A new temporary bronze installation depicting a pile of feces on Nancy Pelosi’s desk was erected in Washington DC this week across from the US Capitol, appearing to satirically “honor” the people behind the January 6 insurrection.

The scatological statue, which was installed on Thursday, features a swirl somewhat resembling the common “poop” emoji sitting on a desk with Pelosi’s name.

“This memorial honors the brave men and women who broke into the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021 to loot, urinate and defecate throughout those hallowed halls in order to overturn an election,” the plaque under the statue reads.

“President Trump celebrates these heroes of January 6th as ‘unbelievable patriots’ and ‘warriors.’ This monument stands as a testament to their daring sacrifice and lasting legacy.”

The statue does not indicate who the artist is or who created it. However, according to the Washington Post, the National Park Service approved a permit request from Julia Jimenez-Pyzik of Civic Crafted LLC to install a statue on the National Mall until 30 October.

The Park Service added that when issuing permits it “does not consider the content of the message being presented”, and that “as federal land and America’s premier civic space, the National Mall serves as a forum where citizens can exercise their Constitutional rights to speech and assembly”.

In the permit, obtained by NBC News, Civic Crafted LLC said the desk “represents the heart of democracy, where decisions are made, voices are heard, and the future is shaped”.

“Here, the power of the people finds its expression through the diligent efforts of those who serve the public good,” it said. “When rioters broke in to destroy these ideals, this desk stands firm, so too must the principles of equality, justice, and freedom that it represents.”

It added that the statue is named The Resolute Desk.

Social media reaction ranged from “tasteless” and a “total embarrassment” to “awesome”. “Welcome to America, where a bronze poop statue honoring the people who tried to break our democracy currently stands on the National Mall,” one user posted.

According to NBC News, the permit indicates that another statue, depicting a hand emerging from a stone base and holding a tiki torch, will be installed next week between the Capitol and the White House.

Their brazen chip-snatching, swooping and aggressive squawking has earned seagulls a reputation as the scourge of seaside towns, terrorising unsuspecting tourists and enraging residents alike.

And as the marauding birds have ventured inland and established urban colonies, towns have deployed spikes, netting and even birds of prey as deterrents. Now Worcester city councillors appear to be contemplating a new escalation in the battle: bird contraceptives.

Inspired by experimental pigeon-control schemes in Barcelona and Venice, the Labour councillor Jill Desayrah described the approach as “safe sex for seagulls”. “I am concerned that the increasing numbers of gulls are getting out of hand,” she said, according to a report in the Mirror.

Contraceptives have been used with varying degrees of success as a humane approach to containing populations of kangaroos, wild horses, prairie dogs, grey squirrels and rats on the New York subway. But experts are sceptical about the approach being a risk-free quick fix.

First, the perception of gulls as an out of control pest species may not match reality. “While it may appear as though gull species are thriving because of their increasing numbers in some urban areas, they are not faring well elsewhere,” a Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) spokesperson said. “People will be surprised to learn that many species of gulls are red- and amber-listed across the UK – the highest levels of conservation concern – including herring gulls and lesser black-backed gulls, which are both declining nationally.”

The annual gull population survey in Blackpole, the area of Worcester that has been floated as a potential location for a pilot, found that 376 pairs were living on retail parks and industrial estates. The majority are lesser black-backed gulls, which is a protected species.

“We would therefore be concerned about any action taken to reduce productivity of the birds without reference to Natural England, the government’s scientific adviser and wildlife regulator,” the RSPB spokesperson said.

There is also the question of efficacy: gulls would need to take the pill daily. But with scraps of discarded food widely available there is no guarantee the council’s contraceptive-laced provisions would be favoured.

“Seagulls can eat many things,” said Cecilia Soldatini, a senior scientist at La Paz University in Mexico, whose research focusses on seabird ecology. Her team uses cheesy fries to lure gulls, but the birds refuse fries that have become soggy in the rain.

“They’re not forced to eat what you’re giving to them,” said Soldatini, who has previously investigated the use of contraceptives in feral pigeons in Venice and found the approach to be of limited utility.

Gulls also have a feeding range of 10-15km (6-9 miles), according to Soldatini, meaning they are not reliant on resources from a tightly defined area. The key, she said, was to eliminate the resources attracting gulls in the first place. “Don’t make food available to them, work on the collection of rubbish. This is the only way.”

