The House easily quashed Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene’s resolution to oust the Republican speaker, Mike Johnson, on Wednesday, as members of both parties came together in a rare moment of bipartisanship to keep the chamber open for business.

The vote on the motion to table Greene’s resolution was 359 to 43, as 196 Republicans and 163 Democrats supported killing the proposal.

Greene took to the House floor on Wednesday evening to announce her plans, prompting boos from fellow Republicans present in the chamber. Her request triggered a countdown clock, as House rules stipulated that members had to vote on the matter within two legislative days. House Republicans chose to take up the matter immediately, as the resolution was widely expected to fail.

House Democratic leaders previously indicated that they would vote to kill Greene’s resolution, and the vast majority of their caucus took the same position on Wednesday. However, 32 Democrats and 11 Republicans opposed the motion to table the resolution, and seven members voted “present”.

Speaking to reporters after the vote, Johnson thanked his colleagues for helping him to hold on to a post he has held for six and a half months.

“I want to say that I appreciate the show of confidence from my colleagues to defeat this misguided effort. That is certainly what it was,” Johnson said. “As I’ve said from the beginning and I’ve made clear here every day, I intend to do my job. I intend to do what I believe to be the right thing, which is what I was elected to do, and I’ll let the chips fall where they may. In my view, that is leadership.”

Greene’s maneuver appeared to catch many Republicans off guard, after the hard-right congresswoman spent much of the past few days meeting with Johnson to address her concerns about his leadership. She has repeatedly criticized Johnson for passing significant bills, including a government funding proposal and a foreign aid package, by relying on Democratic support.

Greene had said she would force a vote on the motion to vacate this week, but she appeared to back away from that commitment on Tuesday.

“We’ll see. It’s up to Mike Johnson,” Greene told reporters when asked if she still planned to demand the vote. “Obviously, you can’t make things happen instantly, and we all are aware and understanding of that. So now the ball is in his court, and he’s supposed to be reaching out to us – hopefully soon.”

Donald Trump, who has voiced support for Johnson in recent weeks, reportedly called Greene over the weekend, but she would not disclose details about the call to reporters.

“I have to tell you, I love President Trump. My conversations with him are fantastic,” Greene said. “And again, I’m not going to go into details. You want to know why? I’m not insecure about that.”

Even though her motion to vacate overwhelmingly failed, Greene and her allies already appear poised to turn the issue into a litmus test for fellow Republican members. Congressman Thomas Massie, a co-sponsor of Greene’s resolution, shared a picture on X of the 11 Republicans who voted against the motion to table.

“It’s a new paradigm in Congress,” Massie said. “[Former Democratic speaker] Nancy Pelosi, and most [Republicans] voted to keep Uniparty Speaker Mike Johnson. These are the eleven, including myself, who voted NOT to save him.”

The Republicans who rallied around Johnson returned the fire by accusing Greene and her allies of promoting chaos in the House. The episode came less than a year after the ouster of former Republican speaker Kevin McCarthy, which brought the chamber to a standstill for weeks until Johnson’s election.

Congressman Mike Lawler, who faces a tough reelection campaign in New York this November, told reporters on Wednesday: “This type of tantrum is absolutely unacceptable, and it does nothing to further the cause of the conservative movement. The only people who have stymied our ability to govern are the very people that have pulled these types of stunts throughout the course of this Congress to undermine the House Republican majority.”

Congressman Sean Casten, an Illinois Democrat, offered a more concise and cutting assessment. Writing on X, he said of Greene: “She is so, so dumb. And yet she keeps talking.”

Three men have been arrested and charged with sexually preying on children via Meta’s social networks in New Mexico, the state’s attorney general announced on Wednesday.

The arrests stemmed from an investigation into the potential harm to children caused by Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, codenamed “Operation MetaPhile”. Undercover agents posed as children, whom the three men solicited for sex, according to the criminal complaint. The sting operation is part of an ongoing lawsuit launched by Raúl Torrez’s office in December that alleges Meta has allowed its social media platforms to become marketplaces for child predators.

“This operation was focused on one specific point, that is the danger presented by Meta, and its social media platforms don’t just exist in the virtual world. They actually endanger children in the real world,” Torrez said at a press conference.

On Tuesday, Marlon Kellywood, 29, was arrested outside a motel in Gallup, New Mexico, and charged with child solicitation by electronic communication device and attempted criminal penetration of a minor. Earlier the same day, Fernando Clyde, 52, was arrested and charged with the same crimes.

“This is Mark Zuckerberg’s fault; this is the fault of executives of a company that has extraordinary resources at its disposal and has chosen time and time again to place profits over the interests of children,” said Torrez.

When approached for comment, Meta issued a statement: “Child exploitation is a horrific crime, and we’ve spent years building technology to combat it and to support law enforcement in investigating and prosecuting the criminals behind it … We use sophisticated technology, hire child safety experts, report content to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and share information and tools with other companies and non-profits to help root out predators across the many platforms they use.”

The men had allegedly sent “extraordinarily graphic” material that was “truly horrifying” to the undercover agents they believed to be girls as young as 12 years old using Facebook Messenger.

The third man, Christopher Reynolds, 47, is a registered sex offender and was brought into custody several weeks ago, Torrez said. Undercover investigators turned their focus to him after concerned parents reported he was targeting their 11-year-old daughter. He has been charged with child solicitation.

