It’s a three-person job to land a 2-metre shark: two to wrap ropes around its thrashing tail and midriff, a third to clamp shut its powerful jaws. Hanging over the side of the Sea Quest fishing skiff, the crew work quickly to minimise any distress to the animal, a female silky shark. Once onboard, a hose attached to a saltwater pump is placed in her mouth, to irrigate her gills.

Catching and tagging sharks is contentious among some researchers, who say it is harmful. But for Alex Hearn, a professor of biology at Quito’s Universidad de San Francisco in Ecuador, who has studied sharks for two decades, it is critical to understanding behaviour that could better protect one of the most endangered group of vertebrates on the planet.

“This looks a bit brutal,” says Hearn, as he picks up a power drill to make the four holes required in the silky’s dorsal fin to attach the tag. “But it’s the most efficient method. Sharks don’t have nerve endings on their fins; what stresses them more is being restrained.”

The shark does not flinch and is back in the waters of the Galápagos archipelago, in the eastern Pacific Ocean, within six-and-a-half minutes. They name her Isabela, after the largest of the islands, 620 miles from mainland Ecuador.

“When we tag these animals to track their movements, we’re building up a picture of underwater highways,” says Hearn, during a two-week Greenpeace expedition to the region in March.

“Are there particular areas they like to hang out? When they move between those areas, do they follow predictable pathways or migratory routes?”

The tightly controlled waters of the Galápagos reserve, a Unesco world heritage site, rate among the world’s top dive spots due to an abundance of hammerheads, whale sharks, turtles and other megafauna. Some researchers believe it has the highest shark biomass in the world.

But once these highly mobile species move outside the reserve, they are vulnerable to overfishing. Despite their endangered status, they are caught and killed in huge numbers by industrial fleets that surround the waters.

For scientists such as Hearn, who want to find out how best to protect them, time is running out.

The world’s shark and ray populations have crashed by 70% over the past 50 years, due to overfishing, a threat compounded by habitat loss and the climate crisis. A third of all shark species, targeted for their fins and meat, and a half of all 31 oceanic sharks, are now threatened with extinction.

Shark fishing, along with the use of long lines, a tuna-fishing technique that results in a high shark “bycatch”, is banned inside the marine reserve. But migratory species that swim outside it and into international waters, can be caught legally.

That is why Hearn and Greenpeace are pushing for additional protections, particularly in the high seas, an area outside national boundaries that is increasingly vulnerable to exploitation.

“The Galapágos marine reserve is not working for highly mobile species,” says Hearn, who co-founded MigraMar, a non-profit environmental organisation involving scientists from California to Chile that maps migratory routes of endangered marine species across the eastern Pacific.

“That’s why we are looking at connecting MPAs [marine protected areas], hotspots and swimways,” he adds.

Hearn’s tracking data from MigraMar shows how threatened marine species, including hammerheads, whale sharks, tiger sharks and turtles, migrate north-east from the Galápagos, towards Costa Rica.

This information helped contribute to the expansion of the marine reserve, by an extra 22,000 sq miles, by Ecuadorian authorities in 2022.

Known as Hermandad (“brotherhood”), the extra protection makes up half of the vital “swimway” used by sharks between Galápagos and the Cocos Island national park off Costa Rica. In half of the protected area there is a complete ban on fishing, while no long-lining is allowed in the other half.

On the bridge of a Greenpeace ship, the Arctic Sunrise, Sophie Cooke, lead investigator for the environmental organisation’s ocean campaign and expedition, points out a map on her laptop showing clusters of industrial fishing vessels around the archipelago.

“You can see what a difference Hermandad has made,” says Cooke, who has collated data from Global Fishing Watch. “When you look at 2019-20 data, you can see there were long liners all around Hermandad. Now, when you look at 2020 to 2022, the long liners have disappeared.”

The next step, says Hearn, is to increase protection for those species that are heavily fished, such as silkies, threshers and blue sharks. “We have a new tool, in the form of the UN global ocean treaty,” he says, referring to the convention governing exploitation of the high seas, agreed by 193 countries last year.

A few weeks after the trip, Hearn tells me Isabela is safe, still swimming in the reserve around San Cristobal where she was found. But the second tagged silky shark, whom the crew named Wolf after another island, did not fare so well. His tag has not pinged a position for two weeks, so Hearn suspects he may have been caught by a long-liner fishing vessel.

Cooke says Wolf’s disappearance follows a pattern seen in Hearn’s work in 2022, when tagged blue sharks were fished almost immediately. Out of eight blue sharks tagged that year, one was picked up by a Spanish trawler 1,200 miles away near Peru, another was found in an Ecuadorian port, believed to have also been caught, and two were last seen close to the high seas. Three were last seen in the protected area.

“We also saw the blue sharks disappearing after going out to the high seas,” Cooke says. “They are disappearing once they leave protected areas. It strengthens the case that we need high seas protected.”

