New research “for the first time proves” toxic PFAS forever chemicals are absorbed through human skin, and at levels much higher than previously thought.

Though modeling and research has suggested the dangerous chemicals are absorbed through skin, University of Birmingham researchers say they used lab-grown tissue that mimics human skin to determine how much of a dose of PFAS compounds can be absorbed.

The paper shows “uptake through the skin could be a significant source of exposure to these harmful chemicals”, said lead author Oddný Ragnarsdóttir.

PFAS are a class of about 16,000 compounds used to make products resistant to water, stains and heat. They are called “forever chemicals” because they do not naturally break down and have been found to accumulate in humans. The chemicals are linked to cancer, birth defects, liver disease, thyroid disease, plummeting sperm counts and a range of other serious health problems.

Humans are most commonly exposed to them through water and diet, but researchers in recent years are increasingly looking into inhalation and dermal absorption. The latter is especially a concern because of the wide range of products containing PFAS that come into contact with skin. Among them are bandages, waterproof clothing, makeup, personal care products, upholstery, baby products and guitar strings.

Researchers applied samples of 17 different PFAS compounds to the three-dimensional tissue model and were able to measure the proportion of the chemicals that were absorbed.

The skin took in “substantial” amounts of 15 PFAS, including 13.5% of PFOA, one of the most toxic and common kinds of the chemical. The skin absorbed a further 38% of the PFOA dose with a longer application. US regulators have found that virtually no level of exposure to PFOA in drinking water is safe.

PFOA is a relatively larger compound, and smaller “short-chain” PFAS that industry now more commonly produces and claims are safer were absorbed at higher levels – up to nearly 60% of one short chain compound dose was absorbed by the skin.

“This is important because we see a shift in industry towards chemicals with shorter chain lengths because these are believed to be less toxic – however the trade-off might be that we absorb more of them, so we need to know more about the risks involved,” said study co-author Stuart Harrad.

Some scientists and industry officials have claimed PFAS used in personal care products or makeup won’t be absorbed because the molecules are ionised so they can repel water.

“Our research shows that this theory does not always hold true,” Ragnarsdóttir said.

Ron DeSantis stripped more than $32m in arts and culture funding from Florida’s state budget over his hatred of a popular fringe festival that he accused of being “a sexual event”, critics of the rightwing governor say.

DeSantis justified his unprecedented, wide-ranging veto of grants to almost 700 groups and organizations by saying it was “inappropriate” for $7,369 of state money to be allocated to Tampa fringe, a 10-day festival that took place earlier this month with a strong message of inclusivity, and its sister event in Orlando.

“[It’s] like a sexual festival where they’re doing all this stuff,” DeSantis said at a press conference Thursday, without elaborating.

“When I see money being spent that way, I have to be the one to stand up for taxpayers and say: ‘You know what, that is an inappropriate use of taxpayer dollars.’”

As a result, he has canceled almost the entirety of Florida’s already slim funding to the arts world, denying much-needed dollars to a diverse array of groups including youth orchestras and choirs, museums, art galleries, dance troupes, zoos, cinemas and community theaters.

Most rely on the state contribution to operate fully, or in many cases simply for their survival. So it makes little sense to any of them that what DeSantis sees as standing up for the taxpayer equates to killing performances, exhibitions and jobs.

“It’s going to be a combination of everything, from tightening our programming and salaries, and going to our patrons, once again, for donations,” said Margaret Ledford, artistic director of City Theatre Miami, a small performing arts group that, among other projects, focuses on presenting short-form plays to middle schoolers.

Her group, with two full-time and three part-time employees, lost a $47,000 grant, about 6% of its annual budget.

Other allocations quashed by DeSantis range from $500,000 each for organizations including the Tampa Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale’s Museum of Science and Discovery and Miami’s Pelican Harbor seabird station, to a few thousand dollars each for groups such as the Amelia Island opera and the Annasemble community orchestra of Gainesville.

Ledford is among those who believe the governor’s action against the arts world is purely political, a continuation of his well-documented targeting of minority groups, including the LGBTQ+ community, through executive action and legislation designed to stifle discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity.

Asked for details, the governor’s office issued a statement condemning a performance at Tampa fringe that featured transgender characters.

“You can’t say gay, you can’t do anything he considers woke, and the word climate change has been taken out of state statutes,” Ledford said.

“We’re also trying to figure out how we reach the students of the community if we can’t talk about things they need to talk about in schools. If we bring in a play with a gay character, we can do that because we’re theater, but whose job are we putting in jeopardy if a student then asks a question of a teacher?”

Margaret Murray, chief executive of the non-profit arts agency Creative Pinellas, called DeSantis’s veto “incredibly disheartening”.

“Arts money does so much more than allow us to enjoy a performance or visit a museum, and now is the time to invest more heavily, rather than less, in our cultural community,” she said in a statement.