Dr Giovanna Massei of the University of York, who is Europe director of the Botstiber Institute for Wildlife Fertility Control, said that “hard scientific evidence” should be sought before any rollout – research she said councils ought to fund if they wished to explore this option. “If you put something out and then there are lots of fish and chips lying around it’s difficult for [the gulls] to get the dose they need.”

She added: “I understand that some councils are desperate to find a solution.”

Kay Haw, the director of UK Squirrel Accord (UKSA), said injectable contraceptives had been used successfully in herd species, such as wild horses in the US. UKSA is investigating oral squirrel contraceptives jointly with the government’s Animal and Plant Health Agency. “There are about 3 million grey squirrels in the UK,” she said. “You can’t catch them all and inject them.”

However, extensive research and fieldwork has had to be carried out over several years before the planned distribution of medicated food can proceed. “It’s not a quick process,” she said.

A key requirement is ensuring the contraceptives only get to the target species – in this case through a special feeding device that red squirrels are unable to operate. Haw said the protein-based contraceptive being used breaks down so quickly that a predator would have to “eat 1,000 squirrels” to be affected.

“People aren’t necessarily as careful as they need to be about this,” she said. “They have issues on the Isle of Wight with red squirrels being poisoned by rat poison.”

Soldatini agreed that non-eaten food could pose an environmental risk. “If it rains, it can go into rivers, or seawater,” she said. “This same pills can affect the populations living there – fish, other birds, sea mammals.”

The squirrel project also has a different motivation: to support the growth of red squirrel populations and the health of woodlands, not simply to remove a species deemed to be a nuisance to humans. “We’re working on an invasive species problem – the [grey squirrels] should never have been here,” Haw said. “That’s a different angle to a native species.”

A Worcester city council spokesperson said: “An annual gull report will be presented to the city council’s environment committee on 5 November. This will provide councillors with an opportunity to consider a gull management programme for 2025.”

The actor Helen Mirren has lamented that Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain did not live long enough to be able to experience the excitement of tracking his location on his phone.

Speaking to the Evening Standard proprietor Evgeny Lebedev on his Brave New World podcast, Mirren, 79, said she considered herself lucky to have lived long enough to witness dramatic technological advances.

“I always say it’s so sad that Kurt Cobain died when he did,” she said, “because he never saw GPS, as it’s the most wonderful thing to watch my little blue spot walking down the street. I just find it completely magical and unbelievable.”

The actor has frequently referenced Cobain in the past when discussing the interface of technology and ageing. In 2014, she told Oprah Winfrey, “Look at Kurt Cobain – he hardly even saw a computer! The digital stuff that’s going on is so exciting. I’m just so curious about what happens next.”

The following year, she told Cosmopolitan, “I was thinking about Kurt Cobain the other day and he died without knowing the internet, and I’m totally blown away by that.”

And, in 2016, she told the Daily Mail, “If I’d died at 27, the age that Kurt Cobain died in 1994, I’d never have even known there was an internet! Incredible things are happening all the time and I can’t wait to see what comes next.”

However, the sentiments Mirren expressed this week to Lebedev – whose podcast focuses on “longevity, neuroscience, biohacking, and psychedelics” – were less cheerful. “From this point on,” Mirren predicted, “however long humanity survives, it will be a world of technology. And I’m so grateful that I was of a generation that knew the world before technology. And you know we will die out eventually.”

Ageing in the public eye, reflected Mirren, is “kind of OK” but “it’s not brilliant”. She continued: “But it wasn’t that brilliant to be 25 either. So it’s not a question of seeking youth at all. It’s a question of living the life you have as fully and positively and enjoyably and confusingly and everything that it was when you were younger. It’s just called life.”

A year before Cobain died, Nirvana recorded their Unplugged in New York set for MTV, which further popularised the band beyond their core grunge fanbase. A now-iconic photo from the early 1990s shows Cobain grinning broadly while talking on a brick-like mobile phone, suggesting he might well have been enthusiastic about Google Maps.

Four astronauts have returned to Earth after a nearly eight-month space station stay extended by Boeing’s capsule trouble and Hurricane Milton.

A SpaceX capsule carrying the crew parachuted before dawn on Friday into the Gulf of Mexico, just off the Florida coast, after undocking from the International Space Station earlier this week.

The three Americans and one Russian should have been back two months ago, but their homecoming was stalled by problems with Boeing’s new Starliner astronaut capsule, which came back empty in September because of safety concerns. Hurricane Milton then interfered, followed by a further two weeks of high wind and rough seas.

