The wreck of the ship on which renowned Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton died has been found off the coast of Labrador, Canada, searchers have announced.

Locating the Quest – a schooner-rigged steamship which sank on a 1962 seal hunting voyage – represents a last link to the “heroic age of Antarctic exploration”, said search leader John Geiger.

“Finding Quest is one of the final chapters in the extraordinary story of Sir Ernest Shackleton,” said Geiger, who heads the Royal Canadian Geographical Society.

Geiger was speaking from the bridge of Leeway Odyssey as the oceanographic research vessel returned to port in St John’s, Newfoundland, after locating the Quest in 400 metres of water 15 nautical miles from shore.

Quest’s final resting place was 7,500 miles (12,000km) from where it was anchored when Shackleton died of a heart attack onboard in the harbour at Grytviken, South Georgia, on 5 January 1922.

The explorer was just 47 and was returning to Antarctica seven years after his previous ill-fated expedition had ended in near catastrophe.

Coming three years after the expeditions of the Norwegian Roald Amundsen and the Englishman Robert Falcon Scott first reached the south pole just weeks apart, in 1914 Shackleton hoped to make the first land crossing of the Antarctic continent. Instead, his doomed expedition became one of the most gruelling – and miraculous – survival ordeals of all time.

The mission went awry when his ship, the Endurance, became trapped in pack ice in the Weddell Sea, forcing Shackleton and his men to camp on unstable ice floes. After months adrift, the Endurance sank and Shackleton sailed with his crew in lifeboats to the desolate and uninhabited Elephant Island.

Realising their chances of rescue remained slim, Shackleton took five of his men in an open boat on an 800-mile odyssey across perilous oceans to reach the whaling station at Grytviken on South Georgia. Four months later, Shackleton succeeded in rescuing his crew from Elephant Island.

All 27 members of Shackleton’s crew survived the ordeal, establishing their leader as a lion of the heroic age of Antarctic exploration, with his care for his men distinguishing Shackleton in an era when polar explorers often died in the extreme conditions due to rudimentary equipment and insufficient supplies.

In a further testament to Shackleton’s leadership, eight of the Endurance crew would return with him on his next expedition. This despite the Quest being smaller than the Endurance with a design apparently ill-suited for polar expedition. A wooden-hulled former sealer built in Norway in 1917, the Quest was “small, poorly fitted and reckoned exceedingly uncomfortable by those who sailed in her”, according to an exhibition on the ship at the South Georgia Museum.

But journalists at the time marvelled at its modern gadgetry, which included wireless radio equipment, electric lights, an electrically heated crow’s nest, an instrument for plotting a ship’s course called an odograph, and even an Avro Baby seaplane.

After Shackleton’s death, Frank Wild took command and the Quest continued towards the Weddell Sea but the underpowered ship struggled in icy conditions and its men returned despondent to the UK months later.

The journey marked the end of the so-called heroic age, which was followed by a new “mechanical age” which relied less on the derring-do of its leaders and more on technological advances including tracked motor vehicles and aircraft.

But the Quest continued sailing for decades in various capacities. When Norwegian polar explorer Amundsen disappeared while flying on a rescue mission over the Arctic in 1928, the Quest was sent to help in the unsuccessful search for his remains.

British explorer Gino Watkins then used the Quest on his 1930 British Arctic air route expedition, which sought to survey an air route from the UK to Winnipeg.

During the second world war the Quest served as a minesweeper in the Caribbean.

After the war, the ageing vessel returned to her original purpose and it was while hunting seals in the Labrador Sea that the Quest struck ice and sank in May 1962, though all her crew were rescued.

This year marks 150 years since Shackleton’s birth in County Kildare and more than a century after his death, the Anglo-Irish explorer’s story continues to make headlines.

In 2022, the wreck of the Endurance was discovered 3,000 metres below the Weddell Sea, preserved by the freezing waters and absence of wood-eating organisms.

“After Endurance was found, a lot of Shackleton buffs all over the world … immediately turned to Quest,” said Geiger, asking “‘Where’s Quest? Can we find it?’”

