Residents across Nottinghamshire can expect to find more spiders crawling into their homes over the next few weeks - and this is why. Male house spiders - which can have a leg span of up to 10cm - are on the prowl looking for female spiders to be their mating partner. August and September is the mating season and they are attracted to warm and dry areas which is usually in people's homes, sheds or garages. Dr Chris Terrell-Nield, ecology lecturer at Nottingham Trent University who has been involved in a number of spider projects for Nottinghamshire Wildife Trust explains the situation. He said people can expect to find three types of spiders at this time of year - the house spider, the daddy long leg spider and the cross spider.

Since before recorded history, Indonesia has been the world’s vortex of natural catastrophe, largely due to its location: The nation of 17,500 islands could not be in a worse place tectonically, within the “Ring of Fire,” a huge, horseshoe-shaped seismic zone that stretches east all the way to California’s San Andreas Fault and Washington state’s Mount St. Helens. Just west of the Ring is the Alpide Belt, the world’s next-most seismically active zone. Together, the Ring of Fire and the Alpide account for 95% of all the world’s known earthquakes since the last ice age 11,700 years ago, and all but three of the 25 largest volcanic eruptions. Four of the six biggest earthquakes this century have occurred in Indonesia, and three of the 10 deadliest. In the latter category, it’s the only country to be listed more than once. Between volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, and disease, no single place has inflicted anywhere near the same scale of disaster on itself and the rest of the planet. A 2004 earthquake near Sumatra killed some 227,000 people in 14 countries. In 2018, Indonesia was responsible for nearly half of all the world’s disaster-related deaths. But nothing before or since appears to have equaled the ferocity of the supervolcano Toba, which wiped out nearly every human on the planet 75,000 years ago, according to some scientists. The few thousand surviving Homo sapiens had to more or less start over. In the context of such history, you might not expect Indonesians to be easily spooked by word of another disaster, and a slow-moving one at that. But that would be wrong. The country’s latest tribulation has shaken people: Jakarta is sinking into the sea. In 2030, it will be the world’s most populous city, surpassing Tokyo, but just two decades later — in 2050 — it will also probably be largely under water. Already, at least 20% of the city sags below sea level.

