The wealth of the 10 richest people in the world – a list dominated by US tech billionaires – increased by a record amount after Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election, according to a widely cited index.

The Bloomberg Billionaires Index estimated that the world’s 10 wealthiest people gained nearly $64bn (about £49.5bn) on Wednesday, the largest daily increase since the index began in 2012.

Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, registered the largest increase with a $26.5bn addition to his fortune, which now stands at $290bn. The prominent backer of Trump’s campaign, benefited from a surge in the share price of Tesla, the electric carmaker where he is chief executive and in which he owns a 13% stake.

The gains came as tech business leaders, including Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of Facebook parent Meta, and Apple’s Tim Cook publicly congratulated Trump on his election win...

... very credible sources have reported seeing UFOs — unidentified flying objects. Now they’re called Unexplained Aerial Phenomena, or UAP. But whatever you call them, the U.S. government has lately begun taking these mystery objects seriously. Very seriously. And it’s recruited a lot of scientists to investigate what’s behind them (albeit quietly).

We still don’t know what the pilots and others have seen. But here’s what’s motivated the new and growing scientific interest in them...

Social media users were shocked over an “alien” creature that washed ashore in Australia with some labeling it the “freakiest thing” they’d ever seen.

“I’ve never seen anything quite like this before!” wrote the sea denizen’s discoverer Vicki Evans in a post with a photo on a community Facebook page. “Nature never ceases to amaze!”

The beachcomber happened across the freaky flotsam while walking along Horseshoe Bay in Port Elliott, South Australia, The Advertiser reported.

Evans included photos of the oceanic oddity, which is long and riddled with gelatinous tendrils that are tipped with shells, like maritime hair-braid beads.

Many Facebook users were equally baffled by the vermicelli-esque tentacles, with one writing, “That might just be the freakiest thing I’ve ever seen!!”

“Wow, it looks long judging by scale of dog,” one said, referring to a curious pooch seen inspecting the creature in the photo...

Every country has its ghost stories, its mythical monsters and its ghoulish urban legends. But the United Kingdom – the home of the Gothic novel and the birthplace of paranormal investigation – may stake a claim to being the most haunted country on Earth.

With one of the world's highest concentrations of castles and no shortage of centuries-old pubs and coaching inns, there are plenty of reputedly haunted places to enjoy a drink or a meal, or even lay your head for the night – if you're feeling brave.

In addition, the country's relatively small size means it's possible to combine several of these places into one ghost-heavy itinerary. Here's where travellers with a penchant for the paranormal should head to get spooked this Halloween...

• Skirrid Inn, Abergavenny, Wales
• Chillingham Castle, Northumberland
• Whitby, North Yorkshire
• Ancient Ram Inn, Gloucestershire
• Edinburgh Castle, Scotland

It’s witching hour deep in the Nevada desert. The time of night when ghosts and demons are most likely to appear. I’m standing with a torch in an eerie, dark bedroom of the self-proclaimed “most haunted motel in America” to try and glimpse the paranormal in action.

“Can you feel that cold air?” says Christopher Alefeld, my ghost hunting guide for the night. “You can feel it in some of the rooms, it just feels different. More tense”.

Our ghost-detecting equipment (an “EMF Meter”) bleeps and lights up with activity, indicating it has picked up on changes in a nearby electromagnetic field. It feels like I’m a member of the Ghostbusters when I’m told a sudden unexplained spike in the EMF reading is considered evidence of the paranormal.

But here at the Clown Motel it’s a regular occurrence. They even have a disclaimer on their site about the potential risks involved with a supernatural encounter. And, yes, you heard correctly – because your run-of-the-mill regular haunted motel just ain’t scary enough, this is a clown-themed haunted motel...

A mysterious radio station that has broadcasted a monotone buzzing sound and the occasional odd voice for decades has left scientists baffled.

The shortwave radio station, found on frequency 4625 kHz, has been running for at least 50 years. It has been appropriately nicknamed 'The Buzzer'.

But rumors as to its origins continue to swirl online today.

One alarming theory is that the sound is a signal which, if ceases, indicates a nuclear attack is imminent. Others say the buzzing sound is a foreign government's attempts to communicate with visiting alien species.

However, the most common theory among experts is that the radio waves come out of Russia, which may be reserving the frequency for an impending emergency...

... A truism of combat is that whoever shoots first wins, and having a drone wait while a human makes a decision can cede the initiative to the enemy. Warfare at its core is a competition—one with dire consequences for the losers. This makes walking away from any advantage difficult.

