A Scottish safari park has announced the birth of two female lemur pups native to Madagascar.

Nova and Evie, who are living at Blair Drummond safari and adventure park, near Stirling, were born on 14 April, and the park has now publicly announced their birth.

The six-week-old black-and-white ruffled lemurs are among as few as 1,000 remaining in the wild, with the species considered critically endangered.

They are known to have the second-loudest primate call in the animal kingdom, with howler monkeys the only louder species.

Their loud cry makes them more susceptible to capture for the illegal pet trade, and additional threats include hunting by locals and habitat destruction due to deforestation, logging and mining.

Blair Drummond participates in the European Endangered Species Breeding Programme in order to build the population of animals such as the lemurs.

The sisters are the third litter to be born at the park, with several of their siblings now in zoological establishments across the UK.

The park also collaborates with the conservation project Feedback Madagascar, which focuses on educating communities and protecting lemurs in their natural habitat.

The pups will eventually join the other lemurs at the park’s Lemur Land. Meanwhile, visitors can catch a glimpse of them in their indoor enclosure with their mother, Cali.

The twin sisters will later be rehomed as part of the breeding programme.

The zookeeper Lesley Rodger said: “We are overjoyed to welcome these two new arrivals to our lemur conspiracy. They are gaining confidence in their surroundings daily and are already testing their limb strength by hanging from branches in their aviary.

“Both pups are female, and based on our past experience, girls do tend to be more of a handful.

“We have named them Nova, meaning ‘new’, and Evie, meaning ‘life’.”

Donald Trump’s inner circle is stepping up efforts to woo Black and other minority voters, with a leading candidate to be his vice-presidential running mate claiming falsely on Sunday TV that Joe Biden was resegregating US public schools.

Tim Scott, the US senator from South Carolina who has been open about his desire to be on Trump’s ticket, made one of the most extreme claims yet. Speaking on CNN’s State of the Union show, he described President Biden as a supporter of educational segregation.

“We need four more years of common sense under Donald Trump, and not four more years of segregation under Joe Biden,” Scott, who is African American, said.

Asked by CNN host Dana Bash whether suggesting Biden was for segregation was going too far, Scott tried to justify the contention by saying that “the elimination of charter schools under Joe Biden resegregates schools in America”. He added that schools in the largest cities were being resegregated by “Joe Biden’s Department of Education which has halted the growth of charter schools that provide greater diversity”.

In fact, charter schools, which are publicly funded but which operate outside state school systems, are backed by federal government grants through the Charter Schools Program to the tune of $440m a year – a level that has remained unchanged since 2019 under the Trump administration. Scott’s argument that charter schools create more diversity is also open to question.

New research carried out by sociologists at Stanford University and the University of Southern California to mark 70 years of the landmark US supreme court ruling outlawing segregated schools, Brown v Board of Education, reveals that segregation has been creeping back up for the past 30 years. One of the main drivers of the revival, contrary to Scott’s claim, has been the rise of charter schools, the academics discovered.

In recent weeks Trump has stepped up his attempt to prise Black voters away from their long-standing support for the Democratic party. On Thursday, he staged a rally in the South Bronx, one of the most diverse and staunchly Democratic parts of the country, where 95% of the population is Black or Hispanic.

Trump made a brazen play for the support of Black voters at the rally, talking about “millions and millions of illegals coming into the country” who he said had a negative impact particularly on minority American communities. “African Americans are getting slaughtered. Hispanic Americans are being slaughtered,” he said.

The Trump campaign push comes as recent opinion polls indicate that his support among these demographic populations is climbing. The Pew Research Center found in a recent survey that 18% of Black voters were leaning for Trump, compared with the 8% of Black voters who voted for him in 2020.

The Biden campaign has responded to the apparent shift towards Trump by targeting negative political adverts accusing Trump of a track record of racism. Last week it released a 30-second ad that invoked the case of the Central Park Five, Black men who were wrongly convicted of raping a jogger in 1989.

Trump took out a full-page advert in local newspapers soon after the men were arrested, calling for New York to bring back the death penalty.

Six people who shared a meal involving black bear meat kebabs have been diagnosed with trichinellosis, a parasitic zoonotic disease.

In a new report released this week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revealed that in July 2022, a 29-year old hospitalized patient with suspected trichinellosis was reported to the Minnesota health department. His symptoms included fever, severe muscle aches, periorbital edema or eye swelling, and eosinophilia or the condition of elevated levels of eosinophils, a type of white blood cell.