When Microsoft began talking this summer with the popular video app TikTok and its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, no one had any intentions of pursuing a blockbuster deal. With tensions swirling between the United States and China, along with the complexities of running a social media company, any large acquisition appeared too treacherous to navigate. So Microsoft discussed taking a small stake in TikTok and becoming one of the app’s minority investors, said four people briefed on the conversations. Even a small deal would be a win-win, the thinking went. For Microsoft, a minority investment would potentially bring TikTok over to using its Azure cloud computing service, immediately making the app one of Microsoft’s biggest cloud clients, said the people, who declined to be identified because the details are confidential. (TikTok has been using Google’s cloud computing services to power its videos.) For ByteDance and TikTok, a deal with Microsoft could help propel the valuation of the app’s business outside China to as high as $80 billion, the people said. It would also provide TikTok with the endorsement of a blue-chip American company to mollify the Trump administration, which had called TikTok’s Chinese ties a national security threat. Yet what started as discussions about a small investment morphed into a big, messy, political soap opera. Pushed by President Trump, who has ordered TikTok’s U.S. operations to be sold or to cease operating, ByteDance is now discussing selling parts of TikTok’s global operations to several potential bidders. And with so many groups jumping into the talks to get a piece of any deal, all are trying to drive their own interests and agendas. Apart from Microsoft, the bidders include Oracle, the enterprise software company, the people with knowledge of the talks said. Bankers and investors, some authorized and some simply trying to gin up a deal, have also called Netflix and Twitter about buying TikTok, they said, though it is unclear if those companies have a genuine interest in an acquisition. Microsoft, with the deepest resources and a market value of more than $1.6 trillion, still appears the furthest along for now, the people said. The sale scenarios on the table are head-spinning, the people said, because all of the parties — ByteDance, TikTok, their investors, and the bidders — want to get the most out of any deal. The talks have covered everything from selling just TikTok’s North American operations all the way to every part of TikTok, minus ByteDance’s Chinese-only video app Douyin, they said. A deal price is unclear, though numbers have ranged from $20 billion to $50 billion depending on what parts of TikTok will be sold, the people said. The talks are fluid and no deal may ultimately be reached. Even if one does take place, a TikTok sale — which has become a referendum on the U.S.-China relationship — may still be disrupted if Beijing or Mr. Trump weigh in. Mr. Trump has been highly involved, including talking to Microsoft’s chief executive, Satya Nadella, and saying that Oracle could handle buying TikTok. In an Aug. 6 executive order, he imposed a deadline for TikTok’s U.S. operations to be sold by Sept. 15. On Monday, TikTok sued the U.S. government, arguing that the executive order had deprived it of due process. The suit could give TikTok more time to operate in the United States if the courts order it, a stalling tactic that may help the app wait it out past the Nov. 3 election. Steven Davidoff Solomon, a law professor at the University of California in Berkeley, who contributes to The New York Times, said the United States’ forcing such a huge company to sell itself was “really unprecedented.” He added, “This is a forced sale, and ByteDance is trying to keep it from being as much of a fire sale as possible.” This account of TikTok’s deal discussions was based on interviews with more than a dozen people who were involved in or were briefed on the situation. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. Representatives from TikTok and ByteDance, Microsoft, Netflix, Twitter, Oracle and the White House declined to comment. A spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry, Wang Wenbin, called Mr. Trump’s executive order a “naked act of bullying,” and added that the U.S. government would eventually “reap what it sows.” TikTok, which ByteDance created partly out of a $1 billion purchase of the lip-syncing app Musical.ly in 2017, has become a phenomenon in the United States and elsewhere. More than 100 million Americans regularly use the app, the company has said, especially teenagers and twentysomethings. Last year, as tensions between the United States and China grew worse, the Trump administration began scrutinizing TikTok and ByteDance. In November, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a powerful panel known as Cfius that reviews foreign acquisitions, opened an inquiry into ByteDance’s deal to buy Musical.ly after lawmakers voiced concerns that TikTok was giving data on its American users to Beijing. TikTok has denied that it helps Beijing. To reduce the U.S. pressure, Zhang Yiming, ByteDance’s chief executive, began consulting with a small group of investors in his internet company, including Sequoia Capital and General Atlantic. ByteDance, which is privately held, has been valued at about $100 billion. Doug Leone, one of Sequoia’s partners, and Bill Ford, chief executive of General Atlantic, became Mr. Zhang’s bridge to the White House, the people with knowledge of the talks said. In their conversations, the Trump administration had specific stipulations: First, it wanted TikTok to overhaul its governance and shareholder structure to reduce ByteDance’s ownership of the app. Second, it wanted guarantees that TikTok’s American user data be stored on U.S. servers. The firms needed a major U.S. tech partner to get the deal done, the people close to the talks said. Mr. Zhang and the investors figured that Facebook, Google and Amazon were under too much antitrust scrutiny. But Microsoft, with its cash hoard of $137 billion, cloud expertise and strong government relationships, could work. Mr. Zhang, a former Microsoft engineer, reached out to Microsoft executives to gauge their interest, said one person with knowledge of the talks. Sequoia and General Atlantic declined to comment. By July, Microsoft joined the talks. At the time, the discussions centered on Microsoft making a minority investment in TikTok, the people said. Between the U.S.-China tensions and the pressures of operating a social media company, Microsoft executives were hesitant about a big deal, said people briefed on the conversations. ByteDance and Mr. Zhang also wanted to retain some ownership of TikTok, they said. Yet as the talks progressed, Microsoft grew warmer on a potentially larger deal with TikTok. While Microsoft has lots of data about industries like gaming and workplace software, it has little information about people’s social media behavior. TikTok’s user interaction information could strengthen Microsoft’s data science operation, the people briefed on the talks said. TikTok could also be linked to Microsoft’s $7 billion advertising business. Together, that could make a meaningful difference to Microsoft’s growth, they said. ByteDance and Microsoft came to see an acquisition of TikTok’s U.S. operations as a cleaner option, they added. Microsoft could allow TikTok to operate as a stand-alone unit, similar to how it had treated past large acquisitions, such as its $2.5 billion acquisition of the company behind the video game Minecraft in 2014 and its $26 billion purchase of professional networking site LinkedIn in 2016. All the while, Trump administration officials were keeping an eye on the situation. Last month, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who is chairman of Cfius and holds the final word on the panel’s recommendations of ByteDance’s purchase of Musical.ly, spoke with TikTok and Microsoft about how TikTok’s data should be on U.S. servers, three of the people said. On July 31, Mr. Mnuchin presented the Cfius analysis of the ByteDance-Musical.ly deal to Mr. Trump, two people said. The recommendation: that ByteDance be ordered to sell TikTok to an American owner, with Microsoft acquiring most of TikTok’s business and the stakes held by ByteDance’s Chinese shareholders winnowed to a minority investment. A spokesman for the Treasury and Mr. Mnuchin declined to comment. But aboard Air Force One later that day, President Trump said he planned to ban TikTok entirely. Several of Mr. Trump’s advisers were furious at the derailment of their recommendation, saying that China hawks like Peter Navarro, the White House director of trade and manufacturing policy, had exerted too much influence, according to White House officials and others close to the president. In a statement, Mr. Navarro said, “Nobody exerts ‘influence’ over President Donald J. Trump. He listens carefully to a wide range of often sharply competing views and then he makes the best and most informed decision. That’s why he is such a great president.” The next 72 hours were chaotic. News leaked that Microsoft was in talks to acquire TikTok. Private equity firms and bankers circled. That briefly included Stephen A. Schwarzman, chief executive of the Blackstone Group, said people familiar with the talks. Blackstone declined to comment. That weekend, Mr. Trump called Mr. Nadella about TikTok. Mr. Trump said ByteDance had 45 days to complete a sale of TikTok’s business in the United States. He added that any deal should help the U.S. government in some way, perhaps in the form of job creation or other economic benefits, or some kind of offering to the Treasury Department. Privately, officials at Microsoft and TikTok were shocked. The 45-day window put TikTok at a disadvantage in negotiating the best deal. Mr. Trump also seemed to be arguing for “tipping the waiter,” essentially offering a percentage of the deal to the Treasury, the people said. On Aug. 2, Microsoft issued a statement about its pursuit of TikTok and said it would provide “proper economic benefits to the United States, including the United States Treasury.” It did not elaborate on what that meant. A few days later, Mr. Trump signed his executive order to block TikTok if it was not sold by mid-September. A week later, he issued another executive order giving ByteDance 90 days to close such a deal. Since then, other potential suitors have emerged, including Oracle. ByteDance, backed into a corner by the White House, wants the best price for TikTok — and not only from one bidder in Microsoft. And sensing ByteDance’s weakness, more potential acquirers are kicking the tires on the hot, fast-growing app. All of that may turn off Microsoft from a purchase. Even as deal discussions have continued, TikTok sued the U.S. government on Monday over Mr. Trump’s executive order. “We far prefer constructive dialogue over litigation,” the company said in a statement. But given the executive order, it said, “we simply have no choice.”

