They’re Australia’s own underwater punks in leopard print.

Spotted handfish are an endangered species of fish that prefer to “walk” instead of swim, thanks to their unusual pectoral and pelvic fins; have a fluffy dorsal fin on their head that looks almost like a mohawk; and live in the waters off south-east Tasmania.

Now CSIRO scientists have sequenced the first full genome of the critically endangered species, a step that could aid monitoring, captive breeding and conservation efforts.

Dr Tom Walsh, co-lead of CSIRO’s applied genomics initiative, said the genome was like a “blueprint” for the handfish, providing a better understanding of the species.

“What we don’t want is for all our endangered species to only exist as genomes,” he said. “The conservation has to happen on the ground. What the genome can do is provide more information to those people making those decisions.”

Fewer than 2,000 individual spotted handfish remain in the wild. Walsh said the genome could help scientists monitor its presence using sophisticated methods such as eDNA (environmental DNA) – testing water samples for DNA that matches a reference – that support other traditional approaches, such as surveys involving scuba divers.

The CSIRO initiative has produced genomes for a host of rare species, including night parrots, but the chance to produce a handfish blueprint arose opportunistically, Walsh said. When a spotted handfish died in Tasmania, it was preserved, frozen and shipped to CSIRO in Canberra where its raw data – DNA – was extracted.

CSIRO scientists have been watching the species since 1997, observing nine localised populations in the Derwent Estuary.

The principal investigator Carlie Devine, who specialises in spotted handfish conservation, said the genome’s “rich genetic information” would inform long-term management strategy.

A multidisciplinary approach – with genetics alongside ecology – was “essential for effective conservation of threatened species”, Devine said.

Dr Jemina Stuart-Smith, who researches handfish at the University of Tasmania’s Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies and was not involved in the genome sequencing work, said it could inform understanding of genetic diversity, as well as captive breeding and translocation.

“This information can also feed into identification of adaptive traits including disease resistance, and can therefore be extremely beneficial in guiding these breeding programs,” she said.

Stuart-Smith said many species of handfish were endangered due to their small size, low reproductive capacity, limited range and fragmented populations and habitats.

Conservation efforts remained largely focused on two species of handfish, she said: the spotted handfish and the red handfish.

Though these species are the most well-studied, Stuart-Smith said many questions about their breeding, biology and general ecology remained.

Walsh noted it was still early days but the reference genome data was now available to handfish researchers: “It really is the plan, the blueprint of the organism that allows all sorts of different work to be done.”

A man armed with guns and false press and VIP passes was apprehended by authorities at a campaign rally in California on Saturday being held by Donald Trump.

The suspect, identified as Vem Miller, was intercepted by police at a checkpoint about a half-mile from an entrance to the rally in Coachella Valley, California, soon before the rally began, police said Sunday.

“We probably stopped another assassination attempt,” Riverside county sheriff Chad Bianco said, adding that Miller was plotting to kill Trump.

Police said Miller was carrying a loaded shotgun, handgun and high-capacity magazine and is believed to be a member of a rightwing anti-government organization.

He holds a UCLA master’s degree, and in 2022 ran for Nevada state assembly. Bianco said Miller considers himself a so-called sovereign citizen, a group of people who do not believe they are subject to any government statutes unless they consent to them.

Bianco said Miller’s identity card was enough to raise suspicion with local rally security. “They were different enough to cause the deputies alarm,” he said, according to the Riverside Press-Enterprise.

Miller was booked for possessing a loaded firearm and a high capacity magazine – and was released after posting $5,000 bail, police records show.

“The incident did not impact the safety of former president Trump or attendees of the event,” the sheriff’s office said in a press release.

Trump narrowly survived an assassination attempt in July, when a gunman’s bullet grazed his ear during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. In September, another man was charged with trying to assassinate Trump after Secret Service agents discovered him hiding with a rifle near Trump’s Palm Beach golf course. He has since pleaded not guilty.

