Kristi Noem, the South Dakota governor who was once considered one of Donald Trump’s top vice-presidential contenders, has been banned from nearly one-fifth of the state after two more tribes voted to prohibit her from their lands.

The move by the Yankton Sioux tribe and the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate tribe last week follows criticism from the governor who has – without evidence – accused tribal leaders of “personally benefiting” from drug cartels. The Oglala, Rosebud, Cheyenne River and Standing Rock Sioux tribes banished Noem earlier this year.

Noem has been the subject of controversy in recent weeks after the Guardian reported that the governor described killing a family dog and a goat in her new book.

Noem also falsely claimed to have met the North Korean dictator, Kim Jong-un – in a passage she later said should not have been included in the book – and claimed to have cancelled a planned meeting with Emmanuel Macron, which the French government denied. The controversies appear to have weakened Noem’s chances of becoming the former president’s running mate.

Her dispute with South Dakota tribes heightened after remarks she made at a forum in March, accusing tribal leaders who had been critical of her catering to drug cartels.

“We’ve got some tribal leaders that I believe are personally benefiting from the cartels being there, and that’s why they attack me every day,” Noem said. “But I’m going to fight for the people who actually live in those situations, who call me and text me every day and say: ‘Please, dear governor, please come help us in Pine Ridge. We are scared.’”

The Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate said it had moved to ban Noem after she made statements that were “injurious to the parents of tribal children”, Kelo, a local TV station reported.

In a statement announcing the ban in April, the Rosebud Sioux said the decision was based not only on Noem’s recent comments but an “ongoing strained relationship” with the governor, who took office in 2019.

The tribe cited Noem’s support of the Keystone XL pipeline, her opposition to checkpoints on reservation borders established by the Cheyenne River Sioux and Oglala Sioux during the pandemic, and her support of the removal of “significant sections” of Native American history from state social-studies standards, among other issues.

“Governor Noem claims she wants to establish meaningful relationships with tribes to provide solutions for systemic problems. However, her actions as governor show blatantly otherwise,” the tribe said in a statement.

“Her disingenuous nature towards Native Americans to further her federal political ambitions is an attack on tribal sovereignty that the Rosebud Sioux tribe will not tolerate.”

The tribe said it would acknowledge Noem only after she issues a public apology and presents a “plan of action” for supporting and empowering the Lakota people.

In response to the wave of bans, Noem again repeated her claims about the tribes’ leadership. “Tribal leaders should take action to ban the cartels from their lands and accept my offer to help them restore law and order to their communities while protecting their sovereignty,” Noem said.

Cal Jillson, a politics professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, said that unlike previous disputes, Noem seems to be “stoking it actively, which suggests that she sees a political benefit”. He said it is likely Noem does not mind the focus on this conflict rather than on other recent controversies.

“I’m sure that Governor Noem doesn’t mind a focus on tensions with the Native Americans in South Dakota, because if we’re not talking about that, we’re talking about her shooting the dog,” Jillson said.

With at least five minutes of stoppage time still to run, the stadium announcer asked the Aston Villa supporters to remain in their seats at the final whistle for a lap of appreciation. At that particular moment, it was wishful ­thinking as Villa went for the jugular. Seconds earlier, Moussa Diaby had blasted at goal, forcing Alisson into a smart, right-hand save to prevent an improbable 4-3 comeback victory against Liverpool and bedlam in the stands.

Many fans had spent the ­previous 10 minutes on their feet after Jhon Durán’s late double secured an unlikely point that may prove priceless in the race to secure a Champions League berth. Just when it seemed inevitable Liverpool would yield ­victory from Jürgen Klopp’s final away game, the substitute striker, unpredictable at the best of times, flipped the mood in the stands. His goals, in the 85th and 88th minutes, in this breathless contest may well define Villa’s season.

A point edges Villa closer to fourth and a place in the Champions League. Unai Emery will doubtless be glued to events at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Tuesday, where anything but a Spurs win against Manchester City will secure Villa’s return to Europe’s ­premier competition for the first time since 1982-83.