SpaceX launched the four astronauts – Nasa’s Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt and Jeanette Epps, and Russia’s Alexander Grebenkin – in March. Barratt, the only space veteran going into the mission, acknowledged the support teams back home that had “to replan, retool and kind of redo everything right along with us … and helped us to roll with all those punches”.

Their replacements are the two Starliner test pilots Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, whose own mission went from eight days to eight months, and two astronauts launched by SpaceX four weeks ago. Those four will remain in orbit until February.

The space station is back to its normal crew size of seven – four Americans and three Russians – after months of overflow.

AstraZeneca has said it may cut jobs at its UK operation if the government enforces a global push to make companies share profits derived from nature’s genetic codes, multiple sources have told the Guardian.

The alleged comments from the company came amid a concerted lobbying push by the pharmaceutical industry against the profit-sharing measures.

Sources told the Guardian that the British-Swedish biotech company – which made $5.96bn (£4.59bn) profit last year – made the comments during a Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs roundtable meeting last week to discuss a proposed new global levy on drugs derived from the digital forms of biodiversity. A spokesperson for AstraZeneca denied the comments were made by their representative.

The genetic codes of nature – which, when stored digitally, are known as digital sequence information (DSI) – are playing a growing role in new drug development in the pharmaceutical and biotech industries.

But there is widespread anger among biodiverse countries about how DSI is being used by multinational companies to develop commercial products – almost always for free. Most of the world’s remaining biodiversity is concentrated in poorer countries. They argue that the free use of this genetic information amounts to “biopiracy”, and say companies should share profits when indigenous species are used to develop commercial products.

Global leaders have already agreed in principle that these benefits should be shared more fairly. They are now gathered in Cali, Colombia, at the biodiversity Cop16, in negotiations over what form that sharing should take.

Ideas under consideration include a 1% global tax on profits of goods derived from DSI, which could cost the Cambridge-based company as much as $60m if enforced by the UK government [that figure represents an estimated maximum, as not all of the firm’s profit would be derived from DSI].

The profit-sharing proposals have prompted significant backlash from pharmaceutical companies. In March, AstraZeneca announced a £650m investment in its UK operations, including £450m for its vaccine research and manufacturing facility in Liverpool. According to sources present at last week’s meeting, however, a representative for the company said jobs in north-west England could be affected by any levy.

Without a global agreement on how revenue is shared from discoveries based on DSI, some countries have threatened to restrict access to their biodiversity – potentially a major blow for commercial and scientific research. Proceeds from the global fund would be used for nature conservation around the world in an effort to prevent the continued destruction of ecosystems.

Eva Zabey, chief executive of Business for Nature, said making progress on DSI at the Cop16 negotiations was essential.

“Nature underpins every aspect of our economy. The benefits of natural resources – including through digital sequencing – must be valued and shared fairly. Businesses have a responsibility to contribute financially and non-financially for their use of these resources,” she said.

While any DSI levy would be voluntary, governments are free to implement compulsory national measures, an approach that is under consideration by the UK government.

At the Defra meeting on 15 October, pharmaceutical industry representatives voiced strong opposition to the idea and said a compulsory levy would damage competitiveness with countries such as the US, which is not a signatory to the UN biodiversity process and would not introduce any levy.

Richard Torbett, chief executive of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry, who attended the Defra meeting, said the imposition of a compulsory levy for UK-based companies was “a poorly targeted and damaging response to a critical global challenge”.

“It would discourage the use of this vital data, stifling British research efforts into vital to public health concerns,” he said.

“Any multilateral benefit-sharing mechanism must promote conservation objectives alongside scientific innovation and economic growth. The proposals on the table at Cop16 for a compulsory levy do not achieve this.

“They will have a direct impact on UK innovation, investment and growth, made worse by the fact that key nations such as the US will not impose a levy, putting the UK at an active disadvantage in attracting cutting-edge medical research,” he said.

Ahead of the negotiations in Cali, the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers & Associations (IFPMA), said it had “serious concerns” about a proposed global DSI tax, and that it could further complicate research.

Steve Bates, chief executive of the UK Bioindustry Association, said: “Any rules or levies that come from this summit will be imposing barriers to innovation and business growth … We have already discussed this with the UK government delegation going to Colombia.”

International DSI negotiations at Cop16 are expected to conclude on Friday next week.

