President Joe Biden on Monday celebrates Labor Day in Philadelphia as he courts one of his most important constituencies at a moment when the labor movement is attempting to reassert its strength.

Convicted killer Alex Murdaugh has claimed that mysterious “newly discovered evidence” will pave the way for him to be granted a new trial for the murders of his wife Maggie and son Paul. Murdaugh’s attorneys Dick Harpootlian and Jim Griffin said in a statement that new evidence had come to light since his March conviction over the brutal 7 June 2021 slayings. This evidence will form the basis of a new motion requesting a retrial in the high-profile case. The attorneys – who are longtime friends of the killer and represented him at his high-profile murder trial – will reveal this new evidence and release the motion at a press conference on Tuesday afternoon. The briefing is scheduled to take place on the grounds of the South Carolina State House near the Court of Appeals in Columbia at 2.30pm local time. For now, the details remain a mystery. Murdaugh is currently behind bars at the McCormick Correctional Institution in South Carolina where he is serving two life sentences for his wife and son’s murders. Last week, it emerged that Murdaugh had lost some of his prison privileges after he fed information to a Fox Nation documentary without permission. South Carolina Corrections Department officials said on Wednesday that, during a jailhouse phone call on 10 June, Mr Griffin had recorded him reading aloud entries from the journal he had kept during his double murder trial. Mr Griffin had then handed over the recordings to producers working on the new Fox Nation documentary about his high-profile case titled “The Fall of the House of Murdaugh”, released today. Prison policy prohibits inmates from talking to the media without permission because the agency “believes that victims of crime should not have to see or hear the person who victimized them or their family member on the news,” state prisons spokesperson Chrysti Shain said in a statement. The media interview violation, along with another violation for using a different inmate’s password to make a telephone call, are prison discipline issues and not a crime, Ms Shain said. As a result, the disgraced legal scion has had his phone privileges revoked and his prison tablet computer confiscated. Murdaugh also lost his ability to buy items in the prison canteen for a month. He will now have to get permission from prison officials to get another tablet, which can be used to make monitored phone calls, watch approved entertainment, read books or take video classes, the prison spokesperson said. Mr Griffin was also issued a warning from prison officials that if he knowingly or unknowingly helps Murdaugh violate rules again, he could lose his ability to talk to his client. Phone calls between lawyers and prisoners are not recorded or reviewed because their conversations are considered confidential. But prison officials said they began investigating Murdaugh after a warden reviewing other phone calls heard Murdaugh’s voice on a call made in a different inmate’s account. Murdaugh claimed that his phone password had not been working. He also told the prison investigators about the recorded journal entries, according to prison records. Murdaugh’s use of a jailhouse tablet previously hit headlines when selfie images he took on the device were obtained in a Freedom of Information request by FITS News. In many of the images, the convicted family killer appeared topless. South Carolina prison officials later clarified that the photos are automatically taken as an inmate uses their tablet that is individually assigned to them – as part of inmate monitoring. Now, Murdaugh has lost the use of his tablet indefinitely due to his unauthorised communication with the documentarymakers – which marks his first media interview of sorts since his conviction. His eldest – and now only surviving – son Buster Murdaugh also broke his silence speaking out in his first TV interview as part of the three-part series. In the interview, Buster insisted that he still believes his father is innocent of the murders of his mother and brother – but admitted that he may be a psychopath. Maggie and Paul were found shot dead on the family’s 1,700-acre Moselle estate back on 7 June 2021. Alex Murdaugh had called 911 claiming to have found their bodies. During his high-profile murder trial, jurors heard how Paul was shot twice with a 12-gauge shotgun while he stood in the feed room of the dog kennels on the affluent family’s 1,700-acre Moselle estate. The second shot to his head blew his brain almost entirely out of his skull. After killing Paul, prosecutors said Murdaugh then grabbed a .300 Blackout semiautomatic rifle and opened fire on Maggie as she tried to flee from her husband. During the dramatic six-week trial, Murdaugh confessed to lying about his alibi on the night of the murders but continued to claim his innocence of the killings. The jury didn’t agree and the disgraced legal scion was convicted in March of the brutal murders. Beyond the murder charges, Murdaugh, 55, is also facing a slew of financial fraud charges for stealing millions of dollars from his law firm clients and his dead housekeeper’s family. He is expected to plead guilty on 21 September to federal charges – marking the first time he has pleaded guilty to a crime in court. Murdaugh is also facing around 100 financial charges in state court as well as charges over a botched hitman plot where he claims he paid an accomplice to shoot him dead. Murdaugh’s high-profile conviction also shone a spotlight on some other mystery deaths tied to the South Carolina legal dynasty. Following Maggie and Paul’s murders, investigations were reopened into the 2018 death of the Murdaugh’s longtime housekeeper Gloria Satterfield and the 2015 homicide of gay teenager Stephen Smith. Meanwhile, at the time of his murder, Paul was also awaiting trial for the 2019 boat crash death of Mallory Beach. Read More Convicted killer Alex Murdaugh loses prison privileges over recorded phone call for documentary Buster Murdaugh breaks silence on Stephen Smith killing – and calls father Alex a ‘psychopath’ Alex Murdaugh to plead guilty in theft case. It would be the first time he admits to a crime