“They expressed quite clearly a sexual interest in children,” Torrez said. “These are individuals who explicitly used this platform to find and target children.”

The agents posing as children did not initiate conversations about sexual contact, per Torrez. Instead, they were all located and contacted by the three men charged, he said, who were able to find children through the design features on Facebook and Instagram.

Since the New Mexico lawsuit was filed in December, Torrez’s office has updated the legal filing several times to include a list of fresh allegations.

Internal Meta documents obtained by the attorney general’s office as part of its investigation have also revealed that the company estimates about 100,000 children using Facebook and Instagram endure online sexual harassment each day.

The lawsuit also alleges Facebook and Instagram have been profiting from placing corporate adverts from companies such as Walmart and Match Group next to content potentially promoting child sexual exploitation, citing internal company documents and emails.

The suit follows a two-year Guardian investigation, which revealed that the tech giant was struggling to prevent people from using its platforms to buy and sell children for sex.

In January, Torrez told the Guardian he wants his lawsuit to provide a platform to introduce new regulations that would see Meta change how it does business and “prioritize the safety of its users”. Meta has filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit.

On 14 August 2023, heavy rainfall in north India triggered flash floods and landslides, devastating the region. Kishori Lal, the sarpanch (head) of the Kothi Gehri village in the Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh, recalls the events of that day: “Our link road connecting to the state highway and a few homes along that road were completely devastated.”

Torrential downpours in nearby Rewalsar, a picturesque lake town popular with tourists, led to several water bodies bursting their banks. The subsequent flooding and landslides wrecked homes in Lal’s village, necessitating the evacuation of hamlets and severing vital links to the outside world. With roads submerged, the ensuing closure of the Mandi-Rewalsar-Kalkhar Road and link roads left scores of tourists stranded and local communities isolated.

Amid this chaos, the resilience of Nog, a village in Bilaspur district, stands out. While roads across the region, including those in and around Kothi Gehri, remained closed, the road leading to Nog was accessible in less than one week, according to officials.

The reason lies in an innovative approach: soil bioengineering.

Concrete retaining walls 10ft high are the traditional go-to solution used to protect roads from hillside slopes. However, these structures leave exposed slopes vulnerable to erosion during intense rains, exacerbating the risk of landslides.

Sanjeev Dogra, vice-president of the Nog panchayat, the local governing body, describes the threat landslides used to pose: “Our road used to suffer landslides every monsoon, which threatened villagers living nearby,” he says. Before the implementation of bioengineering measures, Nog’s road endured month-long closures on average during every monsoon season.

The turning point came in 2010, when bioengineering techniques were used to stabilise exposed slopes at two locations on the new link road to Nog, as part of the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY), the Prime Minister’s Village Roads Scheme. Launched in 2000, the flagship government programme seeks to provide reliable all-weather connectivity to unconnected rural communities across the country.

“We treated the exposed surface of the potential landslide area near Nog by covering it with wire-mesh netting, planted shrubs and grasses within the grid,” says Pawan Kumar Sharma, director of projects at Himachal Pradesh Road and Infrastructure Development Corporation Ltd (HPRIDCL). “Where landslides were triggered by erosion from a local river, we planted brush hedges and hardwood cuttings to bind the soil.”

The green infrastructure took root within a single season, gradually fortifying the slopes, which were better able to withstand the effects of last year’s deluge.

Neha Vyas, a senior environmental specialist with the World Bank, defines bioengineering as a subset of green infrastructure. This ecological engineering technique involves the strategic planting of vegetation and the incorporation of other organic materials to stabilise soil and enhance ecosystem resilience.

By harnessing the natural properties of plants and their root systems, soil bioengineering can be a sustainable and cost-effective approach to mitigate environmental hazards and promote landscape restoration, which is particularly good in fragile ecosystems.

In Himachal Pradesh, soil bioengineering has “involved the use of vegetation, both living and dead plants, such as bamboo, in conjunction with simple civil engineering structural elements such as catch drains, gabion walls and others,” says Vyas.

The Nog bioengineering initiative was the first of more than 250 mountainous road stretches treated with the World Bank’s assistance. Dalip Chauhan, president of the Jubbal panchayat, attests to its efficacy, citing reduced damage along the state highway #10 during last August’s catastrophic floods.

“If soil bioengineering is designed after due investigation and analysis, and monitored during execution, it effectively controls erosion along roadways, which is crucial to maintain the integrity of the road section and can even help during the heavy rains that are becoming more commonplace due to climate change,” says Vyas.

“Soil bioengineering can also improve the stability of slopes along roads, thereby reducing the risk of landslides, increasing safety for people and protecting assets,” she adds. “By absorbing much more water, bioengineered slopes can reduce the runoff and the ensuing erosion, water logging and damage.”

Beyond that, she reckons that choosing the right vegetation species could lead to carbon dioxide absorption, habitat creation for wildlife, increased ecosystem resilience and additional livelihood sources for local communities.

Harvesting grass planted by the roadside has saved Sonali, a 38-year-old cattle-rearing resident of Nog, many visits to the forest where the species is usually found. “Planting vegetation that can be used as fodder by the road to help protect it is doubly useful for us,” she tells Dialogue Earth. “I source about half of the fodder I need from the roadside. I wish such species were planted alongside all the roads in the area.”