Elon Musk’s X now officially allows pornographic content on its platform but says it will block adult and violent posts from being seen by users who are under 18 or who do not opt-in to see it.

The company announced on Monday new policies that formalise what is viewable on the platform.

They come as regulator pressure grows for platforms around the world to prevent children from accessing inappropriate content on social media.

Historically X, previously Twitter, has not prevented people posting adult content on the platform. Sex workers who use subscription services such as OnlyFans have used X to promote their work for years.

Users who post adult content, including nudity and implied or explicit sexual acts, have now been asked by X to adjust media settings so that their images and videos are put behind a content warning before they can be viewed. Users under 18 or those who do not put a birthdate in their profile will be unable to view this content.

X indicated it would detect what users were posting, stating that if users do not mark pornographic posts appropriately then “we will adjust your account settings for you”.

Similar rules have been put in place for violent content including violent speech or media, including that which threatens, incites, glorifies or expresses desire for violence or harm.

Teenagers have reported seeing pornographic material more on X than on adult sites. Research from the UK children’s commissioner in January 2023 found that 41% of teenagers aged between 16 and 18 reported seeing pornography on X, versus 37% for dedicated adult sites.

Last week Australia’s online safety regulator, Julie Inman Grant, claimed Apple and Google had financial motives for keeping both X and Reddit on their app stores despite hosting adult content – which she claimed was in violation of both app store policies.

“There’s a huge disincentive right now for the app stores to actually follow their own [policies],” she said.

“They collect a 30% tithe from every transaction that happens on a social media site … Think about the force multiplier of deplatforming an app and what that would mean to their revenue.”

Under Apple’s developer guidelines, apps with user-generated, primarily pornographic content may be removed but apps with user-generated adult content hidden by default may still be displayed. X’s new policy would keep it in line with Apple’s guidelines.

X is also embroiled in a legal battle against the Australian eSafety commissioner over violent content – 65 tweets of a video of the stabbing attack of a Sydney bishop in April, which eSafety has ordered X to remove. The case will be heard in the federal court at the end of June.

X has made the tweets unavailable to users accessing the site in Australia but eSafety has argued in recent court filings that X should also prevent Australian users accessing the tweets via a virtual private network connection.

A Hobart magistrate has issued an arrest warrant for an Aboriginal activist who refused to attend court on charges stemming from a protest because he does not consider himself an Australian citizen.

Jim Everett-puralia meenamatta says he wants to highlight the destruction of forests and issues of Indigenous sovereignty.

Everett-puralia meenamatta was arrested and charged with trespassing in March over an anti-forestry protest in Tasmania’s Styx Valley of the Giants.

His matter was listed in the Hobart magistrates court on Monday but he chose to not appear, prompting magistrate Glenn Hay to issue an arrest warrant for the 81-year-old.

“There was no need to show up, the court doesn’t have any jurisdiction over Aboriginal people protecting our country,” Everett-puralia meenamatta said.

“We’ve never made any agreements to be citizens.”

Everett-puralia meenamatta, who plans to continue protest action in coming months, said he was not fazed by the prospect of jail time or a fine.

“They’ll either catch up with me before I get much else done … or they don’t,” Everett-puralia meenamatta said.

“I’ll probably get fined and then complete what I’m doing and keep building up this issue.

“There’s no use standing up and arguing with a colonial government and expecting they’re going to listen the first time you jump up and down about it. I’m going to keep pushing.”

Veteran environmentalist Bob Brown, whose organisation arranged the March protest, attended court and described the situation as a legal test case.

“A court is overriding the sovereignty of Jim Everett … an Aboriginal man who has such enormous respect in the First Nations community,” Brown told reporters.

“Every similar nation in the world has a treaty with its original people where people have invaded … and established courts. This country doesn’t.”

Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre campaign manager Nala Mansell has called for the trespass charge to be dropped.

“The power that white people have over Aborigines, our lives, culture and cultural responsibilities has to have some flexibility,” she said in a statement.

“White people can govern and manage themselves but their laws shouldn’t apply to Aboriginal people.”

Everett-puralia meenamatta, a pakana plangermairreenner man who has written poetry, plays, political and academic papers and short stories, has visited many remote Aboriginal communities.

“If you understand what being Aboriginal is, it is being part of country,” he said. “If you hurt country, you are hurting our community.

“Much research has been done on the generational trauma … because of the destruction of our country.”

Gareth Southgate decided to make his move. The hour had passed and although his experimental England team was getting closer, he wanted to introduce the big gun, his captain Harry Kane, from the bench – plus four others including James Maddison and Jack Grealish. There would also be the thrill of debuts for Jarrad Branthwaite and Adam Wharton.

