levy on drugs derived from the digital forms of biodiversity. A spokesperson for AstraZeneca denied the comments were made by their representative.

The genetic codes of nature – which, when stored digitally, are known as digital sequence information (DSI) – are playing a growing role in new drug development in the pharmaceutical and biotech industries.

But there is widespread anger among biodiverse countries about how DSI is being used by multinational companies to develop commercial products – almost always for free. Most of the world’s remaining biodiversity is concentrated in poorer countries. They argue that the free use of this genetic information amounts to “biopiracy”, and say companies should share profits when indigenous species are used to develop commercial products.

Global leaders have already agreed in principle that these benefits should be shared more fairly. They are now gathered in Cali, Colombia, at the biodiversity Cop16, in negotiations over what form that sharing should take.

Ideas under consideration include a 1% global tax on profits of goods derived from DSI, which could cost the Cambridge-based company as much as $60m if enforced by the UK government [that figure represents an estimated maximum, as not all of the firm’s profit would be derived from DSI].

The profit-sharing proposals have prompted significant backlash from pharmaceutical companies. In March, AstraZeneca announced a £650m investment in its UK operations, including £450m for its vaccine research and manufacturing facility in Liverpool. According to sources present at last week’s meeting, however, a representative for the company said jobs in north-west England could be affected by any levy.

Without a global agreement on how revenue is shared from discoveries based on DSI, some countries have threatened to restrict access to their biodiversity – potentially a major blow for commercial and scientific research. Proceeds from the global fund would be used for nature conservation around the world in an effort to prevent the continued destruction of ecosystems.

Eva Zabey, chief executive of Business for Nature, said making progress on DSI at the Cop16 negotiations was essential.

“Nature underpins every aspect of our economy. The benefits of natural resources – including through digital sequencing – must be valued and shared fairly. Businesses have a responsibility to contribute financially and non-financially for their use of these resources,” she said.

While any DSI levy would be voluntary, governments are free to implement compulsory national measures, an approach that is under consideration by the UK government.

At the Defra meeting on 15 October, pharmaceutical industry representatives voiced strong opposition to the idea and said a compulsory levy would damage competitiveness with countries such as the US, which is not a signatory to the UN biodiversity process and would not introduce any levy.

Richard Torbett, chief executive of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry, who attended the Defra meeting, said the imposition of a compulsory levy for UK-based companies was “a poorly targeted and damaging response to a critical global challenge”.

“It would discourage the use of this vital data, stifling British research efforts into vital to public health concerns,” he said.

“Any multilateral benefit-sharing mechanism must promote conservation objectives alongside scientific innovation and economic growth. The proposals on the table at Cop16 for a compulsory levy do not achieve this.

“They will have a direct impact on UK innovation, investment and growth, made worse by the fact that key nations such as the US will not impose a levy, putting the UK at an active disadvantage in attracting cutting-edge medical research,” he said.

Ahead of the negotiations in Cali, the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers & Associations (IFPMA), said it had “serious concerns” about a proposed global DSI tax, and that it could further complicate research.

Steve Bates, chief executive of the UK Bioindustry Association, said: “Any rules or levies that come from this summit will be imposing barriers to innovation and business growth … We have already discussed this with the UK government delegation going to Colombia.”

International DSI negotiations at Cop16 are expected to conclude on Friday next week.

A spokesperson for AstraZeneca said it may be the case that others in the room at the meeting on 15 October who represent the industry may have made comments about the impact on companies.

“I can confirm that no AstraZeneca representative made threats to move operations or cut jobs. As a company we are aligned with the position set out by the IFPMA which can be found here,” they said.