Global plastic production must be reduced to tackle the immense challenge of plastic pollution, according to an analysis published on the eve of crucial talks to hammer out the world’s first legally binding treaty on plastic waste.

Mismanaged plastic waste, which leaches into the environment and can be harmful to health, will double to 121m tonnes by 2050 if limits are not placed on the production of plastic, according to Samuel Pottinger, the lead author of the research.

Annual greenhouse gas emissions from the plastic system will increase by 37% over the same period if the world does not place some restrictions on plastic production.

But combining four measures; a global cap on plastic production, investing in waste infrastructure, using a packaging tax and a recycling mandate could reduce mismanaged plastic waste by up to 91% by 2050, and decrease plastics-related emissions by about a third, the research has found.

The study was published in the journal Science, before UN treaty talks in Busan, South Korea, which present the final chance for countries to agree on how to cut plastic pollution.

The talks are on a knife edge with lobbyists for plastic producers and some countries objecting to the treaty including a cap or cuts to production.

All four interventions highlighted as significant in the research are being considered in the draft treaty and will be part of the discussions on 25 November.

Pottinger, of the University of California, Berkeley, said: “The stated goal of the treaty is to end plastic pollution. The results of this new analysis and our interactive tool show very clearly that it will be nearly impossible to end plastic pollution without cuts to plastic production.

“This research truly laid bare to us the immensity of the global challenge of mismanaged plastic waste. It was an exciting and optimistic finding to see in this research that the treaty could very nearly solve this problem.

“But it is a very hard problem that will require a suite of very ambitious policies to solve. Without a production cap, the problem gets harder to solve and the ambition required for other policies goes up.”

More than 50 countries at the treaty talks, including the UK, have signed the Bridge to Busan commitment to ensure it addresses the full lifecycle of plastic, including introducing sustainable production of plastic polymers.

Most of the 547m tonnes of plastic created in 2020 – 32% – was used for packaging, the analysis showed.

Capping production at 2020 levels, when the world was making an immense amount of plastic, would alone reduce global mismanaged plastic waste by 2050 from approximately 121m tonnes to 72m tonnes.

The research spells out the immense harm caused by plastic production, which has increased relentlessly since 1950, and the pollution it creates.

“In the environment, plastic waste breaks into ever smaller pieces, including micro- and nanoplastics, and thus negatively impacts myriad ecosystems, from the Arctic to the deep ocean,” Pottinger said.

“Plastic pollution is associated with diverse human health impacts, such as elevated risk for cancers, cardiovascular disease, and reproductive health. The plastics system is also accelerating climate change, with emissions associated with the extraction and processing of oil and gas used to make plastic, plastic production and plastic waste management.”

The research separated global plastic production and consumption into four regions: North America, China, the EU and the remainder, referred to as Majority World. It examined consumption, waste generation and mismanaged waste.

Annual global plastic consumption reached 547m tonnes in 2020, 86% of which was virgin plastic and 14% recycled plastic. China was the largest consumer of plastics, accounting for 36% of consumption, followed by Majority World 28%, EU 18% and North America 18%.

But while China’s plastic consumption is likely to peak in 2030 then decrease, consumption in North America and Majority World is predicted to grow.

Without intervention to curb production, plastic consumption would increase to 749m tonnes by 2050, but interventions could have a significant effect, the report found. To tackle packaging waste, the creation of a packaging consumption tax would reduce waste, by 145m tonnes.

Introducing a ban on single-use plastic to tackle packaging waste would lower consumption by 98m tonnes, and a reuse mandate (like a deposit return scheme) could reduce plastic packaging by 74m tonnes by 2050.

The interventions on packaging would have huge environmental benefits, the report said, because leakage of often lightweight plastic packaging into the environment was estimated to be particularly large.

Four individuals in Los Angeles were arrested on Wednesday and charged with insurance fraud after claiming that a bear had damaged their cars, when the bear in question was actually just a person dressed in a bear costume.

The California department of insurance said that the suspects filed a claim in January of this year, stating that a bear entered their 2010 Rolls-Royce Ghost while it was parked at Lake Arrowhead in the San Bernardino mountains and caused interior damage to the vehicle.