Villa got off to a disastrous start, Emiliano Martínez turning the ball into his own net with the game a ­minute old and, though Youri ­Tielemans replied, goals by Cody Gakpo and Jarell Quansah looked to have earned Liverpool a relatively simple victory. “Jürgen Klopp, la, la, la, la,” sang the visiting support.

Not so fast. Never have Villa cele­brated a draw quite so emphatically. Before kick-off the centre-circle banner swirled and swayed to the thud of Jeff Beck and Villa hope it will have the stars of the Champions League on the giant flag next season. “Hopefully that gets us Champions League football,” Villa’s captain, John McGinn, said as he addressed a boisterous crowd. For now, one of the league’s last live storylines – the protracted battle for fourth – could run to the final day, when Villa head to Crystal Palace and Spurs visit Sheffield United. The only caveat is that first Spurs must beat the defending champions.

Durán’s equaliser was a touch fortunate, Diaby’s overcooked pass cannoning off his thigh and looping in after the Frenchman skipped clear of Alexis Mac Allister in midfield. It was not the purest of strikes. As Klopp put it, “somebody hit somebody and the ball goes in”. Not that it will bother Durán and Villa. Suddenly Diego ­Carlos’s inconceivable miss on 36 minutes, when he contrived to slice Leon ­Bailey’s cross wide from a yard out at 2-1 down, felt a long time ago.

Conceding inside 62 seconds courtesy of a goalkeeper howler is one way to kill the pre-match buzz. Tielemans, back from a groin injury, surrendered possession on halfway and Harvey Elliott stepped on to the gas, zoomed upfield and played a one-two with Mohamed Salah. ­Elliott sent a ­seemingly harmless cross in from the right but the ball clinked Pau Torres’s left shoulder and that proved enough to bamboozle Martínez at his near post. He shifted from right to left in good time but the ball squirmed through his hands and, while the Villa goalkeeper tried to claw it back with his right glove, the damage was already done.

“I’m so glad that Jürgen is a Red,” came the adoring chant on loop from the visiting supporters, keen to shower Klopp with love on his final away day in charge. ­Martínez’s error stunned the home support but they were soon on their feet, Tom Hanks – one of Villa’s celebrity fans – celebrating Tielemans’s ­leveller. Ollie Watkins toyed with Quansah and then comfortably beat the defender to the byline, where the Villa striker cut the ball back for an unmarked Tielemans to leather in.

Hanks was interviewed pitchside before kick-off and said he hoped to witness “a little bit of history”. A pulsating game certainly delivered. “I am exhausted, more than the players,” Emery said, smiling.

As Emery added afterwards, his team rarely lie down. Even after the freakish Martínez error and the manner in which an unmarked Gakpo converted from close range after meeting Joe Gomez’s low cross at the back post to retake the lead. Even after Villa started the second half dreadfully, Liverpool storming into a 3-1 lead three minutes after the restart, Quansah looping a header in off a post. Lucas Digne did little to prevent the Liverpool centre-back making clean contact on Elliott’s cross at the back post. “Martínez is the No 1 but he’s human, he can make a mistake sometimes,” Emery said.

McGinn had said they underachieved by failing to win the Europa Con­ference League but qualifying for the Champions League would be the perfect tonic. Durán, the hulking 20-year-old signed from Chicago Fire 16 months ago, entered in place of the injured substitute Nicolò Zaniolo on 79 minutes and, regardless of Emery’s rallying message, even he surely never envisaged what happened next. Klopp’s perfect goodbye – not for the first time this season – was blemished. Villa, meanwhile, are close to a return to the European elite, a stage Klopp knows well. “Danke für alles,” read a banner in the away end. Klopp doffed his black cap.

The White House has condemned an attack on an aid convoy heading to Gaza by Israeli settlers who threw packages of food into the road and set fire to the vehicles.