According to the report, a week prior to the symptoms appearing, the patient and eight other people shared a meal that included the meat of a black bear which had been frozen for 45 days before being grilled and served rare with vegetables that had been cooked with the meat.

An investigation into the incident found six trichinellosis cases, including two in people who consumed only the vegetables. Trichinellosis is a parasitic infection caused by the larvae of trichinella, a type of roundworm. Typically, meat contaminated with the trichinella larvae comes from carnivorous animals such as bears, wild boars or walrus.

Molecular testing found that larvae from the bear meat had been frozen in a household freezer for more than 15 weeks and that the larvae was trichinella nativa, a freeze-resistant species. The CDC warns that adequate cooking is the only reliable way to kill trichinella parasites and that infected meat can cross-contaminate other foods.

The CDC reports that six days before the symptom onset in the initial patient, he and eight extended family members from Arizona, Minnesota and South Dakota gathered in South Dakota for several days. During their gathering, they ate the meat from a black bear which had been harvested by one of the family members in northern Saskatchewan, Canada, in May 2022.

According to the report, the meat was “initially inadvertently served rare, reportedly because the meat was dark in color, and it was difficult for the family members to visually ascertain the level of doneness”.

It added: “After some of the family members began eating the meat and noticed that it was undercooked, the meat was recooked before being served again.”

Three of the six symptomatic people, two of whom sought care at least twice before being offered treatment, were hospitalized. All three patients received trichinellosis-directed treatment with albendazole, a medication for the treatment of a variety of parasitic worm infections.

All six symptomatic people recovered, with the CDC reporting that the non-hospitalized patients did not receive trichinellosis-directed treatment because their symptoms had resolved with supportive care only.

Across the US, trichinellosis is rarely reported. Most of the cases that are reported relate to the consumption of meat from wild game.

From January 2016 to December 2022, there were seven trichinellosis outbreaks in the US that were reported to the CDC, including 35 probable and confirmed cases. Bear meat was the suspected or confirmed source of infection for the majority of these outbreaks, the CDC said.

Britain’s armed forces need more money not untrained teenage volunteers, former military leaders and Tory figures have said in a new blow to the Conservatives’ faltering election campaign.

Within hours of being announced, Rishi Sunak’s election pledge to bring back military service for 18-year-olds was rubbished by army chiefs and a former Conservative defence secretary.

Rishi Sunak pledged to introduce mandatory national service which would see young people spend a year in the military or do volunteer work on weekends.

The prime minister doubled down on the proposal on Sunday night, saying that national service schemes in other countries “show just how fulfilling it is for young people”.

But Adm Alan West, a former chief of the naval staff, said it was a “bonkers” plan which would deplete the defence budget.

“I’m delighted if more young people become aware of defence and are involved … but this idea is basically bonkers,” Lord West said. “We need to spend more on defence, and – by doing what he’s suggesting – money will be sucked out of defence.”

He added that Rishi Sunak should have committed more funds to the defence budget before the election.

Richard Dannatt, a former chief of the general staff, said the proposal was “electoral opportunism”. “The costs of this would be considerable in terms of trainers and infrastructure. This task cannot just be imposed on the armed forces as an extra thing to do,” he added.

Michael Portillo, a former defence secretary, said the announcement could do further damage to the Tories’ reputation for fiscal responsibility.

He told GB News on Sunday: “The way in which this policy has been produced worries me very much indeed. That is to say, I very much doubt whether it’s been thought through, and I doubt whether the armed services and all the charities that need to be involved have been consulted and are on board.

“It represents an increase in public expenditure and that’s very important, because it puts the Conservatives on the back foot. Because, on the whole, the Conservatives have been saying we’ve got clear plans, we’re the government. Now ask Labour how they’re going to find the extra money. But now this reverses all that, because now Labour can say the Conservatives are making promises which aren’t funded.”

The pledge was launched just two days after the defence minister Andrew Murrison said that the government had no plans for national service in “any form” because it would do more harm than good.

In an answer to a written parliamentary question, Murrison said placing “potentially unwilling” recruits with professional soldiers “could damage morale, recruitment and retention and would consume professional military and naval resources”.

He added that if, on the other hand, temporary recruits were kept separate “it would be difficult to find a proper and meaningful role for them, potentially harming motivation and discipline”.