“It was a bit of a detective story initially,” said search director David Mearns, a shipwreck hunter who was also involved in the decades-long project to find the Endurance. “I thought, personally, we had a shot, maybe a 70% chance of finding it.”

Five days into the search, the team’s sonar equipment detected the wreck lying on the seafloor. “The masts are knocked down and that’s what we would expect, but the whole basically is intact,” said Mearns. The team plans to return to photograph the wreck later this year.

The discovery has been welcomed by Shackleton’s closest living relative, Alexandra Shackleton, who noted that her grandfather had originally planned to use Quest on a Canadian Arctic expedition until the Canadian government of Arthur Meighen withdrew its support.

“It is perhaps fitting that the ship should have ended its storied service in Canadian waters,” she said.

Since the UK’s general election was called, the Labour party has been seeking to capitalise on voters’ fury over the sewage filling England’s rivers and seas.

The debt-ridden, leaking, polluting water industry, owned largely by foreign investment firms, private equity and pension funds, has overseen decades of underinvestment and the large-scale dumping of raw sewage into rivers. It has become one of the touchstone issues of this election, with voters across the political spectrum angry at the polluting of waterways treasured by local communities. Groups have sprung up to look after rivers and lakes; protests pop up most weekends along the coast.

Labour is keen to present itself as having the answer – though the Liberal Democrats have also been making a splash on the issue – with the shadow environment secretary, Steve Reed, talking tough by threatening to put water bosses in prison, ban their bonuses and impose fines for sewage spills.

But after vowing to end the “Tory sewage scandal”, Labour – predicted by multiple polls to win the election with an outright majority – will have to act quickly and ambitiously to clean up the mess, say experts.

With no rivers in good condition, water bills projected to skyrocket, crumbling infrastructure leaking sewage into groundwater, people getting sick from tap water, and water companies in dire financial straits, this is not an easy problem to fix. It will take focus, investment and potentially an entirely new regulatory and ownership system.

Labour has identified the potential collapse of Thames Water, the country’s largest water company, as a key crisis issue that will have to be immediately tackled by the incoming government. The party leadership does not want to nationalise water, arguing that it would cost the taxpayer tens of billions of pounds.

But some within Labour have been pushing hard for nationalisation – England is the only country in the world that has a fully privatised water system.

Clive Lewis, who was the MP for Norwich South until the general election was called, recently tabled an early day motion asking for water companies to be brought into public ownership. He thinks this should start with Thames Water and gradually include all of England’s water companies. He has been supported by a group of Labour MPs, including the former shadow chancellor John McDonnell, and it is also a key policy of the Green party. Launching the motion, Lewis said: “Water companies in England have incurred debts of £64bn and paid out £78bn in dividends since they were privatised, debt-free, in 1989 … Water companies paid out £1.4bn in dividends in 2022 even as 11 of them were fined in the same year for missing performance targets.”

Mathew Lawrence, the director of the Common Wealth thinktank, said the potential collapse of Thames Water could give a new Labour government an incentive to act boldly. “A crisis is also an opportunity: to show how they will govern differently and end financial extraction from essential services. If we want to see fairer bills, clean water and well-run services, our water system must be brought into public ownership, just as it is in Scotland, and most of Europe.”

Water companies have been trying to get on the front foot in anticipation of a Labour victory at the election. The industry fears a shake-up, and has been briefing heavily that if companies are fined too heavily and end up failing, it will dent investor confidence in the UK.

Liv Garfield, the chief executive of Severn Trent, last year proposed to her fellow CEOs: “One idea we believe might be attractive to the Labour leadership is repurposing utilities and utility networks into a new breed of declared social purpose companies – companies that remain privately owned, who absolutely can (and should) make a profit, but ones that also have a special duty to take a long-term view.”