“According to a recent report by the Florida Cultural Alliance, every $1 spent on the arts generates $9 in economic activity. Unfortunately, there is little recourse to reverse the state’s decision, but we do still have a voice. Please continue supporting the artists and arts organizations. Now is the time to buy that piece of artwork or purchase tickets to the play you recently heard about. Collectively, we can amplify our advocacy for the arts and make our voices heard.”

Among those also puzzled by DeSantis’s motives are political allies, some in the Republican-dominated Florida legislature that crafted a $117.5bn state budget earlier this year that the governor trimmed by almost $1bn before signing it this month. Those politicians rubber stamped grant applicants that were vetted and approved by the Florida Council on Arts and Culture, a 15-member advisory body hand-picked by the governor.

Additionally, the state’s own publications trumpet the economic value of investment in arts and culture, a $3.1bn industry in Florida that it says “supports jobs, generates government revenue and is a cornerstone of tourism”.

Anna Eskamani, a Democratic state representative representing Orlando, said DeSantis’s veto was irrational.

“If we’re struggling economically, then yes, you cut programs, those that aren’t going to impact things like public safety, education, food security. You go after the line items that won’t lead to urgent problems,” she said.

“But we’re not there. Florida has like $17bn in reserves, and this was $32m, a drop in the bucket compared to the budget as a whole. Now these organizations are going to have to make budget decisions, likely reduce staff, cancel programs and reduce the events they can host.

“And there’s a ripple effect because the folks going to the shows are eating at the small restaurant next door, they’re buying printed materials and swag the art group is selling, they’re paying to park, there’s an entire ecosystem that revolves around arts and culture.

“That’s why it makes no sense. It’s another DeSantis culture war, the same old playbook, just a different chapter.”

The next government must take decisive action to reduce inequality or risk unprecedented far-right gains, a thinktank has warned.

A report from the Fairness Foundation says that Britain will become more unfair and unequal over the next five years, with growing inequality in health, housing, poverty and the north-south income divide.

More than 30 people from business, academia and civil society have backed the report’s findings in a letter to all party leaders which expresses their dismay at the “lack of political will to address unfairness and inequality” in the UK.

“We believe that this is not only morally wrong, but is causing deep damage to our society, economy and democracy, and undermining the fight against the climate crisis,” they say.

“Failure to act now will make us less healthy, productive, efficient, resilient and cohesive.”

The new report, Canaries, warns that the number of children in relative poverty is set to rise from 30% to 33% by 2028, due to a freeze in housing benefit, the end of cost of living payments and the two-child benefit cap.

It also says that the number of children who live in overcrowded homes will rise from 1.8 million to 2 million by 2030, as housing becomes more expensive.

The average person in south-east England is £195,400 wealthier than in the north, a gap that is expected to grow to £229,000 by 2029 due to the unequal inheritance of wealth.

Education attainment gaps are likely to rise because school budgets are set to decline over the next five years.

Only 25.2% of disadvantaged children get five or more good GCSEs compared with 52.4% of their peers without disadvantages – a gap that has been widening since 2017.

And the earnings gap between chief executives and their employees is also likely to grow. FTSE350 CEOs earn 57 times more than the median wage of their workers and earnings inequality has grown by 20% from 1980 to 2019.

Will Snell, chief executive of the Fairness Foundation, said that most people in the UK agree that we must urgently address inequality. “But all the evidence points to the fact that Britain is a deeply unfair and unequal country,” he said.

“This undermines the very foundations of our society, damages our economy and endangers our democracy; and unfairness in Britain looks set to get even worse over the next few years. The canaries in the coal mine are no longer singing, and the next government needs to pay attention.”

Unfairness means people in deprived areas are more likely to fall ill for decades to come, the report says. These types of inequality act as a brake on economic growth, reduce social mobility and fuel social unrest.

Shabna Begum, chief executive of the Runnymede Trust, said: “There is a real threat that, unless a new government delivers swift and meaningful change to inequality, we will see far-right parties capitalise on desperation and despair and become a real electoral threat.”

The report’s recommendations include a plea to scrap the two-child benefit cap and adopt advice from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and Trussell Trust to introduce an “essentials guarantee” – a minimum level of Universal Credit support.

It also backs the Resolution Foundation’s suggestion of creating a £10,000 “citizens inheritance” given to all 30-year-olds, and a “universal savings account” merging pensions, Lifetime ISAs and Help to Save.

Up early? We have three small children: our twins are four and Logan is six. I get up early every day, absolutely not on purpose. At 5.30am they climb into bed, clambering all over me. I make up a story about them being travelling adventurers until first light.

Sunday breakfast? Banana pancakes with yoghurt and fruit. I have five frying pans and I’ll often make the mix the night before. The kids’ capacity to consume pancakes, commensurate with their bodyweight, blows my mind. They will eat half an elephant’s worth of pancakes, while I have a very strong coffee.

Morning routine? All three of the children, including our little girl, go to the local rugby club, where I played for 15 years. I volunteer as a kids’ coach now. Every Sunday, 70 to 80 kids run around like crazy people learning the game. It’s tremendous fun.

