Amazon has told its office workers they may no longer work from home except in extenuating circumstances.

It comes as Jonathan Reynolds, the UK’s business secretary, said flexible working contributes to productivity, employee resilience, and staff retention.

Money blog: Is now a good time to buy an iPhone?

Workers need to be judged on outcomes and “not a culture of presenteeism”, Mr Reynolds told The Times.

What’s Amazon doing?

Amazon has described the policy change as returning to the way it worked before the COVID-19 pandemic – being in the office five days a week except for special circumstances.

A letter from Amazon chief executive Andy Jassy said those situations included when staff or their children were sick, house emergencies, travelling for work or coding “in a more isolated environment”.

Some staff who had been given exceptional permission to work remotely will remain able to do so.

The changes will take effect on 2 January next year as Mr Jassy said the company understands staff have “set up their personal lives in such a way that returning to the office consistently five days per week will require some adjustments”.

Why the change?

Amazon believes being in the office is better for business.

Looking back on five years of hybrid working from home (WFH) and in the office Mr Jassy said “the advantages of being together in the office are significant”.

Learning, working together, generating ideas and strengthening company culture is “simpler and more effective” in the office, while teaching is more seamless and teams are better connected, he said.

“If anything, the last 15 months we’ve been back in the office at least three days a week has strengthened our conviction about the benefits,” he added.

Is WFH here to stay?

The UK government, however, is attempting to facilitate remote work for more people.

It’s already trailed plans to extend the right to request remote and flexible working from the first day of employment.

“There are real economic benefits to be had from the UK adopting this approach,” Mr Reynolds told The Times, adding that remote working could also contribute to levelling up.

“The UK has very significant regional inequality. It could play a significant contribution to tackling that,” he said.

He did concede there are situations when it is “legitimate to need the workforce in the office”, such as when new staff need to learn from those more experienced.

The White House has called Elon Musk “irresponsible” after he posted on social media that “no one is even trying” to assassinate Joe Biden or Kamala Harris.

The billionaire posted the comment on his X social media platform, followed by a thinking emoji. But he later deleted it and said it was intended as a joke.

His comment followed the apparent attempted assassination of Donald Trump on Sunday, which came after an attempt on the former president’s life at one of his rallies in July.

The White House rebuked Mr Musk in a statement. “Violence should only be condemned, never encouraged or joked about. This rhetoric is irresponsible,” said spokesperson Andrew Bates.

The Space X and Tesla boss took the post down early on Monday, having earlier stuck by it.

“Well, one lesson I’ve learned is that just because I say something to a group and they laugh doesn’t mean it’s going to be all that hilarious as a post on X,” he said.

Mr Musk is a well-known backer of Trump for November’s US election, and routinely posts in support of the Republican candidate.

He also hosted him for an interview on X last month.

His decision to delete the post came as investigations continue into the incident at Mr Trump’s Florida golf course, where Secret Service agents opened fire after seeing a rifle poking through bushes.

Questions are being asked about how the suspect was able to spend 12 hours on the course before being spotted.

The former president said yesterday that the apparent attempt on his life was a “much better result” than the first assassination attempt at a rally in July, as no bystanders were wounded or killed.

One person died, and two people were critically injured, when a gunman shot at Mr Trump during the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Mr Trump suffered a wound to his ear, while the gunman was shot dead by a Secret Service sniper team.

A Jordanian-led programme to help fit prosthetic limbs to thousands of victims of the Gaza war has begun.

Two mobile clinics entered Gaza on Monday tasked with helping around 14,000 amputees.

Using cutting-edge British designed technology, the doctors hope to be able to fit a functioning prosthesis every hour.

The estimated cost of each fitting is around £1,000.

“Medical estimates indicate that over 14,000 people have been injured and lost one or more limbs,” said Brigadier General Mustafa al Hiyari, from the Jordanian Armed Forces.

“Our project is distinguished not only by the large number (of prosthetics provided) but also by its speed, as specialists will declare, a prosthetic limb would be installed in less than an hour.

“Those who cannot reach the hospital, the equipped vans will go to them.”

