In the early summer of this year, a ship set sail around the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard. But this wasn’t any ordinary ship. For almost 40 years the Joides Resolution drilled into the ocean floor to collect samples and data that helped scientists to study Earth’s history and structure. Expeditions on the vessel have made a vital contribution to our understanding of the climate crisis, the tectonic plates theory, the origin of life on Earth and natural hazards such as earthquakes and eruptions. Yet the two-month voyage around Svalbard was to be its last.

The National Science Foundation (NSF), the US agency that provided scientists at Texas A&M University with funds for the ship, announced last year it would not give money for the drilling vessel past September 2024. It was a declaration that shocked the global scientific community and meant that Svalbard would be the ship’s final outing.

“Being deprived of this workhorse is devastating because we can’t get these data in any other way,” says Thomas Ronge, the project manager of the Svalbard expedition. “We are losing our potential to read the history book of climate change.”

To understand the significance of the loss of the drilling vessel, it is useful to look at the evolution of this type of exploration and what it has attempted to achieve – in many cases successfully.

It began in earnest in the early 1960s, when a group of scientists embarked on a mission to drill down from a floating barge, called Cuss I, to the border between the crust, the Earth’s outermost layer, and the mantle, the next and thickest layer. Project Mohole, as it was known, was recorded by the novelist and amateur oceanographer John Steinbeck in an article for Life magazine. “This is the opening move in a long-term plan of exploration of the unknown two-thirds of our planet that lies under the sea,” he wrote. “We know less about this area than we do about the moon.”

That mission was ultimately unsuccessful but it laid the foundations for scientific ocean drilling, the concept of which is simple. Strata of sediments accumulate underwater, eventually becoming rock under pressure. Unlike on land, where disparate factors change the ground conformation in unpredictable ways, layers on the sea floor usually pile up at a regular pace and remain untouched. The deeper you drill, the further back in time you can go.

After the failure of Mohole came the drill ship Glomar Challenger and, from 1985, the Joides Resolution. As recently as last year, 62 years after the Mohole project recounted by Steinbeck, scientists aboard the Joides managed to extract rock samples from the Earth’s mantle for the first time. “We did it,” said one of the expedition members to the New York Times. “We now have a treasure trove of rocks that will let us systematically study the processes that people believe are relevant to the emergence of life on the planet.”

Yet such discoveries, at least using a US-funded vessel, appear unlikely in the near future.

“[The end of the funding] is a huge loss to science and to everyone,” says Adriane Lam, a researcher at Binghamton University in New York, who was aboard the Joides this summer for the ship’s last expedition. “The stuff we’re finding has huge implications for things like where people live and may not be able to live in the future if the Earth keeps warming up.”

On its last expedition, the Joides drilled into the sea floor to help scientists understand how an ice sheet in the Arctic Ocean collapsed thousands of years ago. Analysing how the Svalbard ice sheet melted, researchers hope to be able to model the possible collapse of a vulnerable equivalent in the west Antarctic.

The NSF attributed its decision to end its funding to rising costs and a lack of financial support from the International Ocean Discovery Program’s partners. But many see the expenditure for the ship as paltry compared with its benefits. To put it in perspective, the total NSF budget for 2023 was close to $10bn (£7.5bn); the $71m spent on the Joides is 0.7% of that.

When they go low, she goes high. Miller High Life to be precise.

Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, took her election campaign to late night television on Tuesday by cracking open a can of the lager with host Stephen Colbert. The moment set her apart from Joe Biden and Donald Trump – both, famously, teetotallers.

The vice-president also used the interview in New York’s Ed Sullivan Theater to lambast Trump over a report that he sent Covid testing kits to Russia’s Vladimir Putin even as US citizens went without. “He thinks, well, that’s his friend,” she said. “What about the American people? They should be your first friend.”

The appearance before a live audience capped a media blitz for Harris who, having previously been criticised for dodging interviews, spoke in recent days to CBS’s 60 Minutes, the podcast Call Her Daddy, the daytime show The View and radio host Howard Stern.

The Late Show with Stephen Colbert has featured Harris, Biden and numerous other politicians over the years, blending serious political issues with light relief. During Tuesday’s interview in New York, he noted that people are calling this “the vibe election” and that voters typically want a candidate they can have a beer with.

He duly invited Harris to share a drink and said she had requested Miller High Life in advance. The vice-president remarked: “OK, the last time I had beer was at a baseball game with Doug. Cheers.”

Harris repeated the popular slogan “The champagne of beers”, while Colbert noted that it comes from Milwaukee, in the swing state of Wisconsin. He said: “So that covers Wisconsin. Let’s talk Michigan. Let’s appeal to the Michigan voters, OK? What are your favourite Bob Seger songs?”