John Healey, the shadow defence secretary, said the Conservatives’ national service proposal was “an undeliverable plan and a distraction from their failures in defence over the last 14 years. Even Rishi Sunak’s own defence minister dismissed the idea days ago.

“Since 2010, Tory ministers have missed recruitment targets every year, hollowed out and underfunded our armed forces, and cut the British army to its smallest size since Napoleon. It’s time for change. Britain will be better defended with Labour,” Healey added.

Kevan Jones, a former Labour defence minister, said the plan was an “ill-thought-out and expensive election gimmick which will do nothing to add to the nation’s security”.

Some Tory MPs welcomed the policy but privately said they thought it had been poorly communicated. “We’ve made something bold but actually incremental sound insane,” one said.

Facing questions about the proposal on Sunday, James Cleverly, the home secretary, said that no teenagers would be sent to prison for avoiding “mandatory” national service.

Tory estimates said the policy would cost £2.5bn a year by the end of the decade. Of this, they said £1bn would come from cracking down on tax avoidance and £1.5bn from extending the UK Shared Prosperity Fund, which was designed to regenerate underfunded towns around the UK.

On Sunday night, the Conservatives said they would ask a royal commission to look at international examples of how full-time armed forces placements can offer young people better opportunities later in their careers.

The commission would be asked to look at Norway and Israel as case studies and asked to design incentives for young people to complete a year in the military, such as by offering them fast-track interviews in the civil service or with big employers.

The Liberal Democrat defence spokesperson, Richard Foord, said of the plans for a royal commission: “As Suella Braverman once said, when you’re in a hole, keep digging.”

Nigel Farage, the honorary president of Reform UK, told the BBC that the proposal was designed to appeal to his voters but ultimately a “joke” and “totally impractical”.

A professional horse rider has died while competing at an equestrian event in Devon.

Georgie Campbell was competing at the Bicton international horse trials when she suffered a fatal accident, according to British Eventing.

“Medical professionals attended immediately following her fall at fence 5b,” the governing body said in a statement. “However, unfortunately, she could not be saved. The horse, Global Quest, was assessed by the onsite vets and walked back to the stable and is uninjured.

“To respect the family’s privacy at this extremely difficult and sad time, no further details will be shared.”

An air ambulance, double-crewed land ambulance, operations officer and hazardous area response team were sent to the scene.

Campbell was initially a top-level showing rider before turning to eventing, and she had represented Great Britain numerous times on Nations Cup teams and appeared at several five-star events, the highest recognised level of eventing.

Overall, Campbell had competed in more than 200 events – winning on six occasions – during her career, and had outings at the five-star events Badminton and Burghley. She married event rider Jesse Campbell, who had previously represented New Zealand at the Tokyo Olympics, in 2020.

Together the pair joined personal and professional forces to create Team Campbell Eventing.

An earlier statement released by the organisers reported that Campbell and Global Quest had fallen and the rider had been attended to immediately by on-site medical professionals. The event, which was due to conclude on Sunday with a cross-country phase, was abandoned.

A spokesperson for South Western ambulance service NHS foundation trust said it was called to an incident near Budleigh Salterton at 3.05pm on Sunday. An air ambulance, double-crewed land ambulance, operations officer and hazardous area response team were sent to the scene.

The Bicton international horse trials is a four-day event taking place from Thursday to Sunday. Devon and Cornwall police have been contacted for comment.

PGA Tour golfer Grayson Murray took his own life, his family confirmed in a statement on Sunday.

The 30-year-old’s death was announced on Saturday, a day after he had withdrawn from the Charles Schwab Challenge.

“We have spent the last 24 hours trying to come to terms with the fact that our son is gone. It’s surreal that we not only have to admit it to ourselves, but that we also have to acknowledge it to the world. It’s a nightmare,” Murray’s parents, Eric and Terry, said in the statement.

“We have so many questions that have no answers. But one. Was Grayson loved? The answer is yes. By us, his brother Cameron, his sister Erica, all of his extended family, by his friends, by his fellow players and – it seems – by many of you who are reading this. He was loved and he will be missed.

“We would like to thank the PGA Tour and the entire world of golf for the outpouring of support. Life wasn’t always easy for Grayson, and although he took his own life, we know he rests peacefully now.”

Murray had spoken about his struggles with alcohol and mental health. After winning the Sony Open in January he talked about his problems away from the golf course.

“It’s not easy,” he said. “I wanted to give up a lot of times. Give up on myself. Give up on the game of golf. Give up on life, at times.”

