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World of Warcraft announced its Battle for Azeroth expansion over the weekend, marking the first major expansion since Legion in August 2016. The massively multiplayer online role-playing game will test players’ resolve as they champion their faction’s cause in a devastating new war. In the Battle of Azeroth expansion, players will be able to explore two fabled kingdoms. As a champion of the Horde, travel to the Zandalar empire to persuade the trolls to lend their naval might. As a defender of the Alliance, venture to the seafaring kingdom of Kul Tiras, home of Jaina Proudmoore, and rally its inhabitants to fight for your cause. Players can also recruit allied races to help strengthen their factions, scour Azeroth’s uncharted islands and conquer an ever-changing array of enemies and objectives, infuse armor with Titanic Might, instantly boost to level 110 and battle up to 120. Developers Daniel Stahl and Morgan Day spoke with us at PAX East about the longevity of World of Warcraft as it nears its fifteenth anniversary and how important community and engaging with the players is with the game. “An expansion is a great time to jump back in or jump in for the first time,” Stahl said. With level boosting, a player doesn’t have to sit through over a dozen of years of content that they might have missed, keeping new and returning players in the present loop. “We might not have thought about that twelve years ago, but it’s important now.” “We want to provide frequent updates with satisfying content for our players to consume at a great rate,” Day added.. “With Legion, we were just trying to follow that through. Even though it’s two years apart, it’s the smallest window of time between a patch and an expansion release.” World of Warcraft remains one of the most popular games and is an example of how interaction and story can remain fresh and new, keeping people interested while also inspiring new players to jump in. It’s been one of the bridges in the evolution of games in the last decade. Much of that is because of the players themselves. “This virtual world has been around for a while,” Stahl said. “There’s a mutual respect that happens where the dev team will come out with new features and stories and its fed by this very excited fan base and players. We’re about to release a new expansion, and this isn’t just marketing, this is us engaging with our players and seeing how they’re interacting with our stories. We look at the forums, we look at the feedback and we ask, does this feel right?” The Battle of Azeroth expansion will be available for World of Warcraft players August 14, 2018.

This latest patch brings you a load of new content and probably several hours of shooting joy. There is a new boss - the "Sägewerksvorsteher." He is the chief of the regional forest clearance department. And he is not happy to see that S.I.R. is killing all his workers. So be prepared for an assault! Of course, there has been quite a lot of bug fixes and tweaks. Further balancing and little improvements here and there. Below you find the complete patch notes. Scrapyard Patch (0.4.0) Added second level! New biotope scrapyard, with 12 new maps, new mechanics and new encounters added new Boss to the end of level one. The Guardian is now protecting the Scrapyard and is still your final encounter added 6 new difficulty settings. Only the settings civilian mode (easy), standard unit mode (normal), decorated warbot mode (hard) are unlocked. Clear a mode to unlock further difficulty modes added 2 new kinds of turrets. One has a fixed position, the other aims at the player. They both are equipped with different weapons and shooting pattern added new firetraps that deal damage and knock back added new scrap press trap in different variants added new enemy that shoots slow but strong projectiles added grenades as weapon for enemy turret; added moving platforms reworked the main menu into a dynamic background scene added logo animation on game start fixed the actor 'glide' bug when the actor was behaving like on ice Fixed a bug where the boss health bar was shown even after his death fixed, champions no longer can be target of kill events changed world generation: world is now 45000 pixel long for each first and second level changed loot spawn tables: Slightly increased amount of circuits dropped. Plasma and rocket launcher loot chance also raised a little a lot of little fixes and tweaks

The latest entry in the Resident Evil series, Resident Evil 7, is one of the most successful games released by Capcom in recent times and it has recently reached another milestone. The Japanese publisher has recently confirmed that Resident Evil 7 sold 5.1 million units worldwide. "RESIDENT EVIL 7 builds upon the Resident Evil series’ roots of fear, exploration and tense atmosphere. The full game is available to play via the included optional PlayStation On a related note, the Capcom developed game has received the Best VR Audio award during the G.A.N.G. Awards thanks to its sound design which enhances the experience considerably and the technology that powered it. "Sound design on RESIDENT EVIL 7 made use of Capcom’s fully equipped Foley stage to produce sound effects that enhanced the characteristics of enemy characters as well as fear-inducing environmental sounds, and even in composing the game’s musical score. Capcom maintains its development environment at the cutting edge of technology in order to fulfill the company’s commitment to creating the world’s most entertaining games, a stance that lead to developing the REMM (Resident Evil Music Module), a proprietary audio tool that runs on Native Instruments’ Kontakt engine and allows for easier layering of tones and effect control. Further, Capcom is continuing to bolster the quality of its sound production, and in April of 2018 opened a second sound studio at its R&D headquarters in Osaka capable of recording and refining 3D audio." Resident Evil 7 is now out on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in all regions.