The suspects submitted a video to the insurance company, which showed the alleged “bear” inside the vehicle.

However, upon further scrutiny of the footage, “the investigation determined the bear was actually a person in a bear costume”, the insurance department said in a statement.

Detectives also said that they discovered two additional insurance claims submitted to two more insurance companies, involving the same individuals, with identical dates of loss and location, but two different vehicles.

Those claims also included videos showing a “bear” damaging the cars.

To further verify that the figure in the videos was not a real bear, the insurance department said it took the footage to biologists with the California department of fish and wildlife to review. That agency also concluded that it was clearly a human wearing a bear suit, authorities said.

Detectives then discovered the bear costume in the suspects’ home after executing a search warrant.

The four suspects were identified as Ruben Tamrazian, 26, Ararat Chirkinian, 39, Vahe Muradkhanyan, 32, and Alfiya Zuckerman, 39. They have all been charged with insurance fraud and conspiracy.

The insurance companies were defrauded of $141,839, authorities say.

The California insurance department detectives were assisted by the Glendale police department and the California highway patrol in the investigation.

The San Bernardino county district attorney’s office is prosecuting this case.

The satirical news outlet the Onion has purchased Infowars, the rightwing media platform run by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, at a court-ordered auction.

The news was confirmed on Thursday morning in a video by Jones himself, as well as the head of the Onion’s parent company.

“I just got word 15 minutes ago that my lawyers and folks met with the US trustee over our bankruptcy this morning, and they said they are shutting us down even without a court order this morning,” Jones said in a video shared on X. “The Connecticut Democrats with the Onion newspaper bought us.”

The Onion plans to rebuild the website and feature well-known internet humor writers and content creators.

CEO Ben Collins confirmed this in a post on Bluesky on Thursday, writing: “The Onion, with the help of the Sandy Hook families, has purchased InfoWars. We are planning on making it a very funny, very stupid website. We have retained the services of some Onion and Clickhole Hall of Famers to pull this off.”

“I can’t wait to show you what we have cooked up,” Collins added.

In another post on Bluesky, Collins said that “part of the reason we did bought InfoWars is because people on Bluesky told us it would be funny to buy InfoWars” adding that “those people were right” this “is the funniest thing that has ever happened”.

The purchase includes the acquisition of Jones’s company’s intellectual property, such as its website, customer lists, inventory and certain social media accounts, and the production equipment, according to CNN. The amount of the bid has not been disclosed.

In the immediate aftermath of the news breaking publicly, Jones started streaming live on X, lambasting the sale of his site. Railing against the Onion, among others, Jones told viewers that it’s “a distinct honor to be here in defiance of the tyrants”. He emphasized that no one told him he couldn’t go live.

Jones also began to ramble about the upcoming Donald Trump administration, telling viewers things like: “This is the fight. If you think the deep state has given up, think again … America is awake now.”

The sale follows a judge’s order earlier this year for Jones to liquidate his personal assets, to help him to pay off the $1.4bn he was ordered to pay the families of victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting that killed 20 first-graders and six educators when they took him to court for defamation after he falsely claimed that the shooting was a hoax, and that they were actors who staged the shooting as part of a government plot to seize Americans’ guns.

Jones and his company, Free Speech Systems, filed for bankruptcy protection in 2022.

In order to make the bid work, a lawyer representing the families told CNN that the families “agreed to forgo a portion of their recovery to increase the overall value of the Onion’s bid, enabling its success”.

“After surviving unimaginable loss with courage and integrity, they rejected Jones’s hollow offers for allegedly more money if they would only let him stay on the air because doing so would have put other families in harm’s way,” said Chris Mattei, an attorney for the families.

In a post on social media earlier this week, Mattei added that “the breakup of Infowars this week is just the start of Alex Jones’s lesson in accountability” and that the families “will go after his future income and any new Infowars owner acting as a vehicle for Jones’s continued control of the business”.

The world’s largest known coral, visible from space, has been discovered in the waters of the Solomon Islands.

With a circumference of 183 metres, the gigantic multicoloured organism is an intricate network of individual coral polyps that have grown for between 300 and 500 years.

