Microplastic pollution has been found in all human semen samples tested in a study, and researchers say further research on the potential harm to reproduction is “imperative”.

Sperm counts in men have been falling for decades and 40% of low counts remain unexplained, although chemical pollution has been implicated by many studies.

The 40 semen samples were from healthy men undergoing premarital health assessments in Jinan, China. Another recent study found microplastics in the semen of six out of 10 healthy young men in Italy, and another study in China found the pollutants in half of 25 samples.

Recent studies in mice have reported that microplastics reduced sperm count and caused abnormalities and hormone disruption.

Research on microplastics and human health is moving quickly and scientists appear to be finding the contaminants everywhere. The pollutants were found in all 23 human testicle samples tested in a study published in May.

Microplastics have also recently been discovered in human blood, placentas and breast milk, indicating widespread contamination of people’s bodies. The impact on health is as yet unknown but microplastics have been shown to cause damage to human cells in the laboratory.

Millions of tonnes of plastic waste are dumped in the environment and much is broken down into microplastics. These have polluted the entire planet, from the summit of Mount Everest to the deepest oceans. People are known to consume the tiny particles via food and water as well as breathing them in.

“As emerging research increasingly implicates microplastic exposure as a potential factor impacting human health, understanding the extent of human contamination and its relation to reproductive outcomes is imperative,” said Ning Li, of Qingdao University in China, and colleagues.

“[Mouse studies] demonstrate a significant decrease in viable sperm count and an uptick in sperm deformities, indicating that microplastic exposure may pose a chronic, cumulative risk to male reproductive health.”

The research, published in the journal Science of the Total Environment, detected eight different plastics. Polystyrene, used for packaging, was most common, followed by polyethylene, used in plastic bags, and then PVC.

The particles may be causing inflammation in tissue, as air pollution particles do, or the chemicals in the plastics could cause harm. In March, doctors warned of potentially life-threatening effects after finding a substantially raised risk of stroke, heart attack and earlier death in people whose blood vessels were contaminated with microscopic plastics.

Luigi Montano, of the University of Rome, who led the Italian study, said: “Intervention is necessary to stop the exponential increase in plastic waste.” More than 180 nations are negotiating a UN treaty to regulate plastic and cut pollution.

“In particular, there is a need for action to avoid additional permanent damage to the planet and the human body,” Montano said. “If microplastic pollution impacts the critical reproductive process, as evidenced in particular by the decline in seminal quality recorded in recent decades globally, it may prove to be [even worse] for our species in the not too distant future.”

In a down-to-earth suburb of Catania on Sicily’s east coast, smoke billows from street stands selling traditional grilled horse meat, and local youngsters gather around kiosks selling the region’s unique handmade drink, seltz limone e sale (seltzer with lemon and sea salt). It is here that a family of charismatic ex-fishers have opened a seafood restaurant that bravely challenges long-held regional conventions.

The Salamone family sell all the usual local specialities in their slick new business “La Fish”, such as Sicily’s famous swordfish, sardines and tuna. However, the feature of tonight’s tasting menu – attracting customers who range from local families to food connoisseurs – is a relative newcomer to these shores and to Sicilian tables: the Atlantic blue crab.

Inside the restaurant, about half a dozen blue crabs are displayed on a large fish counter alongside an array of other seafood. These crabs, with their striking blue claws and olive-green shells, are creating a crisis for Italy. Originating from the western Atlantic Ocean, they have no natural predators in the Mediterranean and feed on young clams, disrupting traditional shellfish harvests and affecting Italy’s position as one of the top clam producers in the world.

So some Italians, like the Salamones, have adapted by incorporating these crustaceans into their cuisine.

“I love the blue crab,” says chef Mario Contadino, who is in charge of tonight’s dinner at La Fish, citing its delicious and sweet taste that, he says, adds depth to any dish. To entice local people to try this alien critter, he serves it on sticky sushi rice with onions, bell peppers, garlic, tomatoes and coriander, adorned with vibrant, edible yellow flowers.

He says people in Catania can be “closed-minded” when it comes to trying unfamiliar ingredients such as the blue crab. “It’s possible people may think to themselves, ‘What is this?’ or say, ‘Oh no, I don’t like this.’” But he believes the taste will speak for itself and win over even the most sceptical diners. “That first bite does not lie.”