Take Two Interactive’s GTA V has become the most profitable media product since all time, thereby beating movies like Star Wars and Avatar. Grand Theft Auto V, from developer Rockstar Games, launched in 2013 and has since sold around 90 million copies across all platforms, and grossing in roughly 6 billion USD. For reference, movie hits such as Star Wars and Gone in the Wind harvested in more than 3 billion USD. “Far above the success of blockbuster movies like “Star Wars” or “Gone With The Wind,” which both collected more than $3 billion, adjusted for inflation”, website MarketWatch writes. “Even taking into account DVD and streaming sales would not put the biggest movie blockbusters in GTA V’s neighborhood, said Cowen analyst Doug Creutz, estimating those sales might add up to $1 billion to the films’ totals.” “I think it’s a wild outlier,” the analyst told MarketWatch in an interview over the phone. “I think maybe with the exception something Nintendo has made—Mario Brothers—but aside from that there’s never been a console game that’s sold so many units.” Please note that Creutz refers to the Mario game franchise as a whole, but not a single Mario game has managed to harvest 6 billion dollars on its own. GTA 5 Record run According to MarketWatch, the closest competitor for GTA V would be Activision’s Call of Duty series, but sales for this insanely popular shooting franchise fade in the light of GTA V’s sales. Back in July of last year, Take Two’s CEO Straus Zelnick talked about the insane success of the game, and his expectations for the upcoming Red Dead Redemption 2, which are said to be high, but not on the same level as GTA V. I don’t make assumptions like that,” Zelnick told Gamesindustry.biz. “What the team is doing is trying to make the best possible game they can, and if they succeed… Look, the reason, in my opinion, why GTA V has sold 80m units, and GTA Online had another record year 3-and-a-half years since its release, is because it stands alone in the generation. In every prior generation, there have been other titles that have clustered around GTA from a quality point-of-view. That’s clearly not the case now. If you are over 17 and you have a new generation console, you have GTA. Otherwise we wouldn’t have shipped 80m units. Can any other title achieve that? It seems unlikely. Do we have incredibly high hopes for Red Dead? We do. But we are not putting it in the context of GTA.” GTA V and its online component, GTA Online, are available now for PC and consoles.