Kane had taken off his tracksuit but there would be one last action because the VAR had spotted something amiss inside the Bosnia and Herzegovina box as they defended a corner. It soon became apparent that the defender Benjamin Tahirovic had a hold of Ezri Konsa’s shirt. It was a clear penalty and Kane had to be licking his lips at the prospect of getting on to take it for his 63rd England goal.

Instead, he was held back and the responsibility fell to a player at the other end of the international experience spectrum – Cole Palmer, on the occasion of his full debut. Palmer is famously cold from the spot and he was never going to pass up this one, his first senior England goal a special moment.

Southgate’s team had flattered to deceive in the first half, save for a few flashes from another full debutant, Eberechi Eze, plus a few more by Palmer. The penalty settled them, liberated them ahead of the grand Euro 2024 kick-off. After one more warm-up friendly against Iceland at Wembley on Friday, it will be all systems go for the tournament opener against Serbia on Sunday week.

There would be further tonics. Trent Alexander-Arnold had been moved from the right centre midfield role in Southgate’s 4-2-3-1 to right-back after the mass substitutions but how he affected the game from there. One long diagonal over to Grealish took the breath and almost enabled Maddison to score but not as much as the volley for 2-0, Alexander-Arnold fizzing it low and clean into the far corner from a tight angle. There was a glorious nonchalance about it. Wharton, playing with a maturity that belied his 20 years, had gone left to Grealish and he got the assist with a floated cross.

Conor Gallagher – singled out for post-match praise from Southgate – went close to 3-0, denied by the goalkeeper Nikola Vasilj after a surging run, before Kane, inevitably, did gloss the scoreline. The goal had featured smart approach work from Grealish, Maddison and Jarrod Bowen and, when Konsa could not set his feet for a close-range finish, Kane could.

There has been plenty of fretting about Southgate’s defensive problems with Harry Maguire and Luke Shaw injured; John Stones coming off an uneven club season. There is rather less doubt about the attacking riches and this was a game to show them off. It was not perfect. Yet when England cut loose, there was much to enjoy.

It was easy to feel that it was a bad sign for Grealish to have been among the substitutes, after he reported early for duty last week following the FA Cup final in which he did not get on for Manchester City. He would change the narrative sharply, ­playing with a point to prove, although he was hardly the only one. Southgate had started with Bowen, Palmer and Eze, right to left in the line behind the striker, Ollie Watkins, and opportunity had knocked loudly for all of them.

Quick Guide

Germany miss chances in Ukraine stalemate

Show

Euro 2024 hosts Germany missed scores of chances and dominated for much of the game against Ukraine on Monday but could not find a winner as their penultimate warm-up game before the tournament ended 0-0.

Germany, without Real Madrid and Dortmund players in the lineup following Saturday’s Champions League final, started at a fast pace and with high pressing.
Ilkay Gündogan should have put them in the lead in the 16th minute, but failed to connect properly with Pascal Gross’ cross.

Julian Nagelsmann’s side came close again early in the second half but Kai Havertz [pictured] headed wide in the 53rd minute. Substitute Maximilian Beier came even closer with his first touch, hitting the crossbar from a tight angle and then forcing a save from goalkeeper Anatoliy Trubin. Reuters

Photograph: Alexander Hassenstein/Getty Images Europe

Eze looked assured on the ball, those lovely feints to the fore. He will beat you from a standing start. Premier League fans know that and the small contingent of Bosnia and Herzegovina fans, up in the St James’ Park gods, quickly realised it. Palmer had a few moments before the interval, ushering in Watkins for the first chance. Watkins might have gone to ground as Nikola Katic grappled with him. He instead shot straight at Vasilj.

The atmosphere was subdued in the first half, apart from when Kieran Trippier, the Newcastle hero and England captain at the outset, got on the ball. Or when Jordan Pickford did likewise. The Sunderland boy heard boos from the locals, although the England diehards who had travelled from further afield chanted his name.

England gave the crowd little to get excited about before the interval. They did not move the ball with sufficient zip and against big, physical opponents, set up in a rigid 5-4-1, it was all a little clogged. Bowen wanted to get in behind up the right but Eze’s inclination was to drift inside. Trippier was never going to get up and outside from left-back.

Eze burst away from three challengers in the 27th minute – a breathtaking and isolated incision – the ball spinning for Konsa, who won a corner. From it, Konsa again got a break and stabbed low for goal. Vasilj saved smartly. Bowen shot low at the goalkeeper on 45 minutes.

The crowd tried to rouse England after the restart. The noise levels went up significantly, consistently. They implored the team to bring more against the nation ranked 74th on the Fifa list. It worked. Palmer flickered, seeing one shot deflect wide after a trademark shoulder drop, almost creating a yard for himself on another occasion following a low Bowen cut-back.

The breakthrough was coming. When Eze worked the ball wide after a corner, Bowen banged in a low shot and watched it deflect for a corner. Kane and the raft of replacements were stripped. England would strike before they got on.