Video of the incident on Monday at Tarqumiya checkpoint, west of Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, showed settlers blocking the trucks and throwing boxes of much-needed supplies on the ground. Photographs from the scene showed piles of damaged aid packages and drifts of rice and flour across the road.

Late on Monday, photos began circulating on social media showing the trucks on fire.

Israel has faced heavy international pressure to step up the flow of aid into Gaza, where international organisations have warned of a severe humanitarian crisis threatening a population of more than 2 million people.

“It is a total outrage that there are people who are attacking and looting these convoys coming from Jordan, going to Gaza to deliver humanitarian assistance,” US national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters.

“We are looking at the tools that we have to respond to this,” he added. “We are also raising our concerns at the highest level of the Israeli government and it’s something that we make no bones about – this is completely and utterly unacceptable behaviour.”

Referring to a US report issued on Friday on Israeli compliance with international humanitarian law, Sullivan said that the Israeli state had hindered aid deliveries in the recent past but had improved the flow sufficiently, so as not to be subject to restrictions on military aid that might have been required under US law.

“We believe that there were periods over the last few weeks where there were restrictions that had to be worked through,” Sullivan said. “But at the time we put that report forward, we felt that there was sufficient work being done by the Israeli government with respect to the facilitation of humanitarian aid, that we did not make a judgment that anything had to be done in terms of US assistance.”

Police do not appear to have intervened to stop the looting, though four people including a minor were later reported to have been arrested.

This is not the first time that settlers have tried to stop the flow of aid to Gaza, which is already only a fraction of that needed by the population of the embattled territory.

Last week, Israeli demonstrators blocked a road near the desert town of Mitzpe Ramon to protest against the delivery of aid trucks into the strip. The protesters – who say the aid is helping Hamas and want to block its passage until all Israeli hostages are freed – formed a sit-in protest as they scattered rocks across the road to prevent vehicles from passing, creating standstill traffic.

Israel’s siege of Gaza has created what aid officials are referring to as “man-made starvation”, with the territory facing the threat of mass deaths from famine with children already dying from hunger.

In March, the international court of justice ordered Israel to allow unimpeded access of food aid into Gaza, where sections of the population are facing imminent starvation.

Aid efforts have been further complicated by the temporary closure of the headquarters of the main channel for humanitarian support for Palestinians after weeks of violent protests and arson attacks by Israeli right-wingers.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees announced it was closing its East Jerusalem headquarters on Thursday after a fresh attack by what Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the agency, described as “Israeli extremists”.

Hundreds of starving and stranded brown pelicans have turned up along the California coast in recent weeks in what wildlife advocates have described as a “crisis”.

In Newport Beach in southern California, lifeguards came upon two dozen sick pelicans on a pier last week. The Wetlands and Wildlife Care Center in Huntington Beach, the non-profit caring for the animals, said they had treated more than 100 other birds who were anemic, dehydrated and extremely underweight.

“They are starving to death and if we don’t get them into care, they will die,” said Debbie McGuire, the center’s executive director. “It really is a crisis.”

Bird Rescue, a non-profit that operates wildlife centers in northern and southern California, reported taking in more than 235 sick pelicans in the past three weeks. At least 40% of the pelicans have significant injuries after becoming entangled in fishing line and hooks, the non-profit said.

The California department of fish and wildlife (CDFW) confirmed in a statement last week that high numbers of the federally protected species are showing signs of malnutrition. The agency said that since late April it has received increased reports of brown pelicans stranded from Santa Cruz county to San Diego county, and that wildlife rehabilitation facilities “began admitting an unusually high number of debilitated pelicans”.

“Most birds are coming in cold, emaciated and anemic – essentially starving to death,” Dr Rebecca Duerr, Bird Rescue’s research and veterinary science director, said in a statement. “Many of them are exhibiting severe injuries – especially from fishing hooks and line.”

Most pelicans in northern California have come from Monterey and Santa Cruz, while birds in southern California have been rescued from unusual places, including a lake at SoFi Stadium and a fire station in Malibu, Bird Rescue said.