The Secret Service put out a statement saying it was appraised of the arrest: “The incident did not impact protective operations. The Secret Service extends its gratitude to the deputies and local partners who assisted in safeguarding last night’s events.”

Sheriff Bianco told the outlet he had not expected a third attempt on Trump’s life, coming after a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July when Trump was grazed with an assassin’s bullet, and the arrest of man with a rifle hiding in the bushes near Trump’s Palm Beach golf course in September.

“I thought it’s not going to happen in Riverside county,” Bianco said. “We don’t have the same sicko issues and violent protests like they have in Los Angeles. We’re better than that. Go figure.”

Bianco said US Secret Service officials said his department went “above and beyond” in their efforts to protect Trump and others who attended the rally.

Bianco also said the FBI is questioning another man after bomb-detecting dogs “repeatedly” identified him as possibly dangerous. That man was not allowed in the rally, Bianco said.

Miller is scheduled to appear at the Indio Larson justice center on 2 January 2025, according to the Riverside county sheriff’s department inmate database.

It was precisely what Lee Carsley needed. After the mayhem of the Wembley defeat against Greece on Thursday night and all of the fallout, chiefly the uncertainty around his longer‑term role within the England setup, this was a return to the tranquil progress of his first camp in September.

It was a stroll against a limited Finland team, the whipping boys of this Nations League group, England not exactly wowing but doing more than enough to position the Greece defeat a little further back in the rearview mirror. It is now three wins out of four for Carsley, after those against Republic of Ireland in Dublin and Finland at Wembley.

The standout moment came when Trent Alexander-Arnold bent home a sumptuous free-kick from a position to the left of centre, wafting his right foot like a wand to make it 2-0. England had given up chances in the first half and a big one after the break, Finland wasting them, and there was always the sense that Carsley’s team had higher gears to find if needed. They were not.

For Jack Grealish, this was his third start under Carsley and he opened the scoring with a cool finish after a lovely flick from Angel Gomes. Declan Rice got the third from a cross by Ollie Watkins, on as a substitute, and Finland’s late consolation, Arttu Hoskonen running free to head home from a corner, was little more than a minor irritation for England.

The Carsley Question was a major theme – in terms of where he will go at the end of his interim tenure in November. Answer: back to his old job with the under-21s. It is absolutely the most likely outcome. The other big subject had concerned the style of his team. The botched all‑out attack against Greece had given the red tops the dream headline – “KamiCarsley” – and it was always going to be more conventional here, not only because Harry Kane was back from injury to play as the No 9.

England had dominated against Finland at Wembley in Carsley’s second game, creating so many chances, and it was a night when control was the theme. The idea was for more of the same; hence the recall for Gomes alongside Rice in midfield.

It was Gomes who picked the lock for the breakthrough goal, who found a way through Finland’s compact 5-4-1 system. It had all been a little too mannered at the outset, England measured in terms of tempo. They had all of the ball; it was patience over passion.

Grealish injected the urgency, surging off the left to find Alexander-Arnold and dart for the area. What a lovely assist it was from Gomes. He knew where Grealish was and when he accepted the ball from Alexander-Arnold in between the lines, he turned it neatly through for Grealish, who had only Lukas Hradecky to beat.

The Finland goalkeeper had been a titan at Wembley. Grealish simply opened up his body for the sidefoot finish and the sucking-thumb celebration for his recently born baby girl. He looked determined to embrace a more familiar role on the left wing, having previously been played by Carsley in more central areas.

There were imperfections from England in the first half, including when they attempted to build from the back; a few loose passes. Gomes was guilty of one in the early running at 0-0, giving the ball away and watching Finland work it to Benjamin Källman, John Stones jumping into an important block when he shot. On the rebound, Topi Keskinen dragged wide.