Water UK, the trade association for the water industry, is working alongside the regulator, Ofwat, to avoid higher fines for water companies and potential jail time for chief executives. Water UK has recently appointed a number of people who are well-connected in Labour circles. David Henderson, the body’s new CEO, was a longtime adviser to Gordon Brown, and the former Labour cabinet minister Ruth Kelly was appointed as its chair last year. Its head of policy, Stuart Colville, used to work for Ed Miliband, the shadow energy security secretary. Colville then moved to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), which is in charge of regulating the water sector, before joining Water UK. He has a public-facing role at the lobbying group, recently hitting the airwaves to tell people the water industry was “working really hard” to stop sewage spills.

This has led to concern about a revolving door between the UK’s political and corporate classes, which risks preventing action to tackle the water crisis. James Wallace, the chief executive of River Action UK, said: “If the leaders of Water UK speak the same political language as a potential new government it could go one of two ways: collegiate and urgent transition of a failing sewage and water industry for the benefit of people and planet; or a cosy continuation of the scandalous degradation of waterways permitted by under-resourced regulators and profiteering corporations.

“We will be pressuring for the former … History will judge harshly any more broken promises.”

A Water UK spokesperson said: “We are focused on securing regulatory approval for £100bn in new investment. At almost twice the current rate, this investment is vital for ensuring the security of our water supply and reducing the amount of sewage entering rivers and seas as fast as possible. Regardless of which party is in government, the industry will remain focused on securing approval for this investment.”

Also keeping Labour on the straight and narrow is its unofficial water adviser, Feargal Sharkey, former frontman of the Undertones and now one of the country’s most vocal water campaigners. Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, has been seen socialising with Sharkey and the campaigner has accompanied Reed on the campaign trail . Now touring the country to campaign for Labour candidates, Sharkey has been clear that any wavering on their part will cause them to lose his support – which would in turn tarnish the party’s credibility on the sewage issue.

Sharkey, who also chairs Sera, an environmental campaign group affiliated to the Labour party, told the Guardian: “The simple truth is they are going to have to conduct a complete root and branch review and potential restructuring of the ownership and funding not only of the water companies, but the whole system of regulation that oversees their activities.” He said he did not know yet if nationalisation was the answer, but the current system had to change: “For example, in the case of Thames Water, there is not a single year since privatisation the Thames Water shareholders put in more money than they took out. It’s always been a cash-sum game to them. They’ve always abstracted more money out of that company than they ever invested in it.”

There are rumours that Labour is planning a review of the regulators, and to potentially scrap Ofwat and replace it with a new, stronger body. The investment for the new reservoirs that are needed – London is projected to run out of water in coming years if there are any more droughts like that of 2022 – and for sewers to stop human effluent being poured into waterways, also has to come from somewhere. How much of this will a Labour government allow billpayers and taxpayers, rather than shareholders, to shoulder? Sharkey thinks it can force shareholders to pay for the bulk of it. But most think bills will have to rise. Labour has pledged not to raise taxes for working people and is sticking to stringent fiscal rules, so any large-scale investment would be unlikely to come from central government.

An equally pressing issue Labour needs to tackle, experts say, is farming pollution, caused largely by the spread of animal manure on fields that then leaches into waterways, causing harmful plant and algae blooms.

Shaun Spiers, the executive director of the Green Alliance thinktank, said: “Farming must be properly regulated and particular problem areas tackled.” He said an action plan must be put in place for the Wye, one of the most polluted rivers in the UK due to the muck from the intensive chicken farms surrounding it.

Farming unions will be lobbying hard against this, and it will be much easier to blame water company CEOs than farmers, who have more public sympathy. It remains to be seen whether Labour will stick to its guns and clean up the UK’s waters, or if, as has happened for the past 14 years, the tough decisions are deemed just too difficult to make. The harsh truth, however, is that many of England’s rivers and chalk streams do not have 14 more years to wait before ecological collapse.

Cocaine consumption is threatening rare tropical birds as narco-traffickers move into some of the planet’s most remote forests to evade drug crackdowns, a study has warned.

Two-thirds of key forest habitats for birds in Central America are at risk of being destroyed by “narco-driven” deforestation, according to the paper, published on Wednesday in the journal Nature Sustainability.

For 40 years, US drug policy has not reduced the global scale of the illegal networks, but instead driven the traffickers deeper into forests, researchers said. There, traffickers create landing strips and roads to move shipments, as well as cattle pasture to launder money and control territory.