Many months into the COVID-19 pandemic, the coronavirus is still spreading uncontrolled through the U.S. Public health authorities including the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) tell us to remain six feet apart, wash our hands, disinfect frequently touched surfaces, and wear masks. But compliance with these measures—especially masks—is mixed, and daily we hear of cases where people do not know how they were infected. We hear about superspreading events, where one person infects many, happening in crowded bars and family gatherings, but not at outdoor demonstrations. Beaches in cities like Chicago are closed, but gyms and indoor dining at restaurants have reopened. It is no wonder the public is confused. It is critical to have a clear physical description of the ways in which COVID-19 is transmitted, so that individuals and institutions are able to visualize it and will understand how to protect themselves. Contrary to public health messaging, I, together with many other scientists, believe that a substantial share of COVID-19 cases are the result of transmission through aerosols. The evidence in favor of aerosols is stronger than that for any other pathway, and officials need to be more aggressive in expressing this reality if we want to get the pandemic under control. There are three possible ways the virus is transmitted, of which two have been emphasized by the WHO and the CDC. The first is through “fomites,” objects that are contaminated with the virus (which could include someone else’s skin). Early in the pandemic, concern over fomite transmission drove some people to bleach groceries and packages. The CDC now says fomites are a possible means of transmission, but likely not one that is major. For example, an intensive handwashing program in the UK led to only a 16% reduction in transmission. Significantly, other viruses that, like SARS-CoV-2 (the one that causes COVID-19), have a lipid envelope, do not survive long on human hands. That means someone would need to touch their eyes, nostrils, or mouth a short time after touching a contaminated surface in order to contract the novel coronavirus.