Twice before the interval, Stones went stride-for-stride with first Keskinen and then Källman and on both occasions the Finland player was able to unload. Dean Henderson, making his full England debut, saved easily. There was also a worry about Finland getting in on the blindside of Alexander-Arnold, who Carsley played at left-back. When Nikolai Alho did so in the 38th minute, he headed square for Fredrik Jensen, who got a break past Alexander‑Arnold before lashing off-target.

Rice had the sniff of a chance for 2-0 on 34 minutes when he took a decent first touch in the area from a floated Jude Bellingham pass and saw Matti Peltola miss his kick. Just as quickly as the close-range shooting opportunity presented itself, Robert Ivanov got back to shut the door.

Marc Guéhi slid over from left centre-half to make a back three when Alexander-Arnold sortied into midfield. But a word for Guéhi’s defending: commanding. He won a clutch of duels in the first half, and always looked like doing so.

It was a worry when Stones was one-on-one with his man. When Finland moved the ball left for Keskinen in the 57th minute, Stones could not prevent the low cross. It ran all the way through for Jensen, who lifted high from point-blank range. It was an almighty let-off.

It felt like a slog at times for England in creative terms. Bellingham was often frustrated in his attempts to use his twinkle toes to jink through. While Cole Palmer got little, Bellingham is not the type of guy to hide. Bellingham continued to demand the ball, to try his moves and when he hoodwinked the Finland substitute Leo Walta into stretching in for a tackle, he felt the contact and went down for the free‑kick. Grealish told Alexander‑Arnold he would give him £500 if he scored. The goal felt priceless to Carsley.

One person was killed and nine others wounded in a shootout amid a crowd near a university in Tennessee Saturday afternoon, police said.

A crowd that gathered earlier in the day for homecoming events at Tennessee State University was beginning to thin out when the gunfire erupted between two groups around 5pm, said Nashville police spokesperson Don Aaron. He said shell casings indicate that gunfire was exchanged across a street near campus between the groups.

The Nashville police commander Anthony McClain said the gunfire didn’t appear to be directly related to Tennessee State University events that had included a parade and other festivities earlier in the day. The football game was taking place in another part of town when the gunfire happened.

“It’s unfortunate that a few folks ruined it for everybody,” McClain said. “We have to come to a point to stop this violence.”

A police statement on social media said a 24-year-old man died. The victims included two 12-year-olds and a 14-year-old with non-critical injuries, Aaron said.

Police spokesperson Brooke Reese said that at least some of the wounded appear to have been involved in the exchange of gunfire.

Police and firefighters who had been present for the day’s activities were able to quickly respond to the shooting, authorities said. Fire department spokesperson Kendra Loney said some firefighters used belts as tourniquets.

Witness Jashawna Rucker told the television news station WTVF that chaos ensued after people heard the shots, and she saw people crying as they ran for safety.

“I am thankful I didn’t lose my life or get shot,” Rucker said.

Rauf Muhammad told the Tennessean newspaper that he was selling food from a tent along the street when he heard the gunfire and dropped to the ground.

“Everybody having fun, music playing or whatnot. Then all of a sudden, you just hear like you off in a war somewhere,” Muhammad told the newspaper.

Earlier Saturday in Oklahoma City, 13 people were shot – including one fatally – during a party. That case as well as the one in Nashville helped bring the number of mass shootings reported in the US so far this year to more than 415, according to statistics from the Gun Violence Archive.

The non-partisan archive defines a mass shooting as one in which four or more victims are wounded or killed.

Constant mass shootings in the US have prompted many in the country to plead for federal lawmakers to provide more substantial gun control, but Congress has largely been unable or unwilling to heed those calls.

SpaceX launched its enormous Starship rocket on Sunday on its boldest test flight yet, catching the returning booster back at the pad with mechanical arms.

Towering almost 121 metres (400ft), the empty Starship blasted off at sunrise from the southern tip of Texas near the Mexican border. It arced over the Gulf of Mexico, like the four Starships before it that ended up being destroyed, either soon after liftoff or while ditching into the sea. The last one, in June, was the most successful yet, completing its flight without exploding.