The lead author, Amanda Rodewald, from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, said: “That displacement is causing them to go into forests that tend to have the greatest conservation value and are disproportionately occupied by Indigenous peoples. It is affecting the most vulnerable human and non-human populations.”

Millions of hectares of tropical forests are known to have been destroyed by narco-trafficking, with devastating impacts for people. Generally, when areas are invaded by drug gangs, Indigenous people are forced to accept payment for their land and cooperate with the logistics of trafficking.

The paper’s co-author Nicholas Magliocca, from the University of Alabama, said: “If they resist, their land is taken and violence often follows. For those that are not forcibly dispossessed of their land, the only remaining options are to cooperate or flee across international borders.”

Now, for the first time, researchers have calculated the effect that the loss of these critical habitats could have on bird populations.

They found that 67 species of migratory birds that breed in the US and winter in Central America are at increased risk.

Endangered golden-cheeked warblers are particularly threatened, with 90% of the population living in forests at risk from the narcotics trade. The paper found that 70% of golden-winged warblers and Philadelphia vireos also winter in these areas.

“We were surprised by just how high of a percentage of the global population was actually affected,” said Rodewald.

Remote sensing by satellite shows that 15-30% of annual deforestation in Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala can be attributed to the movement of cocaine alone, the paper says. Half of Central America’s resident and migratory bird populations have fallen since 1970 and deforestation is a key driver of that decline.

The largest remaining forests in Central America – known as the “five great forests” – are widely inhabited by Indigenous peoples and are experiencing growing levels of cocaine trafficking. Cartels are also looking for ways to launder money into the legal economy; buying forest and using it for cattle ranching is one of the main ways they do this.

Magliocca said: “US drug policy in Central America focuses on the supply side of the equation, and law-enforcement pressure plays a significant role in the movement of trafficking routes and locations of narco-deforestation.

“After 40 years, that approach has not worked. In fact, cocaine trafficking has only expanded and become a worldwide network,” he said. “You have to do more than reactively chase after the drug traffickers, who have nearly unlimited money and power in the region.”

The study looked solely at drug trafficking, as opposed to drug cultivation. It looked at impacts in all countries in Central America except Belize, because the data was lacking.

The researchers said creating jobs and opportunities for local communities, as well as resolving unclear land tenure, and improving monitoring and protection of forests, would help tackle the problem. This would mean that if traffickers, or criminal activity, moved into an area, there would be greater economic resilience within the community.

The researchers said in the paper: “Enhancing the ability of Indigenous groups and rural smallholders to reassert their territorial control and resource governance norms has been shown to be protective against narco-trafficking and other environmental crimes, such as illegal logging or wildlife poaching.”

Find more age of extinction coverage here, and follow biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield on X (formerly known as Twitter) for all the latest news and features

Jin, the oldest member of the K-pop supergroup BTS, has completed his military service in South Korea, although their legions of fans around the world will still have to wait at least a year until all seven artists are reunited.

The star, who in December 2022 became the first member of the group to begin 18 months of military service, emerged on Wednesday from the 5th Army Infantry Division’s base in northern Yeoncheon province, 60km north of Seoul, to be greeted by fellow bandmates J-hope, RM, V, Jungkook and Jimin.

A smiling Jin saluted outside the camp gate before RM played BTS’s 2020 mega-hit Dynamite on a saxophone, then exchanged hugs with other members of the band who presented him with a giant bouquet of flowers.

While fans had been asked not to visit the camp, some had hung colourful banners outside, with one reading: “Seok-jin you did so well for the last 548 days. We’ll stand by you with our unwavering love,” referring to the star by his full first name.

All able-bodied South Korean men are required to spend between 18 and 21 months in the military by the time they are 28 – a duty intended to maintain the country’s ability to respond to a possible attack by North Korea, with which it is technically still at war.

Some fans had hoped the band – by far South Korea’s most successful cultural export – would be granted an exemption in recognition of their huge contribution to the country’s economy and soft power. Exemptions have been granted to classical musicians and athletes who won international tournaments.