The sprawling coral was discovered in the region of the western Pacific known as the “coral triangle” by scientists belonging to the National Geographic Pristine Seas team during an expedition to the Solomon Islands.

Mostly brown, with highlights of vivid yellows, blues and reds, the Pavona clavus coral is a haven for a panoply of marine species including fish, crabs and shrimps.

“Just when we think there is nothing left to discover on planet Earth, we find a massive coral made of nearly 1bn little polyps, pulsing with life and colour,” said marine ecologist Enric Sala, explorer in residence for National Geographic and founder of Pristine Seas. “This is a significant scientific discovery, like finding the world’s tallest tree. But there is cause for alarm. Despite its remote location, this coral is not safe from global warming and other human threats.”

Unlike a coral reef, which is a network of many coral colonies, this is a standalone coral that has grown uninterrupted from polyps derived from larvae that settled on the seabed and multiplied into millions of other genetically identical polyps over the centuries.

When the team initially spotted the living organism, which is 34 metres wide, 32 metres long and more than 5 metres high, they thought it might be a shipwreck. The expedition’s underwater cinematographer dived more than 12 metres down to the coral and discovered it was a Pavona clavus. Despite its size, this individual coral had never been documented, with local fishers possibly having mistaken it for a boulder over the years.

Ronnie Posala, fisheries officer for the Solomon Islands fisheries ministry, said: “For the people of the Solomon Islands, this mega coral discovery is monumental. It reinforces the importance of our ocean, which sustains our communities, traditions and future. Such discoveries remind us of our duty to safeguard these natural wonders, not only for their ecological value but for the livelihoods and cultural identity they provide.”

Eric Brown, coral scientist for the Pristine Seas expedition, identified and measured the previous record-holding coral, located in American Samoa. “While the nearby shallow reefs were degraded due to warmer seas, witnessing this large healthy coral oasis in slightly deeper waters is a beacon of hope,” he said.

The United States’s blossoming emergence as a clean energy superpower could be stopped in its tracks by Donald Trump, further empowering Chinese leadership and forfeiting tens of billions of dollars of investment to other countries, according to a new report.

Trump’s promise to repeal major climate policies passed during Joe Biden’s presidency threatens to push $80bn of investment to other countries and cost the US up to $50bn in lost exports, the analysis found, surrendering ground to China and other emerging powers in the race to build electric cars, batteries, solar and wind energy for the world.

“The US will still install a bunch of solar panels and wind turbines, but getting rid of those policies would harm the US’s bid for leadership in this new world,” said Bentley Allan, an environmental and political policy expert at Johns Hopkins University, who co-authored the new study.

“The energy transition is inevitable and the future prosperity of countries hinges on being part of the clean energy supply chain,” he said. “If we exit the competition, it will be very difficult to re-enter.

“This was our chance to enter the race for clean technologies while everyone else, not just China but South Korea and Nigeria and countries in Europe, do the same.”

Under Biden, the US legislated the Chips Act, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act, all aimed in varying degrees to deal with the climate crisis while also bolstering American manufacturing.

The IRA alone, with its major incentives for clean energy, is credited with helping create around 300,000 new jobs, with the vast majority of $150bn in new manufacturing investment flowing to Republican-held districts.

Trump, however, has called this spending wasteful and vowed to erase it. “I will immediately terminate the green new scam,” the president-elect said shortly before his election win. “That will be such an honor. The greatest scam in the history of any country.”

Doing this may be politically fraught, even with Republican control of Congress, due to the glut of new jobs and factories in conservative-leaning areas. But should Trump’s plan prevail then planned US manufacturing projects would be canceled, according to the new report, leaving American firms reliant upon overseas suppliers for components.

“Without these investments and tax credits, US industry will be hobbled just as it is getting going, ceding the ground to others,” the report states.

Exports would also be hit, the analysis predicts, allowing US competitors to seize market share. “These plans suggest a complete misunderstanding of how the global economy works,” said Allan. “If we don’t have a manufacturing base, we aren’t going to get ahead.”