Sunday outing? We live on the Thames. If it’s a nice day, even in the middle of winter, we’ll pack up a big canoe with a lovely picnic of sandwiches and hot chocolate and paddle upstream to a beach on the riverside. As we drift, we’ll spot kingfishers and great crested grebes. The twins know the names of more waterbirds than your average adult. Sometimes it can be an expedition that lasts three or four hours. My kids start to go a bit bonkers if they’re caged up inside for any length of time. They need to be outside.

Sunday entertainment? My wife, Helen [Glover, professional rower], and I are quite militant about TV. Screentime is something we don’t do unless we absolutely have to. When we get home, we’ll play board games or do other creative projects, – mega drawings on rolls of wallpaper – or we’ll conjure up our own games. We’ve been playing lots of blind man assault courses recently.

Any time to yourself? No. Helen is often away – at the moment she’s training for the Olympics, so there’s no respite for me from the kids. It’s exhausting, but Sunday is my favourite day of the week.

Early night? Yes. My kids are terrible sleepers. They go to bed at 7pm, but don’t usually get to sleep until 8.30pm. I spend most of that time tidying up, and by 9pm, I’m out cold.

Sunday wind down? Bathtime and a story for the kids, then I’ll sing the Welsh national anthem to them before lights out at 7pm. They’ll join in even though they don’t understand the words.

Steve Backshall’s Ocean tours the UK from 19 October to 3 November (stevebackshall.com)

It is, as Chris Martin points out, 25 years since Coldplay’s Glastonbury debut, a silver anniversary they commemorate tonight by unexpectedly dusting down an acoustic version of Sparks from their debut album Parachutes. Perhaps more pertinently, it’s the fifth time they’ve headlined the festival, and they’ve got the hang of it to such an extent that it increasingly feels like the job the quartet were put on earth to do.

Since their last appearance in 2016, they’ve completed a 180 degree turn from earnest stadium balladeers to purveyors of relentless, balls-out, more-is-more visual overload: their gigs are now effectively a 21st-century equivalent of U2’s Zoo TV shows, albeit without any of U2’s accompanying theorising about the media or the relationship between art and commerce.

This gig is played amid the eye-popping, ongoing Music of the Spheres tour, and everything that appeared to be cranked up to 11 when I saw it two years ago is now cranked up to 12. The end result makes Dua Lipa’s performance on Friday night look like the dernier cri in shy understatement.

Pyrotechnics and confetti cannons are used not as a special effect, but as a regular punctuation point, not deployed to signpost the climax of the show, but the arrival of choruses. Inflatables roll over the crowd, while equipping the audience with illuminated wristbands remains the best idea anyone’s had at a giant-scale gig since they worked out how to turn the big stage-side screens on: it’s both visually dazzling and dizzily effective at turning even the fringes of what looks like it will be the biggest crowd of the weekend into part of the performance.

It is shamelessly unsubtle crowd-pleasing stuff, from the obvious singalong anthems that precede their appearance – Don’t Look Back In Anger, Smells Like Teen Spirit – to a drone flying overhead broadcasting the vastness of the assembled masses back to them, to the level of flattery Chris Martin lavishes on the festival and the audience itself: “Amazing wonderful people from all over the place… the greatest city on earth … the most important engine room in the world”.

Still, in the middle of the crowd, it would take a quite extraordinary level of churlishness not to be swept along in its wake. Whatever reasonable objections you might lodge against Coldplay do seem to melt away in the face of such cartoonish good fun – at a festival where there’s theoretically always something else going on to divert your attention, it’s a smart idea to continually give the audience something to look at – and a set toploaded with a relentless bombardment of greatest hits: Yellow, Clocks, Adventure of a Lifetime, The Scientist, Paradise, Viva La Vida, Higher Power.

Indeed, it’s so relentless that the middle section, during which they start rolling out the special guests feels like a respite, simply because the songs they’re guesting on are album tracks: Laura Mvula sings Violet Hill from Viva la Vida – intriguingly the solitary genuinely angry anti-war protest song in Coldplay’s catalogue – Little Simz raps on And So We Pray, from the forthcoming Moon Music, and Femi Kuti and Palestinian/Chilean singer Elyanna appear on an impressively powerful version of Arabesque, the highlight of 2019’s decidedly mixed bag Everyday Life.

The final part of the show occasionally skirts with a slightly cheesy daffiness as it attempts to find further stops to pull out: Chris Martin gets the cameras to focus on individual audience members and makes up songs about them on the spot; he invites the crowd en masse to send out private messages of love to the world (the dispatch of said messages is marked with more fireworks).

But he still succeeds in carrying the crowd with it. For a finale, he unexpectedly brings out Michael J Fox, and then performs Fix You. The latter is arguably the most slender of Coldplay’s patented Big Tunes, but it feels noticeably bulked up by being sung en masse, to a backdrop of their trademark wristbands glowing a warm orange. Onstage, the cameras briefly focus on drummer Will Champion, who, rather sweetly, seems to be moved to tears. But even if it doesn’t leave you moist-eyed, Coldplay’s performance is the kind of Glastonbury set that no one present is likely to forget in a hurry.