The vast majority of amputees from the war cannot leave Gaza for treatment elsewhere.

The programme involves UK-based companies Koalaa and Amparo, both of which have developed easy-to-fit sockets for upper and lower limb prosthetics.

Each fitting will be registered digitally, allowing for remote follow-up procedures with specialist doctors based in Jordan’s capital Amman or around the world.

‘Beyond catastrophic’ in Gaza

New analysis by aid organisations working in Gaza claims 83% of food aid is being blocked from entering by Israeli authorities.

According to the data, an average of 69 trucks per day entered Gaza during August, compared with 500 a day during the same month in 2023.

During that month, more than one million people didn’t receive any food rations in central or southern Gaza, the research found.

Many in Gaza are now only eating one meal every other day, raising concerns of severe malnutrition and hunger.

“The situation was intolerable long before last October’s escalation and is beyond catastrophic now,” said Jolien Veldwijk, CARE country director in the West Bank and Gaza.

“Over 11 months, we have reached shocking levels of conflict, displacement, disease and hunger.

“Yet, aid is still not getting in, and humanitarian workers are risking their lives to do their jobs while attacks and violations of international law intensify.”

The research also found only 35% of required insulin and half the required blood supply are available in Gaza, while 1.87 million people are in need of shelter.

Israel accuses Hamas of stealing aid and storing it for its own use.

The Israeli government and military also insist aid is entering Gaza but that aid organisations aren’t distributing it effectively.

Tonight’s full moon is a harvest moon, supermoon and lunar eclipse all rolled into one.

The spectacle should be visible across the UK, if skies stay clear.

So what does it all mean?

Lunar eclipse

A partial lunar eclipse happens when the Earth passes between the sun and moon and casts a shadow.

Tonight, it’ll be visible in the top right corner of the moon – you’ll see a sliver of the moon has disappeared; that’s Earth’s shadow.

To spot the moon’s subtle shrinkage over time, spend a few hours outside or take multiple peeks over the course of the evening, KaChun Yu, curator at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, advises.

Supermoon

The partial lunar eclipse is coinciding with the second of four supermoons in as many months.

A supermoon occurs when a full moon is at its closest point to Earth during its orbit, making the moon look bigger than usual.

The best time to spot a supermoon is in the early evening, when it is on the horizon.

That’s when it’ll appear at its largest and may be slightly orange because of the effect of moonlight shining through Earth’s atmosphere.

The lunar eclipse will happen in the early hours of Wednesday morning though, so don’t forget to look again later on.

After this, the next supermoon will be on 17 October and the final one on 15 November.

Harvest moon

Unlike the supermoon and eclipse, the harvest moon isn’t to do with what it will look like but the time of the year.

Throughout the year, there are various mystically named moons, like January’s wolf moon or July’s buck moon, and their names are all to do with what is going on in the natural world at that point.

The harvest moon is usually in September and is the full moon which occurs closest to the autumn equinox.

The wolf moon is thought to be named because while other animals hibernate, wolves can be heard howling at the full moon, according to NASA.

The buck moon may relate to the time of year male deer get their antlers.

The moon at this time of year tends to be bright and rises soon after sunset, so it offers farmers gathering their harvests more light to work into the night; hence the name “harvest moon”.

Teenage Instagram users will get new privacy settings, its parent company Meta has announced in a major new update.

It is an attempt by Meta, which also owns WhatsApp and Facebook, to reduce the amount of harmful content seen online by young people.

Instagram allows 13-year-olds and above to sign up but after the privacy changes, all designated accounts will be turned into teen accounts automatically, which will be private by default.

Those accounts can only be messaged and tagged by accounts they follow or are already connected to, and sensitive content settings will be the most restrictive available.

Offensive words and phrases will be filtered out of comments and direct message requests, and the teenagers will get notifications telling them to leave the app after 60 minutes each day.

Sleep mode will also be turned on between 10pm and 7am, which will mute notifications overnight and send auto-replies to DMs.

Users under 16 years of age will only be able to change the default settings with a parent’s permission.