THE FIRST PLAYABLE moments of Far Cry 5 are a chase—but you're the one being pursued. You're a nameless, silent police deputy fleeing from radical doomsday cultists who intend to gun you down. Feet pounding through the woods of rural Montana, you run, bullets whizzing past your head as you barely manage to escape. As I did this, I noticed something peculiar. While the intensity of the music and the scene's framing never changed, eventually my character stopped taking damage, and the semicircles on the screen indicating enemy attention faded. I stopped running. Nothing happened. I waited for my health to recharge, and I walked, calmly and serenely, away from a threat that didn't exist. The danger, it turned out, was just an illusion. Videogames are rife with trickery. It's a known truism of game design that if the player doesn't need to see it, it probably doesn't exist. Buildings in the background don't have roofs; the floor only extends to the final reachable hallway; there's no grass, green or otherwise, on the other side of the fence. What matters is only what's visible. The rest is a magic trick, all smoke and mirrors. But Far Cry 5 is a game full of more trickery than most. It's built on malignant illusions that are meant to confound you, but serve only to rob the game of both drama and substance. In every game, the experience only holds up as far as you can see it. In Far Cry 5, the experience doesn't even hold up that far. RELATED STORIES JULIE MUNCY You'll Find Far Cry 5 Provocative—Even if It's a Mess JULIE MUNCY The 10 (Well, 12) Most Anticipated Games of 2018 CHRIS KOHLER Hate First-Person Shooters? Even You Will Love Titanfall. Seriously. Far Cry 5, like its predecessors, is a game about fighting across wide outdoor spaces, reclaiming a lush and beautiful place through a series of pitched gunfights. It's battle tourism. But unlike earlier games, which took place in the types of scenery that Americans exoticize through ignorance—anonymous islands in the Pacific, war-torn countries in Sub-Saharan Africa—the fifth entry in Ubisoft's open-world series exoticizes Americans' own backyard. In rural Montana, a fictional county of good ol' boys and girls has been overrun by a fictional doomsday cult called the Project at Eden's Gate. (Anti-cultists have acronymized the group, calling its members "Peggies.") Your charge is to fight to liberate the American frontier from the murderous cult, and your compatriots are the people Far Cry 5 imagines populate rural Montana: eccentric hunters, doomsday preppers, and gun-toting preachers. In a 2016 Mother Jones expose on America's self-organized border militias, what reporter Shane Bauer found was a hotbed of paranoia—lonely men with guns and grudges wandering the Rio Grande River Valley looking for things that didn't exist. Their encounters are mostly with enemies that clearly don't exist. The people they do find, and who they insist are enemies that need monitoring, are likely not drug smugglers or criminals. Just poor migrants. Innocent people looking for a better life. Families. To operate in this paramilitary world is to surround yourself with illusions. In Far Cry 5, these phantom-hunters are your squadmates. The safest places are bunkers stocked with illegal weapons. Militiamen fight alongside you against the cult. Your most sympathetic allies are shellshocked veterans who dearly need good psychological care. The least sympathetic are gun-toting maniacs. Ignoring that the culture of doomsday prepping is largely motivated in real life by xenophobia and a paranoid fear of gun control, that its champions are not folk heroes but men like the Bundys, this game has built a world where these preppers and pretend soldiers are heroes. To do this, the game hangs everything on the militant violence of its cult. It doesn't matter that in real life cults are rarely outwardly violent, nor that they usually find ways to slot themselves into their communities in ways that appear constructive. In this world, the Peggies are unreal, even monstrous enemies, fueled by violence-inducing mind-control drugs and the flimsy propaganda of their mildly charismatic leader (a David Koresh lookalike named Joseph Seed) to go to war in the countryside. They're the embodiment of the paranoid illusions of real-world militiamen and preppers. But just like the chase at the beginning of the game, the Project at Eden's Gate is an illusion that falls apart under thirty seconds of sustained attention. This cult has no coherent doctrine, and its structure doesn't resemble real-world cults in the slightest. You never see people at worship, or play. There aren't any children. During the rhythms of play, the player will likely discover several barracks, wood cabins full of bunk beds and personal effects. But no one, even in the dead of night, will ever be sleeping. Some of these breaches of reality are normal in videogames, and can be acceptable under the right circumstances, but here they combine with the game's muddled, half-made-up politics and anthropology to construct the sense of a game entirely beholden to its own tricks but without the skill to properly hide them. And Far Cry 5 does all of this, wildly contorting its setting and its play, in the interest of hollowing out a real-world place and a real-world set of sociopolitical circumstances until it resembles a playground. All is done in the name of good fun. Running, sneaking, and shooting against the backdrop of rural Americana is, occasionally, fun. But it's never good. The flimsiness of the game's illusions, instead of providing freedom for the player, simply rob the game's violence of substance. From a distance, you would be forgiven for thinking that Far Cry 5, a game that advertised itself with charged imagery of patriotism and white supremacy run amok, would have something to say. Instead, it has nothing to say and offers the player little of interest to do. The only mildly compelling part of the game is its ending, and by then it's far too late to redeem the prior 20 hours spent wandering around a hall of mirrors. I'm no enemy of violence in games, but I do insist that violence be made to matter in games. There is not a single gunfight in Far Cry 5 that does anything to convince the player to care. All this game offers is an opportunity to stand alongside people most of us would find abhorrent in real life and shoot digital guns at unconvincing ghosts. Far Cry 5 is an amateur magic trick. And players deserve better.

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos has told the security forces to go after a criminal gang known as the Gulf Clan after the group was blamed for a bomb attack which killed eight police officers in north-western Colombia. The bomb went off on Wednesday as the officers were escorting officials handing back land to rural dwellers displaced by Colombia's armed conflict. The Gulf Clan is estimated to have about 1,800 members. It is Colombia's biggest drugs gang. It controls many of the routes used to smuggle drugs from Colombia to the US and as far away as Russia. The group also engages in extortion, illegal mining, human trafficking, forced displacements and murder. 'Barbaric act' "This barbaric act will not go unpunished," President Santos said, before telling the police to step up their efforts against the Gulf Clan, which is also known as Los Urabeños after the area where it is most active. Police General Gustavo Moreno said the bomb had been placed on a narrow dirt path and was set off remotely when a car carrying the officers drove past. He said officers had later intercepted radio communications in which the Gulf Clan boasted about the attack. Colombia's security forces have arrested or killed some of the top leaders of the gang in recent months, but it remains a powerful force and has reportedly also been recruiting both left-wing former Farc rebels disgruntled with the peace process as well as their right-wing former paramilitary rivals. Last Christmas, the Gulf Clan declared a temporary unilateral ceasefire and expressed its desire to negotiate with the government, but talks to convince its leaders to hand themselves in have so far not yielded any visible results.