France’s prime minister has been accused of deliberately seeking to eclipse the head of his party’s list in European elections when he unexpectedly appeared on a stage where she was taking part in a radio debate.

The prime minister, Gabriel Attal, strolled into France Info’s radio debate with lead candidates amid an exchange between the anchor and the head of the ruling party’s list for the 9 June polls, Valérie Hayer.

Hayer has largely failed to score with the public in the campaign for the election where the French far right may score a victory in a major setback for the ruling Renaissance party of president Emmanuel Macron.

“Hello, sorry I’m bursting on to the stage,” Attal told the audience as Hayer looked on, saying it was important to him to address the young people watching and to “encourage Valérie”.

He then launched into a short stump speech on how many key issues like climate change “can only be tackled through Europe”.

Asked by the anchor if he was worried about Hayer in the elections, Attal replied: “I am worried about Europe,” and noted the rise of the far right.

“This is the new ‘phone a friend’ lifeline that [Hayer] seems to be using more and more,” said François-Xavier Bellamy, candidate for the conservative Republicans party who was next to speak in the debate, referring to the Who Wants to be a Millionaire? quiz show.

“Clearly people around her think they’re better at campaigning. There’s a bit of a macho aspect to all this,” he said.

The head of the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) party’s list for the elections, Manon Aubry, posted a video of the event calling it the “definition of mansplaining”.

Raquel Garrido, an LFI MP, called the incident “mansplaining or, to be more precise, manterrupting”, using an American English neologism coined by feminists.

Attal had already faced accusations of blatantly eclipsing the head of his party’s list when he, not Hayer, took part last month in a televised TV debate with far right National Rally (RN) lead candidate, Jordan Bardella.

The 28-year-old’s challenge to Attal, 35, France’s youngest and first openly gay premier, has been cast as a battle for dominance of the next generation of French politics.

The three-time RN presidential candidate, Marine Le Pen, called the incident “truly shameful” adding that Attal would “have never allowed that if the candidate was a man”.

But writing on X, Hayer lashed out at opponents accusing Attal of sexism.

“Instrumentalising the feminist cause only harms it. Real sexism is believing you can think for me,” she wrote adding she was “proud” to have Attal “by my side” in the campaign.

The incident was however the latest bump for the ruling party’s campaign in the election, with polls showing the RN scoring over double the total of Renaissance.

In another blow late last week, France’s debt was downgraded by rating agency S&P.

An Ipsos poll released on Monday suggested 33% of people could vote for the RN list in the 9 June polls with Renaissance on 16% only just ahead of the chasing Socialists.

The government on Monday faced two confidence motions in parliament put forward by LFI and the RN.

But both fell short of the 289 votes needed for an overall majority to unseat the government as the Republicans refused to support them.

Real Madrid have announced the signing of Kylian Mbappé seven years after they first tried to bring him to the club. The France forward will officially join on a free transfer on 1 July after his Paris Saint-Germain contract expires.

Mbappé will be paid an annual salary of between €15m (£12.8m) and €20m (£17m) with annual increments. He is due to receive a €125m (£106.5m) signing-on bonus spread over five years of the contract, and will get 80% of his image rights.

Shortly after a Madrid statement confirmed the move, the 25‑year‑old forward shared images on social media of himself as a youngster in the club’s clothing, including ­meeting Cristiano Ronaldo at the Valdebebas training ground. “A dream come true,” Mbappé wrote. “So happy and proud to join the club of my dream, Real Madrid. Nobody can understand how excited I am right now. Can’t wait to see you, Madridistas, and thanks for your unbelievable support. Hala Madrid!”

With Mbappé preparing with France for Euro 2024, Madrid hope to present him in mid-July. He will wear the No 9 shirt next season. Madrid’s statement confirming his arrival said: “Real Madrid and Kylian Mbappé have reached an agreement whereby he will be a Real Madrid player for the next five seasons.”

Mbappé moved to PSG from Monaco seven years ago and Madrid made further attempts to get him in 2021, when they offered €200m on summer deadline day, and 2022, when the forward held positive talks with the Spanish club but ended up committing to a new contract.

The signing of Mbappé follows Madrid’s win against Borussia Dortmund at Wembley last Saturday that secured a record-extending 15th European Cup. Mbappé, who scored 256 goals in 308 PSG appearances, joins forwards at Madrid including Vinícius Júnior and Rodrygo. Another Brazilian forward, Endrick, is due to arrive next month from Palmeiras when he turns 18.

Mbappé was not included by Thierry Henry on Monday in France’s 25-man preliminary squad for a ­training camp for the Paris Olympic Games and will not be part of the final squad. The men’s tournament runs from 24 July to 9 August. “Clubs have the power to say yes or no,” Henry said.