It’s a Tuesday morning, the infinite blue sky of Byron Bay has opened up and the six naturists – four men, two women – have stripped down to their birthday suits for a quick dip in the buff.

This section of beach – an 800-metre stretch along the vast coastline – forms the only legal clothing-optional beach in the shire. Among those taking advantage of the opportunity to be out in the open is Duncan James, vice-president of Northern Rivers Naturists, who is something of an evangelist for “embracing the beach as Mother Nature intended.”

“Many of the beach users have described the clothing-optional beach as their happy place, a place where they can disconnect from modern day stresses, a place they can feel at one with nature,” he says.

There is, however, a metaphorical cloud on the horizon. On Sunday, Tyagarah is set to be stripped of its status as an official clothing-optional beach.

“I guess these values aren’t shared by New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service [NPWS], who are hell-bent on closing one of Byron’s last alternative community hubs and experiences,” James says.

Tyagarah itself was first designated as a clothing-optional beach in 1998 to allow those looking to engage in non-sexual nudity to be one with the surf without risk of being fined or arrested.

It is not the only such beach, or event, in Australia. Maslin’s beach in South Australia was first designated in 1975 and since then, with the exception of Queensland, two dozen similar beaches dot the Australian coastline. Every year at Dark Mofo, hundreds brave the Tasmanian cold to swim naked to mark the winter solstice.

But with Tyagarah now being taken away, those on the beach see it as a troubling sign of the times.

‘We’re not prudes’

The politics of being naked in public has always been fraught.

For its part, Byron Bay has always been comfortable with a certain degree of exposed flesh. The region has one of the highest rates of skin cancer in the country but when the sun is out, people sunbathe topless or discretely skinny dip along its beaches. Every year a naked bike-ride runs through the centre of town and in March local paper the Echo ran uncensored images from the ride showing male genitalia on its front cover.

Until the clothing-optional beach opened, Maxine Hawker says she would skinny dip each morning just outside her front door – something she has been doing since she was 18.

“My first time was probably when I was 18, swimming on an isolated beach on the north coast. We were on holiday and I just went ‘this is magic’,” she says.

Hawker says Tyagarah is far from town, which means it shouldn’t offend those with a more modest outlook, while not being so remote that it is totally inaccessible.

But Bradley Benham, president of Northern Rivers Naturists, says authorities took a “set and forget” approach soon after it was established, which led to problems involving indecent behaviour in the nearby dunes and a lake farther inland.

In 2016 a group calling itself the Safe Beaches Committee formed to clean up Tyagarah, but around this time residents and business owners along Gray’s Lane – a long stretch of road that runs from the Pacific Highway to the coast – began to campaign for its closure. In 2018 they delivered a petition with 86 signatures to council complaining of “lewd” behaviour.

Benham describes this period as “nasty”, saying the negative publicity only attracted the attention of people who weren’t interested in nude sunbathing. At one point he says he was abused by three fishers when leaving the beach.

“The people trying to close the beach down are quite obsessed with the idea of people having sex in the dunes,” Benham says. “The people trying to shut the beach are focusing on this idea that it’s a sex beach, which has never been my experience.”

Things died down for a while but the issue revived in February when the council announced the results of a land survey undertaken by NPWS that found the beach fell within the Tyagarah national park and the clothing-optional section had been created without proper authority.

A tense council meeting followed, featuring impassioned speeches for and against. A mother of two claimed she, her husband and daughter had encountered a naked man with an erect penis while on a bike ride nearby; in his own speech Benham said it was unfair to treat those who used the beach responsibly the same as those who may lurk in bushes.

None of this changed the council’s fundamental position and in a motion it was announced that on 30 June the beach would close.

Speaking to the ABC one resident, Gwen Gould, celebrated the news.

“We’ve worked for about eight years on trying to have this closed down,” she said.

“People say we’re prudes. We’re not prudes.”

Naked Frisbee, volleyball and cricket

Like others in the community, Maxine Hawker says she was “devastated” by the decision.

“I am so shocked by it. I can’t believe Byron Bay would become so conservative,” she says. “We have, as a people and a culture, become more conservative and I think that conservative creep has come to Byron.”

If residents were opposed to the beach being at the end of their street, she says the simplest solution would be to move it.

So far there has been little interest.

A Change.org petition addressed to the New South Wales environment minister, Penny Sharpe, and that received over 7,700 signatures to save Tyagarah beach or find an alternative failed to get anything moving. NPWS, partly citing opposition from traditional owners, has stood by its decision to close the beach but has written to Byron shire council to request that the date be extended.

“NPWS has requested that Byron shire council extend the permissibility of the COA from 30 June 2024 to 30 August 2024, which will allow appropriate notification for the naturist community,” a spokesperson said.

Whether or not the council has responded to the offer is unknown. The Byron shire council mayor, Michael Lyon, was contacted for comment.