More than 60 Brazilian members of congress from the opposition Workers' Party have formally changed their names. They have added the name "Lula", after Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was jailed last weekend. The move, in tribute to the former president, was led by the head of the party, Gleisi Hoffmann. She will now be known as Gleisi Lula Hoffmann in official Congress documents and on the electronic voting board. The party's leader in the lower house, Paulo Pimenta, followed her example and is now called Paulo Lula Pimenta. Party colleagues followed their lead in droves, but so did some legislators from right-wing parties. They are adding Judge Sérgio Moro - who convicted Lula - to their names. The former president began a 12-year sentence for corruption on Saturday. Lula says the charges against him were politically motivated.

Eight Argentine police officers have been dismissed for blaming missing drugs on mice. Investigators discovered 540kg (1,191lb) of marijuana missing from a police warehouse in Pilar, north-west of Buenos Aires. The city's former police commissioner, Javier Specia, and fellow officers told a judge the drugs were "eaten by mice". Forensic experts doubted mice would see the drugs as food, and would have probably died if they had eaten it. A spokesperson for Judge Adrián González Charvay said that according to experts at Buenos Aires University, "mice wouldn't mistake the drug for food" - and even if they did, "a lot of corpses would have been found in the warehouse". The police officers will now testify in front of the judge on 4 May. The court will decide if the drugs are missing due to "expedience or negligence". A 6,000kg haul of marijuana has been in storage at the warehouse for the past two years. But Mr Specia's successor, Emilio Portero, noticed the missing drugs when he took over the commissioner role. Mr Portero alerted the police force's internal affairs division, who then searched the warehouse and found only 5,460kg remaining. Suspicion fell on Mr Specia after authorities discovered he did not sign the inventory for the impounded drugs when he left his post in April 2017. The former commissioner is also reportedly under investigation for not yet filing a sworn income statement for last year.

The "mummified" remains of a monkey have been discovered by workers redeveloping a former department store in the US state of Minnesota. The dead creature was found in the ceiling of the old Dayton Department Store building in Minneapolis. A spokeswoman for the building project said they were working with local museums to trace the origins of the spider monkey, as theories fly. A nearby town's mayor suspects his dad stole the critter in the 1960s. The photo was first shared by a construction worker on the Old Minnesota Facebook page. The "'perished primate' revealed itself in a ceiling", according to the post. Some commenters on the site suggested the monkey may have come from a pet store which was on the eighth floor of the 116-year-old building. Regan Murphy, the mayor of Robbinsdale, Minnesota, believes his late father was to blame for the animal's disappearance. The suburban Minneapolis mayor says that in the 1960s his dad Larry Murphy and a friend stole the simian from the pet shop. Both men have since died, but the widow of the elder Murphy says he was known for monkey shines in his youth. "He was an Irish boy. I think that says it all," Larry's wife Monica told WCCO-TV. "Monkeys are not house broken," she explained. "The monkey was discovered by [the friend's] mom, and she said 'Absolutely not. Can't have it, can't keep it." The two teenagers brought the monkey back to the shop and released it, according to Murphy family lore. Other curious items have been found in air ducts and in ceilings during the building's renovation, including papier mache Easter eggs and a stolen wallet that was recently returned to its owner.

A German aid worker has been abducted by unknown gunmen in Niger. The man and his Nigerien colleagues were travelling near the border with Mali on Wednesday when armed men on motorbikes surrounded their convoy. The four Nigeriens have reportedly been freed and no demands have been made by the kidnappers. It is not clear who was behind the incident, but Islamist militants have repeatedly carried out attacks in the region. The man was working for the German non-governmental organisation Help when he was travelling near Ayorou in the Tillaberi region of western Niger. BBC Monitoring's Africa security correspondent Tomi Oladipo says the area is a dangerous part of Niger where militants regularly target the army. In October four US soldiers were killed in Niger and an offshoot of the Islamic State (IS) group said it carried out the attack.

Three lionesses and their eight cubs have been found dead in Uganda's Queen Elizabeth National Park. The lions are suspected to have been fed poisoned meat, the Uganda Wildlife Authority said. The reason is unclear, and an investigation has been launched. The carcasses were discovered on Wednesday near a fishing village, a spokesperson told the BBC. They did not seem to have any physical injuries. Wildlife and Tourism Minister Ephraim Kamuntu will travel to the park later today to find out more about the incident. The lion population in Queen Elizabeth National Park numbers around 100. Uganda’s wildlife parks are one of the country’s most important sources of revenue, and the government is trying to boost tourism. The country celebrated Wildlife Day last month, with a renewed commitment to protecting the big cats.