Trump has talked of forging “American energy dominance” that is based entirely upon fossil fuels, with more oil and gas drilling coupled with a pledge to scrap offshore wind projects and an end to the “lunacy” of electric cars subsidies. The president-elect is expected to lead a wide-ranging dismantling of environmental and climate rules once he returns to the White House.

These priorities, coming as peak global oil production is forecast and pressure mounts to avert climate breakdown, could further cement China’s leadership in clean energy production.

“China already feels puzzled and skeptical of the Inflation Reduction Act,” said Li Shuo, a climate specialist at the Asia Society Policy Institute. “Throw in Trump and you deepen Chinese skepticism. This is political boom and bust. When it comes to selling clean energy to third country markets, China isn’t sweating at all.”

But even Trump’s agenda is not expected to completely stall clean energy’s momentum. Renewables are now economically attractive and are set to still grow, albeit more bumpily. Solar, which has plummeted by 90% in cost over the past decade, was added to the American grid at three times the rate of gas capacity last year, for example.

“We will see a big effort to boost the supply of fossil fuels from the US but most drilling is at full blast anyway,” said Ely Sandler, a climate finance expert at Harvard University.

“That’s quite different from demand, which is how power is generated and usually comes down to the cheapest source of energy which is increasingly renewables. If Donald Trump eases permitting regulations, it could even lead to more clean energy coming online.”

At the UN Cop29 talks in Azerbaijan, which started on Monday, countries are again having to grapple with a bewildering swing in the US’s commitment to confront the climate crisis. The outgoing Biden administration, which is trying to talk up ongoing American action at the talks, hopes its climate policies have enough juice to outlast a Trumpian assault.

“What we will see is whether we’ve achieved escape velocity or not and how quickly the booster packs are about to fall off,” said Ali Zaidi, Biden’s top climate adviser, at the Cop summit.

The Iranian state has said that it plans to open a treatment clinic for women who defy the mandatory hijab laws that require women to cover their heads in public.

The opening of a “hijab removal treatment clinic” was announced by Mehri Talebi Darestani, the head of the Women and Family Department of the Tehran Headquarters for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. She said the clinic will offer “scientific and psychological treatment for hijab removal”.

Iranian women and human rights groups have expressed outrage at the announcement.

Sima Sabet, a UK-based Iranian journalist who was a target of an Iranian assassination attempt last year, said the move is “shameful”, adding that: “The idea of establishing clinics to ‘cure’ unveiled women is chilling, where people are separated from society simply for not conforming to the ruling ideology.”

Iranian human rights lawyer Hossein Raeesi said that the idea of a clinic to treat women who did not comply with hijab laws is “neither Islamic and nor is it aligned with Iranian law”. He also said it was alarming that the statement came from the Women and Family Department of the Tehran Headquarters for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, which falls under the direct authority of the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei.

The news has since spread among the “Woman, Life, Freedom” protest groups and female students, sparking fear and defiance.

One young woman from Iran, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said: “It won’t be a clinic, it will be a prison. We are struggling to make ends meet and have power outages, but a piece of cloth is what this state is worried about. If there was a time for all of us to come back to the streets, it’s now or they’ll lock us all up.”

The announcement about the opening of the clinic comes after state media reported that a university student who was arrested after stripping down to her underwear on a in Tehran, reportedly in protest at being assaulted by campus security guards for breaches of the hijab law, had been transferred to a psychiatric hospital. Human rights groups including Amnesty International say there is evidence of torture, violence and forced medication being used on protesters and political dissidents deemed mentally unstable by the authorities and placed in state-run psychiatric services.

Human rights groups have also expressed alarm at the crackdown on women who are considered to be in breach of Iran’s mandatory dress code, saying there has been a recent spate of arrests, forced disappearances and the shuttering of businesses linked to perceived breaches of the hijab laws.

Last week, the Center for Human Rights in Iran highlighted the case of Roshanak Molaei Alishah, a 25-year-old woman who it said was arrested after confronting a man who harassed her on the street over her hijab. The NGO said her current whereabouts is unknown.

Donald Trump’s election is a triumph for the politics of the doomsday bunker, which is bad news for the world’s environment.