But in October 2022, BTS’s management agency, Big Hit Music, confirmed that all seven artists were “moving forward with plans to fulfil their military service”.

The band will not be able to reform until RM, Jimin, Jungkook and V – the last four members of the band to join up – are discharged from military service in June 2025.

While the two Koreas engage in a proxy war by flying balloons across their heavily armed border, a giant balloon flown outside the camp had a more benign message. “Worldwide handsome Seok-jin! Congratulations on your discharge,” it said.

County authorities joined in with a banner of their own that read: “BTS Jin, the last year and a half was a joy for us. Yeoncheon will not forget you!”

The band’s agency announced Jin’s discharge on Weverse – a superfan social media platform – earlier this week. “We are excited to bring you the news of Jin’s upcoming military discharge,” it said.

It also urged fans not to visit the camp over safety concerns, and only two were seen on Wednesday morning, according to local media.

On Thursday, Jin, who is expected to release a solo album later this year, is scheduled to give out hugs to fans at the Festa event in Seoul, held to mark the 11th anniversary of the band’s debut. Later the same day he will take part in a meet-and-greet event that will be livestreamed on Weverse.

The five members who greeted Jin on Wednesday had applied for leave, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported, adding that Suga, who is performing civilian duties after the effects of shoulder surgery ruled him out of military service, was the only absentee.

Agence France-Presse contributed reporting.

Azerbaijan’s government has been accused of cracking down on media and civil society activism before the country’s hosting of crucial UN climate talks later this year.

Human Rights Watch has found at least 25 instances of the arrest or sentencing of journalists and activists in the past year, almost all of whom remain in custody.

Many campaigners and civil society groups have spoken of their concerns that climate advocacy was being stifled amid a media clampdown. Azerbaijan will host the UN Cop29 climate summit over two weeks in November, when nearly 200 governments, including dozens of heads of state, are expected to thrash out a new global approach to providing the funds needed to tackle the climate crisis.

Azerbaijan, an authoritarian state where media and civic freedoms are curtailed, is regarded as one of the world’s most corrupt countries, coming 154th out of 180 states in a ranking by Transparency International last year. There is little effective political opposition and the president, Ilham Aliyev, won more than 92% of the vote in elections in February to take a fifth consecutive term. His father was Heydar Aliyev, who led the country under Soviet rule and was installed as president after a military coup in 1993 followed the breakup of the eastern bloc.

Azerbaijan is also accused of holding political prisoners. A war with neighbouring Armenia last year over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region ended with 100,000 people being displaced from their homes.

One of Aliyev’s top advisers said a few weeks ago that the government intended to make Cop29 a “Cop of peace”, and to call for a Cop truce in which hostilities would be suspended around the world for the duration of the talks.

Campaigners raised their concerns at a pre-Cop29 meeting of governments in Bonn, where the secretariat for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is based. Officials from around the world are in the midst of two weeks of meetings to discuss the key issues that will dominate the Cop29 summit, including the vexed question of how to provide sufficient finance to help the developing world cut greenhouse gas emissions and cope with the impacts of global heating.

A protest was held at the entrance to the Bonn talks on Friday evening – the midpoint of the discussions – calling for the release of 23 Armenian political prisoners held in Azerbaijan. Some protesters accused the government of genocide.

Myrto Tilianaki, a senior environmental advocate at Human Rights Watch, highlighted the case of Anar Mammadli, a member of the Human Rights Houses network, who was arrested on 29 April on smuggling charges. He is a founder of the Climate of Justice Initiative, which aims to use Cop29 to push for environmental justice in Azerbaijan.

Ibad Bayramov is campaigning for the release of his father, Gubad Ibadoghlu, a research fellow at the London School of Economics and civil rights activist, who was imprisoned last summer and whose health has badly deteriorated, requiring urgent medical treatment which his family say he is not receiving.