This time, the SpaceX founder and chief executive, Elon Musk, upped the challenge and risk. The company brought the first-stage booster back to land at the pad from which it had soared seven minutes earlier. The launch tower sported monstrous metal arms, dubbed chopsticks, that caught the descending 71-metre booster.

“Are you kidding me?” SpaceX’s Dan Huot observed with excitement from near the launch site. “I am shaking right now.”

“This is a day for the engineering history books,” added SpaceX’s Kate Tice from its headquarters in Hawthorne, California.

It was up to the flight director to decide, in real time with a manual control, whether to attempt the landing. SpaceX said both the booster and launch tower had to be in good, stable condition. Otherwise, it was going to end up in the Gulf of Mexico like the previous ones. Everything was judged to be ready for the catch.

Once free of the booster, the retro-looking stainless steel spacecraft on top continued around the world, targeting a controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean. The June flight came up short at the end after pieces of it came off. SpaceX upgraded the software and reworked the heat shield, improving the thermal tiles.

SpaceX has been recovering the first-stage boosters of its smaller Falcon 9 rockets for nine years, after delivering satellites and crews to orbit from Florida or California. But they land on floating ocean platforms or on concrete slabs several miles from their launch pads – not on them.

Recycling Falcon boosters has sped up the launch rate and saved SpaceX millions. Musk intends to do the same for the Starship, the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built, with 33 methane-fuel engines on the booster alone. Nasa has ordered two Starships to land astronauts on the moon later this decade. SpaceX intends to use the Starship to send people and supplies to the moon and, eventually Mars.

One of the world’s largest music companies has been accused of depriving “potentially hundreds” of artists and bands of their royalties by the 90s nu-metal band Limp Bizkit.

Three decades after it rose to prominence, the band and its founder, Fred Durst, alleges that Universal Music Group (UMG) owes more than $200m after fraudulently concealing royalties from the band.

In a lawsuit filed in California, attorneys representing Durst, Limp Bizkit and Flawless Records accused UMG of using software “deliberately designed to conceal artists’ (including Plaintiffs’) royalties” so it can pocket the profits.

UMG is one of the most powerful forces in the global music industry, with a roster spanning from Taylor Swift and Neil Diamond to Dr Dre and Renee Rapp. The company did not respond to multiple invitations to comment.

Limp Bizkit claims it was not paid “a single cent by UMG in any royalties” until taking legal action, despite a “tremendous” resurgence in popularity in recent years, with its songs played hundreds of millions of times on streaming platforms in 2024 alone.

The lawsuit, filed in California federal court, claims that many more bands and acts might also be getting shortchanged. Attorneys for Durst, Limp Bizkit and Flawless Records go so far as to suggest that a pre-trial discovery process – in which both sides of a case exchange information – will “show that potentially hundreds of other artists have likewise been wrongfully defrauded regarding their royalties, showing that the system was intentionally designed to commit fraud on Plaintiffs and other artists”.

“These accusations are massive,” said Jay Gilbert, a music industry consultant and former executive at UMG and Warner Music Group. He is skeptical.

“My gut tells me that this isn’t a systematic scheme to withhold royalties. It’s more of an accounting issue that’s blown up,” Gilbert said. “It sounded pretty damning and pretty heavy-handed, but in my experience, I think it’s something less dramatic.”

This lawsuit was “the nuclear option”, added Mark Tavern, who previously worked at record companies including UMG and Sony Music. “I think it’s designed to force a settlement, and make it happen quickly.”

“It’s a bit over the top,” said Tavern, who now lectures on the music industry at the University of New Haven. “It can probably be easily explained by bureaucracy, or incompetence,” or the sheer volume of payments processed by a music firm as large as UMG, he said.

Durst claims he was told by UMG that he had not received any royalty statements because his account was still so far from recoupment, with executives at the firm suggesting it had paid Limp Bizkit some $43m in advances over the years, according to the lawsuit.