Judges in France who annulled an Algerian immigrant's marriage to a French woman say they knew it was a sham because the groom "hardly smiled" in the wedding photos, the UK-based Times newspaper reports. It says the judgment was handed down in 2010 by Aix-en-Provence appeals court in south France, but has only now been made public after the bride overcame her family's reluctance to talk about it. "It took eight years to digest because it was a form of disgrace," the woman's lawyer is reported in French media as saying. "But she wanted to contact the media to alert other women so they can avoid falling into the same trap." The woman, a 48-year-old accountant of Algerian origin living in France's second-biggest city Marseille, said she had fallen in love with the man when he was working on a building site near her office. He was eight years her junior. She is quoted in a local newspaper (in French) as saying his behaviour towards her suddenly became hostile after the wedding. Her lawyer said her client was "committed to the marriage but he wasn't - he only wanted a visa".

South African authorities say a businessman who was filmed confronting one of the Gupta brothers in Dubai has been released by the authorities there. South African businessman Justin van Pletzen was detained for questioning in Dubai after a video circulated showing him asking Ajay Gupta - who is officially a "fugitive from justice" in South Africa - when he will return. "When are you going back to South Africa? The country is looking for you," Mr van Pletzen says in the video filmed outside the South African embassy in Dubai earlier this month. The wealthy Gupta family have been accused of using their close friendship with South Africa's former President Zuma to wield enormous political influence, and to win state contracts. The Guptas and Mr Zuma deny all allegations of wrongdoing.

Leading rights group Amnesty International has hailed sub-Saharan Africa as "a beacon of hope" in the campaign to abolish the death penalty. "Sub-Saharan Africa made great strides in the global fight to abolish the death penalty with a significant decrease in death sentences being imposed across the region," it said in a report published today. Its stance contributed to a decline in executions around the world, where nearly 1,000 executions took place last year, four percent fewer than a year earlier, Amnesty International said. Last year, Guinea became the 20th state in sub-Saharan Africa abolish the death penalty for all crimes, while Kenya abolished the mandatory death penalty for murder. Burkina Faso and Chad also took steps to repeal this punishment with new or proposed laws. “The progress in sub-Saharan Africa reinforced its position as a beacon of hope for abolition. The leadership of countries in this region gives fresh hope that the abolition of the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment is within reach,” said Amnesty International’s Secretary General Salil Shetty. The organization recorded a drop in the number of executing countries across sub-Saharan Africa, from five in 2016 to two in 2017, with only South Sudan and Somalia known to have carried out executions. While Botswana and Sudan resumed executions in 2018, this "must not overshadow the positive steps being taken by other countries across the region", Amnesty International said. "Elsewhere in Africa, Gambia signed an international treaty committing the country not to carry out executions and moving to abolish the death penalty. The Gambian President established an official moratorium on executions in February 2018," it added.

Researchers have found that a new kind of mosquito net substantially increases protection against malaria-carrying insects. The discovery was made by a team from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, in a two-year study involving more than 15,000 children in Tanzania. Scientists found that nets incorporating a chemical called piperonyl butoxide blocked the natural defences of mosquitoes against standard insecticides, reducing malaria cases by more than a third. The World Health Organization is now recommending the use of the new nets. Malaria causes well over 400,000 deaths a year, nearly all of them children under five in sub-Saharan Africa.

An Australian woman who faked having terminal cancer before scamming money from friends of her family has been jailed for three months. Hanna Dickenson, 24, accepted A$42,000 (£22,000; $31,000) after telling her parents that she needed medical treatment overseas. Her parents had received donations from their friends, a court was told. It heard Dickenson spent much of the money on holidays and socialising. A judge called the scam "despicable". Dickenson had pleaded guilty in the Melbourne Magistrates' Court to seven charges of obtaining property by deception. In sentencing, magistrate David Starvaggi said Dickenson had "engaged in conduct that tears at the very heartstrings of human nature". "People's desire to assist and social trust has been breached. These are people who worked hard and dug into their own pockets," he said. Blogger case comparison The court was told one person donated A$10,000 to Dickenson after being discharged from hospital following his own cancer treatment. Another person gave money on four separate occasions. The ruse was uncovered when another donor raised suspicions with police after seeing pictures of Dickenson on Facebook. Dickenson's lawyer, Beverley Lindsay, argued that her client should be spared jail because she had "turned her life around". She also compared the deception to one involving an Australian celebrity blogger, Belle Gibson, who was fined A$410,000 last year after falsely claiming to have beaten brain cancer. Ms Lindsay argued that her client's offending was less severe than Gibson's. However Mr Starvaggi said the cases were not directly comparable, and that the court needed to deter others from engaging in similar conduct. Ms Lindsay said her client was likely to appeal the sentence.