But 16 and 17-year-olds will be able to turn off the settings without parental permission.

Parents will also get a suite of settings to monitor who their children are engaging with and limit their use of the app.

Meta said it will place the identified users into teen accounts within 60 days in the US, UK, Canada and Australia, and in the European Union later this year.

The rest of the world will see the accounts rolled out from January.

Ofcom, the UK’s communications regulator, called the changes “a step in the right direction” but said platforms will have to do “far more to protect their users, especially children” when the Online Safety Act starts coming into force early next year.

“We won’t hesitate to take action, using the full extent of our enforcement powers, against any companies that come up short,” said Richard Wronka, online safety supervision director at Ofcom.

Meta has faced multiple lawsuits over how young people are treated by its apps, with some claiming the technology is intentionally addictive and harmful.

Others have called on Meta to address how its algorithm works, including Ian Russell, the father of teenager Molly Russell, who died after viewing posts related to suicide, depression and anxiety online.

“Just as Molly was overwhelmed by the volume of the dangerous content that bombarded her, we’ve found evidence of algorithms pushing out harmful content to literally millions of young people,” said Mr Russell last year, who is chair of trustees at the Molly Rose Foundation.

Meta said the new restrictions on accounts are “designed to better support parents, and give them peace of mind that their teens are safe with the right protections in place”.

It also acknowledged that teenagers may try to lie about their age to circumvent restrictions, and said that it is “building technology to proactively find accounts belonging to teens, even if the account lists an adult birthday”.

That technology will begin testing in the US early next year.

David Lammy chose to make his first major policy speech as foreign secretary in the lush surroundings of a glasshouse at Kew Gardens.

He recalled how his father brought him to Kew as a schoolboy to experience the rainforest environment of his native Guyana.

The sort of opening you might expect to hear from a politician – especially one promising to make climate change and biodiversity “central to all the foreign office does.”

There’s evidence Mr Lammy’s ambition for a new kind of foreign policy is genuine, however.

Take the education centre he and his wife founded in Guyana four years ago for local students to learn about the country’s last remaining rainforest and how to conserve it.

But delivering on his pledge would test even the greenest of foreign secretaries.

Mr Lammy announced three new initiatives: A clean power alliance that would allow poorer countries to “leapfrog” polluting fossil fuel energy in favour of renewables with the help of richer ones; an overhaul of international finance to help poorer countries reduce their carbon footprints and adapt to the climate impacts they didn’t create; and international leadership on protecting biodiversity.

All of these would be delivered by exploiting the UK’s diplomatic “heft,” he said.

Essential goals if we’re to enjoy a habitable planet – but all very similar to pledges we’ve heard before.

The main challenge is how to divert flows of finance from fossil fuel projects or unsustainable agriculture that drives deforestation to cleaner, more sustainable ones.

And while investment globally is shifting rapidly into renewable energy – which is often less expensive to build – carbon emissions are at all-time highs (though possibly peaking).

The reality is that fossil fuels and conventional agriculture are where the biggest profits are still to be made.

You only need to follow the money, as a recent report by NGO Action Aid did, to see that.

It concluded since the Paris Agreement in 2016, $3.2trn (£2.4trn) of investment – much of it from banks in the UK – has flowed into fossil fuel projects and $370bn (£281bn) into industrial agriculture.

I asked Mr Lammy how he could compete with that, given the UK had just £11.6bn to spend on climate finance in developing countries between 2019 and 2026.

The reply suggested that even that amount of money was no longer guaranteed.

Mr Lammy said: “Meeting the £11.6bn remains our ambition.” But, as we’ve heard repeated by ministers throughout Westminster in recent weeks, he added that “difficult choices” lie ahead for Chancellor Rachel Reeves in her autumn spending review.

However, if, in the absence of much money to play with, Mr Lammy can exploit the UK diplomatic machine to attract partner governments in a climate alliance, it might not be a futile exercise.

There is much governments can do to remove subsidies, favourable tax regimes and other incentives, to make environmentally harmful investments more difficult – and to encourage the kind needed to stabilise the climate and protect biodiversity.