Soil bioengineering can be a useful tool in combatting erosion and stabilising slopes, but the planning and maintenance is critical.

Even though they understand the need for robust vegetation growth, contractors sometimes prioritise cost over effectiveness. To maximise efficacy, experts advise a multi-pronged approach that ensures vegetation growth, with Vyas pointing out that “horticultural principles must be used along with the application of engineering design principles to build structures that will protect the plant communities as they grow to maturity and function as they would in their natural settings.”

Himachal Pradesh considers it good practice to also appoint supervisors to watch over and maintain sites, and Sharma highlights the importance of selecting low-maintenance indigenous plants “with aesthetic value, medicinal value, commercial value and grasses that can be used as forage for cattle.”

Vyas describes investments in bioengineering as “investments in safety and sustainability, which are much more cost-effective and visually more appealing than hardcore engineering and less environment-friendly structures.”

As Himachal Pradesh prepares for future climatic uncertainties, soil bioengineering emerges as a potential innovative lifeline to help protect lives and livelihoods.

“While it is impossible to defeat nature, surely we can use bioengineering and allied techniques to make roads that are as climate-resilient as possible,” says Sharma.

Steve Albini, the vocalist, guitarist and producer who was at the helm of a series of the most esteemed albums across the US alternative music scene, has died aged 61 from a heart attack suffered at his recording studio. Staff at his studio, Electrical Audio, confirmed the news to Pitchfork.

As well as fronting the bands Big Black, Rapeman and Shellac, who all pushed at the boundaries of post-punk and art-rock, Albini also produced – or, to use his preferred term, engineered – albums by Nirvana, Pixies, PJ Harvey and Jimmy Page and Robert Plant. He was noted for his DIY and punk ethos, resisting streaming services and refusing to take royalties from the recordings he produced for other artists.

Shellac were preparing their first album since 2014, To All Trains, for release next week.

Born in California in 1962, Albini’s musical inspirations came from the punk movement, chiefly the Ramones but also the weirder end of the genre with bands such as Devo and Pere Ubu. He moved to the suburbs of Chicago to study journalism, and was drawn into the fertile underground music scene in the city, contributing to zines and working for the punk label Ruthless Records.

He started his own musical project, Big Black, initially a solo endeavour that soon became a quartet. Their debut album Atomizer was released in 1986, and the second album, Songs About Fucking – characterised by its seething guitar tone and drum machine pulses – became a landmark in the decade’s US punk scene and earned an admirer in Robert Plant, who later had Albini produce his album with Jimmy Page, Walking Into Clarksdale.

Big Black had already split up by the time Songs About Fucking was released – “I prefer to cut it off rather than have it turn into another Gross Rock Spectacle”, Albini reasoned – and he founded his next band Rapeman in 1987. Named after a Japanese manga, it was perhaps the most high-profile example of Albini’s eagerness to prod and provoke, and he later expressed regret for the band name, calling it “flippant”.

Mindful of not wanting to hop between band projects, Albini has said he wanted his next band to endure – and they did. Shellac, formed in 1992, became a singular light in the US art-rock scene, playing a minimalist yet playfully rhythmic style with riveting interplay between Albini, drummer Todd Trainer and bassist Bob Weston. They released five albums, plus To All Trains coming next week.

Alongside his own music, he nurtured his craft behind the mixing desk. A prominent early credit came on Surfer Rosa, the 1988 debut by Pixies, followed by numerous others as the grunge scene flourished in the early 90s: the Jesus Lizard, Tad, the Breeders and more. He helped to define the raw sound of PJ Harvey’s Rid Of Me in 1993, and that year had perhaps his most famous credit: Nirvana’s famously forbidding In Utero, the follow-up to Nevermind. His stark presentation of the band’s bleak songs disturbed the commercially-minded label, Geffen, who Albini clashed with – the album ended up featuring two singles that were given brighter production compared with the Albini material.

Even as he occasionally freaked out the mainstream like this, Albini became adored by musicians for his unpretentious approach, foregrounding the intentions of each artist rather than bringing in a particular production flavour. He also favoured analogue techniques, brusquely announcing “fuck digital” on the sleevenotes to Songs About Fucking.

His success allowed him to set up Electrical Audio in 1995, and he appeared in the credits for numerous other landmark acts in American indie that went way beyond the noisy work he was generally known for: Joanna Newsom, Low, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and others. British artists such as Manic Street Preachers, Mogwai and Jarvis Cocker also sought his expertise.

Possessed of a gleefully scabrous sense of humour, Albini riled up plenty of artists and fans alike with insults and provocations – such as jokingly dedicating a Big Black single to fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. He became contrite in later years, saying in a viral thread on X (then Twitter) in 2021: “A lot of things I said and did from an ignorant position of comfort and privilege are clearly awful and I regret them”. In a 2023 Guardian interview, he said: “Even as the right wing became more openly fascist, we were still safe – and that’s where my sense of responsibility kicks in, like: ‘Oh yeah, I get it now. I was never going to be the one that they targeted.’”

Albini was also a celebrated poker player, winning two coveted bracelets at World Series of Poker tournaments and hundreds of thousands of dollars in winnings.

Among those paying tribute to Albini were the actor Elijah Wood, who said his death was “a heartbreaking loss of a legend”.

