There is a magnificent, snow-white wolf on the cover of Time Magazine today – accompanied by a headline announcing the return of the dire wolf.

This now extinct species is possibly most famous for its fictional role in Game of Thrones, but it did exist – more than 10,000 years ago – when it roamed across the Americas.

The company Colossal Biosciences is behind today’s headlines. It announced that it used “deft genetic engineering and ancient DNA” to breed three dire wolf puppies and to “de-extinct” the species.

But while the young wolves – Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi – represent an impressive technological breakthrough, independent experts say they are not actually dire wolves.

Zoologist Philip Seddon from the University of Otago in New Zealand explained the animals are “genetically modified grey wolves”.

Colossal publicised its efforts to use similar cutting edge genetic techniques to bring back extinct animals including the woolly mammoth and the Tasmanian tiger.

Meanwhile experts have pointed to important biological differences between the wolf on the cover of Time and the dire wolf that roamed and hunted during the last ice age.

Paleogeneticist Dr Nic Rawlence, also from Otago University, explained how ancient dire wolf DNA – extracted from fossilised remains – is too degraded and damaged to biologically copy or clone.

“Ancient DNA is like if you put fresh DNA in a 500 degree oven overnight,” Dr Rawlence told BBC News. “It comes out fragmented – like shards and dust.

“You can reconstruct [it], but it’s not good enough to do anything else with.”

Instead, he added, the de-extinction team used new synthetic biology technology – snipping out pieces of DNA and inserting them into the genetic code of a living animal that has its entire biological blueprint in tact, in this case a grey wolf.

“So what Colossal has produced is a grey wolf, but it has some dire wolf-like characteristics, like a larger skull and white fur,” said Dr Rawlence. “It’s a hybrid.”

Dr Beth Shapiro, a biologist from Colossal Biosciences, said that this feat does represent de-extinction, which she described as recreating animals with the same characteristics.

“A grey wolf is the closest living relative of a dire wolf – they’re genetically really similar – so we targeted DNA sequences that lead to dire wolf traits and then edited grey wolf cells… then we cloned those cells and created our dire wolves.”

According to Dr Rawlence though, dire wolves diverged from grey wolves anywhere between 2.5 to six million years ago.

“It’s in a completely different genus to grey wolves,” he said. “Colossal compared the genomes of the dire wolf and the grey wolf, and from about 19,000 genes, they determined that 20 changes in 14 genes gave them a dire wolf.”

The edited embryos were implanted in surrogate domestic dog mothers. According to the article in Time, all three wolves were born by planned caesarean section to minimise the risk of complications.

Colossal, which was valued at $10bn (£7.8bn) in January, is keeping the wolves on a private 2,000-acre facility at an undisclosed location in the northern US.

The pups certainly look like many people’s vision of a dire wolf and the story has gathered global attention. So why is this scientific distinction important?

“Because extinction is still forever,” Dr Rawlence told BBC News. “If we don’t have extinction, how are we going to learn from our mistakes?

“Is the message now that we can go and destroy the environment and that animals can go extinct, but we can bring them back?”

The Green Party of England and Wales is aiming for a “record” number of councillors as it looks to increase its power base for an eighth election in a row, party co-leader Adrian Ramsey has said.

The party is looking to build on its successes, after passing 800 councillors for the first time last year.

The local elections in England on 1 May will be a major test for the Greens who quadrupled their number of MPs to four at last year’s general election – but have failed to match the poll increases seen by Reform UK.

Speaking at the Green Party’s campaign launch on Tuesday, co-leader Carla Denyer said her party offers a “positive change” compared to “old tired parties”.

The Green Party leadership predict these elections will lead to a “record-breaking” year for the party.

The party is seeking to win over voters “disillusioned” with mainstream politics.

Ramsey argued the UK was at a “crossroads”, where political instability means smaller parties can help shape the future direction of the country.

Reform is “throwing everything” at the local election “because they want to take advantage of voters feeling understandably let down by Labour and the Conservatives”, Denyer told campaigners.

“But we are here to say that voters have another choice – a positive choice – instead of one of the tired old parties, or worse a party that is divisive, dishonest, in disarray,” she added.

The Greens have failed to match the recent polling successes of Reform, which has overtaken the Tories and been neck-and-neck with Labour in recent national polls.

In contrast the Greens have remained on around 9% in the polls since the general election – while the Liberal Democrats have remained around 14%.

Asked about the party’s polling, Ramsey to BBC Breakfast: “The polls that matter are how people vote in elections.”

The Greens argued their “track record of delivering” is a key point of difference with smaller parties like Reform who are also looking to make in-roads at the local elections.

Green councillors are part of the ruling administration on 40 councils – including Bristol City Council, where the party took control in 2024.

Last year the Greens also became the largest party on Hastings Borough Council and have big numbers on councils including East Hertfordshire, Babergh, East Suffolk, Mid Suffolk, Lewes, Folkestone and Hythe and the Forest of Dean.

The party unveiled its local election pitch in Warwickshire – where the Greens are the largest party on Warwick District Council.

Green leadership of Warwick Council had led to a £5m investment “in improving the quality of council homes to keep bills down and keep homes warm”, Ramsey said.

He added: “These are the sorts of practical things that Green councillors are doing – both for the environment, for people and for affordable housing right around the country.”

About 1,650 seats will be contested on 14 county councils, eight unitary authorities, one metropolitan district, and in the the Isles of Scilly.

There will also be mayoral elections in the West of England, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough and – for the first time – in Hull and East Yorkshire and Greater Lincolnshire.

Elections to all 21 county councils in England were due to take place.

But last month, the government announced elections would be postponed in nine areas, where the councils are undertaking reorganisation and devolution.

Those areas are Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Thurrock, Surrey, East and West Sussex, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.