Experts believe the “man in the loop” is indispensable, now and for the foreseeable future, as a means of avoiding tragedy, says Zach Kallenborn, an expert on killer robots, weapons of mass destruction, and drone swarms with the Schar School of Policy and Government. “Current machine vision systems are prone to making unpredictable and easy mistakes.”

Mistakes could have major implications, such as spiraling a conflict out of control, causing accidental deaths and escalation of violence. “Imagine the autonomous weapon shoots a soldier not party to the conflict. The soldier’s death might draw his or her country into the conflict,” Kallenborn says. Or the autonomous weapon may cause an unintentional level of harm, especially if autonomous nuclear weapons are involved, he adds.

While physical courage may not be necessary to take lives, Kallenborn notes that the human factor retains one last form of courage in the act of killing: moral courage. That humans should have ultimate responsibility for taking a life is an old argument. “During the Civil War folks objected to the use of landmines because it was a dishonorable way of waging war. If you’re going to kill a man, have the decency to pull the trigger yourself.” Removing the human component leaves only the cold logic of an artificial intelligence…and whatever errors may be hidden in that programmed logic.

If autonomous weapons authorized to open fire on humans is an inevitable future, as some armies and experts think it is, will AI ever become as proficient as humans in discerning enemy combatants from innocent bystanders? Will the armies of the future simply accept civilian casualties as the price of a quicker end to the war? These questions remain unanswered for now. And humanity may not have much time to wrestle with these questions before the future arrives by force...

... The belief in ghosts is a funny thing. Despite there being no evidence to support their existence, ghosts have haunted humanity wherever they have settled across the planet. Every age and every culture has its own type of ghost and ghost stories, each shaped by its own peculiar context. And despite the rise of scientific thinking in the 20th and 21st centuries, the belief in unquiet spirits is still very much alive...

Since the shocking revelation about the US Government's UFO research programme in 2017, the topic of extraterrestrial visitors has gradually shifted from conspiracy theories to mainstream discussion.

In recent times, military experts have sworn before the US Congress that the Pentagon ran a "multi-decade" programme which collected and attempted to reverse-engineer crashed alien crafts.

However, the official government "disclosure" of contact with aliens, whether through interstellar craft landings or the recently reported "non-human technological signature" allegedly detected by an Australian radio telescope, seems as distant as ever.

Nick Pope, who was once in charge of analysing UFO reports for the Ministry of Defence, shared his unsettling theory about why that might be with Simon Holland in a leaked email...

Most people imagine philosophers as rational thinkers who spend their time developing abstract logical theories and strongly reject superstitious beliefs. But several 20th-century philosophers actively investigated spooky topics such as clairvoyance, telepathy – even ghosts.

Many of these philosophers, including Henri Bergson and William James, were interested in what was called “psychical research”. This was the academic study of paranormal phenomena including telepathy, telekinesis and other-worldly spirits.

These thinkers attended seances and were attempting to develop theories about ghosts, life after death and the powers exhibited by mediums in trances. My recent archival research has been looking at how these topics shaped 20th-century philosophy...

Halloween’s roots lie in the ancient festival Samhain. Celebrated on the evening of 31 October and into 1 November, Celts believed this was when the boundary between the living and the dead was at its thinnest. They would make offerings to their gods around a bonfire, and dress in costumes to confuse the malevolent spirits that might wander the earth.

It’s no surprise, therefore, that today we gather in the darkened evenings of autumn to share a ghost story or two – a tradition that has lasted centuries.

From medieval hauntings to Victorian messages from the dead, explore ten ghost stories from history…

The childhood home of the late Queen Mother, Glamis Castle, has been declared one of the most haunted places to visit in the UK this Halloween.

Located in Angus, Scotland, Glamis Castle has royal connections that go back over a thousand years, and grisly spot where Malcolm II of Scotland was murdered in 1034.

Even before the castle was built, there were warnings that the land was cursed, and its original location was changed from a nearby hill after workers claimed to hear a voice say: “Build not on this enchanted spot, where man hath neither part nor lot, but build down in yonder bog, where it will neither shake nor shog!”

Ghosts claimed to haunt the walls of Glamis Castle include the Tongueless Woman – a maid said to have been murdered after discovering a secret of the Earl. She is rumoured to appear with blood spilling from her mouth...