David Grubbs, whose band Gastr Del Sol worked with Albini, called him “a brilliant, infinitely generous person, absolutely one-of-a-kind, and so inspiring to see him change over time and own up to things he outgrew”.

Albini is survived by his wife, filmmaker Heather Whinna.

Hunger and disease are rising in Latin America after a year of record heat, floods and drought, a report by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has shown.

The continent, which is trapped between the freakishly hot Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, probably suffered tens of thousands of climate-related deaths in 2023, at least $21bn (£17bn) of economic damage and “the greatest calorific loss” of any region, the study found.

The climate chaos, caused by a combination of human-driven global heating and a natural El Niño effect, is continuing with devastating floods in the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre, which have killed at least 95 people and deluged swathes of farmland after the world’s hottest April in human history.

Global heat records have now been broken for 11 months in a row, causing death and destruction across many parts of the planet. Latin America and the Caribbean have experienced some of the worst effects.

In a summary of last year’s toll in this region, the WMO said disasters and climate change, along with socioeconomic shocks, are the main drivers of acute food insecurity, which affects 13.8 million people.

As the climate warms, diseases are spreading across a greater area. The WMO noted that more than 3m cases of dengue fever were reported in the first seven months of 2023, breaking the previous annual record for the region. Uruguay experienced its first cases of chikungunya and Chile widened alerts about the Aedes aegypti mosquito vector.

There were an average of 36,695 heat-related excess deaths each year in the region in the first two decades of this century. Last year’s toll has not yet been calculated, but it is likely to exceed the average given the record temperatures and prolonged heatwaves in many areas.

Mexico had a record high of 51.4C on 29 August, and many areas sweltered in a prolonged heatwave. By the end of the year, 76% of Mexico was experiencing some degree of drought. In October Acapulco was hit by the first ever category 5 hurricane to make landfall on the Pacific coastline. Hurricane Otis killed at least 48 people, damaged 80% of the city’s hotels and left damages calculated at $12bn.

Other areas of Central and South America endured unusually fierce heat and prolonged drought. The Panama Canal had 41% less rainfall than normal, causing difficulties for one of the most important conduits of world trade.

Brazil, the biggest country in Latin America, experienced record winter heat in excess of 41C and severe droughts in the Amazon rainforest, where the Rio Negro recorded its lowest level in more than 120 years of observations, fires raged around Manaus and more than 100 baiji river dolphins died in the hot, shallow, polluted waters of Lake Tefé.

The south of Brazil has repeatedly suffered deadly flooding. At least 65 people died in São Paulo in February 2023 after torrential rains and landslides. Another 48 were killed and 20,000 displaced in the state of Rio Grande do Sul in September after 300mm of rain fell in 24 hours and now the same southern state is deluged once again. Streets have turned to rivers in Porto Alegre, the capital, forcing the international airport to close while the football pitch of the Arena do Grêmio resembles a lake.

Last year, floods also took lives, disrupted business or ruined crops in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Peru and Bolivia.

Combined with drought, this has hurt agricultural production in one of the world’s most important food production regions. Wheat production in Argentina fell 30% below the five-year average, and a similar loss is expected in the harvest of the grain in the Brazilian state of Paraná and Rio Grande do Sul. Some of these losses have been offset by record maize production in other parts of Brazil, but food prices are rising. Overall, Latin America has suffered significant calorific losses, the report said. In countries that are also experiencing political and economic problems, such as Venezuela, Haiti and parts of Colombia, this is creating a food crisis.

The costs in human lives, lost food production and economic damage are expected to rise for as long as humans continue to burn gas, oil, coal and trees, which emit heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere.

“Sadly, this is probably only the beginning,” said Prof José Marengo, the lead author of the WMO report and director of the Brazil National Center for Monitoring and Early Warning of Natural Disasters. “Extreme events are becoming more frequent and the period of return is becoming shorter.”

I have Jane Fonda to thank for my fitness “discovery” in the late 1980s. Still in my teens, I wore through the carpet doing her workout videos in front of the TV. I also spent hours ploughing up and down the pool at the local leisure centre and honing my muscles at the gym.

I always regarded fitness as my superpower. Something that I worked hard at, for sure, but something that gave me kudos. Keeping fit – I mean, really fit – seemed to me an admirable and noble pursuit. I could fit into nice clothes easily. I could push my body and trust it not to fail. Whatever other qualities I didn’t possess, whatever I wasn’t good enough at, I could walk into a gym or toe a start line for a race and pass muster.

I trained to be a personal trainer, so I could guide others to their “fitness goals”. But it was running that really got me, quickly becoming part of my identity. I ran my first marathon aged 22 – and went on to become a coach, write books about running and host running retreats.

Running may look like freedom, but it can also be about control. Distances must be covered, paces maintained, pounds shed, personal bests (PBs) bettered. I now see that latching on to the pursuit of fitness so young was a way of imposing control on my body, of searching for approval and bringing order to my unravelling family life. It worked, too. But it also became a habit.

Like a magic suit, a fit body protects you from others’ scorn, as well as worries about the usual concerns of ageing, such as weight gain and failing health. But it takes time, energy and discipline to achieve and maintain such a body, requiring rules and restraint that can be life-limiting and reek of patriarchal control.