Bayramov said: “Cop29 lends legitimacy on the world stage to the government’s illegitimate imprisonment of my father. As his health has deteriorated to extreme levels, western governments continue to meet weekly with their Azerbaijani counterparts regarding Cop29. Meaningful progress on climate change cannot be achieved in a country where individuals like my father are imprisoned and tortured for speaking out.”

Paul Polman, a former CEO of Unilever who now campaigns on climate and human rights issues, said he wanted to use Cop29 as an opportunity for the international community to talk about Azerbaijan’s treatment of prisoners, about which he has serious concerns. “I hope that Cop29 can be used as an opening,” he said. “But it’s appalling that human rights has not been on the agenda. After Cop29, there will not be a spotlight on Azerbaijan’s record.”

Azerbaijan’s government has rebutted the activists’ claims. A spokesperson said: “We totally reject the claims about [a] crackdown against human rights activists and journalists in Azerbaijan. No one is persecuted in Azerbaijan because of political beliefs or activities.

“As in any rule-of-law based society, any detention or imprisonment of a person who is suspected in illegal activities is subject to the requirements of investigation and fair trial, based on relevant laws and regulations. Instead of waiting for the results of criminal cases and investigations, as well as court rulings … to call on Azerbaijan to release suspects is in open contradiction with legal procedures.

“As Cop29 president, Azerbaijan lays out its vision and pillars for a successful year of climate negotiations, encouraging an open and direct dialogue among all nations, and we believe all the layers of society should contribute to successful efforts to tackle the climate change challenge.”

Azerbaijan’s presidency follows two other consecutive Cops – the term stands for conference of the parties, under the UNFCCC, the 1992 parent treaty to the Paris agreement – in countries with authoritarian leaders and poor records on human rights: the United Arab Emirates hosted Cop28 in Dubai last year, where protests were muted, and Egypt hosted Cop27 in 2022. The UN guarantees some freedom of expression for protesters within the confines of the Cop during the fortnight it runs, but has little influence on the hosts’ behaviour outside its precincts.

Tilianaki said: “Holding Cop29 in Azerbaijan raises serious concerns about the possibility of advancing ambitious climate action in negotiations. Governments attending the Bonn preparatory meeting should call out Azerbaijan for its repression of civil society and make clear that they will actively confront any attempts to weaken robust climate policies.”

Lawyers for Elizabeth Holmes, founder of failed blood testing company Theranos, urged judges in a federal appeals court on Tuesday to overturn the fraud conviction that earned her an 11-year prison sentence.

In an appeal hearing for both Holmes and company president Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, lawyers argued improper procedures and evidence in both cases warrant new trials.

Holmes, who started Theranos as a college student and became its public face, was indicted alongside Balwani, her former romantic partner, in 2018. The two were tried separately in 2022 and sentenced later that year to 11 years and three months, and 12 years and 11 months, respectively.

Her legal team filed an appeal of her conviction in April 2023, but Tuesday marked the first court hearing on the matter.

Amy Saharia, Holmes’ lawyer, told a three-judge panel of the ninth US circuit court of appeals in San Francisco that the Theranos founder believed she was telling the truth when she told investors that Theranos’s miniature blood testing device could accurately run a broad array of medical diagnostic tests on a small amount of blood.

“There were in fact many good people working at Theranos, and believing they had good technology,” Saharia said. “Holmes believed that, and that is what she was telling investors.”

Saharia’s argument also focused on issues with two main witnesses for the prosecution: former Theranos employee Kingshuk Das, who testified as a scientific expert about Theranos’s product and former laboratory director Adam Rosendorff.

Holmes’ team argued Das should have faced cross-examination about his qualifications and the judge should have allowed Holmes to introduce more evidence attacking Rosendorff, including details of a government investigation of his work after leaving Theranos.

Those mistakes could have made the difference in the “close” case, in which jurors were not able to reach a verdict on most counts against Holmes after seven days of deliberations.

The assistant US attorney Kelly Volkar, arguing for the government, disputed that Das had improperly testified as an expert, saying he was called to talk about his personal experience at Theranos. She also said that “it was not really contested that the device did not work”.

The judges had skeptical questions for both sides and did not clearly indicate how they would rule. Circuit judge Ryan Nelson said that, even without the disputed testimony, “there was, it seemed to me, pretty overwhelming evidence”.