The host proceeded to reel off a list of Seger songs but Harris did not appear enthusiastic. Finally, she said: “I’ll go Aretha or Eminem. You got any?”

The 40-minute interview, due to be broadcast on CBS on Tuesday night, also tackled serious topics. Colbert asked about the 7 October attack by Hamas and Israel’s response. Harris said: “We must have a ceasefire and hostage deal as immediately as possible. This war has got to end. It has to end.”

Progress on a deal for a ceasefire and the release of hostages is “meaningless”, she acknowledged, until it is reached. Harris said she has met with the families of hostages and the families of Palestinians killed in Gaza. “We’ve got to get a deal done and we’re not going to give up.”

The interview took place after it emerged that journalist Bob Woodward writes in his new book, War, that Trump has had as many as seven private phone calls with Putin since leaving office and secretly sent the Russian president Covid test machines in 2020. Trump has denied the claims.

Harris commented: “He openly admires dictators and authoritarians. He has said he wants to be a dictator on day one if he were elected again as president. He gets played by these guys. He admires so-called strongmen and he gets played because they flatter him or offer him favour.”

Referring to the Covid test kits, she went on: “I ask everyone here and everyone who is watching: do you remember what those days were like? You remember how many people did not have tests and were trying to scramble to get them?”

Harris became visibly irate as she recalled that hundreds of people were dying every day, some comforted only by nurses because their families could not reach them.
“And this man is giving Covid test kits to Vladimir Putin? Think about what this means on top of him sending love letters to Kim Jong-un. He thinks, well, that’s his friend. What about the American people? They should be your first friend.”

Earlier Colbert asked Harris about a now celebrated image of her in the presidential debate against Trump in which she frowned and rested her chin on a hand. Asked what she was thinking at that moment, she replied: “It’s family TV, right? It starts with a W, there’s a letter between it, then the last letter’s F.” She burst into laughter.

The comedian asked if Trump lost the 2020 election, something he has always denied. Harris said: “You know, when you lost millions of jobs, you lost manufacturing, you lost automotive plants, you lost the election. What does that make you? A loser. This is what somebody at my rallies said. I thought it was funny.”

She laughed and Colbert remarked: “It’s accurate. It’s accurate.”

Then Harris pointed out: “This is what happens when I drink beer!”

The government’s official climate watchdog has appointed the head of the energy industry’s trade association to lead its work helping to drive the UK’s emissions to net zero by 2050.

Emma Pinchbeck, the head of Energy UK, will take up the role of chief executive of the Climate Change Committee (CCC) from early next month after four years at the helm of the trade association.

The former deputy of RenewableUK will replace Chris Stark, who was appointed to lead the government’s “mission control centre” on clean energy, a Covid vaccine-style taskforce aimed at delivering clean and cheaper power by 2030.

Pinchbeck was tapped for the role earlier this year and told the Guardian in August that “change can be quite frightening” for rural communities likely to host renewable energy infrastructure.

Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, said Pinchbeck would join the CCC at “a pivotal point” in the UK’s journey to net zero, halfway through a “decisive decade to halt climate change”.

“Following her leadership at Energy UK, [Pinchbeck] is well placed to advise and challenge government on our net zero goals – ensuring we meet our climate commitments with ambition and urgency,” Miliband said.

He added that Pinchbeck’s “extensive experience” leading the decarbonisation of the energy industry underscores “how the economics of clean energy are now aligned with climate policy, driving both environmental protection and economic growth”.

Pinchbeck was appointed Energy UK’s chief executive in January 2020 months before the Covid-19 pandemic led to record low energy market prices that wiped billions from the market value of major energy companies. The sharp bounceback in energy prices in 2021 caused more than 30 energy suppliers to go bust. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in early 2022 pushed up energy prices across Europe further and forced the UK government to step in to subsidise bills.

Pinchbeck said: “Energy has moved from the fringes to the very centre of economic policy and I hope that I have played my part in making sure that the importance of our sector and of the energy transition is clear to government.

“I am excited to bring my experience and knowledge of a decade in energy to the challenge of decarbonising our economy at speed with tangible benefits to the people of the UK.”

Two southern California women say they were removed from a Spirit Airlines flight last week for wearing crop tops. A flight attendant instructed the friends to disembark their New Orleans-bound flight before the plane could depart from Los Angeles international airport, they told a local news station.

The friends, Tara Kehidi and Teresa Araujo, were wearing sweaters when they boarded the plane, but removed them because the air conditioning was not functioning.