Many pelicans have died. The cause is still unclear, though the CDFW said the animals appear to be succumbing to problems related to starvation. Some wildlife experts have pointed out that the birds are malnourished despite the bounty of marine life along the Pacific coast.

In 2022, a similar event saw nearly 800 pelicans admitted into wildlife care facilities – about half of which were released, according to the CDFW.

The agency said it was conducting postmortem exams of the birds who died this year and testing those currently under the care of wildlife rehabilitation centers.

The Wetlands and Wildlife Care Center reported nearly 100 pelicans in its care on Friday. The first step in caring for the sick animals is to warm them, Dr Elizabeth Wood, the center’s medical director, said in a video.

“The great news is the vast majority are recovering if we can get them through those first few critical hours of hypothermia,” she said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report

Rain sluiced down on a grey Dublin afternoon but the crowd clustering around the portal ignored the downpour and waved at a man cycling towards the screen on a sunny morning in Manhattan.

He gazed back, waved and wobbled before recovering his balance and vanishing down Fifth Avenue, eliciting a cheer from the sodden observers on North Earl Street.

Monday was day five of a live stream that has connected Ireland’s capital with New York via an interactive sculpture and webcam that allows people to see, but not hear, each other.

Seconds after the cyclist, a woman appeared walking her dog. She stopped, stared at the screen and grinned. She picked up her dog and waved his paw. The crowd in Dublin, huddled under umbrellas, gave another cheer. “I wish I’d brought my dog,” said Amy Ferguson, 24.

The fleeting, playful interactions between people separated by 3,000 miles and five time zones exemplified the hope of authorities when the art installation launched on 8 May. “Two amazing global cities connected in real time and space,” said New York’s chief public realm officer, Ya-Ting Liu.

“I would encourage Dubliners and visitors to the city to come and interact with the sculpture and extend an Irish welcome and kindness to cities all over the world,” said Dublin’s lord mayor, Daithí de Róiste.

Not all, however, have followed that utopian exhortation. Some on the Irish side have flashed body parts, while others displayed images of swastikas and the twin towers aflame on 9/11. One man made a theatrical show of snorting what appeared to be cocaine. Police escorted away a woman who was grinding against the portal.

“Portal to hell: NYC-Dublin live video art installation already bringing out the worst in people,” lamented the New York Post, which blamed Dublin’s “Guinness-glugging patrons”.

Suzanne Byrne, 33, who lives near the portal in Dublin, said she was not surprised. “Why did they put it here? They’re all mad on this street. At night-time it’s like The Purge,” she said, citing the dystopian film franchise.

Designed by a Lithuanian artist, Benediktas Gylys, each structure has an 8ft-wide screen and weighs 3.5 tonnes. The New York portal is at the junction of Broadway, Fifth Avenue and 23rd Street. Its Dublin counterpart is at the corner of North Earl Street and O’Connell Street, the heart of the inner city. The project is to continue until autumn, though some commentators have wondered if provocative behaviour will curb the experiment.

A pair of matching portals in 2021 connected Vilnius, Lithuania’s capital, with Lublin in Poland. The artist Paul St George connected London and New York in 2008 via a device called the Telectroscope, which had Jules Verne-style dials and flourishes.

The cold and wet did not deter tourists and natives from lingering and taking selfies at Dublin’s portal. Most were delighted, all curious. They watched a young New Yorker speed-walk past the screen, only to return and gaze in puzzlement as people waved at her. She laughed, indicated her watch, mimed typing and mouthed “gotta go to work” before vanishing.

“I saw it on Instagram and had to come. It’s cool,” said Sarah Jackson, 23, a student. She was phlegmatic about the reports of rowdiness. “It’s a bit wild. It shows the good and bad of Dublin.”

Sandy Garrido, 32, a tourist from Chile, said she first saw it on TikTok. “It’s so fun to connect with people this way.”

