Science

Four fire crews have remained at the scene of a large blaze at a recycling centre.

Firefighters were called to the site at Hovefields Avenue in Basildon, Essex, overnight to tackle the fire, which had spread across warehouses and 15 vehicles.

Essex Fire and Rescue Service said it expected to stay at the scene throughout the weekend and were using a digger to break up recycling material in order to fully extinguish the fire.

The headteachers of the three girls killed in the Southport stabbings have attended a full council meeting where a one-minute silence was held.

Councillors came together to reflect on the tragic events on 29 July, when Alice da Silva Aguiar, Elsie Dot Stancombe and Bebe King died in a knife attack during a Taylor Swift-themed dance class.

The extraordinary meeting heard how the town had struggled to come to terms with the tragic events of 29 July.

For nearly a century, people around the globe have celebrated World Animal Day. Launched in 1925, the annual event on 4 October is designed to raise awareness of animal rights issues and help improve the treatment and wellbeing of wildlife. Today, the international effort includes more than 90 ambassadors in 70 countries, and in recent decades, travel has increasingly played a pivotal role in wildlife conservation.

The huge asteroid that hit Earth and wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago was not alone, scientists have confirmed.

A second, smaller space rock smashed into the sea off the coast of West Africa creating a large crater during the same era.

It would have been a “catastrophic event”, the scientists say, causing a tsunami at least 800m high to tear across the Atlantic ocean.

Dr Uisdean Nicholson from Heriot-Watt University first found the Nadir crater in 2022, but a cloud of uncertainty hung over how it was really formed.

Two Nasa astronauts who have been stuck in space for over two months will return to Earth in February 2025 with SpaceX.

Nasa said the Boeing Starliner spacecraft the astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore had travelled to International Space Station (ISS) on would return to Earth "un-crewed".

The pair took off on what was planned to be an eight-day mission on 5 June but will now spend around eight months in orbit.

In Ancient Babylonia, soups and stews reigned supreme. Food historians are now using taste-tests to recover their forgotten flavours.