In those final fading years of the New York socialites, Diane Lane was a teenager and already an actor. It was Manhattan in the 70s, and she had glimpses into the world of high society insiders such as Babe Paley and CZ Guest – women the writer Truman Capote “collected” and then betrayed, as depicted in the Apple TV+ series Feud: Capote vs The Swans. Lane, who plays queen bee Slim Keith, remembers occasionally coming into these women’s orbits.

“I met Lee Radziwill on several occasions,” she says, of the sister of Jackie Kennedy and another of Capote’s “swans”. “I was a young person and she was not, but I distinctly remember what that feeling is when you have youth and you’re surrounded by people who don’t, and they’re looking at you with knives.” Lane smiles. Youth and beauty, then as now, were currency, as well as status. Around that time, Lane had been hailed as the next Grace Kelly by Laurence Olivier, with whom she had just starred in A Little Romance. Though even that, Lane points out, was an outdated reference. The world was changing.

Even though she’s only 59, Lane has been an actor for more than 50 years, landing her first stage role when she was six. She went on to work with Olivier and be directed numerous times by Francis Ford Coppola while still in her teens, followed by years of consistent work. She had near misses (she turned down Splash, and auditioned for Pretty Woman, which both became huge hits), and received an Oscar nomination in 2003 for Unfaithful. Even so, she seems to be having something of a well-deserved moment now. As well as Feud, she is in a new Netflix series, A Man in Full, playing Martha, the ex-wife of Charlie Croker (Jeff Daniels), a real estate mogul facing bankruptcy.

Lane seems so level-headed, particularly when you consider her early life, which might not feature the cliched rebellion of a former child star, but did have a wildness to it. She was the only child of Burt Lane, an acting coach and sometime New York taxi driver, and Colleen Farrington, a singer and Playboy model. The one-liner her dad always used, about guiding his daughter into acting, was that it was better than daycare. “The fact that you genetically turn out to be considered worthy to be in front of the camera, that’s my mother’s credit,” says Lane. She glances away from the camera on our video call, explaining that she’s looking at photographs of her late parents on her wall.

At seven, Lane joined La MaMa, an experimental theatre group in New York, and went off on a world tour in their care. I know it was the 70s, but does she look back and wonder what her parents were thinking? “Oh yeah, it definitely got me a seat in therapy,” she says with a smile. “When I was the mother of a seven-year-old [Lane has a grownup daughter with her first husband, the actor Christopher Lambert], there was no way I was going to put her on a plane and send her away. Phones and postcards, that’s what we had.”

Most people in the company were in their 20s, and they’d take it in turns to look after her, not always entirely responsibly – she has said before that in Amsterdam, she mistakenly ate hash brownies. “We were in Shiraz and Tehran and Beirut.” They liked to perform at ancient ruins, “outdoors with fire preferably”. There was nudity on stage, and depictions of sexual assault and murder, and rage, and it was all a bit wild and out there.

The world seemed more innocent then, she says. “You have to understand the comparisons are not on the same playing field. The experiences that I had were extraordinary and multicultural and filled with creative hearts, and intense experimentation and freedom.” She bought a pet tortoise on the streets of Paris, had it blessed at the Notre Dame Cathedral, and wore it around her neck in a pouch crocheted by one of the other actors (again, it was the 70s). “On the long flight home, he kept putting his little head up and I’d tap it back down.”

At 12, she was performing in Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard in New York with Meryl Streep, then at 14, her film debut, A Little Romance, with Olivier came out; about adolescent love, Lane played an American in Paris who meets a French boy. Time magazine put her on the cover. How did she cope with the attention? “I grew a very strong compartmentalisation muscle. I knew to not let it in to myself. It’s a skill I developed quickly, because I had to.” She was still at her normal school in New York, and she doesn’t think her friends were much aware of it. “So I just pretended like it never happened.”

Her parents had split up when Lane was only weeks old, and Lane was largely raised by her father. When she was 15, fiercely independent and with her own earnings, she ran away to Los Angeles. Dramas continued – once back in New York, her mother bundled her into a car and drove her to her home in Georgia, until Lane and her father took her to court and she was allowed to return home.

As a young woman navigating the industry, she says she didn’t experience harassment. “I was a very street-savvy kid. I knew who to give a wide berth to.” She would see one man “who shall remain nameless, at parties and just …” She mimics orbiting him without their paths crossing. But there were instances on sets that, looking back, seem outrageous.

In one film as a young actor, on the day she would be taking her clothes off, a load of executives – from the studio’s parent company, and nothing to do with the film – came to watch. “I was like, really? You’ve got to be kidding me. This can’t be an accident. They were all lined up in the back. That’s messed up, that shouldn’t happen to somebody.” She got on with the job, she says. “Be a professional and not let it get under my skin. I’ve had other executives who timed it so that they were visiting the set on the day when you’re in your robe or what have you. Is that coincidence? I wonder.”