As well as his victory at the Sony Open, Murray won the Barbasol Championship in 2017. His best finish in a major was a tie for 22nd at the 2017 US PGA Championship. He also won three events on the Korn Ferry Tour and was ranked No 58 in the world at the time of his death.

On Saturday, Murray’s fellow professionals expressed their grief at his death.

“Truly devastating news that Grayson Murray has passed away,” the former world No 1, Luke Donald, wrote on X. “He asked me for some advice on how to play Augusta a few months ago, last week I saw him at the PGA Championship, life truly is precious. My condolences and prayers to his whole family that they may find some peace.”

Webb Simpson said he learned of Murray’s death just before he teed off at the Charles Schwab Challenge. “I just hate it so much,” Simpson said. “I’ll miss him. I’m thankful he was in the place with his faith before this morning happened.”

The PGA Tour commissioner, Jay Monahan, said grief counsellors would be available for players at tournaments in the coming days.

“To be in the locker room, to see the devastation on the faces of every player that’s coming in, it’s really difficult to see. And really just profound,” Monahan told CBS on Saturday. “Grayson was a remarkable player on the PGA Tour, but he was a very courageous man, as well. And I’ve always loved that about him, and I know that the locker room is filled with people that really will take that away when they think about Grayson.”

In January, Murray said he had been sober for eight months, had become a Christian and was engaged. He said he believed his best golf was ahead of him. He had recently been appointed as a member of the 16-person Player Advisory Council.

Asbestos has been found in recycled soil fill for sale in New South Wales landscape and garden stores, more than a decade after investigators first raised concerns about contamination.

Guardian Australia bought four products at Sydney landscape supply shops and had samples analysed by accredited private laboratories.

Two did not comply with state regulations on pH levels, and one was found to contain asbestos fibres.

One of the products that passed the laboratory tests contained large physical contaminants such as glass and a metal screw.

The results prompted the state’s environment regulator to express concern about the “poor product and levels of non-compliance we are seeing in the industry”. Earlier this year Guardian Australia revealed that widespread breaches by waste recycling facilities meant potentially contaminated product might have been applied in the past decade to land across the state, including at childcare centres, residential areas, schools and parks.

Jason Scarborough, a former senior waste compliance officer at the NSW Environment Protection Authority (EPA), who took the samples sent for testing, said the product containing asbestos posed a potential health hazard, another would be “unsuitable for any sort of horticultural use” and he also would not use the product that had “serious visible physical contamination”.

The products bought from each store were marketed as crusher dust, recycled turf underlay, recycled soil and budget underlay – all names which can be used to sell the recycled residues from construction and demolition sites known as “recovered fines”. The visual appearance and descriptions of the products were also consistent with recovered fines.

The products are used by industry and at public places such as parks and schools, as well as being sold directly to consumers for back yard landscape purposes such as a foundation for turf, backfill for a retaining wall, or as a base for pavers. An estimated 700,000 tonnes of the product is applied to land in NSW each year.

Testing the samples

Guardian Australia bought products from four Sydney landscape stores. Scarborough took samples from each product in accordance with accepted scientific standards and sent them to two private laboratories accredited by the National Association of Testing Authorities (Nata).

The two EPA investigations revealed previously by Guardian Australia, one in 2013 and one in 2019, found facilities producing recovered fines were breaching regulations intended to limit the spread of contaminants, including lead and asbestos.

Scarborough was the EPA official who led the 2013 investigation. He spoke publicly in February about his concern that the regulator had failed to act on known problems in the waste sector.

The laboratories each tested a portion of the samples against the legislated thresholds for contaminants set out in the regulations for recovered fines. They include physical contaminants such as plastics, hard metal and glass, chemical contaminants such as lead, zinc and nickel, and other toxins such as pesticides and polychlorinated biphenyls. The laboratories also tested the products for asbestos, but this is not a specific requirement under the recovered fines regulations.

Soil fill made from recovered fines is heterogeneous. Even if it has been well processed, the composition can be variable, meaning one portion of a sample won’t necessarily have the same concentration of contaminants as another portion.

The crusher dust was found by one lab to contain a “bundle” of asbestos fibres, meaning it is considered asbestos waste under current NSW laws and must be disposed of.

That product and the recycled soil were found by both labs to have breached the legislated range for pH levels set by the Environment Protection Authority.

The recycled turf underlay contained visible physical contaminants including electrical wire, large pieces of glass and a metal screw. But both the commercial labs found it complied with the legislated thresholds for the full suite of contaminants.