I was in thrall to fitness for three decades. But, when lockdown happened, when gyms, athletics tracks, swimming pools and running clubs closed, when sporting events were cancelled, when I was limited to solitary runs, a feeling crept over me. What was it all for?

One day, in that endlessly glorious spring, I was running along the riverbank. Running had begun to feel joyless and unusually laboured. That point, a few miles in, when you can step aside from the physicality of the endeavour and just let it happen was proving elusive. I was present, every jarring, heavy-footed step of the way, my cadence spelling out what for, what for, what for? I tried to push through it – until, suddenly, neither my body nor my brain could find a reason to carry on. I slowed to a walk. I stopped my watch. I sat down and had a little cry, the sweat drying on my back. Then I walked home.

It wasn’t a one-off. While I continued to go through the motions, my dedication to fitness felt increasingly hollow. And, frankly, shallow. As Sarah Donaghy said, when I interviewed her about Food Bank Run: “Running can be a solitary – even selfish – endeavour, with its focus on individual performance and PBs.”

While I struggled on throughout that summer, squeezing myself into running like a garment that no longer fitted, I began to regard it as a ball and chain, a drain on my resources. This was a big inconvenience for someone whose career was largely built around running.

Eventually, I could no longer ignore the questions my body and mind were raising. My search for answers led me to reconsider not just my attitude to my body and to running, but to life itself. To finding meaning and purpose, to achievement and ageing and to that ultimate finish line, mortality.

Ageing, without doubt, played its part in this shift. I turned 50 in 2019, and I was beginning to realise that the absence of new PBs wasn’t some kind of temporary blip – it was terminal. Try as you might, you cannot compete with the 30-year-old you, or the 40-year-old you. If running is no longer about improvement, achievement, what can it be, I wondered. What am I getting out of it? What am I putting in? Is there something else I should be doing instead?

For many, this is the point where age grading comes to the fore – many people get great pleasure from being “good for your age”. A part of me has great admiration for the 80- to 90-year-olds training for Masters competitions and pursuing every possible marginal gain. But, as the planet and its human and non-human inhabitants face climate breakdown and all the injustice, inequality, exploitation and loss that comes with it, I can’t help wondering if all that energy could be put to better use.

I stopped running altogether for a while, and was appalled when I could no longer fit into some of my clothes. The shame of my expanding, softening body almost lured me back in, but, once again, my body rebelled, voting, quite literally, with its feet. “Don’t want to slip back into being governed by running,” I wrote in my diary. “Do you really want to be the same person you were a year ago, five years ago, instead of moving forward?”

Four years on, I am less fit than I was. I cannot assume the same protective benefits of fitness on my health. I can’t automatically pick up size 10 garments, nor assume that I can do parkrun in under 22 minutes. Not being able to do these things any longer feels uncomfortable – as uncomfortable as having a visible tummy. But there are benefits, too. All that energy I poured into fitness for three decades is mine again. I think more, I notice more, I write more, I have wider interests. I finished a part-time MA last year, and I volunteer in conservation work. I am more aware of the world around me, good and bad.

In his essay How to Live With Dying, the philosopher and lifelong avid runner John Kaag writes how a cardiac arrest, minutes after finishing a punishing treadmill run, changed his perspective on life. “At a certain point, going the extra mile does not make you a better athlete. It just makes you an idiot,” he says.

There’s still the odd pang for my old fitness level, my former body – and even for the rigours of the pursuit itself. But, whatever I may have lost, I’ve gained so much more. “In the end,” writes Kaag, “most of us wish we’d spent less time on the treadmill, whatever form it might take.”

Hundreds of children identified as potential victims of trafficking are being abandoned by the Home Office and left vulnerable to exploitation, new data reveals.

Released following a freedom of information (FoI) request, figures show that in 2022, 1,871 children identified as possible victims of trafficking or modern slavery dropped off the UK government system conceived to support them once they turned 18.

To access comprehensive help in the UK, suspected victims are assessed under the National Referral Mechanism (NRM). About half of the children who fell out of the NRM when they turned 18 were British.

In total, 70% of the 2,634 children who turned 18 while waiting to be formally identified as a trafficking victim disappeared from the NRM. Half of them had their cases “suspended” by the Home Office as a result of them not giving their consent to stay in the system, while another 20% actively withdrew from the scheme.

Many children do not realise they need to give consent to remain listed on the NRM. Some are not even aware that they have been referred to it.

Anti-trafficking charities described the figures as “alarming”, urging sweeping reforms to protect young victims.

Eleonora Fais, coordinator of the Anti-Trafficking Monitoring Group, a coalition of 17 UK-based anti-trafficking organisations, said: “This data is a wake-up call. We urgently need to improve our services, so that children can receive the support they need.”

Patricia Durr, chief executive of the children’s rights charity ECPAT UK, said: “We are deeply troubled by this alarming data.

“The findings underscore the urgent need for systematic reforms to ensure that young victims of trafficking are not left vulnerable and unsupported as they transition into adulthood,” she added.

The improvements being called for include the rolling out of independent child trafficking guardians – someone who advocates on the youngster’s behalf – to all councils in England and Wales.

The data, which is the latest available, revealed that only 6% of children who turned 18 in the NRM went on to receive support under the government’s modern slavery victim care contract, which is designed to help victims.