Belgrade's tribute to the first man in space has been removed after less than a week, following an outcry over the size of its head. The bust of Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, erected on the street which bears his name in the Serbian capital, was removed by workmen on Tuesday, B92 news website reports. Locals said that the tribute, placed next to a branch of McDonald's and facing a shopping centre, was an "insult" to the man who orbited the Earth on 12 April 1961. It featured a tiny bust of Gagarin on top of a tall plinth, which led to complaints that the statue was out of proportion. Belgrade City Manager Goran Vesic says that a new work will be commissioned, and would only go up after getting the go-ahead from "all relevant institutions", B92 reported. It transpired that the city had no knowledge of the design, and neither had the Ministry of Culture nor the foundation which had financed it. However, Mr Vesic said that this time Belgrade would get it right. "Gagarin will have a memorial in Belgrade worthy of the contribution that he has made to humanity," he said.

A significant shift in the system of ocean currents that helps keep parts of Europe warm could send temperatures in the UK lower, scientists have found. They say the Atlantic Ocean circulation system is weaker now than it has been for more than 1,000 years - and has changed significantly in the past 150. The study, in the journal Nature, says it may be a response to increased melting ice and is likely to continue. Researchers say that could have an impact on Atlantic ecosystems. Scientists involved in the Atlas project - the largest study of deep Atlantic ecosystems ever undertaken - say the impact will not be of the order played out in the 2004 Hollywood blockbuster The Day After Tomorrow. But they say changes to the conveyor-belt-like system - also known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (Amoc) - could cool the North Atlantic and north-west Europe and transform some deep-ocean ecosystems. That could also affect temperature-sensitive species like coral, and even Atlantic cod. Scientists believe the pattern is a response to fresh water from melting ice sheets being added to surface ocean water, meaning those surface waters "can't get very dense and sink". "That puts a spanner in this whole system," lead researcher Dr David Thornalley, from University College London, explained. The concept of this system "shutting down" was featured in The Day After Tomorrow. "Obviously that was a sensationalised version," said Dr Thornally. "But much of the underlying science was correct, and there would be significant changes to climate it if did undergo a catastrophic collapse - although the film made those effects much more catastrophic, and happening much more quickly - than would actually be the case." Nonetheless, a change to the system could cool the North Atlantic and north-west Europe and transform some deep-ocean ecosystems. That is why its measurement has been a key part of the Atlas project. Scientists say understanding what is happening to Amoc will help them make much more accurate forecasts of our future climate. Prof Murray Roberts, who co-ordinates the Atlas project at the University of Edinburgh, told BBC News: "The changes we're seeing now in deep Atlantic currents could have massive effects on ocean ecosystems. "The deep Atlantic contains some of the world's oldest and most spectacular cold-water coral reef and deep-sea sponge grounds. "These delicate ecosystems rely on ocean currents to supply their food and disperse their offspring. Ocean currents are like highways spreading larvae throughout the ocean and we know these ecosystems have been really sensitive to past changes in the Earth's climate." To measure how the system has shifted over long timescales, researchers collected long cores of sediment from the sea floor. The sediment was laid down by past ocean currents, so the size of the sediment grains in different layers provided a measure of the current's strength over time. The results were also backed up by another study published in the same issue of Nature, led by researchers from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. This work looked at climate model data to confirm that sea-surface temperature patterns can be used as an indicator of Amoc's strength and revealing that it has been weakening even more rapidly since 1950 in response to recent global warming. The scientists want to continue to study patterns in this crucial temperature-regulating system, to understand whether as ice sheets continue to melt, this could drive further slowdown - or even a shutdown of a system that regulates our climate.