With Sunday approaching, Benham says there is no word about alternatives, when exactly the designation will be lifted, or how the naturists will be treated at law if they continue to use the beach.

The community is planning a send-off that may include naked Frisbee, volleyball and cricket. Even if the weather’s bad, the group says they’ll be out. Getting into the elements in the buff, they say, makes you feel alive.

What happens after that is unknown but Benham says he intends to continue using the beach and that he is willing to risk fines and even jail to do so.

“Some people certainly work in jobs where they don’t want to be arrested and have to go to court,” he says. “I’m fortunately in a position where I’m prepared to do that for what I believe in.”

“That’s how much this means to me.”

It was the armoured vehicles circling the Plaza Murillo – the normally tranquil central square in historic downtown La Paz – that initially set Bolivians on edge on Wednesday afternoon. By the time a phalanx of troops had marched on the presidential palace, the sense of collective confusion and shock was at fever pitch.

By 2.30pm, a small tank was repeatedly ramming the gates of the neoclassical building known as Palacio Quemado until troops forced their way in and, in an extraordinary scene, the coup leader – disgruntled former army chief Juan José Zuñiga – faced off against the president, Luis Arce.

Flanked by cabinet ministers and clasping a ceremonial baton, a symbol of his rank as head of state, Arce, 60, ordered Zuñiga to back down, telling him: “I am your captain … withdraw all of your troops right now, general.”

The heated exchange was filmed and lasted several minutes. It ended when Zuñiga turned and left via the same broken door through which he had entered, disappearing into a bulletproof army vehicle that sped away.

It may be remembered as the shortest attempted coup in the Andean nation’s tumultuous two centuries of existence. It lasted just three hours, during which time Arce rallied Bolivians to “mobilise” to defend democracy, apparently defused the mutiny in a one-on-one confrontation and appointed a new military command which ordered mutinous troops back to their barracks.

The unrest left Bolivians shocked and baffled.

But as soon as a semblance of normality returned, rumours began to swirl in the country of 12.5 million people, which has seen about 190 coups, as well as military dictatorships and revolutions, since it gained independence in 1825.

Just before he was detained on Wednesday, the alleged plotter Zuñiga sowed seeds of doubt, telling journalists – without providing evidence – that Arce had ordered him to stage a sham coup in a bid to boost the president’s flagging popularity.

The former commander, who was reportedly close to the government, had been sacked the day before the mutiny, according to Bolivia’s minister of government, Eduardo Del Castillo.

Zuñiga’s remarks were seized upon by the opposition, who demanded a parliamentary inquiry into claims that Arce had tried to orchestrate an autogolpe (self-coup).

A legislator for the Civic Community bloc, Alejandro Reyes, told the Observer there were “indications, evidence and statements that allow us to think that this [coup] has been premeditated, and could even involve the participation of the executive”.

In Arce’s defence, Deisy Choque, a legislator for the governing Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) party, warned that the coup might have been successful “had it not been for the position taken by the president, the ministers and Bolivian society as a whole in immediately repudiating these actions”. She claimed that Zuñiga’s words held little credibility as he had changed his story several times.

On Thursday, Arce strongly denied accusations that he was behind the attempted coup, saying: “We are never going to authorise weapons to be raised against the people. What the former army commander general did […] was to rise against the Bolivian people, attacking the democracy that has cost the Bolivian people blood. We are never going to do that. Never.”

On Friday, the government announced 20 further arrests, including a former Navy vice-admiral. About 200 military officers took part in the attempted coup, Bolivia’s ambassador to the Organization of American States said.

What is beyond doubt is that Arce is presiding over a flailing economy. Amid plummeting gas exports and dwindling foreign reserves, there are growing protests over rising food prices and the scarcity of fuel and US dollars, as well as deep divisions within his political party.

“Bolivia is going through multiple crises: political, economic, social and environmental, but above all institutional,” said Franklin Pareja, a political scientist at Bolivia’s University of San Andrés. “The government is in a very weak situation. It has no cohesion within its own party.”

Arce is embroiled in a bitter power struggle with former president Evo Morales, who helped elect him in 2020. Arce, a UK-educated economist, served as Morales’s finance minister and replaced him as the MAS candidate after Morales – the country’s longest-­serving democratically elected leader – was ousted in 2019 amid accusations of electoral fraud, which he denied.

Both men have said they plan to seek the presidency in next year’s election for the MAS. Morales was among the first to condemn the apparent coup attempt.

But in a video posted on X by Bolivia TV on Saturday, he is seen with supporters mockingly questioning the incident: “I don’t know what kind of coup it is? A coup with zero wounded, zero gunshots, zero deaths.”

However, some of his supporters have joined the chorus of doubters. Gerardo García, the MAS vice-president, accused Arce of making a “mockery of the country” and being the “intellectual author” of a sham coup.

Regardless of whether or not they are true, the rumours of a “self-coup” have “taken hold in the popular imagination”, said Pareja, and may be hard for Arce to shake. “If this backfires on him, the weakness and fragility of his government could deepen.”