From one presidential election to the next, the battleground states that make — or break — the election remain largely the same. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t gradual (and sometimes, not so gradual) shifts underway. We zoomed in on how 16 battleground states have voted relative to the country as a whole since 2000 — or how much more Republican or Democratic they are relative to the nation1 — and we found an electoral map undergoing a series of changes, some steady and others abrupt.

Multiple Lab Zero members publicly announced they've resigned from the Skullgirls and Indivisible studio, accusing the owner of inappropriate behaviour.

A protest marcher was shot in Bedford County Monday night as a group of activists was walking from Milwaukee to Washington for a Martin Luther King Jr. event and to bring awareness to racial injustice. In a video posted early Tuesday morning to Facebook, marcher Tory Lowe said the group had parked to organize before they walked up an incline when a man emerged from a house and started shooting at them with a rifle, firing at least seven shots.

A soldier assigned to Fort Hood who was missing was probably found dead on Tuesday, his family’s attorney said, adding to the toll of soldiers at the Texas installation who have vanished or died in recent months. Support our journalism. Subscribe today. Sgt. Elder Fernandes, 23, was last seen Aug. 17 by members of his unit at a home in Killeen, outside the sprawling base, the Army said. His family later arrived in Texas from Massachusetts to aid in the search. Fernandes previously reported an “incident of abusive sexual contact” that is being investigated, said Lt. Col. Chris Brautigam, a spokesman for the 1st Cavalry Division. Army officials said Fernandes may have left on his own accord after speaking with soldiers in his unit. Fernandes’s family said the circumstances were suspicious. Fernandes was hospitalized at Fort Hood from Aug. 11 to Aug. 17, his family said, the last day he was seen, and they grew concerned when he did not make a phone call he promised to his mother. His blue BMW was found at his unit parking lot, his family said.

Aaron Coleman, a 19-year-old Democratic candidate in a local race, admitted to engaging in bullying, blackmail, and revenge porn when he was younger.

A couple whose remains were found in a suitcase by a group of TikTokers on a Randonautica adventure was allegedly killed by their landlord.

Trump has certainly cultivated his party’s authoritarian elements more energetically — and delegitimized his opposition more shamelessly — than any other 2016 presidential candidate was liable to do. But regardless, the basic fact remains that the GOP is — and has been — dominated by a movement that sees the Democratic Party as an internal enemy of the United States and any election that a Democratic president wins as illegitimate by definition. In the aftermath of a landslide victory, Biden might be able to secure the cooperation of a couple idiosyncratic Republican senators (Mitt Romney might be invincible enough in Utah to chart his own course; Lisa Murkowski already knows that she can win elections in Alaska without the GOP’s institutional support). But the bulk of the congressional GOP is bound to resist Biden’s agenda as though the salvation of the Republic — and realization of God’s will — depend on it.

Hippopotamus ivory seems to have replaced elephant ivory trade in Karnataka following extensive crackdown by foresters.

Pushing the theory on to bigger platforms proved to be the key to Qanon’s spread — and the originators’ financial gain.

To understand the citadel of law enforcement, we must reckon with its unions—which resemble fraternities more than labor unions. The man stands before them, head slightly bowed. He is gangly, awkward, against the backdrop of the officers’ firm march. They are hurried and he is not. Everything about them is fast, crisp, matte. We watch the push. We watch him fall. We watch them pass his body. Swirling around him, an eddy of thick black fabric. When the blood comes, it drifts languidly across the concrete. When night falls, this is the story they tell: “During that skirmish involving protestors, one person was injured when he tripped & fell.” But when the video appears, the world will see the police shove Martin Gugino to the ground, fracturing his skull. The email from John Evans, president of the Buffalo Police Benevolent Association, came the next day. Evans forcefully defended the police officers implicated in the assault. “After witnessing first hand how these 2 officers were treated,” Evans wrote, “I can tell you, they tried to fuck over these guys like I have never seen in my 54 years.” He signed off the email by writing, “Fraternally, John Evans – PBA.” There are people who will tell you that people like John Evans lead a union. But this is not a union. This is something else.

It's been two weeks since Nashville police announced two men who threw the infamous East Nashville "Fashion House" party would face charges for violating emergency health orders during the coronavirus pandemic. Since then, one of them has already pleaded guilty in the case that drew swift public criticism after photos and videos surfaced showing hundreds of guests partying in close quarters without masks or proper social distancing. On Tuesday, Davidson County Sheriff's Office jail records showed the other man, Christopher "Shi" Eubank, had not been arrested. According to Eubank's Instagram account, he's out of the country on a beach.