By Tim Hepher PARIS (Reuters) -European space officials said on Monday they face crucial timing decisions in the coming weeks

Invasive species that wreck crops, ravage forests, spread disease, and upend ecosystems are spreading ever faster across the globe, and humanity has not been able to stem the tide...

Jimmy Buffett died on September 1, four years after being diagnosed with Merkel cell skin cancer

As Burning Man attendees are left stranded in the Nevada desert due to heavy rain and mud, everyone has been weighing in on the situation. Including Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. Appearing on conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ Info Wars show on Sunday night, she said “well, you know, God has a way of making sure everyone knows who God is.” The comment was made after Jones referenced the “mock sacrifice”, where festivalgoers set fire to a large wooden structure dubbed “The Man.” It seems Greene is suggesting the weather conditions are an act of God, as punishment for their “sacrifice”. Green continued: “There’s 73-75,000 in the Nevada desert right now at this Burning Man. They’re locked in. They’re not allowed to leave and they’re basically probably being brainwashed that climate change is the cause of it and it’s going to destroy the Earth. "And there, they’re feeling the panic. So, what’s going to happen, Alex?” The congresswoman continued with her rant, predicting that when attendees returned home they would spread stories about climate change. “It’s the Left’s new lie they’re going to put on the American people and try to get everyone behind [it],” she claimed. “This is what they’re brainwashing people to believe.” “I totally agree,” Jones interjected. Greene wasn’t the only one to suggest the weather was an act of God. Andrew Torba, founder of Gab, a fringe social media platform, wrote on Twitter/X: “Wow God unleashed a plague and a flood of rain over the satanic ritual “burning man” in the desert that all of the elites attend? You don’t say.” Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

The James Webb Space Telescope, launched on Christmas Day in 2021, was designed by NASA to unravel the mysteries of our solar system

Len Root and five others died at the Wings Over Dallas Air Show in November 2022 after two WW2-era planes collided in front of a huge crowd

The Moon is a constant in the night sky, but all is not actually as it seems. It turns out that scientists have discovered the Moon is drifting away from Earth, and it’s changing everything we thought we knew about our planet’s relationship with its only natural satellite. It’s also having a very real impact on the length of days on our planet – albeit at an incredibly slow rate. By moving away from Earth over the course of millions of years, the Moon is simultaneously making the length of the average day longer. A study by a team at the University of Wisconsin-Madison focused on rock from a formation aged at 90 million years. By doing so, they were able to analyse the Earth’s interactions with the Moon 1.4 billion years ago. It turns out that the Moon is moving away from Earth at us at 3.82 centimetres a year. That means that, eventually, it’ll result in Earth days lasting 25 hours in 200 million years time. Stephen Meyers, who is a professor of geoscience at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said: “As the moon moves away, the Earth is like a spinning figure skater who slows down as they stretch their arms out.” He added: “One of our ambitions was to use astrochronology to tell time in the most distant past, to develop very ancient geological time scales. “We want to be able to study rocks that are billions of years old in a way that is comparable to how we study modern geologic processes.” It’s not the only story that changes our understanding of the Moon recently. Scientists have also just uncovered billions of years’ worth of secrets buried beneath the surface of the moon – all thanks to China’s space programme, which has uncovered hidden structures which can help us start to piece together the Moon’s past. Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings

