Doctors are hailing a new way to treat serious asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease attacks that marks the first breakthrough for 50 years and could be a “gamechanger” for patients.

A trial found offering patients an injection was more effective than the current care of steroid tablets, and cuts the need for further treatment by 30%.

The results, published in the Lancet Respiratory Medicine journal, could be transformative for millions of people with asthma and COPD around the world.

Benralizumab is a monoclonal antibody that targets specific white blood cells, called eosinophils, to reduce lung inflammation. It is used as a repeat treatment for severe asthma at a low dose, but the trial found a higher single dose could be very effective if injected at the time of a flare-up.

Lead investigator Prof Mona Bafadhel, of King’s College London, said: “This could be a gamechanger for people with asthma and COPD. Treatment for asthma and COPD exacerbations have not changed in 50 years, despite causing 3.8m deaths worldwide a year combined.

“Benralizumab is a safe and effective drug already used to manage severe asthma. We’ve used the drug in a different way – at the point of an exacerbation – to show that it’s more effective than steroid tablets, which is the only treatment currently available.”

The trial involved 158 people who needed medical attention in A&E for their asthma or COPD attack.

Patients were given a quick blood test to see what type of attack they were having, with those suffering an “eosinophilic exacerbation” being suitable for treatment.

About 50% of asthma attacks are eosinophilic exacerbations, as are 30% of COPD attacks, according to the scientists.

The trial, led by King’s and carried out at Oxford University hospitals NHS foundation trust and Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS foundation trust, saw patients randomly split into three groups.

One group received the benralizumab injection and dummy tablets. Another group received standard care of prednisolone steroids, 30mg daily for five days, and a dummy injection. The third group received the benralizumab injection and steroids.

After 28 days, respiratory symptoms of coughing, wheezing, breathlessness and sputum were found to be better in those on benralizumab. After 90 days, there were four times fewer people in the benralizumab group who failed treatment compared with those receiving steroids.

Treatment with the benralizumab injection also took longer to fail, meaning fewer visits to a GP or hospital for patients, researchers said. Furthermore, people also reported a better quality of life on the new regime.

Scientists said steroids could have severe side-effects such as increasing the risk of diabetes and osteoporosis, meaning switching to benralizumab could provide huge benefits.

Benralizumab could also potentially be administered safely at home or in a GP practice, as well as in A&E, they said. AstraZeneca provided the drug for the study and funded the research, but had no input into trial design, delivery, analysis or interpretation.

First author Dr Sanjay Ramakrishnan, clinical senior lecturer at the University of Western Australia, said: “Our study shows massive promise for asthma and COPD treatment.

“COPD is the third leading cause of death worldwide but treatment for the condition is stuck in the 20th century. We need to provide these patients with life-saving options before their time runs out.”

Dr Samantha Walker, director of research and innovation at Asthma and Lung UK, welcomed the findings, but said: “It’s appalling that this is the first new treatment for those suffering from asthma and COPD attacks in 50 years, indicating how desperately underfunded lung health research is.”

Police believe Mohamed Al Fayed may have raped and abused more than 111 women over nearly four decades, with his youngest victim said to have been just 13 years old.

The scale of the criminality would make Fayed, who died last year at the age of 94, one of Britain’s most notorious sex offenders, and raises urgent questions about how he got away with his crimes.

Five unnamed individuals suspected of facilitating Fayed, the former owner of the luxury Knightsbridge store Harrods, are being investigated as potential “facilitators”, Scotland Yard said.

A huge review is also being undertaken into whether opportunities were missed in past police investigations and whether there are grounds to pursue past or current officers over historical corruption claims.

Last month, the Guardian reported claims that corrupt police officers had helped Fayed in persecuting members of his staff, including a young woman who allegedly rebuffed the Harrods owner’s sexual advances.

The 111 alleged cases of abuse involving Fayed include 21 alleged victims who reported crimes to the police between 2005 and his death, and 90 women who have come forward since the BBC aired a documentary on Fayed in September.

The Guardian understands that as soon as next week the Met will find out if it faces an independent investigation into whether it bungled the claims of sexual violence against the Harrods boss.

The police watchdog, the Independent Office for Police Conduct, is considering whether its own investigators should investigate Britain’s biggest force.

A Met spokesperson said: “Following complaints from two women about the quality of investigations conducted in 2008, the Met has voluntarily referred these cases to the Independent Office for Police Conduct.

“While these cases date back over a decade and we cannot change what happened in the past, we are committed to understanding, being open about any shortcomings and improving our response to survivors moving forward.”

Cmdr Stephen Clayman, of the Met’s Specialist Crime Command, said he recognised that trust in the police may have been eroded by its past conduct but called for any other survivors to come forward.

He said: “I recognise the bravery of every victim-survivor who has come forward to share their experiences, often after years of silence.

“This investigation is about giving survivors a voice, despite the fact that Mohamed Al Fayed is no longer alive to face prosecution. However, we are now pursuing any individuals suspected to have been complicit in his offending, and we are committed to seeking justice.

“We are aware that past events may have impacted the public’s trust and confidence in our approach, and we are determined to rebuild that trust by addressing these allegations with integrity and thoroughness.

“We encourage anyone who has information or was affected by Al Fayed’s actions to reach out to us. Your voice matters, and we are here to listen and to help.”

The crimes of which Fayed is accused span between 1977 and 2014. The Met said they had already reviewed more than 50,000 pages of evidence, including victim and impact statements, and retrieved “significant amounts of material from these investigations” stored in their archives.