The elements knocked a wild, sometimes thrilling match off kilter and then the deadening technocracy that is smothering elite football took its turn, too. At the end of it all Germany could celebrate to the strains of new wave classic Major Tom, their unofficial anthem, and perhaps dare to fantasise about a new summer fairytale. Much of the night had resembled a fever dream but the prospect of going all the way in their home tournament has become real for Julian Nagelsmann’s team.

They will need to be better than this if, as seems likely, they face Spain in the quarter-finals. Germany looked like blowing Denmark away early on but, having not done so, had become a skittish mush by the time a cataclysmic weather intervention stopped proceedings for nearly half an hour during the opening period. They eventually pulled clear but had, in large part, to thank a handball law that is offensive to the sport’s spirit. Once Kai Havertz had scored from the penalty spot the air was sucked out of a pleasantly bold Denmark side.

Where to start? Perhaps with some of the football, even if the rule that facilitated Germany’s opener should have no place in the sport. Denmark had picked up from where they left off after half-time and felt hard done by when Joachim Andersen, having lashed past Manuel Neuer for what was seemingly a deserved lead, had his celebrations curtailed. Thomas Delaney had swung at the ball and missed just before Andersen applied the finish but was adjudged, through VAR, to have strayed offside by a toenail’s length.

Straight down the other end, and the marauding Germany left-back David Raum had men to aim for in the centre. His cross glanced off Andersen’s hand, a fact picked up by the VAR official Stuart Attwell and the “snickometer” deployed in the control room, and it was enough for Michael Oliver to award a penalty after pulling play back. Havertz converted and, for any neutral, the fun was over.

Andersen had been at close quarters to Raum and his arm, while not beside his body, was hardly outstretched. The decision was probably correct, according to a strict interpretation of handball’s modern definition. But the law needs calling out loudly for what it is: a ruinous example of overreach that makes the sport appreciably worse.

It would probably be a cheap shot to correlate such farce with the oversight of Premier League officials, even if handball controversies resemble catnip to those refereeing and re-refereeing English matches. Oliver’s night had been difficult enough already. Denmark were dominating when, just after the half-hour, a portentously close and muggy evening became something far more serious.

The heavens opened, as they had been threatening to; forked lightning cracked the night sky and loud, ominous claps of thunder shuddered the stands. With 35 minutes played Oliver led the players off, first to the side of the pitch and then down the tunnel as conditions continued to deteriorate. The playing area was patently unsafe and for a time proceedings seemed at risk of being curtailed altogether.

Eventually conditions eased and play could resume. The famous Südtribüne, part of which had emptied out to escape a biblical drenching refilled and bedded in for a contest that had already delivered. Germany had called Kasper Schmeichel into action four times in the first 11 minutes, saves from Havertz and Joshua Kimmich particularly eye-catching, but they had become nervous and twitchy after not putting Denmark to the sword. Before the unscheduled break Christian Eriksen and Joachim Maehle had been given openings and the ingredients for a classic, if a flawed and ragged one, were present.

Schmeichel made an even better stop from Havertz shortly after Oliver had led the sides back out, and before half-time Rasmus Højlund was denied one-on-one by Neuer. Denmark had been chastised back home for dull group stage performances but they had evidently spied an opportunity and, at this point, looked the better side.

Then came the extraordinary sequence that Andersen, the Crystal Palace defender, may struggle to shrug off. Germany could enjoy themselves after going ahead and should have settled things soon after when Havertz, who had held off the claims of local hero Niclas Füllkrug and kept his starting place, escaped the defence with sublime skill only to miss the target. Leroy Sané, recalled to the starting lineup by Nagelsmann, then missed a sitter of his own.

It fell to Jamal Musiala, who had been relatively quiet, to run on to a laser-like pass from Nico Schlotterbeck and see the whites of Schmeichel’s eyes. There was no redemption available to Andersen, who had seemed hesitant in trailing him. Musiala finished superbly for the third time in a European Championship that he has illuminated. Germany, rampant on the break but profligate, could have scored several more after that.

Few can begrudge this Germany side a crack at the last eight. Kasper Hjulmand certainly did not but the Denmark manager knew where the evening had turned.

“This is not how football is supposed to be,” he said of the calls that sent them home. As rumbles and flashes started up anew outside, someone seemed to agree.

In the summer months, north-easterly winds frequently herald the arrival of bluebottles on beaches along Australia’s east coast. But while bluebottles – or to give them their more formal name, the Pacific man-of-war – are a common sight on Australian shores, they are not native to coastal waters. Instead, they spend most of their lives on the open ocean, drifting with the winds and the currents.

Bluebottles are just one of a collection of organisms that have made their home at the ocean’s surface. Some of these animals are hydrozoans like the bluebottle.

There is the by-the-wind sailor, Velella velella, which has a stiff, transparent, oval sail about five centimetres long attached to its bright blue float, and Porpita porpita, sometimes known as the blue button, which is shaped like a disc about three centimetres in diameter surrounded by stinging polyps. But there is also the strikingly beautiful sea dragon; crustaceans such as shrimp, buoy barnacles and tiny swimming copepods; and even molluscs such as the violet snail and Recluzia.