Her mother, who had been photographed for Playboy, had been objectified. Was that something that provided a warning for Lane? She pauses. “I’m gonna save that for my memoirs. I can’t really talk about that out of respect for the dead and also the fact that I’m not sure … at one point, she was intending to write a book.” Her mother, she says, often told her, “‘That’s my story, not yours, you don’t get to tell my story.’ And I thought, wow, OK, fair enough.”

It must have affected her though – as a teenager, Lane had visited the Playboy mansion and was introduced to Hugh Hefner. She is clearly beautiful and has an earthy sexiness, but she also doesn’t strike me as someone who turns it up to her advantage. She pauses, makes a thoughtful “hmm” and says, “I have been critiqued as being somebody who does not flirt. I don’t know if that’s an answer to your question. Maybe they’re correlated.”

In Feud, Keith is certainly someone who uses her looks to her advantage, and the sexiness of Lane’s character in A Man in Full is something of a plot point. Look away now if you don’t want spoilers, or mental images of giant penises, but this is the show where TV drama’s (probably) biggest erect phallus makes its entrance. “I mean, it had its own beauty team, key light, direction and intimacy coordinator and everything.” In the UK, where such things are regulated, one MP said streaming services should come under the power of Ofcom and there have been other complaints.

Lane never had a career plan – “That’s half the fun, isn’t it? The element of surprise” – and since it has spanned five decades, there have been highs and lows. Being cast by Coppola was thrilling, but not a guarantee of success – one of the four films of his she appeared in, The Cotton Club, was one of his biggest failures. Throughout her career, people have often talked of Lane’s comebacks. “You cycle through periods where there’s work that nobody sees, and when you do something that’s a hit everybody goes, ‘So glad you’re working again.’” She laughs. “And you say, ‘I’ve been working this whole time in things that you don’t know exist.’ That’s fine. Everything’s not for everybody. I’m grateful to work because it’s all a game of luck. When you talk about your last job, you think, ‘Well, that may be the last job.’”

Stepping away from the industry for periods of time has been important, she says, “to keep perspective, to stay interested, to keep a part of yourself that’s just for you so that you have a well to draw from. You have to have life experiences that piss you off enough to play somebody who is very upset. You can’t just have life be a bowl of strawberries and cream every day in your trailer.” She laughs. “I’m teasing, of course – that’s never happened to me in my trailer.”

Last year, Lane was in demand, the world seemingly woken up to interesting roles for older women. “There seems to be work and I’m grateful for it.” She is thrilled, she says with a laugh, to still be associated with child stardom. “It’s nice to have a generation of people that have been with me,” she says of those who have grown up watching Lane. “Maybe they feel that way again, now we’re not so young. I feel that I’ve got to play the different ages that I have been. I’m not trapped, trying to play 35, I’m playing the age of women that I am.”

DNA testing has confirmed that Asian hornets overwintered in the UK for the first time this year, meaning it is very likely the bee-killing insect will be here for good.

Asian hornets (Vespa velutina) dismember and eat bees, and have thrived in France, where they have caused concern because of the number of insects killed. They sit outside honeybee hives and capture bees as they enter and exit, and chop up the smaller insects and feed their thoraxes to their young.

Previously they were not established in the UK, but earlier this year experts raised the alarm about a hornet that was captured in Kent in March.

Despite the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) saying earlier this month that there was no concrete proof the hornets had stayed here over winter, testing from the government-backed National Bee Unit has shown that three queen hornets caught at Four Oaks in East Sussex are the offspring of a nest destroyed in nearby Rye in November 2023. That implies that the hornets are here and breeding in the UK.

For the species to be classed as naturalised in the UK, however, the NBU says there needs to be evidence of a reproducing population present in the wild “for a significant number of generations”. Currently, only one generation of hornets has been found. “The presence of overwintered hornets produced from a nest found and destroyed late last year is not considered to be strong evidence of an established population,” it said.

Just one Asian hornet can hunt down and eat 30 to 50 honeybees in a day. Asian hornet numbers have skyrocketed in the UK, with 57 sightings in 2023, more than double the previous seven years combined.

It looks like 2024 may be an even better year for the hornet, with 15 confirmed sightings so far. Three sightings had been confirmed by the same date in 2023.

The species first came to Europe in 2004, when they were spotted in France, and it is thought they were accidentally transported in cargo from Asia. They rapidly spread across western Europe.

Defra has been contacted for comment.

A leading federal scientist in Canada has alleged he was barred from investigating a mystery brain illness in the province of New Brunswick and said he fears more than 200 people affected by the condition are experiencing unexplained neurological decline.

The allegations, made in leaked emails to a colleague seen by the Guardian, have emerged two years after the eastern province closed its investigation into a possible “cluster” of cases.