The samples of the budget underlay were given a pass by the labs against every aspect of the regulations and also did not have the large visible contaminants.

“Based on those four products, one of them potentially poses a health risk because it contained asbestos fibres,” Scarborough said.

“Another would be unsuitable for any sort of horticultural use.

“50% are not compliant with an aspect of the [recovered fines] order and another had serious visible physical contamination that wasn’t reflected in the laboratory results.

“So the maths there is 75% – three out of the four products, I wouldn’t use.”

Poor documentation increases risk to consumers

The results showed no traces of pesticides or of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), which are potentially carcinogenic chemicals. All samples tested were within the limits for heavy metals such as lead.

But Scarborough said he would exercise caution in interpreting those findings because of the variable nature of the material.

“The portion the lab took to analyse may not be representative of the whole, which is really the fundamental problem with this stuff,” he said.

But he said this aspect of the tests did seem to show an improvement on samples the EPA tested in the 2013 investigation, which he said detected regular breaches of thresholds for lead, zinc and copper in particular.

The 2013 report recommended that soil products made from recovered fines should be used only for things such as pipe bedding and deep earth works where the risk of human contact was lower. It recommended the products not be sold by third parties such as landscapers because poor documentation made it difficult to follow the chain of custody for the material, and landscape suppliers were not necessarily equipped to explain the nature of the product to their customers.

Guardian Australia’s tests were limited to stores that sold the products in small quantities – most recovered fines products are sold in bulk.

The original source of the material and the recycling facility that processed it was not contained in the product information for any of the soil fill bought by Guardian Australia.

Under the recovered fines regulations, the waste facilities that process the material are required to give the purchaser a statement certifying they have met all of the legislated requirements for the product as well as a copy of the regulations or a link to where the purchaser can find that information.

But those rules only apply to the processors. That information often won’t reach the consumer who buys the product from a third party such as a landscaper. None of the landscape stores Guardian Australia bought the products from provided that information, nor were they required to.

“This is where it breaks down,” Scarborough said.

“That information may have been provided to the landscape stores, but it wasn’t provided to you when you bought the stuff.

“Realistically, the person using the material is the most important in this supply chain, because they are the ones that are going to be exposed to the product.”

An EPA spokesperson said the regulator was “concerned by reports of suspected contamination of recycled products and to investigate this matter further we would require more information”.

They said a recent compliance campaign following up on the 2019 investigation had found “asbestos in stockpiles at several facilities resulting in prevention notices being issued to stop the distribution of this material”.

“We will shortly be taking regulatory action as a result of this compliance campaign,” they said.

In 2022, the EPA abandoned a proposal to tighten the regulations for producers of recovered fines products after pressure from the waste industry.

An EPA spokesperson said the regulator was now considering changes to those rules and was consulting the industry.

They said any reforms would be informed by a review under way by the NSW chief scientist into the management of asbestos in products made from recycled construction and demolition waste.

As part of that review, the office of the chief scientist is examining approaches to asbestos management taken in other Australian jurisdictions and whether a “tolerable threshold level” can be set for asbestos in waste intended for beneficial reuse.

To hear Donald Trump tell it, America’s cities are in dire shape and in need of a federal intervention.

“We’re going to rebuild our cities into beacons of hope, safety and beauty – better than they have ever been before,” he said during a recent speech to the National Rifle Association in what has become a common refrain on the campaign trail. “We will take over the horribly run capital of our nation, Washington DC.”

Trump has for years railed against cities, particularly those run by Democratic officials, as hotbeds for crime and moral decay. He called Atlanta a “record setting Murder and Violent Crime War Zone” last year, a similar claim he makes frequently about various cities.

His allies have an idea of how to capitalize on that agenda and make cities in Trump’s image, detailed in the conservative Project 2025: unleash new police forces on cities like Washington DC, withhold federal disaster and emergency grants unless they follow immigration policies like detaining undocumented immigrants and share sensitive data with the federal government for immigration enforcement purposes.

Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, an extensive document breaking down each part of the federal government and recommending changes to be made to advance rightwing policy, was created by the Heritage Foundation, with dozens of conservative organizations and prominent names contributing chapters based on their backgrounds.

This part of the project is another Republican attempt at a crackdown on so-called “sanctuary” cities, places around the country that don’t cooperate with the federal government on enforcing harsh immigration policies.