“We were wearing crop tops … just like a little bit of stomach showing,” Kehidi told the ABC news affiliate KABC. When a male flight attendant told her and Araujo to “put something on”, the friend asked: “Can we see a dress code? Like, is there a policy that says we can’t wear crop tops on the plane?”

Another woman sitting in the row in front of Kehidi and Araujo told the station that the temperature on the plane had forced most of its passengers to remove their sweaters.

“I said, ‘Well, if your body is inappropriate, then so is mine because I also have a crop top under my sweater.’ And I took my sweater off and I was like: ‘So if they’re kicking you off the flight, then they’re also going to have to kick me and my toddler off of the flight,’” said Carla Hager, who was traveling with her child.

Kehidi and Araujo ultimately offered to put their sweaters back on, but the three women and Hager’s toddler were all removed from the flight with no refund.

“Everyone in the plane was looking at us,” Araujo said. She said that she and Kehidi felt like they were being “treated like criminals”.

Although the majority of airlines have a dress code, they are often vague and left up to flight attendants to enforce – leading many female passengers to point out sexist differences in that enforcement.

In a statement to KABC, Spirit Airlines said: “Our Contract of Carriage, a document all Guests agree to upon making a reservation with us, includes certain clothing standards for all Guests traveling with us. We are investigating the matter, and we are in contact with the Guests about their experience.”

The airline’s Contract of Carriage says passengers may be asked to leave a flight if they are “inadequately clothed, or whose clothing is lewd, obscene or offensive in nature”.

Kehidi and Araujo ultimately spent $1,000 rebooking on to a Delta flight to New Orleans in order to celebrate Kehidi’s 30th birthday.

They told KABC that they were interested in pursuing legal action against Spirit. The budget airline has a history of headline-making snafus: from putting an unaccompanied minor on the wrong flight to stranding thousands of passengers with cancelled and delayed flights.

The Trump administration protected Brett Kavanaugh from facing a full FBI investigation in the wake of serious allegations that he sexually assaulted two women – once in high school and once in college – during his controversial 2018 Senate confirmation to become a supreme court justice, according to a new report.

An investigation led by the Democratic senator Sheldon Whitehouse also found that both the Trump White House and the FBI “misled the public and the Senate” about the scope of the investigation it did conduct into the sexual assault allegations by falsely claiming that the FBI had conducted its investigation thoroughly and “by the book”.

Kavanaugh’s confirmation by the Senate seemed to be in doubt after Christine Blasey Ford, a professor at Palo Alto University, alleged he had sexually assaulted her while the two were in high school. A classmate at Yale, named Deborah Ramirez, alleged in a report published by the New Yorker that Kavanaugh had exposed himself at a drunken dormitory party. Kavanaugh denied both allegations.

The Senate judiciary committee agreed after Ford publicly testified about her allegations that the FBI conduct a supplemental background check to examine those allegations before the full Senate voted on his nomination.

In the aftermath of Kavanaugh’s ultimate confirmation by the Senate, in a 50-48 vote, Whitehouse and his staff set out on a six-year investigation to try to find answers about how the FBI conducted its investigation.

The investigation was hampered, Whitehouse said, by executive branch delays, reluctance to answer even basic questions, and often incomplete answers.

“In 2018, I pledged to Christine Blasey Ford that I’d keep digging, for however long it took, and not give up or move on from Senate Republicans and the Trump White House’s shameful confirmation process for Justice Kavanaugh,” Whitehouse said.

“This report shows that the supplemental background investigation was a sham, controlled by the Trump White House, to give political cover to Senate Republicans and put Justice Kavanaugh back on the political track to confirmation.”

The findings are significant because at least eight senators cited the FBI’s findings – that “no corroborating evidence” had been found to back up the allegations against Kavanaugh – when they voted to confirm the justice. They include the then majority leader, Mitch McConnell, Shelley Moore Capito, former senator Jeff Flake and Bob Corker, Chuck Grassley and Susan Collins.

In reality, the Whitehouse report claims the FBI’s limited supplemental background investigation involved only a “handful” of interviews of relevant witnesses, and ignored other potential sources, including Kavanaugh himself, Ford, or others who had offered to give the FBI corroborating or otherwise relevant information.

Ford was not interviewed, the report said, even though her attorney repeatedly contacted the FBI directly to request the FBI interview her.

A lawyer for Ramirez provided lists of suggested witnesses to the FBI, including a list of 20 additional witnesses likely to have relevant information who Ramirez suspected could corroborate her account.

In one case, a former classmate of Kavanaugh at Yale named Max Stier sought to come forward to report that he had once witnessed Kavanaugh with his pants down at a drunken party, and that his friends pushed the future justice’s penis into the hands of a female student.