Justin Miller, 28, an American who is studying history at Trinity College Dublin, said he had half-jokingly asked friends in the US to visit the New York portal. He shrugged off the Irish side’s notoriety. “Hopefully it’s mainly a positive thing rather than people being weird. It shouldn’t take away from the fun.”

Johnny McEntee, the former White House Trump aide closely linked to plans for radical federal government reform should Donald Trump win re-election, stoked outrage with a TikTok video in which he claimed to give unhoused people fake money, thereby to ensure their arrest.

“So I always keep this fake Hollywood money in my car,” McEntee said in the video posted last week by The Right Stuff, a dating site for rightwingers of which McEntee is a co-founder.

“So when a homeless person asks for money, then I give them like a fake $5 bill. So I feel good about myself. They feel good. And then when they go to use it, they get arrested. So I’m actually like helping clean up the community, you know, getting them off the street.”

The video included a caption: “Just a joke. Everyone calm down.”

But that only pointed to the outrage it stoked.

Tara Setmayer, a former Republican operative now an adviser to the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, called McEntee “a cruel, indecent POS”, or piece of shit.

“I can’t imagine being this awful as a human being,” Setmayer added. “Which explains why I’m proudly not Maga [a Trump supporter] and working so hard to defeat this ilk.”

David Corn, the Washington bureau chief of Mother Jones magazine, asked: “How broken must you be to do this and think it’s funny?”

In 2018, McEntee was bruised but not broken by his own unhousing: from the White House on the orders of John Kelly, the former US Marine Corps general who was Trump’s second chief of staff.

A former college football quarterback, McEntee was Trump’s “body man”, an aide who follows the president closely to make sure every need is met. Kelly reportedly fired him over security clearance issues related to an online gambling habit.

In 2020, McEntee returned to the White House as director of the Presidential Personnel Office. Though the Atlantic would later quote a “high-profile” Trump cabinet secretary as calling McEntee “a fucking idiot”, the same outlet quoted another senior official as saying, “He became the deputy president.”

As described by the Atlantic, McEntee led a fierce drive for loyalty which “made the disastrous last weeks of the Trump presidency possible … back[ing] the president’s manic drive to overturn the election, and help[ing] set the stage for the January 6 assault on the Capitol”.

McEntee is widely reported to be involved in preparations for a Trump second term meant to feature far-reaching reforms, under the label Project 2025, and purges of government officials deemed insufficiently loyal.

As McEntee’s video about giving unhoused people fake money spread around the internet, however, some observers pointed to a possible problem with federal law, should he ever prove not to be joking.

Under 18 US Code section 480: “Whoever, within the United States, knowingly and with intent to defraud, possesses or delivers any false, forged, or counterfeit bond, certificate, obligation, security, treasury note, bill, promise to pay, bank note, or bill issued by a bank or corporation of any foreign country, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.”

Jannine Mancilla, 32, and Nicole Macias, 34, bonded over a shared love of DIY fashion and hand-me-downs, and frustrations with an environmentally-destructive industry and a throwaway culture that creates huge amounts of waste. So they came up with a radical idea: asking people to offer up their old clothes – for free. Their Los Angeles clothing swaps have grown from humble origins to “overwhelmingly” popular events that receive hundreds of pounds of clothing donations each month, helping attendees save the planet and keep money in their pockets.

Jannine Mancilla: All of us at Radical Clothes Swap are first-gen Mexican American and grew up with an immigrant, sparse mentality. I grew up with hand-me-downs from my siblings and cousins. We had that cookie container that never had cookies in it, that we would reuse to hold a sewing kit. I grew up mending my own pants. When skinny jeans were a thing, I would sew them by hand.

Nicole Macias: I still get my brothers’ hand-me-downs. There’s nothing like a beat-up old shirt or a sweater to sleep in or just hang around in. Bipoc communities have always done this because we’re resourceful. It was ingrained in our upbringing and our lifestyle. A lot of times we’ve had to, because we couldn’t afford to buy new wardrobes every new school year.

