What happened
King Charles highlighted the importance of Nato and the continued backing of Ukraine in a speech to the US Congress, placing defence cooperation at the centre of the UK-US alliance. Speaking during a state visit marking 250 years of American independence, he warned that the world had become “more volatile and more dangerous”, and that joint security efforts remained essential.

Who said what
The King called for “unyielding resolve” in support of “Ukraine and her most courageous people” to achieve a lasting peace. He said US leadership lay at the “heart of Nato”, safeguarding both continents.

The King “sprinkled well-crafted jokes” in among his “carefully chosen references” to the US and Britain’s shared history, said The New York Times, and received “standing ovations and laughter across both sides of the aisle”.

“Simply put, the King nailed it,” said Republican Senator Lindsey Graham.

What next?
Behind the “jovial address” were comments “laced with plenty of shade”, said Politico. His “trademark British understatement” was “strong on subtext”. This was a speech that “will be read as a veiled plea to Donald Trump to return to the US’s traditional European alliances and restore his country’s role as a defender of liberal values”, said The Guardian.

What happened
The United Arab Emirates has announced that it will leave the Opec and Opec+ groups of major oil-producing nations next month after nearly 60 years of membership. Emirati officials had long floated the possibility of quitting the cartel, blaming its quotas for unfairly curtailing its oil exports. And it has recently criticised fellow Arab and Gulf states for not doing enough to protect it from Iranian attacks.

Who said what
The decision reflects the UAE’s “long-term economic vision” and desire to increase investment in its energy production sector, said a statement published by the state news agency.

This is “the beginning of the end of Opec”, Saul Kavonic, head of energy research at MST Financial, told the BBC. “With the UAE leaving, Opec loses about 15% of its capacity.” Saudi Arabia, the group’s de facto leader, will “struggle to keep the rest of Opec together”. This is “a fundamental geopolitical reshaping of the Middle East and oil markets”.

What next?
The World Bank has warned that the war in the Middle East will cause energy prices to rise by about a quarter on average this year.

The giant kraken, a mythical marine beast, may not be entirely fictional. New evidence suggests that octopuses up to 62 feet long likely roamed the waters of ancient Earth, ripping and devouring any prey in their path.

These gigantic octopuses might have been formidable predators of the ocean approximately 100 million years ago, according to a study published in the journal Science. “With their large bodies, long arms, powerful jaws and advanced behavior, they represent what could be described as a real Cretaceous Kraken,” Professor Yasuhiro Iba, a paleontologist at Hokkaido University in Japan and the lead author of the study, told Reuters. The invertebrates would have “rivalled” and “possibly even preyed upon apex predators such as mosasaurs and plesiosaurs”, said The Guardian.

Although octopuses are some of Earth’s oldest animals, they are difficult to study from the past because they lack hard external shells and have very few fossils. So the researchers examined the fossilised beaks of the animals, revealing two extinct species: Nanaimoteuthis jeletzkyi and Nanaimoteuthis haggarti. The beaks and jaws were also used to deduce the size of the creatures – between 23 and 62 feet – as well as their feeding habits.

However, there may be some inaccuracies in the findings because the researchers used “error-prone” methods in estimating the size of the octopuses, Dr René Hoffmann, a paleontologist focusing on fossil cephalopods at the Ruhr University Bochum in Germany, told Live Science.

Despite this, the results provide valuable new information about the ancient animals. “It’s a big old planet,” Dr Neil Landman, a paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, told The Associated Press. “So we have lots to look at to piece together the marine ecosystem through time.”