Some lenders are set to cut rates on mortgages after turmoil from US President Donald Trump’s tariff policy raised expectations that UK interest rates could be cut further this year.

TSB Bank said it will reduce some two-year fixed rate mortgages by up to 0.25 percentage points on Wednesday, following MPowered Mortgages which trimmed rates across a number of its deals.

Financial markets and economists are predicting that the Bank of England will cut interest rates by more than expected this year to avoid an economic downturn.

The Bank’s main rate stands at 4.5%. It was forecast to reduce it twice this year but the uncertainty created by US tariffs has changed the expectation to three cuts.

Sarah Coles, head of personal finance at Hargreaves Lansdown, said the Bank of England, and other countries’ central banks, “will be really looking to cut interest rates as much as possible in order to support growth”.

“And of course mortgage companies start to price that in right away and we’ve already seen mortgage rates start to fall and we should see plenty of that in the coming days,” she added.

The average mortgage rates on two-year and five-year fixed deals were unchanged on Tuesday, at 5.32% and 5.17% respectively, according to financial information company Moneyfacts, although it said rates were expected to come down in the coming weeks.

Mortgage brokers told the BBC that if so-called swap rates, which lenders use to price loans, stay as they are then some mortgage rates may fall to as low as 3.79% in the coming weeks.

However, the lowest rate deals will not be available to all borrowers, particularly first-time buyers, and may come with a hefty fee.

And many homeowners coming off fixed deals signed before interest rates started rising in mid-2021 will still find themselves in a higher mortgage rate environment.

According to the Bank of England, around a third of those on households will be looking to renew in the next year or two.

A detailed analysis of a full-sized digital scan of the Titanic has revealed new insight into the doomed liner’s final hours.

The exact 3D replica shows the violence of how the ship ripped in two as it sank after hitting an iceberg in 1912 – 1,500 passengers lost their lives in the disaster.

The scan provides a new view of a boiler room, confirming eye-witness accounts that engineers worked right to the end to keep the ship’s lights on.

And a computer simulation also suggests that punctures in the hull the size of A4 pieces of paper led to the ship’s demise.

“Titanic is the last surviving eyewitness to the disaster, and she still has stories to tell,” said Parks Stephenson, a Titanic analyst.

The scan has been studied for a new documentary by National Geographic and Atlantic Productions called Titanic: The Digital Resurrection.

The wreck, which lies 3,800m down in the icy waters of the Atlantic, was mapped using underwater robots.

More than 700,000 images, taken from every angle, were used to create the “digital twin”, which was revealed exclusively to the world by BBC News in 2023.

Because the wreck is so large and lies in the gloom of the deep, exploring it with submersibles only shows tantalising snapshots. The scan, however, provides the first full view of the Titanic.

The immense bow lies upright on the seafloor, almost as if the ship were continuing its voyage.

But sitting 600m away, the stern is a heap of mangled metal. The damage was caused as it slammed into the sea floor after the ship broke in half.

The new mapping technology is providing a different way to study the ship.

“It’s like a crime scene: you need to see what the evidence is, in the context of where it is,” said Parks Stephenson.

“And having a comprehensive view of the entirety of the wreck site is key to understanding what happened here.”

The scan shows new close-up details, including a porthole that was most likely smashed by the iceberg. It tallies with the eye-witness reports of survivors that ice came into some people’s cabins during the collision.

Experts have been studying one of the Titanic’s huge boiler rooms – it’s easy to see on the scan because it sits at the rear of the bow section at the point where the ship broke in two.

Passengers said that the lights were still on as the ship plunged beneath the waves.

The digital replica shows that some of the boilers are concave, which suggests they were still operating as they were plunged into the water.

Lying on the deck of the stern, a valve has also been discovered in an open position, indicating that steam was still flowing into the electricity generating system.

This would have been thanks to a team of engineers led by Joseph Bell who stayed behind to shovel coal into the furnaces to keep the lights on.

All died in the disaster but their heroic actions saved many lives, said Parks Stephenson.

“They kept the lights and the power working to the end, to give the crew time to launch the lifeboats safely with some light instead of in absolute darkness,” he told the BBC.

“They held the chaos at bay as long as possible, and all of that was kind of symbolised by this open steam valve just sitting there on the stern.”

A new simulation has also provided further insights into the sinking.

It takes a detailed structural model of the ship, created from Titanic’s blueprints, and also information about its speed, direction and position, to predict the damage that was caused as it hit the iceberg.

“We used advanced numerical algorithms, computational modelling and supercomputing capabilities to reconstruct the Titanic sinking,” said Prof Jeom-Kee Paik, from University College London, who led the research.

The simulation shows that as the ship made only a glancing blow against the iceberg it was left with a series of punctures running in a line along a narrow section of the hull.

Titanic was supposed to be unsinkable, designed to stay afloat even if four of its watertight compartments flooded.

But the simulation calculates the iceberg’s damage was spread across six compartments.

“The difference between Titanic sinking and not sinking are down to the fine margins of holes about the size of a piece of paper,” said Simon Benson, an associate lecturer in naval architecture at the University of Newcastle.

“But the problem is that those small holes are across a long length of the ship, so the flood water comes in slowly but surely into all of those holes, and then eventually the compartments are flooded over the top and the Titanic sinks.”

Unfortunately the damage cannot be seen on the scan as the lower section of the bow is hidden beneath the sediment.

The human tragedy of the Titanic is still very much visible.

Personal possessions from the ship’s passengers are scattered across the sea floor.

The scan is providing new clues about that cold night in 1912, but it will take experts years to fully scrutinise every detail of the 3D replica.

“She’s only giving her stories to us a little bit at a time,” said Parks Stephenson.

“Every time, she leaves us wanting for more.”