In 2021, I was invited to participate in a back-to-school community event for young people, and I thought about what I could bring that wouldn’t require the kids to spend money. I had been inspired by a company called Suay Sew Shop that does textile repurposing and has a free rack at their store.

I was blown away by that concept – you could just grab a sweater off a rack and it’s free. So I decided to have a free rack at the back-to-school event. I donated five items from my own closet and did a shout-out on social media asking people for clothes they wanted to get rid of.

The response was overwhelming. I got all types and sizes of clothing: pajamas, winter coats, jeans, dresses, shorts, workout clothes, you name it. I couldn’t even fit all the bags in my car and had to borrow a friend’s catering van to haul everything with me.

After that I did four more swaps and ended up with more and more clothes. Jannine, who I’d never met, hit me up on social media and she was like: “Hey, I like what you’re doing. I’ve done this before. Do you want to team up?” I had already agreed to a community event in [the Los Angeles neighborhood of] Inglewood and told her to come. She was like: “Yeah, let’s do it.”

I showed up with my clothes, my wagon and some hangers. Jannine showed up with a canopy and a table and some hangers. We were hanging clothes from the canopy. It was so ugly, but people loved it.

Jannine: People were so thrown off by the concept that it was all free.

We are ruled by capitalism, and if people aren’t profiting, they don’t take an interest in it. Giving out something for free without expecting anything in return is radical.

We don’t ask anything of people. We don’t even ask them to post and tag us. When we created an Instagram, we were throwing out names. Nicole threw out the word “radical” and we were like: “Wait, that fits, because what we’re doing is very, very radical and unheard of. Who just gives out clothes or anything for free without expecting anything in return?”

That’s how we came up with Radical Clothes Swap. There’s literally no catch: you’re keeping money in your pockets and saving the environment a little bit by shopping for free.

Nicole: At first people were unsure, but now we have a following. Since March, we’ve probably held about five per month. Angel City Brewery is our main swap, every second Saturday of the month. We’re also at the Rivian Pasadena Hub every last Sunday.

We typically get up to 100-plus folks that visit us and, on average, about 50 of those people donate clothes to swap. We’ve estimated that each of those people donates about 6-10lb of clothes, so we receive up to 500lb of clothes per event. We tend to go home with extra donations, which we store for future events.

A lot of people don’t understand that a lot of thrift stores are so overwhelmed with donations that sometimes they just throw clothes away. For people who do thrift, they’re also starting to find that the quality is not good. A lot of it is fast fashion that’s priced at regular store prices.

Jannine: What also makes it different from thrift stores is the connections that people make. It’s so beautiful to see people come to our events who don’t know each other, and then we turn around and we see them laughing and talking. It’s not just a place for people to shop for free, but to build community and make connections with other like-minded folks.

When we were growing up it wasn’t cool to wear second-hand clothes, but now it is. White people are thrifting more, so prices are rising because there’s more demand. In a way, this is us taking back that power that we’ve had, something that we’ve always done.

Nicole: Our end goal is to open up a physical space where we can host more educational workshops, like mending and fabric dyeing. We’d love to expand outside of Los Angeles and California.

I feel like Bipocs are always the trendsetters, and this concept of swapping is coming full circle. There’s no money involved. There’s no exchange. It’s community at its core, just giving back.

• The DIY Climate Changers is a series about everyday people across the US using their own ingenuity to tackle climate change in their neighborhoods, homes and backyards. If you would like to share your story, email us at [email protected]

Actor Steve Buscemi is OK after he was punched in the face by a man on a New York City street, his publicist said on Sunday.

The 66-year-old star of Fargo and Boardwalk Empire was assaulted on Wednesday morning in Manhattan and taken to a nearby hospital with bruising, swelling and bleeding to his left eye.

“Steve Buscemi was assaulted in Mid-Town Manhattan, another victim of a random act of violence in the city,” according to a statement from his publicist. “He is OK and appreciates everyone’s well wishes.”

The assault was first reported by the New York Post.