Known collectively as the neuston, these creatures are not tied to any one place. Instead, they move with the wind and the water. Sometimes they gather into huge drifts, living islands of velella and bluebottles like those that wash occasionally ashore on beaches in Australia or the western coast of the Canada and the United States. At other times they clump together around drifting debris or spread out sparsely over hundreds or even thousands of square kilometres.

Despite its ubiquity, the neuston remains comparatively poorly understood and critically understudied. A mere handful of papers concerning the ecosystem are published each year, and only three of the 400 proposals received for the International Zooplankton Production Symposium earlier this year concerned the neuston.

Marine ecologist Associate Prof Kerrie Swadling,from the University of Tasmania, puts it bluntly. “We know more about deep sea vents than we know about the neuston.”

The reasons for this ignorance are partly historical. Although several important studies of the neuston were published during the 20th century, they were written in Russian by scientists from the Soviet Union and were largely ignored outside the Eastern Bloc. But for the most part, the lack of research into the neuston is a consequence of the practical challenges involved in observing organisms that are scattered unevenly across the immensity of the open ocean.

Griffith University’s Prof Kylie Pitt specialises in jellyfish ecology. She says, “The neuston’s transient nature makes it difficult to study. You’ll see large numbers of jellyfish or bluebottles and then you won’t be able to find them again.”

In recent years, however, there has been an uptick in interest in the neuston. New research is revealing not just its importance to the health of ocean ecosystems as disparate as coral reefs and the deep ocean, but also important gaps in our understanding of how it will be affected by changes in the ocean environment.

The person most responsible for the increased visibility of the neuston is Dr Rebecca Helm. Now an assistant professor at Georgetown University in the United States, Helm was scrolling Twitter in 2018 when she came across a tweet about The Ocean Cleanup’s plans to remove plastic from the oceans by sweeping a floating net across the surface.

Helm says she immediately wondered about the potential impact of this technology on the neuston, and so began to investigate.

“Initially I was just doing a little digging in my free time. But once I did, I realised how little information there was available and how little had actually been done on this group of animals.”

Helm might have left it at that if the pandemic hadn’t meant she was locked out of her lab for several months. “I suddenly had all of this nebulous time to start looking into this more deeply, and became really fascinated.”

‘An inverted sea floor’

Helm’s response is easy to understand. The ocean surface is an extremely challenging environment: food is often scarce and survival requires an ability to withstand not just waves and storms, but also the heat of the sun and high levels of ultraviolet radiation. This last part may help explain why so many neuston species are blue: as well as acting as camouflage, the colour acts as an inbuilt sunscreen that reflects UV radiation.

However, survival in the neuston also requires animals to find some way to remain at the surface. For free-swimming species such as copepods and zooplankton, this is easy. But for other organisms it requires special adaptations.

Hydrozoans like the bluebottle and velella employ gas-filled floats, while the buoy barnacle extrudes air into the cement that it would otherwise use to attach itself to ships and rocks, creating a substance a bit like pumice that it uses as a float. Similarly, violet snails suspend themselves beneath rafts constructed out of hardened bubbles of mucus. There is even a form of free-floating sea anemone that hangs upside down from the surface with the aid of a float in their pedal disc.

Fascinatingly, this need for a float helps explain one of the more surprising discoveries to have come out of Helm’s research, which is that many of the animals that inhabit the neuston are not particularly closely related to other free-swimming species. Instead, they are descended from species that usually exist attached to the bottom of the sea that have migrated upwards, meaning that the neuston is, in a very real sense, what Helm dubs “an inverted sea floor” clinging to the ocean’s surface.

This unexpected evolutionary link between the ocean’s surface and the sea floor echoes the growing awareness of the neuston’s role in connecting ocean ecosystems more generally. Many animals from other parts of the ocean rely upon it for food: numerous species of fish and fish larvae feed in the neuston, as do turtles and oceangoing birds such as fulmars, shearwaters, storm petrels and some albatrosses. The neuston also provides vital nutrition for many of the species that ascend each night from deeper waters to feed as part of the diel migration.

The neuston also plays a critical role in the life cycles of many fish, whose larvae spend time near the surface before migrating to other parts of the ocean as they mature. “The ocean surface is an incredibly important nursery ground for diverse species of fish,” says Helm. “Deep sea viper fish can be found at the surface when they’re very young. Many seahorses and pipefish, mahi mahi and billfish also seek out the ocean surface when they’re young.”

It’s likely many of the fish that spend time at the surface as juveniles do so because it is safer than deeper waters. Some shelter among the stinging tentacles of bluebottles and porpita, while others hide under floating mats of sargassum. Others join the many species that congregate around driftwood and other floating debris in search of food, protection or simply a scratching posts with which to remove parasites.