Trump v Washington DC

Washington DC, in particular, has taken up residence in Trump’s stump speech, where he rails against the city for crime, graffiti and general mismanagement. He vows that the federal government will take over the city and run it.

Project 2025 posits a way to do this: use the Secret Service. The service’s police force, the Uniformed Division, doesn’t have the ability to enforce laws outside the White House and its immediate surrounding area, the project says. But that could change.

“As the District of Columbia is a federal jurisdiction and currently is beholden to the trend of progressive pro-crime policies, UD officers should enforce all applicable laws,” Project 2025 says. “The result would be to allow UD officers to gain more law enforcement experience – an attractive credential that would improve morale.”

Trump’s allies in Congress have already been taking aim at DC, with Arizona’s Republican US representative Andy Biggs saying he’d support a federal takeover of the city to enforce laws and the Florida representative Byron Donalds pushing a bill to put Congress in charge of some DC criminal laws. The US House also will reverse a DC policy that allows non-citizens to vote in local elections, a pet issue nationwide for Republicans this election year.

The anti-DC sentiment is predicated on crime rates, which, after reaching a peak in 2023, is down this year compared with last year, DC police data shows.

In a speech to the National Rifle Association earlier this month, Trump went on about what he’s seen in DC lately that justifies a federal takeover.

“I was there recently on a court case, of course. I get so many court cases,” he said. “And I’m driving into a federal courthouse, and the graffiti all over the place is unbelievable. It’s staggering. The roads are full of potholes. The medians in the middle, you know, the guardrails, are all broken and some of them laying, literally laying, in the street. The garbage is piled up and disgusting, cans are laying there for many months.”

So it’s time for a change, he says: “We’re going to make our capital strong again. We’re going to run our capital, we’re going to take our capital over by the federal government, it’s going to run properly, not the way it’s run right now.”

The office of DC Mayor Muriel Bowser declined to comment.

Trump has posited creating new cities whole cloth as well, predicated on the idea that cities now are uninspiring at best.

Last year, he talked about building “freedom cities” on federal lands, though this idea hasn’t entered into his speeches lately, which have taken a darker turn. At the time, he said there should be a contest to charter 10 new cities using vacant, federally owned land. And he challenged local leaders to work with him to get rid of “ugly buildings”, make cities and towns more liveable and build new monuments to “our true American heroes”.

“These freedom cities will reopen the frontier, reignite American imagination and give hundreds of thousands of young people and other people, all hardworking families, a new shot at home ownership and, in fact, the American Dream,” he said in one video.

The threat of withholding federal funds

Republicans, cheered on by Trump, have worked to make immigration a key issue in cities across the country by busing migrants from the US-Mexico border inland, to places run by Democrats like New York, DC and Chicago, overwhelming the social safety net in these cities.

The idea of using federal funds granted by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) to force immigration changes are included in a chapter about the Department of Homeland Security, written by Ken Cuccinelli, Trump’s former deputy secretary of homeland security.

The chapter’s initial recommendation is to dismantle DHS entirely, create a border-focused agency comprised of other immigration-related organizations and farm out the rest of its components to existing agencies (or privatize them, in the case of the Transportation Security Administration).

It’s not directly clear whether the aim is to use all Fema funds – including those that help cities and states in the immediate aftermath of an emergency like a tornado or flood – or large grant programs for things like emergency preparedness. One line in the chapter says “post-disaster or nonhumanitarian funding” could be exempt from the immigration policy requirements. The chapter also suggests that cities and states should take on more of the burden of financially responding to disasters.

Project 2025 did not respond to a request for an interview or comment.

Fema administers most of the homeland security department’s grant programs to local governments, the project notes. The chapter suggests the many billions of dollars in Fema grants outside of post-disaster relief have become an avenue for special interests and “pork” spending that “do not provide measurable gains for preparedness or resiliency”.

The concept of withholding federal funding in this way is not new for Trump. During his time in office, Trump tried to use the federal government’s funding strings to deprive US cities that didn’t abide by immigration policies of a justice department grant program, though the process got tied up in the courts for years.

The Biden administration reversed the policy of using the Edward Byrne memorial justice assistance grants program, which sends about $250m annually to local law enforcement, to compel immigration compliance.

Trump also threatened in 2020 to withhold federal funds from cities he claimed had “allow[ed] themselves to deteriorate into lawless zones” after that summer’s protests over the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. In a memo, he specifically mentioned Portland, Seattle and New York City as places where chaos reigned, directing the federal government to review the use of federal funds to places that “permit anarchy, violence and destruction in America’s cities”.