The alleged incident was separate from others that became public during the investigation but bore similarities to the allegations made by Ramirez. Stier notified the Senate and the FBI about his account, according to media reports, but the matter was never investigated by the FBI.

The FBI director, Christopher Wray, was even personally notified by Senator Chris Coons of Delaware about Stier’s account but he was never contacted.

Stier, who runs a non-profit in Washington, has declined to discuss the matter with the Guardian. He is married to Florence Pan, who serves as a circuit judge on the US court of appeals, a post formerly held by the supreme court justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.

In response to the release of the report, Debra Katz and Lisa Banks, lawyers for Ford, said in a statement: “Dr Ford performed a heroic act of public service that came at a steep personal cost for her and those close to her. We know today that Trump White House officials acted to hide the truth. They conspired, with the FBI complicit, to silence those who offered important evidence, including one college classmate who ‘saw Mr Kavanaugh with his pants down at a different drunken dorm party, where friends pushed his penis into the hand of a female student.’ We also know that this will likely result in no consequences for those involved, though it should.”

The FBI also declined to pursue information it received through the agency’s tip line. The tips were forwarded directly to the White House.

Mexico’s new government has been shaken by the murder of a city mayor who was attacked and beheaded days after taking office.

Alejandro Arcos Catalán was sworn in as the mayor of Chilpancingo, the capital of the southern state of Guerrero, on 30 September, a day before Mexico’s first female president, Claudia Sheinbaum, took power herself.

On Monday, less than a week into her presidency, Sheinbaum confirmed reports that the 43-year-old city leader had been slain the previous day, telling reporters: “All the necessary investigations are taking place.”

Photographs of Arcos Catalán’s bloodied head, exhibited on the roof of a white vehicle while his body lay slumped inside, spread on social media – a terrible reminder of the violence that Mexico’s organised crime conflict has inflicted on the Latin American country.

The mayor’s murder came after two close allies were shot dead in the early days of his short-lived administration. A secretary, Francisco Tapia, was gunned down on 3 October, while Ulises Hernández Martínez, a former special forces police commander who was tipped to become Arcos Catalán’s security chief, was riddled with bullets on the eve of the mayor’s inauguration.

Shocked citizens shared footage of an interview with the mayor before his death in which he said he wished to be remembered as a champion of peace and happiness. “I’ve lived here all my life … and it’s here that I want to die – but I want to die fighting for my city,” Arcos Catalán said.

The murder sparked anger and disgust, with Alejandro Moreno, the president of Arcos Catalán’s party, the Institutional Revolutionary party (PRI), denouncing what he called a grotesque “act of terror”.

Ricardo Anaya, an opposition senator, lamented the “spine-chilling” security situation in Mexico, where more than 450,000 people have been killed since President Felipe Calderón launched his doomed “war” against the drug cartels in 2006.

“The fact that they have decapitated the mayor of such an important city should make us shudder. It is utterly unacceptable and we need to do something to ensure it stops happening,” Anaya told reporters, calling for an immediate change in tack in security policy.

But Sheinbaum has promised to continue the so-called “hugs, not bullets” security policy of her predecessor and mentor, the 70-year-old nationalist Andrés Manuel López Obrador, during her six-year term.

“We will not return to Calderón’s reckless war on the narcos that did our country so much harm. It remains our conviction that security and peace are the fruits of justice,” she told thousands of supporters who packed Mexico City’s Zócalo Square for her historic inauguration last Tuesday.

Although López Obrador claimed to have achieved a modest reduction in Mexico’s murder rate in the later stages of his presidency, there is consensus among security analysts that his attempts to “pacify” the country failed. Last year Mexico suffered more than 30,000 murders. According to the Instituto Igarapé thinktank, Mexico was home to 11 of the world’s 50 most murderous cities in 2023, compared with three in 2015. Chilpancingo was one of them.

Despite that bleak reality, López Obrador, who most Mexicans know simply as Amlo, left office with approval ratings of 70%, largely as a result of his relentless focus on fighting inequality and positioning himself as a champion of the poor.

Aware that tackling violence represents one of her most daunting challenges – and under pressure after Arcos Catalán’s murder – Sheinbaum said she would set out her public security plans on Tuesday.

Another major security crisis is playing out in the north-western city of Culiacán, where an internal conflict within the Sinaloa cartel triggered by the capture of its co-founder Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada García has led to scores of killings.