Plastic and the neuston

But wood and sargassum are not the only kinds of debris in the sea. Although most of the more than 12m tonnes of plastic that ends up in the oceans every year sinks, a considerable amount of that which remains accumulates in the subtropical gyres, huge current systems that circulate in the centre of the Indian Ocean, the North and South Atlantic and the North and South Pacific.

The regions at the centres of the gyres are often called garbage patches, but Helm rejects that label, arguing they are in fact neuston environments that have been invaded by plastic. Nonetheless, samples taken when long-distance swimmer Ben Lecomte swam through the North Pacific garbage patch in 2019 showed plastic and neustonic life clustered together.

This intermingling of plastic and neustonic life has severe impacts on species that feed upon the neuston. Unable to distinguish fragments of plastic from food, fish, turtles and other animals consume it, resulting in malnutrition and passing toxins into the food chain.

The effects of this can be catastrophic: Laysan albatrosses feed almost five tonnes of plastic to their chicks every year, while on Lord Howe Island plastic appears to be connected to rising mortality among shearwater chicks.

The effect of plastics upon the neuston itself seem to be more complex, however. While animals such as fish and buoy barnacles are likely to suffer adverse effects from ingesting plastic, larger pieces of floating plastic have the potential to provide shelter to some fish and fish larvae and appear to benefit sea skaters and other species that require objects on which to lay their eggs.

The effects of technologies designed to remove plastics from the ocean on the neuston also remain unclear. Partly as a result of Helm’s advocacy, Ocean Cleanup have adjusted their technology to minimise its impact on neustonic life.

But Helm is unconvinced. “I think it’s difficult to assess whether this technology is harming neuston. We don’t understand these animals … So while they may have made efforts that are perhaps trending in the right direction, I’m sceptical that can be stated with any confidence.”

Others are less concerned, believing the neuston’s dispersed distribution is likely to protect it against significant harm. Although she says her views may change if the operation scales up in the future, Swadling points to the fact Ocean Cleanup’s operation has only cleared a tiny fraction of the North Pacific gyre and says “the effect to date will be negligible.”

Nor is plastic the only area where our understanding of the human impact on the neuston remains worryingly incomplete. Oil and chemical spills have the potential to adversely affect neustonic life, as do rising air and ocean temperatures. Yet in a reminder of how little we know about the neuston, Swadling says that not only is she unaware of a single experiment gauging the thermal tolerance of neustonic organisms, our knowledge of the ecosystem is so incomplete that we don’t even possess a useful baseline from which to measure change.

To overcome these gaps in our knowledge, scientists are increasingly utilising the power of citizen science. Helm helped establish Go Sea, a Nasa-funded community that allows both scientists and the public to report sightings of surface life, and in collaboration with SeaKeepers has been helping train yachters to take samples of the neuston. Meanwhile the University of NSW is developing Bluebottle Watch, a bluebottle forecasting system that will use public sightings, ocean surveys, laboratory experiments and computer modelling to track and anticipate bluebottle swarms.

Nonetheless, there is no question that this crucial ecosystem deserves more attention. “People think of the open ocean as an empty environment, but it’s absolutely not,” says Pitt. “Just because we can’t see what’s going on doesn’t mean it’s not important.”

More than 100 dolphins have become stranded in the shallow waters around Cape Cod on Friday in what an animal welfare group is calling “the largest single mass stranding event” in the organization’s 25-year history.

A group of Atlantic white-sided dolphins were found Friday in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, about 100 miles south-east of Boston, in an area called the Gut – or Great Island at the Herring River – which experts have said is the site of frequent strandings, due in part to its hook-like shape and extreme tidal fluctuations.

The International Fund for Animal Welfare, which rescues and rehabilitates animals, described the area as “the epicenter of our mass strandings” in a Facebook post.

The team of 25 animal-welfare workers and 100 trained volunteers had a rescue operation in place by an hour after high tide on Friday evening, Stacey Hedman, the fund’s communications director, told CNN.

“We had 125 Atlantic white-sided dolphins strand and 10 died before we arrived,” Hedman said in an email to CNN on Friday.

“We estimate 115 live dolphins, and we’re continuing to encourage them further out of the shallow mudflats,” Hedman told CNN Friday evening. “The tide in this area can be 10, 11 ft, and can make a dramatic difference in just a few hours.”

Misty Niemeyer, the organization’s stranding coordinator, said rescuers faced many challenges Friday including difficult mud conditions and the dolphins being spread out over a large area.

“It was a 12-hour exhausting response in the unrelenting sun, but the team was able to overcome the various challenges and give the dolphins their best chance at survival,” Niemeyer said in a statement.

The team started out on foot, herding the creatures into deeper waters and then used three small boats equipped with underwater pingers, according to the organization.

“The plan, given the number, is to triage and aim to support animals, refloat and herd as many as possible,” Hedman said. “Luckily, it is cooler today, but these animals will risk sunburn and overheating until the tide rises, and then we have the challenge of herding them into deeper water.”

The group also had the support of Whale and Dolphin Conservation, the Center for Coastal Studies, AmeriCorps of Cape Cod and the New England Aquarium.