Francesco Tiralongo, a marine biologist at the University of Catania, has documented the explosive population growth of the blue crab. He explains how rising water temperatures in the Mediterranean, have made Sicilian waters a welcoming environment for such alien species. “Changing fish consumption habits in Sicily to include alien species like the blue crab is a necessary response to climate change and current ecological challenges,” he says.

The blue crab can also now frequently be found in Catania’s famous fish market behind the city’s Piazza del Duomo. On a warm day, the market bustles with activity – a cacophony of sounds, sights, and smells. Fishers, traders, local people and tourists mingle in narrow alleys, stepping over black cobblestones covered in bright crimson blood, as fishmongers cut large chunks of silvery swordfish and tuna.

On a small wooden table, holding a large knife next to buckets filled with crustaceans and fish, is Rosario, a local fishmonger who has been selling blue crab for the past few months. “I sell it because people like it,” he says. Having started with just a few kilos of blue crab a day, he now averages sales of about 20 kilos daily.

Rosario says the traditional crustaceans he used to sell are not so readily available, but he gets “more and more of these blue crabs” from the fishers he buys from.

Though it may be an unfamiliar ingredient in Sicily, he says it helps that blue crabs are no different from the many varieties of crustaceans the Catanese eat as a staple part of their diet. “Here in Sicily, we eat fish every day.”

“People are getting to know it,” Rosario says, adding that they seem to really like its delicate and tender taste. Most of his customers prefer to eat blue crabs with spaghetti in tomato sauce, while he prefers to eat his crab boiled. “A very good dish,” he says.

For now, Rosario only sells the Atlantic blue crab. He says other invasive species such as scorpion fish, lionfish and the silver-cheeked toadfish are too strange for his customers, adding: “They would not eat them.”

The island needs a new way to deal with the interlopers, as the rising numbers of blue crabs are now causing serious economic pain to local Sicilian fishers, who are already facing a crisis over dwindling fish populations. Alberto Pulizzi, the director general of the fisheries department of the Sicilian regional government, says the crabs are destroying fishers’ nets and eating clams and mussels. These molluscs are highly prized in Italian dishes such as spaghetti alle vongole (pasta with clams).

Tommaso Salamone says the family’s major motivation for starting their restaurant a few months ago was to take a new approach to the invaders, presenting them as something desirable. In other words – if you can’t beat ’em, eat ’em. He says: “We are making these dishes with blue crab to show people that anything can be edible.”

This report was supported by Journalismfund Europe

Today’s puzzles are about deducing the mechanisms behind two extremely puzzling objects: a practical joke cup supposedly invented by Pythagoras and a vehicle that seemingly travels the wrong way.

1. Pythagoras’s Cup

This narrow lane is a busy cut-through and we often have to stand to one side because of the traffic. Between the passing places the verges are uncut, and their flowers have grown tall after spring’s heavy rainfall. Either side is hedged and the more interesting flora is in the north‑facing verge, separated from a narrow band of woodland by a deep ditch. The trees are mainly Scots pine and beech, from which a chaffinch calls insistently on this sunny morning.

The flowers of wood avens shine a deep lemon yellow, their stems arching over freshly green grasses. There’s a delicate tracery of leaves from herb robert, dandelions going to seed and the clear white stars of stitchwort. Clambering stems of bush vetch entwine with emerging brambles; the petals of this common legume are a dirty purple, a smudgy colour that is hard to define. Bright meadow buttercups stand tall and, later on, there’ll be meadowsweet and knapweed.

Other wildflowers like this shady spot: honeysuckle, woodruff, nettles and nipplewort. So much to notice in just a few paces – but then we see it, illuminated in a patch of dappled light: a bird’s nest orchid growing perilously close to the road. This curious plant, nationally and locally rare, has a pale beige colouring that makes it easy to overlook as dead or dying.

Named for its nest-like tangle of roots, Neottia nidus-avis has clusters of dull brown hooded flowers. Being parasitic on the mycorrhizal fungi associated with tree roots, it has no need for leaves or chlorophyll. It often gains its nutrients from beech trees – and there on the other side of the hedge is a large beech whose roots run under the verge. The orchid’s more usual habitat is the deep leaf litter and shade that we can glimpse through the hedge.

That mass of nest-like roots stores food, building up energy over a decade until the orchid blooms, which is why its appearance is such an event. We’d heard about it from a keen-eyed friend who notified the county recorder for South Northumberland. It joins the scattering of Tyne Valley records held by the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland. And it’s something that couldn’t have happened if the road verge had been cut.