A spokesperson for AstraZeneca said it may be the case that others in the room at the meeting on 15 October who represent the industry may have made comments about the impact on companies.

“I can confirm that no AstraZeneca representative made threats to move operations or cut jobs. As a company we are aligned with the position set out by the IFPMA which can be found here,” they said.

Israeli strikes hit Beirut on Thursday evening, after the US warned against Israel being led into a “protracted” campaign in Lebanon and efforts got under way to hold renewed talks over a ceasefire and hostage deal in Gaza.

Lebanese state media said several strikes hit Beirut’s southern suburbs on Thursday, about half an hour after Israel issued evacuation warnings for the Hezbollah bastion after intense strikes the night before.

In the south of the country, an Israeli strike killed at least three media staff staying at a guesthouse where several other reporters were staying, Lebanese media said.

A month into Israel’s military assault on Iranian-backed Hezbollah, US secretary of state Antony Blinken said he hoped Iran was getting a clear message that any further attacks on Israel risked its own interests. Israel has vowed retaliation for an Iranian missile barrage on 1 October.

Israel unleashed its Lebanon offensive with the declared aim of securing the return of tens of thousands of people evacuated from homes in northern Israel during a year of cross-border hostilities with Hezbollah.

“As Israel conducts operations to remove the threat to Israel and its people along the border with Lebanon, we have been very clear that this cannot lead, should not lead, to a protracted campaign,” Blinken said in Doha on his 11th trip to the region in the last year.

Blinken said the US was working on a diplomatic deal which would allow civilians on both sides on the border to return to their homes. Later, the head of Israel’s military said an end to the conflict with Hezbollah now looked possible.

“In the north [of Israel], there’s a possibility of reaching a sharp conclusion. We thoroughly dismantled Hezbollah’s senior chain of command,” Lt Gen Herzi Halevi said in a video statement.

Blinken is set to meet with Lebanese prime minister Najib Mikati in London on Friday, as well as with the foreign ministers of Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, two key US partners in a postwar plan for Gaza, the state department said.

US and Israeli negotiators will gather in Doha to prepare for renewed talks on a Gaza ceasefire deal which would also entail release of hostages in the Palestinian territory, Qatar and Washington said on Thursday.

Israel said its Mossad intelligence agency head David Barnea will travel to Doha on Sunday to try to restart talks, and meet with CIA director William Burns and Qatar’s prime minister.

“The parties will discuss the various options for starting negotiations for the release of the hostages from Hamas captivity, against the backdrop of the latest developments,” the office of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.

Hamas senior official Osama Hamdan told pro-Iranian channel Al Mayadeen there was no change in the group’s position. “The hostages held by the resistance will only return by stopping the aggression and completely withdrawing,” Hamdan said.

Previous attempts to reach a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal have failed.

Blinken, who held talks with Qatar’s prime minister, has been on his first trip to the region since Israel killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, a mastermind of the group’s 7 October 2023 attack on Israel that triggered conflict across the Middle East.

Washington, Israel’s close ally, has expressed hope his death can provide an impetus for an end to the fighting.

With Reuters and Agence France-Presse

George Gascón, the Los Angeles county district attorney, has recommended that the Menéndez brothers be resentenced for the 1989 killings of their parents, a step that is expected to lead to their release.

Gascón said during a news conference on Thursday that the pair should be resentenced, and that life without the possibility of parole be removed, after the office reviewed new evidence in the case. They will be eligible for parole immediately because of their ages at the time of the murder, he said.

“After a very careful review of all the arguments made … I came to a place where I believe that, under the law, resentencing is appropriate and I’m going to recommend that to a court tomorrow,” Gascón said.

A judge will have the final say in a case during a hearing next month.

The development is a major victory to the brothers and their supporters who said that they killed their parents in self-defense after years of sexual, physical and psychological abuse by their father. Prosecutors had argued that they were driven by greed and a desire to inherit a multimillion-dollar fortune.

Gascón said he believed the brothers’ account of abuse. “I do believe the brothers were subjected to a tremendous amount of dysfunction in the home, and molestation,” he said.

“They have been in prison for nearly 35 years. I believe that they have paid their debt to society.”

Erik and Lyle Menéndez were convicted in 1996 for the murders of their parents, José and Kitty. The violent killing of the prominent entertainment executive and his wife in Beverly Hills attracted international attention and drew renewed interest in recent years thanks to a new Netflix show and documentary series.