Sheinbaum’s security drive will be spearheaded by the security minister, Omar García Harfuch, who served as her police chief while she was mayor of Mexico City. García Harfuch has first-hand experience of the dangers of organised crime: in 2020 he came close to death when hitmen ambushed his car on the capital’s best-known street, firing more than 400 times with assault rifles and grenade launchers.

The identity of the killers of the mayor of Chilpancingo remained unclear but in recent years the city has witnessed a bloody squabble between two criminal groups called Los Ardillos (the Squirrels) and Los Tlacos. As often happens in Mexico, local politicians have been implicated in that underworld. Arcos Catalán’s predecessor Norma Otilia Hernández was removed from office after compromising footage emerged showing her talking with a Squirrels boss in a restaurant. Hernández, who was then a member of López Obrador and Sheinbaum’s political movement, Morena, claimed it was a “chance” encounter, but was later expelled from the party.

After his election earlier this year, Arcos Catalán reportedly said he would not do deals or negotiate with criminal groups.

Many of Earth’s “vital signs” have hit record extremes, indicating that “the future of humanity hangs in the balance”, a group of the world’s most senior climate experts have said.

More and more scientists are now looking into the possibility of societal collapse, says the report, which assessed 35 vital signs in 2023 and found that 25 were worse than ever recorded, including carbon dioxide levels and human population. This indicates a “critical and unpredictable new phase of the climate crisis”, it says.

The temperature of Earth’s surface and oceans hit an all-time high, driven by record burning of fossil fuels, the report found. Human population is increasing at a rate of approximately 200,000 people a day and the number of cattle and sheep by 170,000 a day, all adding to record greenhouse gas emissions.

The scientists identified 28 feedback loops, including increasing emissions from melting permafrost, which could help trigger multiple tipping points, such as the collapse of the massive Greenland icecap.

Global heating is driving increasingly deadly extreme weather across the world, they said, including hurricanes in the US and 50C heatwaves in India, with billions of people now exposed to extreme heat.

The scientists said their goal was “to provide clear, evidence-based insights that inspire informed and bold responses from citizens to researchers and world leaders – we just want to act truthfully and tell it like it is.” Decisive, fast action was imperative to limit human suffering, they said, including reducing fossil fuel burning and methane emissions, cutting overconsumption and waste by the rich, and encouraging a switch towards plant-based foods.

“We’re already in the midst of abrupt climate upheaval, which jeopardises life on Earth like nothing humans have ever seen,” said Prof William Ripple, of Oregon State University (OSU), who co-led the group. “Ecological overshoot – taking more than the Earth can safely give – has pushed the planet into climatic conditions more threatening than anything witnessed even by our prehistoric relatives.

“Climate change has already displaced millions of people, with the potential to displace hundreds of millions or even billions. That would likely lead to greater geopolitical instability, possibly even partial societal collapse.”

The assessment, published in the journal Bioscience, says the concentrations of CO₂ and methane in the atmosphere are at record levels. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, 80 times more powerful than CO₂ over 20 years, and is emitted by fossil fuel operations, waste dumps, cattle and rice fields.

“The growth rate of methane emissions has been accelerating, which is extremely troubling,” said Dr Christopher Wolf, formerly of OSU, who co-led the team.

While wind and solar energy grew by 15% in 2023, the researchers said, coal, oil and gas still dominated. They said there was “stiff resistance from those benefiting financially from the current fossil-fuel based system”.

The report includes the results of a Guardian survey of hundreds of senior climate experts in May, which found that only 6% believed that the internationally agreed limit of 1.5C of warming would be adhered to. “The fact is that avoiding every tenth of a degree of warming is critically important,” the researchers said. “Each tenth places an extra 100 million people into unprecedented hot average temperatures.”

The researchers said global heating was part of a wider crisis that included pollution, the destruction of nature and rising economic inequality. “Climate change is a glaring symptom of a deeper systemic issue: ecological overshoot, [which] is an inherently unstable state that cannot persist indefinitely. As the risk of Earth’s climate system switching to a catastrophic state rises, more and more scientists have begun to research the possibility of societal collapse. Even in the absence of global collapse, climate change could cause many millions of additional deaths by 2050. We need bold, transformative change.”

Among the policies the scientists recommend for rapid adoption are gradually reducing the human population through empowering education and rights for girls and women; protecting, restoring or rewilding ecosystems; and integrating climate change education into global curriculums to boost awareness and action.

The assessment concludes: “Only through decisive action can we safeguard the natural world, avert profound human suffering and ensure that future generations inherit the livable world they deserve. The future of humanity hangs in the balance.”

The world’s nations will meet at the UN’s Cop29 climate summit in Azerbaijan in November. Ripple said: “It’s imperative that huge progress is made.”