When representatives of Durst and Limp Bizkit gained access to UMG’s portal for royalty statements in April, however, they claim to have noticed balances that indicated it owed more than $1m.

In August, UMG paid just over $1m to Limp Bizkit and $2.3m to Flawless Records, according to the lawsuit, which says executives blamed the failure to pay sooner on an error with new software.

Questions over royalty payments arise “all the time”, according to Gilbert, but rarely explode into the open. “This sort of dirty laundry is not aired commonly,” he said, with issues typically resolved through audits “behind the scenes”.

The global music industry has been rapidly transformed over recent decades, first by the rise of downloads, and then by streaming. Finding and listening to songs has never been easier, thanks to hundreds of millions of tracks that stack the libraries of platforms like Spotify and Apple Music.

Take Break Stuff by Limp Bizkit. It was first released in May 2000, but you might hear it in passing while watching TV, scrolling through social media, or playing a video game. Gone are the days when you would visit a local record store, go through the racks, find the album, and ultimately listen back to the song. It’s just a few taps away.

Even Limp Bizkit’s attorneys acknowledged that the band – which split up in 2006, and reformed in 2009 – had a “relatively quiet period” in the early 2010s. In the lawsuit, however, they claim that interest in the band began to increase “exponentially” around 2017, leading it to sell out arenas and headline festivals.

“There is a big pop-punk revival going on,” observed Tavern. “The current generation [of fans] is looking back 20 or 25 years.”

Such “heritage” acts and artists, as they are referred to by music industry executives, are prized by record labels.

UMG sought Durst’s approval to reissue Limp Bizkit’s 2000 album Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water on vinyl last year, according to the lawsuit, and “repeatedly asked” him to get involved with an anniversary rerelease of Significant Other, another of its albums. To Durst, it seemed like a “money grab”.

The complaint alleges that the plaintiffs are still owed much more than they have been paid. Durst, Limp Bizkit and Flawless Records are demanding a jury trial. Their case is already making waves.

​“Everyone is talking about it,” observed Tavern, who noted the complicated nature of calculating music royalties in the streaming era had led to widespread confusion – and, sometimes, suspicion of the industry’s dominant firms. ​

“The way the money gets paid is totally different now, and much more convoluted,” he said. “You can point to 450 million streams, but that is not the same as 450 million records.”

Gilbert said: “I think cooler heads will prevail,” suggesting that attorneys for either side would probably meet privately to examine the facts. “This thing will be resolved,” he said. “I think it’s going to go away.”

‘Israel is not invading Lebanon, it is liberating it.” So proclaimed France’s pre-eminent liberal philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy as Israeli tanks drove across the border and its war planes bombed villages in the south and residential districts in Beirut. “There are moments in history,” he exulted, when “ ‘escalation’ becomes a necessity and a virtue.” For Lévy, it is not just Lebanon that Israel is liberating, but much of the Middle East, too.

Lévy is not alone in rejoicing at Israel’s spreading military offensive. For many, Israel is waging war, not merely in “self-defence” but, in the words of president Isaac Herzog, “to save western civilisation, to save the values of western civilisation”, a claim echoed by many of its supporters. And the destruction of Gaza, of its hospitals and universities, and the killing of 40,000 people? And the 2,000 people killed in Lebanon in a fortnight, and the fifth of its population displaced? Collateral damage en route to saving civilisation.

I should not need to say this but, as it has become commonplace to portray anyone criticising Israel’s wars in Gaza and Lebanon as supporting Hamas or Hezbollah or celebrating the slaughter on 7 October last year, let me say that what Hamas did was barbarous, and that, as I wrote at the time, “Hamas represents a betrayal of Palestinian hopes as well as a threat to Jews”. The same can be said of Hezbollah.