Rachel Medina, chief executive of the Snowdrop Project, a Sheffield-based charity that provides long-term support to survivors of modern slavery, which submitted the FoI requests, said: “Worryingly, hundreds of children are falling through gaps in the systems that are meant to protect and support victims of modern slavery.

“The government must take responsibility to ensure that no child’s right to support is overlooked.”

A Home Office spokesperson said: “The targeting, grooming and exploitation of children is deplorable and we remain firmly committed to working with the police and with delivery partners to tackle this horrific crime.
“We have introduced the independent child trafficking guardianship services across England and Wales, which provide an additional source of advice and support for potentially trafficked children. The modern slavery victim care contract provides support to consenting adults in England and Wales.”
A source added that the NRM is consent-based for adults and that if a child becomes an adult after being referred, their consent is required for the process to continue.

Hundreds of the world’s leading climate scientists expect global temperatures to rise to at least 2.5C (4.5F) this century, blasting past internationally agreed targets and causing catastrophic consequences for humanity and the planet, an exclusive Guardian survey has revealed.

Almost 80% of the respondents, all from the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), foresee at least 2.5C of global heating above preindustrial levels,, while almost half anticipate at least 3C (5.4F). Only 6% thought the internationally agreed 1.5C (2.7F) limit will be met.

Many of the scientists envisage a “semi-dystopian” future, with famines, conflicts and mass migration, driven by heatwaves, wildfires, floods and storms of an intensity and frequency far beyond those that have already struck.

Numerous experts said they had been left feeling hopeless, infuriated and scared by the failure of governments to act despite the clear scientific evidence provided.

“I think we are headed for major societal disruption within the next five years,” said Gretta Pecl, at the University of Tasmania. “[Authorities] will be overwhelmed by extreme event after extreme event, food production will be disrupted. I could not feel greater despair over the future.”

But many said the climate fight must continue, however high global temperature rose, because every fraction of a degree avoided would reduce human suffering.

Peter Cox, at the University of Exeter, UK, said: “Climate change will not suddenly become dangerous at 1.5C – it already is. And it will not be ‘game over’ if we pass 2C, which we might well do.”

The Guardian approached every contactable lead author or review editor of IPCC reports since 2018. Almost half replied, 380 of 843. The IPCC’s reports are the gold standard assessments of climate change, approved by all governments and produced by experts in physical and social sciences. The results show that many of the most knowledgeable people on the planet expect climate havoc to unfold in the coming decades.

The climate crisis is already causing profound damage to lives and livelihoods across the world, with only 1.2C (2.16F) of global heating on average over the past four years. Jesse Keenan, at Tulane University in the US, said: “This is just the beginning: buckle up.”

Nathalie Hilmi, at the Monaco Scientific Centre, who expects a rise of 3C, agreed: “We cannot stay below 1.5C.”

The experts said massive preparations to protect people from the worst of the coming climate disasters were now critical. Leticia Cotrim da Cunha, at the State University of Rio de Janeiro, said: “I am extremely worried about the costs in human lives.”

The 1.5C target was chosen to prevent the worst of the climate crisis and has been seen as an important guiding star for international negotiations. Current climate policies mean the world is on track for about 2.7C, and the Guardian survey shows few IPCC experts expect the world to deliver the huge action required to reduce that.

Younger scientists were more pessimistic, with 52% of respondents under 50 expecting a rise of at least 3C, compared with 38% of those over 50. Female scientists were also more downbeat than male scientists, with 49% thinking global temperature would rise at least 3C, compared with 38%. There was little difference between scientists from different continents.

Dipak Dasgupta, at the Energy and Resources Institute in New Delhi, said: “If the world, unbelievably wealthy as it is, stands by and does little to address the plight of the poor, we will all lose eventually.”

The experts were clear on why the world is failing to tackle the climate crisis. A lack of political will was cited by almost three-quarters of the respondents, while 60% also blamed vested corporate interests, such as the fossil fuel industry.

Many also mentioned inequality and a failure of the rich world to help the poor, who suffer most from climate impacts. “I expect a semi-dystopian future with substantial pain and suffering for the people of the global south,” said a South African scientist, who chose not to be named. “The world’s response to date is reprehensible – we live in an age of fools.”

About a quarter of the IPCC experts who responded thought global temperature rise would be kept to 2C or below but even they tempered their hopes.

“I am convinced that we have all the solutions needed for a 1.5C path and that we will implement them in the coming 20 years,” said Henry Neufeldt, at the UN’s Copenhagen Climate Centre. “But I fear that our actions might come too late and we cross one or several tipping points.”

Lisa Schipper, at University of Bonn in Germany, said: “My only source of hope is the fact that, as an educator, I can see the next generation being so smart and understanding the politics.”

Venezuela has lost its last remaining glacier after it shrunk so much that scientists reclassified it as an ice field.

It is thought Venezuela is the first country to have lost all its glaciers in modern times.

The country had been home to six glaciers in the Sierra Nevada de Mérida mountain range, which lies at about 5,000m above sea level. Five of the glaciers had disappeared by 2011, leaving just the Humboldt glacier, also known as La Corona, close to the country’s second highest mountain, Pico Humboldt.

The Humboldt glacier was projected to last at least another decade, but scientists had been unable to monitor the site for a few years due to political turmoil in the country.

Now assessments have found the glacier melted much faster than expected, and had shrunk to an area of less than 2 hectares. As a result, its classification was downgraded from glacier to ice field.