This is the idea that in an age of climate disruption, nature extinction and ever wider social inequality, the best chance of survival for those who can afford it is to construct a personal shelter, where they can keep the desperate masses at bay. It is survival of the richest.

Apocalyptic thinking like this may once have been the stuff of science fiction but it has been normalised by billionaires such as the Palantir founder, Peter Thiel, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and others who have been building underground bunkers or buying superyachts and private jets to whisk themselves away to remote islands.

Tech billionaires were instrumental in Trump’s victory, particularly the Tesla boss, Elon Musk, who poured millions into the campaign and used X as a loudspeaker, and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, whose newspaper, the Washington Post, blocked its editorial staff from endorsing Kamala Harris.

Once you get into a bunker mindset, you become invested in apocalypse. Out goes any idea of looking for solutions to the cause of the world’s problems, and in comes the idea that you survive by amassing wealth and weapons, throwing up higher walls and asset-stripping the wasteland outside.

From the perspective of the global south, such thinking in the most powerful country on Earth is a disaster. Survival in the Amazon rainforest, where I live, or the African savannah or the flood plains of Asia depends on a stable climate, abundant nature and peaceful cooperation.

The first Trump administration diminished environmental protections. Trump 2 has the capacity to take this to a new level because there are fewer constraints. Voters have given Trump the authority of an emperor. This is cause for multiple alarms, not least a US exit from the global climate fight.

Polls suggest this was not high in the minds of most voters, and the climate and nature crisis barely featured in election debates and speeches. But the climate created the setting for Trump’s economy-first win: the devastating impacts of hurricanes such as Helene and Milton making the federal government seem impotent, droughts worldwide adding to food price inflation, and higher temperatures everywhere creating more stress and foreboding. Throughout the world, ever more extreme weather is sparking ever more extreme politics.

Those who think of the climate challenge solely in terms of an energy transition may be inclined to see Trump 2 as a mere four-year setback. After all, the world weathered his first term. They may believe the momentum for solar and wind is already unstoppable because these forms of power generation are now cheaper than fossil fuels. Others could ask what difference a change of president will make, given that the US under Joe Biden had already ramped up oil and gas output to record levels.

But this misses the bigger picture. Carbon Brief estimates that a Trump presidency will add 4bn tonnes to US emissions by 2030. Every extra tonne means higher temperatures, more floods, more droughts, more fires, higher food prices, more deaths and a greater risk of hitting catastrophic tipping points for ocean circulation, polar ice melt or forest die-off.

Nowhere will escape – though, as usual, the global south will suffer first and worst. This is home to the populations most vulnerable to deadly heatwaves and crop-crippling droughts. It is also where developing countries were last year promised hundreds of billions of dollars in “loss and damage” compensation payments for the climate catastrophes they have done the least to cause. If Trump goes ahead with his threat to pull the world’s richest country out of the Paris agreement and the entire UN climate process, it will become extremely difficult to persuade other wealthy nations to find this money. Environmental justice now looks a more distant prospect.

An already dire situation in regions such as the Amazon rainforest will deteriorate. Trump’s denials will not affect the physics of climate disruption, which is already drying up sections of some of the world’s once mightiest rivers such as the Solimões, Negro, Tapajós, Xingu and Madeira. But they will prolong and intensify the breakdown of this globally important ecosystem, which plays a vital role in the water cycle of South America.

Trump’s rhetoric and example will also embolden the extreme right across the world to reduce protections for nature and people. In Brazil, this will increase the likelihood of a resurgence of the forces that gathered around the former president Jair Bolsonaro, who encouraged invasions of the Amazon and oversaw a record level of deforestation. The former army captain has been banned from running for office until 2030 after attempting a Trump-esque insurrection in the wake of his 2022 election defeat, but his allies dominate Congress and will be keen to replicate their American idol’s example of overturning punishments. Money buys power. Power buys safety. That is the logic of the bunker.

This is not sustainable. Deal only with the consequences and the causes will grow worse. Those who reveal this truth, such as scientists and journalists, come under attack. This is particularly true in the field of climate. The authors of the far-right Project 2025 wishlist are encouraging Trump to break up the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, one of the world’s most important centres for climate research.