And yet, until 7 October 2023, the prime minister of Israel, and much of his government, was far more supportive of Hamas than I was or would ever wish to be. “Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,” Benjamin Netanyahu told a Likud meeting in 2019. “To prevent the option of two states,” observed former Israeli general Gershon Hacohen, who for years backed Netanyahu’s policy, “he is turning Hamas into his closest partner. Openly, Hamas is an enemy. Covertly, it’s an ally.”

Israel’s support for Hamas goes back decades, an “attempt to divide and dilute support for a strong, secular PLO by using a competing religious alternative”, as a senior CIA agent told UPI more than 20 years ago. So successful was this strategy that Hamas swept to power in Gaza in 2006, and the Palestinian Authority was cut in two, with Hamas controlling Gaza and Fatah the West Bank.

In recent years, the Times of Israel observed, “Israel has allowed suitcases holding millions in Qatari cash to enter Gaza through its crossings since 2018”, while practically turning “a blind eye to the incendiary balloons and rocket fire from Gaza”. On 7 October, it added on the day after the slaughter: “The concept of indirectly strengthening Hamas went up in smoke.”

Hamas was responsible for the butchery of 7 October. But Israel had helped nurture it for the explicit aim of denying Palestinians a state. And now, in the attempt to undo its previous work, it has laid Gaza to waste. Israel has to enforce “another Nakba [catastrophe]”, Hacohen insists. “The Gazans have to be expelled from their homes for good.”

Yet, however cynical it may have been, there was nothing exceptional about Israel’s strategy. For decades, western governments sought to exploit Islam to help pursue their political ends, from the funding of international jihadists to drive out the Red Army in Afghanistan after the Soviet invasion of 1979 to secular France encouraging the building of prayer rooms in factories, regarding Islam, in the words of Paul Dijoud, immigration minister in Valéry Giscard d’Estaing’s government, as a “stabilising factor which would turn the faithful from deviance, delinquency, or membership of unions or revolutionary parties”. Such policies often created a space in which more radical Islamist movements could flourish. We are still living with the blowback from this strategy.

Netanyahu’s aim in expanding Israel’s wars, and in threatening to turn Lebanon into another Gaza, is not to “liberate” anything or anyone but to maintain control, internally and externally. The lessons of previous invasions of Lebanon – in 1978, 1982 and 2006 – should be clear enough. On the first two occasions, Israel invaded to confront the Palestine Liberation Organisation, on the third to try to eliminate Hezbollah, which had emerged, with Iranian backing, in response to the 1982 invasion and occupation. Each invasion was marked by considerable bloodshed – including, in 1982, the massacre of up to 3,500 Palestinians and Lebanese Shia in two Beirut refugee camps, Sabra and Shatila, by Israel’s allies the Lebanese Christian Phalangist militia – and nothing that anyone could call “liberation”.

There is a deeper issue here, too. In modernity, the historian Ronald Schechter wrote, “Jews became good to think [with]”, a comment echoed by David Nirenberg who, in his classic history of “Anti-Judaism”, similarly observed that “modernity thinks with Judaism”. What they meant was that the symbolic roles imposed on Jews became a means of addressing wider social issues. “The ‘Jewish Question’ ”, Nirenberg wrote, is not “simply an attitude towards Jews and their religion, but a way of critically engaging with the world”.

This use of “the Jew” as a means of making sense of the world is most true, of course, of antisemitism. For antisemites, belief in mythical Jewish power explains the evils of the world. It is true also of many strands of philosemitism, a term coined originally by antisemites but which has come to be used more widely to describe the views of those who have particular admiration for the Jewish presence in the world.

And, increasingly, it has become true of perceptions of Israel, which, too, has acquired a symbolic status on both sides of the debate. For many of those hostile to Israel, the state has become totemic of many of the ills of the modern world. For supporters of the Jewish state, it is an especially moral nation, carrying the burden of defending civilisation against barbarism. The one view leads to the celebration of Hamas’s murderous assault on 7 October as “resistance”, the other to viewing the destruction of Gaza and the invasion of Lebanon as a necessary defence of western values and of “civilisation”.