“Other countries lost their glaciers several decades ago after the end of the little ice age but Venezuela is arguably the first one to lose them in modern times,” said Maximiliano Herrera, a climatologist and weather historian who maintains a chronicle of extreme temperature records online.

According to Herrera, Indonesia, Mexico and Slovenia are next in line to become glacier-free, with Indonesia’s Papua island and Mexico having experienced record-high warmth in recent months, which is expected to accelerate the glaciers’ retreat.

“The glacier at Humboldt does not have an accumulation zone and is currently only losing surface, with no dynamic of accumulation or expansion,” said Luis Daniel Llambi, an ecologist at Adaptation at Altitude, a programme for climate change adaptation in the Andes.

“Our last expedition to the area was in December 2023 and we did observe that the glacier had lost some 2 hectares from the previous visit in 2019, [down from 4 hectares] to less than 2 hectares now.”

The world has recently been experiencing the El Niño climate phenomenon, which leads to hotter temperatures and which experts say can accelerate the demise of tropical glaciers.

“In the Andean area of Venezuela, there have been some months with monthly anomalies of +3C/+4C above the 1991-2020 average, which is exceptional at those tropical latitudes,” said Herrera.

Llambi said Venezuela is a mirror of what will continue to happen from north to south, first in Colombia and Ecuador, then in Peru and Bolivia, as glaciers continue to retreat from the Andes.

“This is an extremely sad record for our country, but also a unique moment in our history, providing an opportunity to [not only] communicate the reality and immediacy of climate change impacts, but also to study the colonisation of life under extreme conditions and the changes that climate change brings to high mountain ecosystems.”

In a last-ditch attempt to save the glacier, the Venezuelan government has installed a thermal blanket to prevent further melting, but experts say it is an exercise in futility.

“The loss of La Corona marks the loss of much more than the ice itself, it also marks the loss of the many ecosystem services that glaciers provide, from unique microbial habitats to environments of significant cultural value,” said Caroline Clason, a glaciologist and assistant professor at Durham University.

Venezuelan glaciers had a limited role in water provision for the region, in contrast with countries such as Peru, where tropical glaciers are much more extensive.

“The biggest impact for me of the disappearance of glaciers is cultural,” said Llambi. “Glaciers were a part of the region’s cultural identity, and for the mountaineering and touristic activities.”

Clason said: “That Venezuela has now lost all its glaciers really symbolises the changes we can expect to see across our global cryosphere under continued climate change. As a glaciologist, this is a poignant reminder of why we do the job and what is at stake for these environments and for society.”

More than 800,000 people in Europe and the US appear to have been duped into sharing card details and other sensitive personal data with a vast network of fake online designer shops apparently operated from China.

An international investigation by the Guardian, Die Zeit and Le Monde gives a rare inside look at the mechanics of what the UK’s Chartered Trading Standards Institute has described as one of the largest scams of its kind, with 76,000 fake websites created.

A trove of data examined by reporters and IT experts indicates the operation is highly organised, technically savvy – and ongoing.

Operating on an industrial scale, programmers have created tens of thousands of fake web shops offering discounted goods from Dior, Nike, Lacoste, Hugo Boss, Versace and Prada, as well as many other premium brands.

Published in multiple languages from English to German, French, Spanish, Swedish and Italian, the websites appear to have been set up to lure shoppers into parting with money and sensitive personal data.

However, the sites have no connection to the brands they claim to sell and in most cases consumers who spoke about their experience said they received no items.

The first fake shops in the network appear to have been created in 2015. More than 1m “orders” have been processed in the past three years alone, according to analysis of the data. Not all payments were successfully processed, but analysis suggests the group may have attempted to take as much as €50m (£43m) over the period. Many shops have been abandoned, but a third of them – more than 22,500 – are still live.

So far, an estimated 800,000 people, almost all of them in Europe and the US, have shared email addresses, with 476,000 of them having shared debit and credit card details, including their three-digit security number. All of them also handed over their names, phone numbers, email and postal addresses to the network.

Katherine Hart, a lead officer at the Chartered Trading Standards Institute, described the operation as “one of the largest online fake shops scams that I have seen”. She added: “Often these people are part of serious and organised crime groups so they are harvesting data and may use it against people later, making consumers more susceptible to phishing attempts.”

“Data is the new currency,” said Jake Moore, a global cybersecurity adviser at the software company ESET. He warned such personal data troves could also be valuable to foreign intelligence agencies for surveillance purposes. “The bigger picture is that one must assume the Chinese government may have potential access to the data,” he added.

The existence of the fake shops network was revealed by Security Research Labs (SR Labs), a German cybersecurity consultancy, which obtained several gigabytes of data and shared it with Die Zeit.

A core group of developers appears to have built a system to semi-automatically create and launch websites, allowing rapid deployment. This core appears to have operated some shops themselves, but to have allowed other groups to use the system. The logs suggest at least 210 users have accessed the system since 2015.

SR Labs consultant Matthias Marx described the model as “franchise-like”. He said: “The core team is responsible for developing software, deploying backends, and supporting the operation of the network. The franchisees manage the day-to-day operations of fraudulent shops.”