The New York Police Department put out a statement on the assault on Wednesday. Buscemi’s representative confirmed Sunday that the unidentified assault victim in the police statement was the actor.

The police said there were no arrests and the investigation was continuing.

Buscemi’s Boardwalk Empire co-star Michael Stuhlbarg was hit in the back of the neck with a rock while walking in Manhattan’s Central Park on 31 March. Stuhlbarg chased his attacker, who was taken into custody outside the park.

Night skies were lit up around the world by a spectacular display of the northern lights on Friday, with sightings seen widely across Europe, the US and even New Zealand (as the southern lights). The lights occur when charged particles emitted from the sun reach the Earth’s atmosphere and collide with gases around the magnetic poles triggering breathtaking night-time auroras.

In the US, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) issued a “severe” G4 geomagnetic storm event, but by Friday evening it announced conditions had reached “extreme” G5 levels, the highest level on the space weather scale, for the first time since October 2003.

G5 geomagnetic storms carry the potential to cause impacts to modern day infrastructure, such as inducing strong currents in power grids and disrupting satellite communication signals. The Halloween storm of October 2003 caused power outages in Sweden and damaged transformers in South Africa.

A large sunspot cluster about 17 times the size of Earth has been the primary source for this rare event by producing several strong solar flares since Wednesday last week. The region of the sun continued to be active over the weekend, with NOAA saying another period of G4-G5 geomagnetic storms were possible later on Sunday.

Meanwhile, parts of North America continue to endure a historic heatwave through May. In Mexico, the hottest day in history for the month of May was observed last week, with temperatures reaching a brutal 51.1C (124F) in Gallinas on 9 May. This temperature is less than a degree below the all-time national record in Mexico during any month.

It also set a new monthly record for the whole of the North American continent for May, surpassing the 50.5C recorded on 27 May 1973 in Ballesmi, also in Mexico.

The extreme heat has put immense pressure on the country’s power grid, with blackouts lasting several hours across numerous cities. There have been a reported 159 active wildfires as a result of the extreme heat, covering about 186,500 acres of land, including parts of Mexico’s protected natural areas.

The heatwave also comes during a water crisis, with much of Mexico experiencing a moderate to exceptional drought. There is no end in sight for this heatwave, with temperatures forecast to reach low to mid-40C through at least the rest of the month.

The Covid-19 pandemic will “look minor” compared with what humanity faces from the growing number of superbugs resistant to current drugs, Prof Dame Sally Davies, England’s former chief medical officer, has warned.

Davies, who is now the UK’s special envoy on antimicrobial resistance (AMR), lost her goddaughter two years ago to an infection that could not be treated.

She paints a bleak picture of what could happen if the world fails to tackle the problem within the next decade, warning that the issue is “more acute” than climate change. Drug-resistant infections already kill at least 1.2 million people a year.

“It looks like a lot of people with untreatable infections, and we would have to move to isolating people who were untreatable in order not to infect their families and communities. So it’s a really disastrous picture. It would make some of Covid look minor,” said Davies, who is also the first female master of Trinity College, Cambridge.

AMR means that some infections caused by bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites can no longer be treated with available medicines. Exposure to drugs allows the bugs to evolve the ability to resist them, and overuse of drugs such as antibiotics accelerates that process.

Widespread resistance would make much of modern medicine too risky, affecting treatments including caesarean sections, cancer interventions and organ transplantation.

“If we haven’t made good strides in the next 10 years, then I’m really scared,” Davies said.

Without the development of new treatments “it’ll grind on for decades and it won’t burn out. We know that with viruses, they burn out, you generally develop herd immunity, but this isn’t like that.”

Last week the UK government announced a national action plan on AMR, with commitments to reduce its use of antimicrobials in both humans and animals, strengthen surveillance of drug resistant infections, and incentivise industry to develop new drugs and vaccines.

Launching the plan, Maria Caulfield, the health minister, said: “In a world recovering from the profound impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, international collaboration and preparedness for global health challenges have taken on an unprecedented level of importance.”