If 7 October was an act of “resistance”, and if the destruction of Gaza and the brutalisation of Lebanon can be dismissed as essential steps towards a more civilised world, then I suggest we need to rethink what we mean by “resistance” and “civilisation”.

Kenan Malik is an Observer columnist

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Two of England’s biggest water firms dumped raw sewage into rivers across the country in suspected illegal breaches of their permits, despite being given the highest possible rating by the regulator for their environmental performance, the Observer can reveal.

Severn Trent Water and United Utilities were responsible for 1,374 raw sewage spills from sewage treatment works in apparent breaches of permits over a two-year period in more than 80 watercourses, according to an analysis of previously unpublished operational data. It is alleged the suspected illegal discharges were during dry weather or at times when the plants were not at operating capacity.

The two firms were both given the four-star rating by the Environment Agency this year for their performance in 2023. Over the past five years, the firms have paid out a combined £2.8bn in dividends to shareholders and millions of pounds in bonuses to bosses, with both repeatedly citing their top ratings from the regulator.

In response to the revelations, Emma Hardy, the water minister, said: “For too long, water companies have pumped record levels of sewage into our rivers, lakes and seas. This government will never let this happen again.”

Ashley Smith, founder of the campaign group Windrush Against Sewage Pollution (Wasp), which conducted the studies, said it was shocking the two firms had been given the top rating while apparently “permitting illegal discharges on a massive scale”.

He said: “These environmental performance assessments lie at the heart of the deceit that has allowed the privatised water industry to pay huge dividends and bonuses.

“They have been a tick box exercise, providing a cover for profiteering and regulatory failure. It is a national disgrace.” The water firms say the findings are based on “assumptions” and consider them unreliable.

The Environment Agency provides an annual assessment of the environmental performance of the nine water and sewerage companies operating in England. Severn Trent has been given the highest rating five years in a row. United Utilities was given the top rating for the years 2020, 2021 and 2023.

In response to the new findings, the agency said a four-star rating does not mean a firm is a “perfect performer”. It also said it was consulting on changes to the environmental performance assessments.

An agency spokesperson said: “Overall water company performance, including for Severn Trent and United Utilities, isn’t where it needs to be and a major area for company improvement is in stopping unacceptable ‘dry day spills’”.

Water firms have faced public fury after it was first revealed by the Guardian in July 2020 that they had discharged raw sewage into England’s rivers on more than 200,000 occasions in just one year.

The firms are permitted to discharge raw sewage at times of heavy rainfall, but the latest analysis examines potentially illegal spills. The rivers campaign group Wasp matched rainfall records against the water firms’ operational data for their sewage treatment works (2021-2022) and regulatory permits to expose the scale of the suspected illegal discharges.

Its analysis found that Severn Trent had made 494 suspected illegal spills of sewage in 2021 and 309 in 2022 from 50 sewage plants. One sewage treatment works at the village of Colwall in Herefordshire discharged 72 times in suspected breach of permit conditions in 2021 and 2022.

A treatment works at Derby appears to have illegally discharged sewage into the River Derwent on 35 days over the two-year period, according to the data. There were also suspected illegal spills into the Severn, the Trent and the Cam in Gloucestershire.

Wasp’s analysis of United Utilities found the firm had made 308 suspected illegal spills in 2021 and 263 in 2022 from 35 sewage plants. At a sewage works at Newbiggin on Morecambe Bay, which is designated a special area of conservation, there were 84 suspected illegal discharges in 2021 and 2022.

Peter Hammond, the author of Wasp’s reports, said there may have been hundreds of other illegal spills by the companies, but the data from the recording equipment in those cases could not be considered robust enough to distinguish between legal and illegal spills. Hammond said that the government “must replace current devices with flow meters to record frequency, duration and volume”. Any bonuses based on unreliable environmental data should be clawed back, he said.