The relentless campaign to find and sink Germany's WWII battleship, the Tirpitz, left its mark on the landscape that is evident even today. The largest vessel in Hitler's Kriegsmarine, it was stationed for much of the war along the Norwegian coast to deter an Allied invasion. The German navy would hide the ship in fjords and screen it with chemical fog. This "smoke" did enormous damage to the surrounding trees which is recorded in their growth rings. Claudia Hartl, from the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany, stumbled across the impact while examining pines at Kåfjord near Alta. The dendrochronologist was collecting wood cores to build up a picture of past climate in the area. Severe cold and even infestation from insects can severely stunt annual growth in a stand, but neither of these causes could explain the total absence of rings seen in some trees dated to 1945. A colleague suggested it could have something to do with the Tirpitz, which was anchored the previous year at Kåfjord where it was attacked by Allied bombers. Archive documents show the ship released chlorosulphuric acid to camouflage its position. "We think this artificial smoke damaged the needles on the trees," Dr Hartl told BBC News. "If trees don't have needles they can't photosynthesise and they can't produce biomass. In pine trees, needles usually last from three to seven years because they're evergreens. So, if the trees lose their needles, it can take a very long time for them to recover." In one tree, there is no growth seen for nine years from 1945. "Afterwards, it recovered but it took 30 years to get back to normal growth. It's still there; it's still alive, and it's a very impressive tree," Dr Hartl said. In other pines, rings are present but they are extremely thin - easy to miss. As expected, sampling shows the impacts falling off with distance. But it is only at 4km that trees start to display no effects. The Tirpitz sustained some damage at Kåfjord. However, a continuous seek-and-destroy campaign eventually caught up with the battleship and it was sunk by RAF Lancasters in late 1944 in Tromso fjord further to the west. Dr Hartl believes her "warfare dendrochronology" will find similar cases elsewhere. "I think it's really interesting that the effects of one engagement are still evident in the forests of northern Norway more than 70 years later. In other places in Europe, they also used this artificial smoke and maybe also other chemicals. So perhaps you can find similar patterns and effects from WWII." The Mainz researcher presented her research here at the European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly in Vienna, Austria.

Theresa May has summoned ministers to an emergency cabinet meeting to discuss the UK's response to the suspected chemical weapons attack in Syria. Ministers are expected to back her call to join military action threatened by the United States and its allies. Sources say the PM is prepared to take action against the Assad regime without first seeking Parliamentary consent. But there have been calls from opposition parties and some Tories for MPs to get a vote beforehand. The allies want to prevent a repeat of an apparent chemical attack in the formerly rebel-held town of Douma. Mrs May has said "all the indications" are that the Syrian regime of president Bashar al-Assad, which denies mounting a chemical attack, was responsible. Senior figures from Russia, which provides military support to the Syrian regime, have warned of a Russian response to a US attack. BBC political correspondent Iain Watson said Mrs May appeared to have made up her mind and that it was "a question of when, not if" there will be military action. If the cabinet approves UK involvement, that would open the way for British forces to join an operation against Syrian targets that US President Donald Trump has said in a tweet "will be coming". During a briefing on Wednesday, however, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders appeared to row back on President Trump's warning to Russia that it should "get ready" for missile strikes against its ally. She told reporters that the president had "a number of options at his disposal and a number remain on the table", but added: "We haven't laid out any specific actions we plan to take." MPs are due to return to Westminster from the Easter recess on Monday. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has said Parliament must be consulted before military action is taken, and has warned of triggering a "hot war between US and Russia over skies of Syria". Brexit Secretary David Davis, one of the MPs to oppose military action against President Assad when it was rejected by the Commons in 2013, said he was assured that evidence and intelligence, as well as a "proper plan", would be provided this time. The SNP's Westminster leader, Ian Blackford, told the BBC a Parliamentary debate should take place before - rather than after - military action has taken place because Mrs May does not have a majority in the House of Commons. Conservative MP Zac Goldsmith also called for Parliament to have its say before anything is agreed. But Conservative MP Tom Tugendhat, who chairs the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that while "politically it may make sense", Mrs May did not need to ask for a vote. He added that a "very targeted operation" at Syrian chemical weapons stocks need not trigger a conflict with Russia. Lib Dem leader Sir Vince Cable did not rule out backing military action but he said Parliament would have to give its approval with conditions. But Conservative MP Chris Philp told the BBC's Newsnight that although a vote was "desirable", events can move too fast and it was not a necessity. Mr Philp also said that, even if there was a vote, a number of Labour backbenchers had already expressed their willingness to side with the government and back military action. "I wouldn't make any assumptions about the vote," he added. Medical sources say dozens of people were killed, including children, during the alleged toxic bombing of the formerly rebel-held town of Douma, in the Eastern Ghouta region.