One of the conditions Project 2025 suggests is requiring states or localities to share information with the federal government for law and immigration enforcement, and specifies that this would include both department of motor vehicle and voter registration databases.

This is of particular interest in many cities because 19 states and Washington DC allow undocumented people to get drivers licenses, the Niskanen Center, a thinktank that delved into the project’s immigration aims, points out. These licenses help with public safety by decreasing the potential for hit-and-runs and increasing work hours, among other benefits, the center writes.

If a city or state is forced to choose between issuing licenses and then sharing this information for use by immigration authorities, or accessing emergency funds for their whole population in a crisis, it’ll be tough for them to deny Fema money, said Cecilia Esterline, an immigration research analyst at the Niskanen Center.

“I think that it is most likely that maybe the state will bend to the will of the executive on this. But that comes at a cost, and that cost is not just a political one,” she said, though she noted that there will be pushback and likely lawsuits from states and cities if an incoming Trump administration tries to put these policies in place.

Shamanic healing or opportunity for ritualized abuse? A lawsuit filed in New Mexico last week alleged that a “shamanic master” assaulted a woman during an “energy medicine” training session in March.

The claim, which is being investigated, could shed more light on what some say is a dark side of some trends in modern spirituality, especially those that involve the ceremonial use of often intense psychedelic treatments.

The woman in New Mexico, who was identified in the complaint only by the initials MG, says she paid thousands of dollars to the Four Winds Society and the Chi Center to become a certified energy medicine practitioner with “an extraordinary life of health, purpose and inner guidance”.

The lawsuit, first reported by the Santa Fe New Mexican, says that the woman had scheduled a session with an unidentified Peruvian “wisdom keeper” and “shamanic master of energy training” and informed him that she had been sexually abused as a child. The man indicated in Spanish he understood.

But after he directed her to lie down on one of the beds in his room at the Chi Center, the shaman used the healing session for “his own personal interests or gratification”. The lawsuit alleges that at least two other women had similar experiences with the man.

A senior teacher at the center told MG that “what was done to her was not a standard part of the healing session” when she raised her concerns, according to the suit. The Santa Fe county sheriff’s office has said the woman had not completed a sexual assault nurse examination because she “had left the state and waited to report the incident via telephone from California”.

The shaman had by then left the US, flying from Houston to Panama, and the Santa Fe sheriff, Adan Mendoza, said a criminal case was “challenging” because the accused shaman was from overseas.

Still, the accusation follows in a long line of claims against spiritual gurus which indicate that some shamanic master practitioners may engage in sexual abuse, a troubling tendency previously associated primarily with more mainstream religious practices.

Last year, Jeffrey Glattstein, a shaman in Georgia, was accused of sexually assaulting staff and clients, including at least three women who said they had been assaulted “under the guise that he would be healing and helping them”. The defendant then filed claims against two former employees under the state’s anti-defamation Slapp laws that later failed.

Sex scandals in spiritual or self-enlightenment communities are hardly novel, says Patrick Paul Garlinger, a former lawyer and the author of a 2022 essay titled The Spiritual World Has a Sex Abuse Problem.

“We are seeing an increase, and part of that is the expanding number of people donning the mantle of spiritual teacher. But this also has a long history, in Zen and Tibetan Buddhism, in New Age circles, and there are obviously parallels with the sex abuse scandals in the Catholic church.”

The proliferation of spirituality, coupled with a willingness of victims to come forward in the #MeToo age, has created the conditions for an increasing number of claims coming to light. “The power differential of a master-teacher, who is treated as enlightened or ascended in some way, is often used as the justification for why this isn’t abuse,” Garlinger says.

Scandals within such organizations date at least to 1983, when Richard Baker, then the head of the San Francisco Zen Center, was fired for having affairs with several students. A decade later, Amrit Desai, the spiritual leader of the Kripalu yoga school, was similarly brought down. More recently Bikram Choudhury, the founder of a popular form of hot yoga, was sued for sexual assault in 2016 and fled the US to Mexico.

Sogyal Rinpoche, the author of The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, was accused of abusing students in 2016; three years later, Sakyong Mipham, the leader of the Shambhala Buddhist meditation organization, was exposed and the Zen master Joshu Sasaki, accused of abusing students, was said to proselytize that the path to inner peace was to touch his penis because “true love is giving yourself to everything”.