During the pandemic, the case reached a new audience thanks to viral TikTok videos that offered a more sympathetic view of the brothers and created a new network of supporters. Kim Kardashian has become an advocate for the brothers, and argued in a recent essay that the case is more complex than it appears and that Erik and Lyle “chose what they thought at the time was their only way out – an unimaginable way to escape their living nightmare”.

The district attorney highlighted the brothers’ behavior in prison. Since they were first incarcerated, they have earned college degrees and served as mentors and caregivers in prison.

“Even though they didn’t think they would ever be let free, they engaged in a journey of redemption and a journey of rehabilitation,” Gascón said.

Cousins of Erik and Lyle spoke at Thursday’s press conference and praised the district attorney for his action, describing it as a “day filled with hope” for the family.

“This decision is not just a legal matter – it is a recognition of the abuse my cousins endured,” said Karen VanderMolen, Kitty’s niece.

Gascón had announced earlier this month that his office would review new evidence and decide whether the case should be considered for resentencing or a new trial. The new evidence included a letter written by Erik before the killings that his attorneys say corroborates his account of sexual abuse as well as allegations from a former member of the boy band Menudo who said that José Menéndez had sexually abused him.

“There is no question they committed the killing. The question is to what degree of culpability should they be held accountable to given the totality of the circumstance,” Gascón told CNN earlier this month. He suggested the state exhibited implicit bias in a manner that may have affected how the case was presented, citing a comment from one prosecutor “how men cannot be raped”.

The district attorney had announced earlier this week that he planned to expedite his decision due to the public interest in the case. His own office remains divided about whether or not the brothers should be released, Gascón said. He made his decision just an hour before the press conference, he told reporters.

Tesla shares closed up nearly 22% on Thursday – their biggest single-day gain in over a decade – as Elon Musk’s bold forecast of surging sales reassured investors he was still looking to grow its core business of selling electric cars. At close, nearly $150bn was added to the company’s market value.

Musk forecast 20-30% in sales growth next year, promising to launch an affordable vehicle in the first half of 2025, and said efforts to slash production costs boosted margins in the third quarter.

The stock rose to a session high of $262.2 with volumes of roughly 200 million shares. It was the biggest gain since May 2013, and erased recent losses on concerns that Musk was distracted by new projects like the recently unveiled robotaxi.

Musk has been pivoting Tesla into an artificial intelligence and robotics company from an EV market leader, but has yet failed to lay out a detailed business plan for his new focus. Investors sold off Tesla shares earlier this month after a robotaxi event was short on details.

“With the stock selling off in October before its earnings announcement, some bears feel this is more of a relief rally, as results were better than feared,” said Ed Egilinsky, managing director at investment company Direxion.

Last quarter, Musk made bold company announcements about everything but cars – from driverless taxis to humanoid robots – leaving investors worried about dwindling margins already squeezed by lowered prices.

“He definitely seemed more passionate and invested in it this time,” said Jessica Caldwell, head of insights at car research and buying website Edmunds.

“I feel like so much of Tesla is tied up in the future but we need to figure out how you get there. That’s what people needed to hear and they were a little bit better in providing those details than they have been in the past.“

Tesla reported third-quarter margin that handily beat Wall Street expectations and said that the labor and material costs of making vehicles – known as the cost of goods sold per vehicle – dropped to its lowest-ever level, about $35,100.

It recorded $326m in revenue for its autopilot software called Full Self Driving (FSD) used in Cybertruck and other autonomous features.

“FSD played a part in the margin expansion, but I think the larger driver was reduced unit production costs … Over time, FSD should drive higher long-term margin expansion,” said Seth Goldstein, equity strategist at Morningstar.

FSD is the bedrock for Tesla’s robotaxis.

Musk said he expects Tesla vehicles to offer paid, driverless, ride-hailing services next year, doubling down on his promise made at the robotaxi event. But that plan is likely to face significant regulatory challenges.

Not all investors are likely to be mollified by Tesla’s reassurances on Wednesday.

Ross Gerber, chief executive of Gerber Kawasaki Wealth and Investment Management and a prominent Tesla investor, said robotaxis and AI were not the fundamental businesses he wanted Musk to focus on.

“The days were good when Elon slept at the factory. He was there every day, working. Not going on Trump rallies of all things he could be doing,” Gerber said, referring to Musk’s well-publicized support of the Republican presidential candidate.