A Russian nuclear energy agency released formerly classified footage of the Soviet Union’s 1961 Tsar Bomba test.

One of the speakers for the second night of the Republican National Convention was pulled from the program after The Daily Beast surfaced a tweet from her, earlier in the day, urging her followers to investigate a supposed Jewish plot to enslave the world. “Do yourself a favor and read this thread,” Mary Ann Mendoza, who is a member of the Trump campaign’s advisory board, tweeted to her more than 40,000 followers Tuesday morning. Mendoza, an “angel mom,” was scheduled to speak Tuesday about her son’s 2014 death at the hands of a drunk driver who was in the country illegally. But a Republican source familiar with the programming said the speech had been cancelled amid uproar over her tweet. Hours earlier, Mendoza had linked to a lengthy thread from a QAnon conspiracy theorist that laid out a fevered, anti-Semitic view of the world. In its telling, the Rothschilds—a famous Jewish banking family from Germany—created a plot to terrorize non-Jewish “goyim,” with purported details of their scheme that included plans to “make the goyim destroy each other” and “rob the goyim of their landed properties.”

In a win for amne­sia, Con­gress advanced a bipar­ti­san bill on Tues­day dereg­u­lat­ing the bank­ing indus­try, just a decade after Wall Street trig­gered a finan­cial cri­sis that caused mil­lions to lose their jobs and their homes. S.2155, known as the Crapo bill both for its co-author, Sen­ate Bank­ing Com­mit­tee chair Mike Crapo (R‑Idaho), and its gen­er­al qual­i­ty, was pitched as a nar­row mea­sure to pro­vide relief for salt-of-the-earth com­mu­ni­ty banks and cred­it unions. But any­one mak­ing that claim is either mis­in­formed or try­ing to spin the truth. In real­i­ty, the Crapo bill will dereg­u­late 25 of the 38 largest banks in Amer­i­ca, weak­en cap­i­tal require­ments that force banks to pay for their own mis­takes, free some lenders from dis­clos­ing data used to detect lend­ing dis­crim­i­na­tion and large­ly hand­cuff the Fed­er­al Reserve’s abil­i­ty to apply spe­cial reg­u­la­tions to the biggest banks, to name just a few pro­vi­sions. Plus, the changes have already begun to con­sol­i­date the bank­ing sec­tor, with the very com­mu­ni­ty banks the bill was intend­ed to help being scooped up by larg­er rivals. Com­bined with efforts inside the agen­cies that reg­u­late banks to weak­en rules, it rep­re­sents a pen­du­lum shift away from safe­ty and toward anoth­er finan­cial cri­sis.

Since last fall, Minnesota State Sen. Roger Chamberlain, R-Lino Lakes, has taken a keen interest in a book called Bronze Age Mindset. The self-published tome has captivated many on the American right while trafficking in neo-fascism, racism and misogyny. The writer is an anonymous internet figure who goes by the pen name “Bronze Age Pervert” and has 45,000 Twitter followers. The book argues that equality and human rights are unnatural; that most people form a vast, inferior class who will only find “solace and meaning” through “submission” — and that the proper rulers of the world are white men. A passage claims, “Life appears at its peak not in the grass hut village ruled by nutso mammies” — using a racial slur to refer to Black women — “but in the military state.” Chamberlain, the influential chairman of the upper chamber’s Taxes Committee, tweeted at the author, Bronze Age Pervert, on April 30, thanking him for an introduction to Bach’s “Fugue in G-minor;” likely a reference to Pervert’s podcast, which uses classical compositions as bumper music. (The podcast is even more overtly white supremacist.)

“Statistically, I look at our prison population and I see that there is a disproportionately high number of African-American males in our prison population for crimes, particularly for violent crimes. So statistically, when a police officer sees a brown man like my Jude walking down the road — as opposed to my white nerdy kids, my white nerdy men  walking down the road — because of the statistics that he knows in his head, that these police officers know in their head, they’re going to know that statistically my brown son is more likely to commit a violent offense over my white sons.” “So the fact that in his head, he would be more careful around my brown son than my white son, that doesn’t actually make me angry. That makes that police officer smart, because of statistics.”