What happened
The King will rubber-stamp a new public holiday in Scotland to mark the country’s men’s football team playing in its first World Cup since 1998. First Minister John Swinney has proposed designating Monday 15 June a day off so fans, businesses and other organisations can celebrate the team’s opening game against Haiti in Boston.

Who said what
Despite the fanfare, said BBC Scotland, the move will only affect staff directly employed by the Scottish government as Holyrood “simply does not have the power to give people across the country an extra, specified day off work”.

MPs south of the border have criticised the move, with shadow transport minister Greg Smith telling The Telegraph: “Everyone wants more bank holidays – but the harsh reality is bank holidays cost the economy billions. I am all for a debate on whether some bank holidays need to change, but more will just leave the county poorer.”

What next?
Scotland’s first match kicks off at 2am UK time on Sunday 14 June and a national holiday “would allow fans to fully enjoy the match without the worry of a Monday morning alarm”, said The Telegraph. But so far there are no such holiday plans for people in England, whose campaign kicks off on 17 June against Croatia in Dallas.

What happened
The Duke of Marlborough has denied strangling his estranged wife, Edla Marlborough. Charles James Spencer-Churchill, 70, appeared at High Wycombe Magistrates’ Court, indicating he would plead not guilty to three counts of intentional strangulation.

Who said what
The court heard Spencer-Churchill, known by his family as Jamie, was accused of “striking” his wife “several times” following an argument in their home’s garden on 13 November 2022 before “putting his hands around her neck”, said The Telegraph. The court was told that on 23 April 2023, the duke “grabbed her, hit her with a closed fist and strangled her” after she ran into a laundry room. The final allegation is that the duke pushed his wife on a bed and “assaulted her after putting his hands tightly around her neck” on 29 January 2024.

What next?
Spencer-Churchill has been granted bail on the condition that he does not contact his estranged wife, prosecution witnesses or Blenheim estate managers. He will appear at Oxford Crown Court on 5 February, where he will be asked to formally enter pleas to the charges.

An exoplanet with a distinct shape is challenging many of the previously held assumptions about planetary formation. PSR J2322-2650b, which has a mass similar to Jupiter and was found using Nasa ’s James Webb telescope, has properties that are in “stark contrast to every known exoplanet orbiting a main-sequence star”, according to a study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

“The planet orbits a star that's completely bizarre – the mass of the sun, but the size of a city,” said study co-author Michael Zhang. PSR J2322-2650b is also unusually close to its star – a full orbit takes only 7.8 hours – and that proximity means “the star’s gravity is pulling the planet into a lemon shape”, said Scientific American.

What has interested scientists most is the planet’s atmosphere, which is “dominated by helium and carbon, and likely has clouds of carbon soot that condense to create diamonds that rain down onto the planet”, said Space.com. “Everywhere in the universe, where there’s carbon, there tends to be nitrogen and oxygen,” Zhang told Scientific American.

PSR J2322-2650b and its star together form a “black widow system,” which is a “rare type of double system where a rapidly spinning pulsar [the star] is paired with a small, low-mass stellar companion”, said Nasa. Over time, the pulsar “erodes and devours” the formation in its orbit with “jets of radiation”, said Space.com. If that’s the case, we may have witnessed the “very last moments”, with PSR J2322-2650b “on the cusp of being entirely consumed”, said The New York Times.