Hammond and Smith, who have been labelled the “sewage sleuths”, previously used machine learning to detect untracked sewage discharges, with a paper published in March 2021. Eight months later, the Environment Agency announced its biggest criminal investigation into potential breaches of environmental conditions at sewage treatment works.

Ofwat, the industry regulator, last week ordered water firms to return £158m to customers through bills because of poor performance. Severn Trent and United Utilities, however, were reported to have exceeded their targets and will be able to charge customers more next year.

Charles Watson, chair of the charity River Action, said: “It’s only through the relentless work of citizen scientists that we now know about the state of our rivers while our regulators have been missing in action. The fact that any dividends and bonuses have been paid by firms complicit in persistent widespread illegal activities is an outrage.”

Liv Garfield, chief executive of Severn Trent, was given a £3.2m pay deal in 2023/24, including a bonus of £584,000. Louise Beardmore, chief executive of United Utilities, was paid £1.4m in the year to 31 March 2024, including a £420,000 annual bonus.

A United Utilities spokesperson said: “The methodology used in this report is not one that is used by regulators or companies and continues to be based on assumptions rather than actual evidence or measured data.” The spokesperson said it understood people’s concerns about sewage discharges and had embarked on the “largest environmental investment in a century” in its infrastructure.

Severn Trent said: “Our sites have complex hydraulic configurations with multiple interdependencies that need to be assessed using site specific assured data, whereas desktop analysis like this can only produce assumptions and unreliable conclusions.

“We’re making progress to improve river health and an extra £1bn raised by our investors is accelerating delivery, with £450m being invested this year alone to reduce spills.” The firm said it considered the works at Colwall was operating “in line with its permits”, and that the Environment Agency performance assessments were “challenging and intensive” and it was the only water firm to achieve the highest rating five years in a row.

A government spokesperson said a new water bill going through parliament will strengthen regulation, including the powers to ban the payment of bonuses to bosses of polluting firms. It will also conduct a review of the water sector.

A spokesperson for Water UK, the trade association for the industry, said: “No sewage spill is ever acceptable, and we have a plan to put it right. Water companies have proposed investing £11bn to reduce spills by 40% by 2030. We now need Ofwat to give us the green light so we can get on with it.”

The centuries-old mystery over Christopher Columbus’s nationality has been revealed by scientists in a Spanish TV documentary after using DNA analysis.

The 15th explorer was Jewish and from Spain, according to Columbus DNA: His True Origin, a programme broadcast on national broadcaster RTVE on Saturday to mark Spain celebrating its national day and commemorating Columbus’s arrival in the New World.

Researchers led by forensic expert Miguel Lorente tested tiny samples of remains buried in Seville Cathedral, long marked by authorities there as the last resting place of Columbus, although there had been rival claims. The team compared them with those of known relatives and descendants.

Countries have long argued over the origins and the final resting place of the divisive figure who led Spanish-funded expeditions from the 1490s onward, opening the way for the European conquest of the Americas.

Many historians have questioned the traditional theory that Columbus was from Genoa in north-west Italy. Other theories ranged from him being a Spanish Jew, Greek, Basque or Portuguese.

Lorente, briefing reporters on the research on Thursday, had confirmed previous theories that the remains in Seville belonged to the explorer.

He said: “Today it has been possible to verify it with new technologies, so that the previous partial theory that the remains of Seville belong to Christopher Columbus has been definitively confirmed.”

Research on the nationality had been complicated by a number of factors including the large amount of data but “the outcome is almost absolutely reliable,” Lorente added.

Columbus died aged 55 in the northwest Spanish city of Valladolid in 1506 but wished to be buried on the island of Hispaniola that is today shared by the Dominican Republic and Haiti.

His remains were taken there in 1542, then moved to Cuba in 1795 and then, it had been long thought in Spain, to Seville in 1898.

In 1877, workers found a lead casket buried behind the altar in a cathedral in Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic, containing a collection of bone fragments the country says belong to Columbus.

Lorente said both claims could be true as both sets of bones were incomplete.