When bunkered minds also throw up walls against truth, they imply might is right. In a normal, stable world, this can be shaken off as the dangerous nonsense it is. But when old certainties about the climate start to wobble, so does everything else and frightened voters seek supposed “strongmen” leaders, such as India’s Narendra Modi, Argentina’s Javier Milei, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the growing cast of far-right figures who have emerged in Europe.

Their denialism has deadly consequences, as the world saw during the Covid crisis, and as Valencia learned when more than 200 people died in flash floods after the rightwing local authorities ignored warnings from meteorologists and voted down efforts to strengthen disaster preparations.

Those looking for positives must grasp at straws. The US retreat to the bunker may be a sign that two centuries of fossil-fuelled industrial expansion are coming to an end, that late-stage capitalism is showing its true rapaciousness, and that this will finally stir a shake-up of a status quo that was, in any case, failing to halt emissions, prevent biodiversity collapse and tackle horrendous inequality.

Those looking for alternatives point to China as the real winner of the US election because its model is proving more stable, more intelligent and more effective in transitioning away from fossil fuels. It has built up a world-leading renewables industry, achieved its 2030 climate goals six years early and is on course for emissions to peak as early as next year.

And of course, nobody should forget that almost half of US voters rejected Trump, Europe is pushing ahead with emissions reductions, South America has more progressive leaders promising changes, and many cities and companies have bold plans. Somewhere in this may be the basis for a new era of clean, cheap, peaceful energy, smart leadership and healthier relations with nature.

Maybe. But in Trump 2, the ancien regime of dirty fossil fuels now has a belligerent, newly empowered defender. The fight will be messy.

In the years ahead, the logic of the doomsday bunker threatens to become suffocating. And if we are not careful, this could easily become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The best antidote may be to remember what we are surviving for, why it is worth fighting for every fraction of a degree, every tonne of carbon, and to prove life is so much better outside than in.

Donald Trump’s decision to nominate the far-right Republican congressman Matt Gaetz as attorney general has sent shockwaves through Washington, including the president-elect’s own party.

Trump on Wednesday announced Gaetz as his pick to be the nation’s chief law enforcement officer in the justice department, a role that directs the government’s legal positions on critical issues, including abortion, civil rights, and first amendment cases.

Republicans were puzzled over this nomination, expressing this move was not on their “bingo card”.

“I don’t think it’s a serious nomination for the attorney general,” Republican senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, told NBC News. “We need to have a serious attorney general. And I’m looking forward to the opportunity to consider somebody that is serious. This one was not on my bingo card.”

A rightwing firebrand, Gaetz was a thorn in the side of his fellow Republican and former House speaker Kevin McCarthy, eventually leading the successful charge to oust McCarthy from his role.

He was investigated by the justice department in a sex-trafficking case, though the department ultimately declined to bring charges. And was under investigation by the House ethics committee amid allegations of sexual misconduct, illicit drug use and other alleged ethical breaches.

Gaetz has fiercely denied wrongdoing.

Amid consternation even within his own party, it’s unclear if Gaetz can win Senate approval.

Republican congressman Max Miller of Ohio told Axios that “Gaetz has a better shot at having dinner with Queen Elizabeth II than being confirmed by the Senate”.

Miller also told Politico that Gaetz is “a reckless pick” with “a zero percent shot”.

John Bolton, a former national security adviser, said Gaetz “must be the worst nomination for a cabinet position in American history”.

“Gaetz is not only totally incompetent for this job, he doesn’t have the character. He is a person of moral turpitude,” Bolton said in an interview with NBC News.

One anonymous House GOP member told Axios: “We wanted him out of the House … this isn’t what we were thinking.” Another remarked they were “stunned and disgusted”.

Democrats, too, were left astonished by the announcement. Vice-President Kamala Harris’s team said in a statement that Trump and Gaetz “will weaponize the DoJ to protect themselves and their allies”.

Congressman Ro Khanna of California argued that voters were not necessarily voting for these cabinet picks when they decided to elect Trump.