Much of this year’s clay-court season had been a miserable experience for Carlos Alcaraz. He was sidelined from three of his four planned tournaments with a forearm injury and hampered in the one event he did play. His fitness struggles raised further questions about whether his body can withstand the pressure his all-action playing style imposes on it and he arrived at Roland Garros without much match practice or rhythm.

It takes a special talent to enter a major tournament with such difficult preparation yet still manage to compete with sufficient quality and conviction to keep on winning under pressure. This time, after five turbulent, tension-filled sets, the Spaniard emerged after four hours, 19 minutes with a 6-3, 2-6, 5-7, 6-1, 6-2 win over the fourth seed Alexander Zverev and his first French Open title.

By triumphing in Paris, Alcaraz has now mastered every surface at 21 years old, winning on the hard courts of the US Open in 2022, the lawns of Wimbledon in 2023 and now on the red clay here. He is the youngest man in history to win a major on all surfaces, a record previously held by Rafael Nadal at 22 and a feat that has only been achieved by seven players. Now a three-time grand slam champion, he moves level with Arthur Ashe, Andy Murray, Stan Wawrinka and Gustavo Kuerten.

This tournament will also be remembered for Zverev being in the midst of a public trial in Berlin for allegedly physically assaulting his ex-girlfriend, Brenda Patea, who is the mother of their child, Mayla.

The trial opened in Berlin on 31 May, where the court was told that Zverev was accused of pushing and strangling Patea after an argument at a Berlin flat in May 2020. He denied the allegations.

A week later, before his semi-final against Casper Ruud, the lawyers of Zverev and Patea agreed to an out-of-court settlement. The court officially declared no verdict, with no ruling on the allegations and no admission of guilt from Zverev.

After a slow start from both players, Alcaraz, the third seed, took control. He dictated the vast majority of rallies with his forehand and he made use of his all-court game in the swirling wind by peppering Zverev with drop shots and closing down the net. Alcaraz’s level dropped at the beginning of the second set, though, and as he struggled to find his range, Zverev’s improved serving and consistency allowed him to level the set.

Just as Alcaraz seemed to have found his rhythm again, striking the ball sweetly to build a 5-2 third-set lead, Alcaraz’s nerves took over and a composed Zverev rolled through five consecutive games to establish a two-sets-to-one lead.

To his immense credit, Alcaraz immediately shrugged off the third set, responding with an excellent return game to break serve at the start of set four. Having already requested pickle juice to address potential cramping, Alcaraz received a medical timeout at 4-1 in the set for his left leg. After the break, he continued to pound the ball from the baseline, maintaining his momentum to see out the set.

As they stepped up for the final set, tension radiated from both sides of the court. It was Zverev who first succumbed to the moment. While he handed over his service game at 1-1 with four pitiful errors, in the very next game Alcaraz plotted an incredible recovery from 0-40 down, closing out the hold with a spectacular backhand drop-shot winner.

Alcaraz’s miraculous hold for 3-1 included a controversial overrule from the umpire on break point, which the Hawk-Eye line-calling system, used only by television networks, ruled out. The shot, however, was well within Hawk-Eye’s margin of error, meaning it is unclear if the ball was actually out.

With the momentum behind him, Alcaraz refused to let up as he closed out another spectacular triumph. The intention he played with after trailing by two sets to one underlined the difference between the Spaniard, with his two grand slam titles before this match, and Zverev who, at 27, has been chasing his first major win for over half a decade.

“I want to be one of the best tennis players in the world, so I have to give an extra in those moments in the fifth set, I have to show the opponent that I am fresh, I’m like we are playing the first game of the match,” said Alcaraz.

With a third major title in as many years, Alcaraz will leave Paris having further elevated his status in the sport. He continues to establish himself as a winner, no matter his struggles, injuries and sometimes his own turbulent form.

He has again proved that his generational talent is matched by a level of self-belief and big-match temperament that will carry him to even greater victories in the years to come.

An appellate court has ruled that Texas cannot ban books from libraries simply because they mention “butt and fart” and other content which some state officials may dislike.

The fifth US circuit court of appeals issued its decision on Thursday in a 76-page majority opinion, which was written by Judge Jacques Wiener Jr and opened with a quote from American poet Walt Whitman: “The dirtiest book in all the world is the expurgated book.”