Davies has spent more than a decade warning about the problem, but said it truly hit home when her “beautiful” goddaughter, Emily Hoyle, died of a drug-resistant infection aged 38.

Hoyle had cystic fibrosis and had undergone two lung transplants before she was infected by Mycobacteroides abscessus, which was resistant to treatment.

The team treating her “tried everything”, Davies said. “But I would think for me, looking back from the year before she died, I thought it was likely this would kill her.

“And she knew about six months before she died that this was not going to be treatable and that she would probably die of it.

“She had a very beautiful death – she was very dignified, laughing, joking, making light of it to husband, family, all of us. She was very special.

“But she gave me permission to use her story as my goddaughter because, well, it got personal for me, the Christmas before last.”

Hoyle’s death has reinforced her determination to turn the tide, Davies said, describing it as a question of intergenerational fairness.

“My generation and older have used the antibiotics [and] we’re not replenishing them. We’re not making sure that our food is produced with as low usage as possible. And I owe it to my children and – if I have them – grandchildren and the next generations to do my best.”

There are also issues of fairness in the present day, she said. One death in five caused by AMR is in a child aged under five, usually in sub-Saharan Africa, where Davies said the problem is “particularly prevalent and disastrous”.

Many of the countries are also being hit hard by the climate crisis and Davies said the two problems were interlinked.

“If we don’t control and mitigate AMR, then it will kill more people before climate change does,” she said.

“Climate will play out in many ways, but think about flood water, think about sewage, think about displacement, think about storms and what they spread and the lack of clean water if you’ve got drought; infections do go up.”

There are global efforts to reduce inappropriate use of drugs such as antibiotics in medicine, although the Covid-19 pandemic stalled progress on many of those initiatives. Few new antibiotics have been created in recent years and the issue is “made more complicated” because it involves sectors such as farming as well as human health.

More than two-thirds of antibiotics go into farm animals, Davies said, usually to promote growth or prevent infections in overcrowded, unsanitary conditions rather than treat specific infections.

Some Asian fish farms were “tipping antibiotics in with the fish food”, partly because it is cheaper, she said, but also because of a lack of research into which infections occur in local breeds of fish such as tilapia, and which vaccines might be needed.

“If you don’t have appropriate, careful use,” she said, “you’re risking it really getting out of control.”

Animals, including humans, excrete up to 80% of the antibiotics they take in, she points out, “contaminating the environment”. Factories producing antibiotics may not control their effluent, allowing “dramatic amounts” to enter water systems.

Despite her warnings, Davies insisted she is a “glass half-full” person, brimming with enthusiasm as she discusses projects that find a different approach. A major US poultry supplier has stopped using antibiotics, “so you can do it”, she said.

Breakthroughs such as genomics and artificial intelligence are “reinvigorating” the science of new antibiotics. She is also hopeful that programmes to incentivise pharmaceutical companies to create new antibiotics will bear fruit.

Ideally, such medicines should be held in reserve as a last resort if existing drugs fail to work, so bugs do not develop resistance to them. However, this makes it hard for companies to guarantee a return on investment in research and development.

Various countries are exploring alternative means of funding, such as a subscription model by NHS England, paying a fixed annual fee for access to antimicrobials, regardless of volume used.

Davies is part of the UN Global Leaders Group on AMR. In September, the UN will hold a high-level meeting on the issue and the group is pushing for targets by 2030, including reducing global human deaths from AMR by 10%, cutting antimicrobial use in agriculture by at least 30%, and ending the use of “medically important antimicrobials for human medicine” in farming where they are not needed to treat disease.

While “honoured” to be part of the group, she said more formal structures were needed. “We need inter-country governance of some form, a bit like a COP for climate change,” Davies said.

Particularly important would be the establishment of an independent scientific panel similar to the IPCC, “otherwise, it’s academics saying, ‘oh, we need this target’. And however correct that is, if you haven’t taken the low- and middle-income countries on the journey, there’s no reason why they would accept those – or should accept them.”