“All I will say is that my scientific opinion is that there is something real going on in [New Brunswick] that absolutely cannot be explained by the bias or personal agenda of an individual neurologist,” wrote Michael Coulthart, a prominent microbiologist. “A few cases might be best explained by the latter, but there are just too many (now over 200).”

New Brunswick health officials warned in 2021 that more than 40 residents were suffering from a possible unknown neurological syndrome, with symptoms similar to those of the degenerative brain disorder Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Those symptoms were varied and dramatic: some patients started drooling and others felt as though bugs were crawling on their skin.

A year later, however, an independent oversight committee created by the province determined that the group of patients had most likely been misdiagnosed and were suffering from known illnesses such as cancer and dementia.

The committee and the New Brunswick government also cast doubt on the work of neurologist Alier Marrero, who was initially referred dozens of cases by baffled doctors in the region, and subsequently identified more cases. The doctor has since become a fierce advocate for patients he feels have been neglected by the province.

A final report from the committee, which concluded there was no “cluster” of people suffering from an unknown brain syndrome, signalled the end of the province’s investigation.

But leaked emails viewed by the Guardian tell a starkly different story and suggest senior research scientists in Canada’s public health agency (PHAC) remain increasingly concerned over the cause – and the debilitating symptoms – of an seemingly unexplained illness that disproportionately affects younger people.

In an October 2023 email exchange with another PHAC member, Coulthart, who served as the federal lead in the 2021 investigation into the New Brunswick illness, ​​said he had been “essentially cut off” from any involvement in the issue, adding he believed the reason was political.

Coulthart, a veteran scientist who currently heads Canada’s Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease Surveillance System, did not respond to a request for comment by the Guardian. But in the leaked email, he wrote that he believes an “environmental exposure – or a combination of exposures – is triggering and/or accelerating a variety of neurodegenerative syndromes” with people seemingly susceptible to different protein-misfolding ailments, including Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease.

Coulthart argues this phenomenon does not easily fit within “shallow paradigms” of diagnostic pathology and the complexity of the issue has given politicians a “loophole” to conclude “nothing coherent” is going on.

“I believe the truth will assert itself in time, but for now all we can do … is continue to collect information on the cases that come to us as suspect prion disease,” Coulthart wrote.

Copies of the email exchange were sent to the parliamentary health committee by a patient advocacy group in March, but it is unclear whether any action was taken. The committee did not respond to a request for comment.

New Brunswick’s health department did not respond to specific questions about Coulthart’s emails.

“Although Dr Alier Marrero has made statements regarding findings and observations with regards to a large number of patients, since May 2023, Public Health New Brunswick has received a total of only 29 complete notifications from Dr Marrero,” a spokesperson for the province’s health department told the Guardian in an email.

“These are being reviewed … to date, Public Health New Brunswick has not received any similar notifications from other physicians.”

Coulthart’s email emerged more than a year after Marrero pleaded with the Canadian government to carry out environmental testing he believed would show the involvement of glyphosate.

Marrero, who initially worked closely with Coulthart, declined to comment on the October emails, instead directing questions to the province’s health authority.

In the years since the cases were first flagged to health officials, those suffering say various levels of government have ignored their plight.

“Politicians don’t want to acknowledge there is something serious going on, because then they need to address it,” said one young woman, adding that ever since the province issued its final report, she has received no assistance or follow-up, despite experiencing worsening symptoms.

She now suffers from muscle tremors and poor coordination, and was told by doctors her visual and memory deterioration is reminiscent of a patient several decades older.

“My condition is progressing and things have been much more challenging,” she said. The woman, who asked not to be named, is unable to cook because her hands are too hard to control and she now relies nearly exclusively on frozen meals. As her memory deteriorates, she requires constant reminders from her smart speaker to take medications, to shower and to eat.

“I miss being able to drive and to have a sense of independence,” she says. “I don’t recognize myself on the inside.”

Elon Musk and the entrepreneur and investor David Sacks reportedly held a secret dinner party of billionaires and millionaires in Hollywood last month. Its purpose: to defeat Joe Biden and re-install Donald Trump in the White House.

The guest list included Peter Thiel, Rupert Murdoch, Michael Milken, Travis Kalanick, and Steven Mnuchin, Trump’s treasury secretary.

Meanwhile, Musk is turning up the volume and frequency of his anti-Biden harangues on Twitter/X, the platform he owns.

According to an analysis by the New York Times, Musk has posted about the president at least seven times a month, on average, this year. He has criticized Biden on issues ranging from Biden’s age to his policies on health and immigration, calling Biden “a tragic front for a far left political machine”.

The Times analysis showed that over the same period of time, Musk has posted more than 20 times in favor of Trump, claiming that the criminal cases the former president now faces are the result of media and prosecutorial bias.

This is no small matter. Musk has 184 million followers on X, and because he owns the platform he’s able to manipulate the algorithm to maximize the number of people who see his posts.