Researchers funded by the US Air Force are developing a new type of device that can invite comparisons to a weapon used by a Batman villain. Scientists, including Patrick Hopkins from the University of Virginia in the US, are working on a new device to be used for on-demand surface cooling for electronics inside spacecraft and high-altitude jets. The device may seem similar to the freeze gun used by Batman villain Mr Freeze to “ice” his enemies. “A lot of electronics on board heat up, but they have no way to cool down,” said Dr Hopkins, whose lab has been granted $750,000 over three years to develop the technology. On Earth, electronics in military craft can rely on nature to cool themselves, but in space, this may be a challenge, scientists said. Citing an example, researchers said the Navy uses ocean water in its liquid cooling systems while flying jets can rely on air that is dense enough to help keep components chilled. “With the Air Force and Space Force, you’re in space, which is a vacuum, or you’re in the upper atmosphere, where there’s very little air that can cool,” Dr Hopkins said. “So what happens is your electronics keep getting hotter and hotter and hotter. And you can’t bring a payload of coolant onboard because that’s going to increase the weight, and you lose efficiency,” he explained. In such extra-terrestrial environments, a jet of plasma, the fourth and most common state of matter in the universe, can be used in the interior of a craft. “This plasma jet is like a laser beam; it’s like a lightning bolt. It can be extremely localized,” Dr Hopkins explained. One of the strange qualities of plasma is that while it can reach temperatures as hot as the surface of the Sun, it chills before heating when it strikes a surface. In the new research, published recently in the journal ACS Nano, scientists fired a purple jet of plasma generated from helium through a hollow needle encased in ceramic, targeting a gold-plated surface. When researchers turned on the plasma, they could measure temperature immediately at the point where the plasma hit, and could see that the surface cooled first and then heated up. “We were just puzzled at some level about why this was happening, because it kept happening over and over,” Dr Hopkins said. “And there was no information for us to pull from because no prior literature has been able to measure the temperature change with the precision that we have. No one’s been able to do it so quickly,” he said. The strange surface-cooling phenomenon, according to scientists, was the result of blasting an ultra-thin, hard-to-see surface layer, composed of carbon and water molecules. Researchers compare this to a similar process that happens when cool water evaporates off of our skin after a swim. “Evaporation of water molecules on the body requires energy; it takes energy from body, and that’s why you feel cold. In this case, the plasma rips off the absorbed species, energy is released, and that’s what cools,” the researchers explained. Using the method, scientists could reduce the temperature of the setup by several degrees for a few microseconds. While this may not be dramatic, they said it is enough to make a difference in some electronic devices. Now, thanks to the Air Force grant, researchers are looking at how variations on their original design might improve the apparatus. “Since the plasma is composed of a variety of different particles, changing the type of gas used will allow us to see how each one of these particles impact material properties,” researchers said. Read More Scientists discover 3,000-year-old arrowhead made of ‘alien’ iron Carcinogens found at nuclear missile sites as reports of hundreds of cancers surface India’s moon rover confirms sulphur and detects several other elements near the lunar south pole China’s ‘government-approved’ AI chatbot says Taiwan invasion likely Russian cyber-attacks ‘relentless’ as threat of WW3 grows, expert warns How new bike technology could help cyclists tell drivers not to crash into them

When Congress returns this week, Homeland Security officials and those in the chemical industries will be watching to see if a program regulating the chemical sector will be on its agenda

Director-screenwriter Frank Darabont wanted to bring Stephen King’s ‘The Mist’ to the big screen for years.