But that requires genuine partnerships that typically are built not just with trust, but cash on the table.

Making money was the driving force of the company behind the doomed Titan submersible and it involved “very little in the way of science”, OceanGate’s former operations director has said.

The vessel imploded on its way to the wreckage of the Titanic in June last year, killing all five people on board.

David Lochridge, who fulfilled the role for two years before being sacked in January 2018, has told a commission into the disaster, that “the whole idea behind the company was to make money”.

He backed up what other ex-employees had already said about the firm’s head, Stockton Rush, that he was volatile and difficult to work with.

Mr Rush was among those who died in the tragedy, along with British billionaire adventurer Hamish Harding, father and son Shahzada and Suleman Dawood and Frenchman Paul-Henri Nargeolet.

In a report he wrote after inspecting the first Titan hull, Mr Lochridge said he was “appalled” by the O-ring – a type of seal – and described the hull as “porous paper. It was disgusting”.

But the second Titan hull, the one used in the fateful voyage, was little better, he said, explaining that “they reused these domes. They reused these ceiling faces. Everything was reused. It’s all cost.”

Titan, he said, was “an abomination of a submersible”.

Mr Lochridge alleged the company’s lawyers wrote a “threatening” letter after he raised a complaint with a US safety agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).

He told the hearing he had “no confidence whatsoever” in the way the Titan was being built in 2017 and put shortcomings down to “cost-cutting”, “bad engineering decisions” and “the desire to get to the Titanic as quickly as they could to start making a profit”.

“There was a big push to get this done, and a lot of steps along the way were missed,” he added.

CEO Stockton Rush had “no experience building submersibles”, and [former engineering director] Tony Nissen was hiring “children that were coming in straight out of university. Some hadn’t even been to university yet”.

He continued: “There was no experience across the board within that organisation. It was nothing. It was all smoke and mirrors, all the social media that you see about all these past expeditions, they always had issues with their expeditions.”

The submersible made its final dive on 18 June 2023, losing contact with its support ship around two hours later.

Rescuers rushed ships, planes, and other equipment to an area around 435 miles (700km) south of St John’s, Newfoundland.

The search for the Titan attracted global attention and the wreckage was eventually found on the ocean floor around 300m from the Titanic wreck, according to officials.

One-year-old twin girls, conjoined at the head, have been successfully separated during a 14 hour operation led by a leading British surgeon.

Professor Noor ul Owase Jeelani from Great Ormond Street Hospital used leading mixed reality technology to complete the complex procedure on Minal and Mirha in Turkey.

Both are recovering in hospital and are expected to make full recoveries and lead normal lives when they return home to Pakistan next month.

The operation at the Ankara Bilkent City Hospital on 19 July, which included a local team of medics, required two surgical stages and was completed over three months, with the final surgery taking 14 hours.

The girls, who were born in Pakistan, are called craniopagus twins because they are joined at the head.

They shared vital blood vessels and brain tissue and separation of the pair required extremely intricate surgery.

Mixed reality (MR) combines 3D images with the physical world and is used to increase precision during complex operations. It enhances a surgeon’s view of a patient by mixing digital content – like 3D scans – while remaining in the real world.

A high definition 3D model was created of the twins to help train medics in Ankara on what to expect in the operating theatre, as well as allowing the UK-based team to prepare and rehearse the surgery.

Professor Jeelani said: “The technology developed to undertake this work makes a lot of the more routine surgeries we do, safer, less invasive and more effective.

“To be able to give these girls and their family a new future where they can live independently and enjoy their childhood is a special privilege,” he said.

He has led several surgeries involving conjoined twins including three-year-old boys in Brazil in 2022, one-year-old twin girls in Israel in 2021, and in 2019 twin two-year-old girls from Pakistan.

The work was supported by Gemini Untwined, a charity founded by Mr Jaleeni to raise funds for siblings born joined at the head.

According to Gemini figures, one in 60,000 births results in conjoined twins, and only 5% of these are craniopagus children.

The life expectancy of twins who are not separated is very low. About 40% of twins fused at the head are stillborn or die during labour.