No other leader of a social media firm has gone as far as Musk in supporting authoritarian leaders around the world. In addition to Trump, Musk has used his platform in support of India’s Narendra Modi, Argentina’s Javier Milei and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro.

Some of this aligns with Musk’s business interests. In India, he secured lower import tariffs for Tesla vehicles. In Brazil, he opened a major new market for Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite internet service. In Argentina, he solidified access to lithium, the mineral most crucial to Tesla’s batteries.

But something deeper is going on. Musk, Thiel, Murdoch and their cronies are leading a movement against democracy.

Peter Thiel, the billionaire tech financier, once wrote: “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”

If freedom is not compatible with democracy, what is it compatible with?

Thiel donated $15m to the successful Republican senatorial campaign of JD Vance, who alleged that the 2020 election was stolen and that Biden’s immigration policy meant “more Democrat voters pouring into this country”. (Vance is now high on the list of Trump vice-presidential possibilities.)

Thiel also donated at least $10m to the Arizona Republican primary race of Blake Masters, who also claimed Trump won the 2020 election and admires Lee Kuan Yew, the authoritarian founder of modern Singapore.

Billionaire money is now gushing into the 2024 election. Just 50 families have already injected more than $600m into the 2024 election cycle, according to a new report from Americans for Tax Fairness. Most of this is going to the Trump Republican party.

In 2021, Stephen A Schwarzman, the billionaire chairman and chief executive of the Blackstone Group, called the January 6 attack on the US Capitol an “insurrection” and “an affront to the democratic values we hold dear”. Now he’s backing Trump because, Schwarzman says, “our economic, immigration and foreign policies are taking the country in the wrong direction.”

Trump recently solicited a group of top oil executives to raise $1bn for his campaign, reportedly promising that if elected he would immediately reverse dozens of environmental rules and green energy policies adopted by Biden. Trump said this would be a “deal” for the oil executives that would avoid taxation and regulation on their industry.

Speaking from the World Economic Forum’s confab last January in Davos, Switzerland, Jamie Dimon – chair and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, the largest and most profitable bank in the United States, and one of the most influential CEOs in the world – heaped praise on Trump’s policies while president. “Take a step back, be honest,” Dimon said. Trump “grew the economy quite well. Tax reform worked”.

Rubbish. Under Trump the economy lost 2.9m jobs. Even before the pandemic, job growth under Trump was slower than it’s been under Biden.

Most of the benefits of Trump’s tax cut went to big corporations like JPMorgan Chase and wealthy individuals like Dimon, while the costs blew a giant hole in the budget deficit. If not for those Trump tax cuts, along with the Bush tax cuts and their extensions, the ratio of the federal debt to the national economy would now be declining.

But don’t assume that the increasing flow of billionaire money to Trump and his Republican party is motivated solely by tax cuts and regulatory rollbacks. The goal of these US oligarchs is to roll back democracy.

When asked if he was becoming more political, Musk admitted (in a podcast in November): “If you consider fighting the woke mind virus, which I consider to be a civilizational threat, to be political, then yes … Woke mind virus is communism rebranded.”

Communism rebranded? Hello?

A former generation of wealthy US conservatives backed candidates like Barry Goldwater because they wanted to conserve American institutions. Musk, Thiel, Schwarzman, Murdoch and their fellow billionaires in the anti-democracy movement don’t want to conserve much of anything – at least not anything that occurred after the 1920s, including Social Security, civil rights, and even women’s right to vote.

As Thiel wrote: “The 1920s were the last decade in American history during which one could be genuinely optimistic about politics. Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women – two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians – have rendered the notion of ‘capitalist democracy’ into an oxymoron.”

If “capitalist democracy” is becoming an oxymoron, it’s not because of public assistance or because women got the right to vote. It’s because billionaire capitalists like Musk and Thiel are intent on killing democracy by supporting Trump and the neo-fascists surrounding him.

Not incidentally, the 1920s marked the last gasp of the Gilded Age, when America’s robber barons ripped off so much of the nation’s wealth that the rest of the US had to go deep into debt both to maintain their standard of living and to maintain overall demand for the goods and services the nation produced.

When that debt bubble burst in 1929, we got the Great Depression. Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler then emerged to create the worst threats to freedom and democracy the modern world had ever witnessed.

If America learned anything from the first Gilded Age and the fascism that grew like a cancer in the 1930s, it should have been that gross inequalities of income and wealth fuel gross inequalities of political power – as Musk, Thiel, Schwarzman, Murdoch and other billionaires are now putting on full display – which in turn generate strongmen who destroy both democracy and freedom.

Under fascist strongmen, no one is safe – not even oligarchs.

If we want to guard what’s left of our freedom, we must meet the anti-democracy movement with a bold pro-democracy movement that protects the institutions of self-government from oligarchs like Musk and Thiel and neo-fascists like Trump.