The increased use of psychedelic drugs like ayahuasca, often amid claims of promoting spiritual growth or emotional healing, and an increase in shamanic tourism, could also be exacerbating the issue.

Ayahuasca ceremonies, usually held at night, involving drinking a sticky brown liquid – a brew of two Amazonian plants – followed by vomiting before the drugs take effect, often involving powerful visions. In such circumstances, consent to any form of sexual contact is not grantable.

In one instance, a supposed taita, or shaman, Édgar Orlando Gaitán, was convicted in a Colombian court of raping women and three cases of sexual abuse of minors with disabilities, some during “traditional Indigenous” therapeutic practices.

Academic Daniela Peluso has warned of “increased abuses of power, intercultural misunderstandings, the proliferation of inexperienced shamans, and vast power differentials that have fueled the unacceptable reality that ayahuasca ceremonies can become potential spaces where sexual abuse can occur”.

The shadow side of the ayahuasca scene led to a code of conduct co-authored by Peluso that “aimed to assist individuals within the psychedelic community to understand the common scenarios that can lead to abuse during ayahuasca consumption”.

The authors warned that “mutual cross-cultural misunderstandings and misconceptions between healers and participants can create confusion at least, and can be brutally manipulated at worst” under the guise of spiritual empowerment or through the use of “charm spells”.

“As ayahuasca’s popularity is increasing, alarmingly so are incidents of the sexual abuse of women,” they wrote, noting that “the majority of such cases involve the abuse of female participants by male shamans”.

This, the authors added, “is especially harmful and shocking considering many women who drink ayahuasca are seeking healing for sexual traumas suffered in the past”.

A separate study published by Psychedelic Invest warned: “Many of the people running these programs are not qualified to be working with people suffering from the after-effects of trauma. Others do have qualifications, but overstep important boundaries because they believe they are entitled to.”

But a code of conduct is a poor substitute for avenues for complaints and redress. Garlinger writes that the master-student relationship is problematic from the outset, especially when the approach to sexuality is unarticulated.

“There’s a lot of shame and a sense of deep betrayal within a setting that is deeply meaningful,” he says. “These abuses are difficult to investigate, and historically there has been an effort to silence victims, reframe their experience as part of their spiritual growth, and a need to protect the teacher and institution.”

Nicki Minaj has offered her “deepest and most sincere apologies” after her Manchester concert was cancelled at the last minute as she was arrested in Amsterdam.

The US rapper was detained for hours at Schiphol airport on suspicion of “possessing soft drugs” before being fined by Dutch police and allowed to continue her journey.

Her show at Co-op Live was abandoned at 9.30pm, when Minaj was due on stage. About 20,000 fans were inside the venue, the UK’s biggest indoor arena, when they were told the concert had been called off.

There were boos from the crowd and some concertgoers said they felt “disgusted” and felt “betrayed” by the 41-year-old star.

“I feel appalled. But also, in a way, I’m not shocked,” said Olivia Gibson, 21, who had travelled from Newcastle for the gig. “And it’s not the Co-op Live’s fault. She’s just let all her fans down.”

Minaj said on social media she was in a jail cell for five to six hours and finally arrived at her hotel in Manchester at about midnight.

“They succeeded at their plan to not let me get on that stage tonight,” she wrote on X, without saying who she was referring to. “Please please please accept my deepest & most sincere apologies. They sure did know exactly how to hurt me today but this too, shall pass.

“They’ve been doing this over & over & over & over & over again & I’ve tried so hard to not discuss it b/c [because] you guys deserve to just get the good stuff. I hate involving you in anything that isn’t for entertainment purposes only.”

She said she hoped to announce a rescheduled date on Sunday, promising an “added bonus” for those who had bought a ticket.

Minaj went on to meet fans – who call themselves Barbz – outside the Stock Exchange hotel in Manchester shortly before 2am on Sunday.

“I love you … and I’m so sorry,” she told those gathered, according to footage shared on social media.

Co-op Live, which has endured a series of setbacks since opening in April, said it was “deeply disappointed” at the inconvenience caused by the latest cancellation, which came two-and-a-half hours after ticket-holders had entered the arena.

The venue said: “Tickets will remain valid for the rescheduled performance which will be announced ASAP. Despite Nicki’s best efforts to explore every possible avenue to make tonight’s show happen, the events of today have made it impossible.”

Minaj is due to perform in Birmingham on Sunday night before returning to Manchester on Thursday.