‘It reeled me in …’

It was a few weeks before Christmas. Melanie Brown, 54, from Shropshire in England, was looking for a new handbag. She put the image of a leather item from one of her favourite German designers, Rundholz, into Google. Immediately a website appeared offering the bag at 50% off the usual £200 retail price. She added it to her cart.

“It reeled me in,” she said. After selecting the bag she spotted other designer clothes from a high-end brand she loves called Magnolia Pearl. She found dresses, tops and jeans, racking up a £1,200 bill on 15 items. “I was getting a lot for the money, so I thought it was worth it,” she said.

But Brown was being ripped off. Over nearly a decade, a network operating from Fujian province in China used what appears to be a single software platform to create tens of thousands of fake online shops.

There are the big global brands such as Paul Smith, haute couture houses such as Christian Dior, but also more niche, much sought-after names such as Rixo and Stella McCartney, and high street retailers like Clarks shoes. Not just clothes – there are fake stores selling quality toys, such as Playmobil, and at least one selling lighting.

About 49 people who say they were scammed have been interviewed for this investigation. The Guardian spoke to 19 from the UK and the US. Their evidence suggests these websites were not set up to trade in counterfeit goods. Most people received nothing in the mail. A few did, but the items were not the ones ordered. A German shopper paid for a blazer and received cheap sunglasses. A British customer received a bogus Cartier ring instead of a shirt and another was sent a non-branded blue jumper instead of the Paul Smith one they had paid for.

Strangely, many who tried to shop never lost money. Either their bank blocked the payment, or the fake shop itself did not process it.

However, all of those interviewed have one thing in common: they handed over their private data.

Simon Miller, the director of policy and communications for Stop Scams UK, said: “Data can be more valuable than sales. If you are hoovering up someone’s card details that data is invaluable then for a bank account takeover.”

SR Labs, which works with corporations to protect their systems from cyber-attacks, believes the scam is operating on two levels. First, credit card harvesting, in which fake payment gateways collect credit card data but do not take any money. Second, fake selling, where the criminals do take money. There is evidence the network took payments processed via PayPal, Stripe and other payment services, and in some cases directly from debit or credit cards.

The network used expired domains to host its fake shops, which experts say can help to avoid detection by websites or brand owners. It appears to have a database of 2.7m of these orphaned domains and runs tests to check which ones are best to use.

In Germany, the owner of a glass bead factory said she had received angry calls almost every day from shoppers asking where their Lacoste clothes were. She found out that an old website of hers, perlenzwoelfe.de, had been used for the scam. She was findable as content she had previously placed on at that address was visible in web archives. She reported the fraud to the police. “The officials just said there was nothing they could do about it.”

It was the same story for Michael Rouah who runs Artoyz, an online store and shop in central Paris selling handmade toys. His full catalogue of products was copied. “They changed the name and used another domain … They stole the images from our website and changed the prices, putting them – of course – much lower.”

He was alerted to the fraud by customers. “We generally can’t do much about it … We explored taking action with a lawyer, but it takes time and it costs money,” he said.

The network appears to have originated in Fujian province. Many of the IP (internet protocol) addresses can be traced back to China, some to the Fujian cities of Putian and Fuzhou.

Payroll documents found in the data suggest individuals were hired as developers and data harvesters and paid salaries through Chinese banks.

There were also three templates for employment contracts, where the employer is listed as Fuzhou Zhongqing Network Technology Co Ltd.

Officially registered in China, and issued with an official unique identifier number, the company gives its address as Fuzhou, the capital of Fujian. It is not clear what connection it has to the network.

The contracts set out strict working conditions. The employee is given a performance score and can increase their salary with a higher ranking. They are judged on whether they refrain from playing video games, watching movies, or sleeping while at work. If staff are sick or take a holiday, their salary is reduced for days missed unless they work overtime.

The data includes a spreadsheet describing the payment between January and October 2022 of 2,410,000 yuan (almost £266,000) in dividends to at least four shareholders of an unnamed company.

The Fuzhou Zhongqing company is now advertising for developers and data collectors via Chinese recruitment websites. The salary for a data collection specialist is 4,500-7,000 Chinese yuan (about £500 to £700) a monthand the business is described as a “foreign trade company that mainly produces sports shoes, fashion clothing, brand bags, and other series”.

The Fuzhou Zhongqing company did not respond to a request for comment.

Action Fraud, the UK’s reporting centre for cybercrime, said it would seek to have the fake web shops taken down.

Online scams are a growing problem. There were 77,000 cases of purchase fraud – where goods are paid for but never materialise – in the UK in the first six months of 2023, a 43% increase compared with the same period in 2022. In the US consumers lost nearly $8.8bn to fraud in 2022, an increase of more than 30% over the previous year. The second most commonly reported scam is related to online shopping fraud.

According to the TSB fraud spokesperson Matt Hepburn, purchase fraud is “the biggest driver” of online financial crime in the UK. He said technology companies should do more to protect consumers. “Search engines and tech platforms must prevent their users from being exposed to fake sites, and swiftly remove the scam content that is reported to them.”

Hester Abrams, the international engagement manager at the industry collaboration Stop Scams UK, said: “Consumers will only be better protected from criminal outfits exploiting digital systems if businesses and governments make scam prevention a genuine priority. Investigations like this show just how much impact we could have against scammers with a better coordinated international effort.”

Additional reporting from Helen Davidson and Chi-hui Lin