In its decision, the appellate court declared that “government actors may not remove books from a public library with the intent to deprive patrons of access to ideas with which they disagree”.

It added: “This court has declared that officials may not ‘remove books from school library shelves simply because they dislike the idea contained in those books and seek by their removal to prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion or other matters of opinion.’”

The appellate court’s latest decision follows a federal lawsuit filed in 2022 by seven Llano county residents against county and library officials for restricting and removing books from its public circulation.

The residents argued that the defendants violated their constitutional right to “access information and ideas” by removing 17 books based on their content and messages.

Those books include seven “butt and fart” books with titles including I Broke My Butt! and Larry the Farting Leprechaun, four young adult books on sexuality, gender identity and dysphoria – including Being Jazz: My Life As a (Transgender) Teen – and two books on the history of racism in the US, among them Caste and They Called Themselves the KKK.

Other books targeted by the ban were In the Night Kitchen, which contains cartoons of a naked child, as well as It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex and Sexual Health, according to court documents.

The books were removed after parents complained, with library officials referring to the books as “pornographic filth”.

In its majority decision, the overwhelmingly conservative appellate court ordered eight of the 17 books to be returned, including Being Jazz: My Life As a (Transgender) Teen, Caste and They Called Themselves the KKK.

Wiener wrote how a dissenting opinion from the Donald Trump appointee Kyle Duncan “accuses us of becoming the ‘Library Police,’ citing a story by author Stephen King”.

“But King, a well-known free speech activist, would surely be horrified to see how his words are being twisted in service of censorship,” wrote Wiener, whop was appointed during George HW Bush’s presidency.

“Per King: ‘As a nation, we’ve been through too many fights to preserve our rights of free thought to let them go just because some prude with a highlighter doesn’t approve of them.’ Defendants and their highlighters are the true library police.”

Wiener also said that “libraries must continuously review their collection to ensure that it is up to date” and engage in “removing outdated or duplicated materials … according to objective, neutral criteria”.

In a report released last October, the American Library Association found that Texas made the most attempts in the US to ban or restrict books in 2022. In total, the state made 93 attempts to restrict access to more than 2,300 books.

A wave of book banning has also emerged in Florida as part of the culture wars of the Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, on “wokeism,” a term meant to insult liberal values.

In January, a Florida school district removed dictionaries, encyclopedias and other books because the texts included descriptions of “sexual conduct”.

Meanwhile, in 2022, a Mississippi school district upheld the firing of an assistant principal after he read a humorous children’s book, I Need a New Butt, to his students.

Alan Hansen, the legendary former Liverpool and Scotland defender, is seriously ill in hospital.

Liverpool confirmed the news on Sunday afternoon and the club are providing support to the family of the 68‑year‑old, who retired in 1991 to begin a hugely successful career as a television pundit.

“The thoughts and support of everyone at Liverpool FC are with our legendary former captain Alan Hansen, who is currently seriously ill in hospital,” a statement read. “The club is currently in contact with Alan’s family to provide our support at this difficult time, and our thoughts, wishes and hopes are with Alan and all of the Hansen family.

“We will provide any further updates as we receive them in due course, and we request that the Hansen family’s privacy is respected at this time.”

Hansen joined Liverpool from Partick Thistle in 1977 and won three European Cups, eight league titles, two FA Cups and three League Cups in 620 appearances for the Anfield club before retiring in March 1991 because of injury.

The man known as “Jockey” also won 26 caps for his country and played at the 1982 World Cup in Spain, having made his international debut in 1979. He is widely recognised as being one of the finest centre-backs of his generation, combining ­excellent strength, speed and awareness with supreme composure in and out of possession.

After he hung up his boots Hansen became a regular on the BBC, ­appearing on Match of the Day as well as the broadcaster’s live ­coverage, establishing himself as a respected and charismatic voice on the game. In that role, however, he is perhaps best known for claiming “you can’t win anything with kids” after Manchester United’s 3-1 defeat against Aston Villa on the opening day of the 1995-96 Premier League season and after Alex ­Ferguson had fielded a team containing a host of raw, young talent including Gary Neville, Nicky Butt, Paul Scholes and, from the bench, David Beckham. United went on to win the Double that season.

Hansen retired from punditry in May 2014 and has largely lived a quiet life since. He is married and has two children.