Deception, disguise and finally a disappearance. This might sound like the premise of a magic trick, but it’s actually the story of a woman who managed to fool a male-only, world-famous magic society into admitting her, before being unceremoniously kicked out when she revealed her true identity. Now, they want her back. The women trained for 18 months in magic ...

A legal challenge over the decision to give consent to the UK’s largest untapped oil field has begun in Edinburgh. Greenpeace and Uplift have jointly raised a judicial review at the Court of Session, arguing consent for the Rosebank oil field northwest of Shetland ought to be paused and reassessed. The two environmental groups are also arguing against the exploration ...

Keir Starmer’s arrival at COP29, with a promise to drastically cut the UK’s carbon emissions by 81%, will be a small ray of sunshine in an otherwise gloomy start to the climate talks. The election of Donald Trump, who has vowed to drag the world’s largest economy out of the negotiations, was a colossal setback for a round of talks ...

Tweaking the routes of a small number of planes could reduce the warming effect of contrails by half and cost less than €4 per ticket, according to a study. Contrails (or condensation trails) are the lines left in the sky when warm, moist exhaust fumes from an aircraft mix with the cold air to produce ice crystal clouds. They can ...

Cryptocurrencies and stocks, including Tesla, rallied Monday, picking up where they left off last week in the wake of the President-elect Donald Trump’s victory. The price of bitcoin hit an all-time high of more than $88,000, a rally that started shortly after Trump was declared the winner of the election. That’s up from $68,000 — a gain of 27% — ...

Thousands of Mattel’s “Wicked”-branded fashion dolls are flying off shelves, but not because of consumer demand. The toy company has been forced to pull its line of character dolls after a package misprint. Instead of listing the website for Universal’s “Wicked” movie, boxes featured a link to a pornographic website for a group called Wicked Pictures. “Mattel was made aware of a misprint on ...

The Archbishop of Canterbury, the most senior cleric in the Church of England, is under mounting pressure to resign after a damning report accused him of failing to take sufficient action against a sadistic child abuser. A review of the church’s handling of “horrific” abuse perpetrated by John Smyth has put Archbishop Justin Welby’s position in doubt after it found ...

Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, has ordered preparations for the annexation of settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Smotrich, who is in charge of the settlements, said on Monday that he had instructed his department to “prepare the necessary infrastructure for applying sovereignty.” It is unclear whether his long-standing desire to apply full Israeli law in West Bank settlements ...

A Spirit Airlines plane was hit by gunfire Monday over Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince, according to diplomatic source in the country, resulting in what the airline described as “minor injuries” to one of its crew members. Spirit said Monday that its flight 951 from Fort Lauderdale in Florida to Port-au-Prince was diverted and landed in Santiago in the Dominican Republic, where ...

China has built a land-based prototype nuclear reactor for a large surface warship, in the clearest sign yet Beijing is advancing toward producing the country’s first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, according to a new analysis of satellite imagery and Chinese government documents provided to The Associated Press. China’s navy is already the world’s largest numerically, and it has been rapidly modernizing. ...