“People voted for Trump to have lower prices and a secure border. I don’t think they voted for the appointments that they’re getting,” Khanna told CBS News. “He is not moving to the center. He’s going to his Maga base, and we’ll see if he’s overreaching on the mandate he had from the American people.”

Kate Maeder, a California-based political strategist, said the announcement should not come as a surprise, but wondered whether Trump trusts Gaetz will make it through the confirmation process. “It’s not a surprise that Trump is rewarding his political loyalists,” Maeder told the Guardian. “It’s a shock to many that he’s considering Matt Gaetz for attorney general. But is this a serious pick? I don’t think so.”

“In this political climate, it’s definitely possible for Matt Gaetz to be confirmed,” she said. “But I think it’ll be difficult. Some of the more moderate Republican senators are already on record questioning this choice.”

In newly released audio, Charles Manson, the cult leader behind a string of killings during the late 1960s in California, admitted his involvement in additional killings that occurred prior to his assembly of the notorious Manson Family.

An audio recording in a teaser clip from Peacock’s latest docuseries Making Manson features Manson saying: “There’s a whole part of my life that nobody knows about.”

The cult leader, speaking on a phone call from prison, goes on to add: “I lived in Mexico for a while. I went to Acapulco, stole some cars. I just got involved in stuff over my head, man. Got involved in a couple of killings. I left my .357 Magnum in Mexico City, and I left some dead people on the beach.”

Quick Guide

A quick guide to Charles Manson

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Who was Charles Manson?

Charles Manson was one of the most notorious murderers of the 20th century. He led a cult known as the Manson Family in California, most of whom were disaffected young women. Some became killers under his messianic influence.

Murder from afar

Despite spending more than  40 years in prison for the murders of seven people in 1969, Manson did not carry out the killings. Instead he convinced members of his ‘family’ to murder. One of their victims was the actor Sharon Tate, who was married to Roman Polanski and was more than eight months’ pregnant when she was killed.

Celebrity friends

By the time of his trial in 1970, Manson had spent half of his life in correctional institutions for various crimes. He became a singer-songwriter before the Tate murders and got a break in the music industry when he met Beach Boys’ Dennis Wilson, who let him crash at his home.

Helter Skelter

It is believed that Manson intended using the murders to incite an apocalyptic race war he called Helter Skelter, taking the name from the Beatles song.

Notorious by name

The killings and the seven-month trial that followed were the subjects of fevered news coverage in the US. Manson occupied a dark, persistent place in American culture, inspiring music, T-shirts and half the stage name of musician Marilyn Manson.

Photograph: Los Angeles Times

According to Peacock, the new three-part docuseries investigates 20 years’ worth of never-before-aired conversations in which Manson talks about his crimes, his upbringing and Family, a commune and cult led by Manson from the late 1960s to early 1970s. The cult leader did not commit the murders himself, preferring to persuade his followers to do it. The group murdered at least seven people in the late 1960s.

Manson and his followers were arrested in 1969. At his trial in 1970, Manson presented himself as a demonic force, showing up with a Nazi swastika he had carved into his forehead.

At a 2012 parole hearing, which was denied, Manson was quoted as having said to one of his prison psychologists: “I’m special. I’m not like the average inmate. I have spent my life in prison. I have put five people in the grave. I am a very dangerous man.”

Manson, who died from natural causes in November 2017, served more than 40 years in a prison in Corcoran, California, for first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder over the deaths of seven people, including the actor Sharon Tate, the pregnant wife of film director Roman Polanski.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Manson committed hundreds of rules violations while at the Corcoran state prison, including assault, repeated possession of a weapon and threatening staff. Officials said he has spat in guards’ faces, started fights, tried to cause a flood and set his mattress ablaze.

Describing the new docuseries which is scheduled to premiere next Tuesday, Peacock said: “Former ‘Family’ members listen to the exclusive conversations and are taken back to the time when they ‘would do anything for Charlie’.”

“Manson recounts the early crimes that led to the murder spree in the summer of 69, laying out an explanation of loyalty and brotherhood that pushes against the accepted motive: his desire to incite Helter Skelter,” Peacock added, referring to an apocalyptic vision embraced by Manson and his cult members.