Circuit judges Jacqueline Nguyen and Mary Schroeder said that much of Das’s testimony concerned what he observed at the company, not his scientific opinions, as Saharia argued.

Nguyen and Nelson, however, also both told Volkar that they had concerns about what opinions Das was allowed to give during the trial. “I have some problems with how this happened,” Nelson said.

Jeffrey Coopersmith, Balwani’s lawyer, argued that prosecutors had gone beyond what was in the indictment against his client by introducing evidence that the commercial testing technology Theranos secretly used was not reliable.

The judges appeared more skeptical of that argument, though again did not clearly signal how they would rule. Appeals can take weeks or months to be decided. Representatives from Holmes’s legal team did not respond to request for comment.

Reuters contributed to this report

The confident demeanour of Rory McIlroy before this week’s US Open at Pinehurst has been further explained after it emerged the divorce petition he filed in a Florida court last month has been voluntarily dismissed.

McIlroy has reconciled with Erica, his wife of seven years, in what is likely to serve as a huge boost to the golfer’s state of mind.

Shock news emerged in the immediate buildup to the US PGA Championship that the world No 2 was to divorce. However, court papers served in Florida on Tuesday show dismissal of the case at the behest of the parties involved. McIlroy looked in noticeably upbeat mood when he addressed the media at Pinehurst earlier in the day.

Contacted by the Guardian about the divorce and fevered speculation between the last two majors about his situation, McIlroy said: “There have been rumours about my personal life recently, which is unfortunate. Responding to each rumour is a fool’s game.

“Over the past weeks, Erica and I have realised that our best future was as a family together. Thankfully, we have resolved our differences and look forward to a new beginning.”

McIlroy arrived in North Carolina seeking to end a wait for a fifth major stretching back to August 2014. The Northern Irishman will partner Scottie Scheffler and Xander Schauffele in rounds one and two.

“I’m really proud of my body of work over the past 15 years and everything that I have achieved, whether it be season-long titles or individual tournaments or majors,” McIlroy said.

“Obviously getting my hands on a fifth major has taken quite a while, but I’m more confident than ever that I’m right there, that I’m as close as I’ve ever been.”

It is a weird and wonderful sight: millions of migratory insects funnelling through a single narrow pass high in the Pyrenees, looking like a dark flying carpet and emitting a low, deep hum.

A team of scientists from a British university that has been studying the phenomenon for the last four years has now concluded that more than 17 million insects fly each year through the 30 metre-wide Puerto de Bujaruelo on the border of France and Spain.

“It really is a magical thing,” said Will Hawkes, from the centre for ecology and conservation at Exeter University. “You sweep your net and it’s full of the tiniest of flies, all journeying on this unbelievably huge migration.”

The work has its origins in the discovery in 1950 by British ornithologists Elizabeth and David Lack, who “chanced upon a spectacle” – the migration through the pass, which sits at 2,273 metres.

Hawkes said: “They witnessed remarkable numbers of marmalade hoverflies migrating through the mountains. We went to the same pass to see if this migration still occurred, and to record the numbers and species.

“Not only were vast numbers of marmalade hoverflies still migrating through the pass but far more besides. These insects would have begun their journeys farther north in Europe and continued south into Spain and perhaps beyond for the winter. There were some days when the number of flies was well over 3,000 individuals per metre, per minute.”

As well as the marmalade hoverflies, they watched butterflies – including cabbage whites, dragonflies and house flies – whiz through the pass. The team used cameras, nets and keen eyesight to spot and record the insects.

There has been an alarming decline in insect numbers across the globe and the assumption is that the amount travelling through the pass has dropped since the Lacks first observed it, though the precise figures were not recorded 70 years ago.

The Exeter team hope that their findings may boost determination to protect their habitats. Hawkes said: “Insects are resilient and can bounce back quickly.”

Team leader Karl Wotton said it was a wonder of nature to see so many insects all moving purposefully in the same direction at the same time.