A UN court has overturned the acquittal of Serbian ultra-nationalist Vojislav Seselj for crimes committed during the 1990s Balkans conflict. Appeal court judges in The Hague found him guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced him to 10 years in jail. Seselj was acquitted two years ago of nine war crimes and crimes against humanity, following a trial lasting more than eight years. He will not return to custody as he has served 11 years in pre-trial detention. The presiding judge Theodor Meron told the court that Seselj, a close ally of then Serbian autocratic leader Slobodan Milosevic, was guilty "of instigating persecution, deportation and other inhumane acts". The tribunal ruled that a single speech by the academic turned far-right leader to Serb crowds in May 1992 had sparked atrocities against ethnic Croats in part of the Vojvodina province. Seselj, Serbia's deputy prime minister between 1998 and 2000, elected to represent himself legally but refused to attend the court in The Hague. He returned to Serbia in 2014 to undergo treatment for colon cancer. In 2016, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia acquitted Seselj of all charges against him, including murder and allegedly stoking ethnic hatred at the start of the wars that broke apart the Yugoslav federation. While prosecutors appealed against his acquittal, Seselj was elected as a member of parliament in Serbia. The unrepentant Serbian Radical Party leader has stuck to his nationalist line, telling news agency AFP last week he will never give up the idea of a "Greater Serbia", uniting all parts of Serbia, Bosnia and Croatia where Serbs live. Following his acquittal in March 2016, he said: "I do not feel guilty of anything."

The Pope has said he made "serious mistakes" over a case of alleged child abuse by Catholic clergy in Chile. In a letter to the South American country's bishops, Francis said he felt "sadness and shame" over comments earlier this year in which he accused the victims of committing slander. The letter, released by the Church in Chile, said the Pope would invite some of the victims to Rome. A Chilean bishop, Juan Barros, is accused of hiding abuses by a priest. Pope Francis made his controversial remarks during a visit to Chile in January. Defending Bishop Barros, he said: "There is not a single piece of proof against him. Everything is slander." Bishop Barros has not been accused of abuse, but of being present when another priest, Fernando Karadima, molested young boys in Santiago, starting in the 1980s. Father Karadima never faced prosecution as too much time had passed, but the judge who heard victims' testimony described them as "truthful and reliable". The Pope's comments in January prompted an angry response from some of the victims. They told reporters that the Pope's demand that they provide evidence was "offensive and unacceptable". At the end of his Latin American trip, the Pope apologised by saying he realised his words had hurt many. But he reiterated his belief that Bishop Barros was innocent. In the letter released by the Chilean Church on Wednesday, the Pope says he "made serious mistakes in assessing and perceiving the situation, especially due to a lack of truthful and balanced information". He said he hoped he could apologise personally to the victims, and invited them to come to the Vatican over the next few weeks. After his trip, Pope Francis sent Maltese Archbishop Charles Scicluna to investigate allegations of a Church cover-up of the abuse in Chile.

Rescue teams are searching for one of Germany's richest men, who has gone missing while skiing in the Swiss Alps. Karl-Erivan Haub, heir to the Tengelmann supermarket chain, did not return from an off-piste skiing expedition near the Matterhorn on Saturday. A Tengelmann spokeswoman confirmed on Wednesday that a "full-speed" search for Mr Haub had begun. The 58-year-old billionaire has been in charge of the firm since 2000. It owns various supermarket brands in Germany and Central Europe. In a letter published in the German newspaper Handelsblatt, the supermarket boss' brother, Christian Haub, said he was an experienced skiier and mountaineer. He said he was still hopeful his brother would be found, but that the Haub family - one of Germany's wealthiest - was "prepared" for bad news. If Mr Haub could not be located, "the business will continue to run smoothly and orderly", he added.

It was an idea to improve road safety: special strips on the asphalt would play a tune when cars drove over them at the correct speed. But residents of a nearby village in the Netherlands said the constant noise was driving them mad. One called it "psychological torture". Another said cars were going faster to see if the song played at double speed. After pressure, officials closed the "singing road" on Tuesday, just one day after it had been officially opened. For the road to play out the anthem of the northern province of Friesland, cars had to drive at the speed limit of 60km/h (40mph). 'You can't sleep' The sound was created when cars drove over strategically-laid rumble strips, which are usually deployed at the side of roads to warn drivers against veering off. But it quickly became clear that locals were not singing the same tune. "I'm going nuts. You can't sit outside and you can't sleep at night," Sijtze Jansma told RTL News. Ria Jansma told Reuters news agency: "Last Saturday night, taxis... tried to go across the lines as quickly as possible and we had the anthem playing all night at high speed." Sietske Poepjes, the local minister for infrastructure and cultural affairs, said the project on a stretch of the N357 road was a way to promote the city of Leeuwarden, this year's European Capital of Culture, while also testing a new paint for roads. "It works amazingly well. You can hear the melody," she told the BBC. "We were glad it worked but people should not be unhappy... Other roads are more suitable for this." The strips were installed on Friday and cost €80,000 (£69,800; $99,000), including the expenses for their removal, a spokesman for Friesland province said. "It was an experiment on how to influence the behaviour of drivers." But he added: "I was there myself and if you're living there it was unpleasant. "The idea is