Wotton said: “The combination of high-altitude mountains and wind patterns render what is normally an invisible high-altitude migration into this incredibly rare spectacle observable at ground level.”

The researchers said that insect numbers peaked when conditions were warm, sunny and dry – just after lunch seemed the best time. The area is a tourist hotspot and visitors, who at first were a little upset at being bombarded with flies, cheered up when they realised what was going on.

Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, has said she is still “not doing great” but will continue to work, in her first interview since she was assaulted in a Copenhagen square last week.

Frederiksen, 46, suffered minor whiplash in the attack last Friday, which is not thought to have been politically motivated. A 39-year-old Polish man was detained on suspicion of assault.

“I’m not doing great, and I’m not really myself yet,” Frederiksen told the Danish broadcaster DR in an interview broadcast on Tuesday.

Frederiksen gave no details of the attack, but said “it was very intimidating when someone crosses the last physical limit you have. There is some shock and surprise in that”.

She said it was “probably also an accumulation of many other things. Threats over a long period of time on social media have got worse, especially since the war in the Middle East. Shouting in public space. Maybe that was the final straw”.

“As a human being, it feels like an attack on me,” Frederiksen said in the 10-minute interview. “But I have no doubt that it was the prime minister that was hit. In this way, it also becomes a kind of attack on all of us.”

“No form of violence has any place in our society.”

She continued: “I would rather have a Denmark where the prime minister can bicycle to work without being worried. I am Mette at my core, but I am the country’s prime minister. Thus, an institution that you must not attack, like the police.”

Frederiksen said the tone had changed in politics recently.

A 39-year-old Polish man was arrested and will be held in custody until 20 June on preliminary charges of violence against a person in public service. In Denmark, preliminary charges are one step short of formal ones but allow authorities to keep criminal suspects in custody during an investigation.

In court, the suspect, who was not identified, reportedly praised Frederiksen as “a really good prime minister”, and investigators suspect he was under the influence of drugs and intoxicated at the time of the incident that happened just before 6pm on Friday.

Media reports said the man walked toward Frederiksen and pushed her hard while she was passing one of Copenhagen’s main squares. He hit her upper right arm with a clenched fist.

Frederiksen has not appeared in public since the attack and did not participate in public party events as the results of Sunday’s European parliament elections started coming in. Her party, the Social Democrats, faced a loss in the vote.

Frederiksen became the youngest ever Danish prime minister when she took office in 2019. She won re-election in legislative elections in 2022.

International efforts to protect the ozone layer have been a “huge global success”, scientists have said, after revealing that damaging gases in the atmosphere were declining faster than expected.

The Montreal protocol, signed in 1987, aimed to phase out ozone-depleting substances found primarily in refrigeration, air conditioning and aerosol sprays.

A study has found that atmospheric levels of hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs), harmful gases responsible for holes in the ozone layer, peaked in 2021 – five years ahead of projections.

“This has been a huge global success. We’re seeing that things are going in the right direction,” the study’s lead author, Luke Western from the University of Bristol, said.

The most harmful CFCs were phased out by 2010 in the effort to protect the ozone layer – the shield that protects life on Earth from harmful levels of ultraviolet rays from the Sun.

The HCFC chemicals that replaced them are expected to be eliminated by 2040.

The study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, examined levels of these pollutants in the atmosphere by using data from the Advanced Global Atmospheric Gases Experiment and US National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration.

Western attributed the steep decline in HCFCs to the efficacy of the Montreal protocol, as well as tighter national regulations and a shift by industry in anticipation of the coming ban of these pollutants.

“In terms of environmental policy, there is some optimism that these environmental treaties can work if properly enacted and properly followed,” Western said.

Both CFCs and HCFCs are also powerful greenhouse gases, meaning their decline also aids in the fight against global heating.

CFCs can last in the atmosphere for hundreds of years, while HCFCs have a lifespan of about two decades, Western said.

Even once they are no longer in production, the past use of these products will continue to affect the ozone for years to come.

The United Nations Environment Programme in 2023 estimated it could take four decades before the ozone layer would recover to levels before the hole was first detected in the 1980s.