As part of the inquiry, detectives from the Directorate of Professional Standards are seeking to establish if any serving or former officers at the Met were involved in any misconduct.

Detectives have been examining a witness statement from a former security director at the Knightsbridge store, Bob Loftus, who had claimed that one ex-Met commander received luxury hampers “whenever he had been a particularly great help to Harrods”.

Loftus had further claimed that a detective constable, who was accused of regularly taking cash bribes to carry out Fayed’s wishes, was secretly given a mobile phone from Harrods to facilitate his illicit work.

“It’s amazing what they will do for just a few readies,” John Macnamara, Fayed’s longtime security chief and an ex-detective, was said to have remarked about the police.

Loftus, 83, who worked for Fayed as the director of security at Harrods between 1987 and 1996, was unable to comment due to ill health when approached by the Guardian, but Eamon Coyle, 70, who was Loftus’s deputy, said he recognised the allegations contained in the statement to be true.

Coyle said: “I knew that there was a tame policeman. He was under the direct control of Macnamara. He was on tap. He was on the payroll.”

It is understood that detectives have interviewed a number of potential witnesses as part of the investigation into potential misconduct.

A Met spokesperson said: “The Metropolitan police is committed to thoroughly reviewing all information relating to historical allegations in the case of Mohamed Al Fayed, which includes our Directorate of Professional Standards assessing any indication of police misconduct.

“In line with this, we always look to acquire relevant documents, including witness statements, and other materials which we will actively review.”

Some Democratic figures have accused Kamala Harris’s campaign of being self-congratulatory after a series of recent public appearances from the candidate and her senior staff in which they declined to admit making any errors that could have contributed to her defeat.

Some of the criticism was aimed at Harris herself, following a video call to thank campaign donors in which the vice-president expressed pride in her failed race for the White House.

She appeared to boast that the coalition assembled during her three-and-a-half-month campaign after succeeding Joe Biden as the Democrats’ nominee ranked among the “best political movements”. She insisted it would have “a lasting effect”, despite it ending in a decisive loss to Donald Trump, something she and her supporters warned beforehand would be a catastrophe.

“I am proud of the race we ran, and your role in this was critical,” the vice-president said in a 10-minute address. “What we did in 107 days was unprecedented. Think about the coalition that we built, and we were so intentional about that – you would hear me talk about it all the time.”

Although she admitted the election “didn’t turn out like we wanted”, she noted that the campaign raised nearly $1.5bn dollars, a record, and praised the success in fundraising from grassroots donors – despite reportedly ending the race $20m in debt and sending post-election fundraising emails to donors.

After some of the vice-president’s key staffers also appeared on a podcast billed as dissecting reasons for the defeat, one member of the Democratic National Committee’s finance team called the Harris campaign “self-congratulatory” .

Lindy Li told NewsNation she was “stunned that there was no sort of postmortem or analysis of the disastrous campaign”.

“It was just patting each other on the back,” she said. “They praised Harris as a visionary leader, and at one moment during the call, she was talking about her Thanksgiving recipe.”

Referring to a Pod Save America podcast posted on Tuesday in which Harris’s key aides discussed the $1bn-plus campaign spend, Li said: “They failed to mention that hundreds of millions of dollars went to them and their friends right through these consulting firms.

“These consultants were the primary beneficiaries of the Harris campaign, not the American people.”

One explanation on the podcast by Stephanie Cutter, a Harris adviser, on why the vice-president had declined to break with Biden despite the president’s persistently low approval ratings drew criticism.

“She felt like she was part of the administration. So why should she look back and cherry pick some things that she would have done differently when she was part of it?” Cutter told the podcast. “She had tremendous loyalty to President Biden. So the best we could do, and the most that she felt comfortable with was saying like, look, vice-presidents never break with their presidents.”

One X user posted: “If the guys at pod save America don’t have an episode just straight shit talking all these losers who helped us lose im never listening to another episode. [Because] wtf was this nonsense.”

Another podcast guest, David Plouffe, a former adviser to Barack Obama, was criticised after claiming: “It’s really hard for Democrats to win battleground states.” He said the party needed “to dominate the moderate vote” to win future elections.

Jeet Heer, a writer for the leftwing Nation magazine responded: “Is it too much to ask for a little humility and self-reflection from the people whose strategies failed badly?”

Another social media user posted: “Anybody with more than two brain cells who’s committed to building up the democratic party would be analyzing the depressed voter turnout numbers. But the dudes at pod save America have no goal other than reliving their glory days.”

The discussion, which also included Harris’s campaign chair, Jen O’Malley Dillon, and Quentin Fulks, the campaign’s deputy manager, was also ridiculed by some on the right.

Bill O’Reilly, a former Fox News host, told NewsNation: “It’s kind of like the New York Jets. You guys follow the football, nobody did anything wrong, and they’re 3-8 … I hope people see the absurdity of this.”

James Carville, a veteran Democratic strategist and the architect of Bill Clinton’s 1992 election win, criticised aides who advised Harris not to go on the Joe Rogan podcast before election. Trump, by contrast, granted a three-hour interview to Rogan.

“If I were running a 2028 campaign and I had some little snot-nosed 23-year-old saying, ‘I’m going to resign if you don’t do this,’ not only would I fire that motherfucker on the spot, I would find out who hired them and fire that person on the spot,” Carville said in a foul-mouthed video rant posted on social media. “I’m really not interested in your uninformed, stupid, jackass opinion as to whether you go on Joe Rogan or not.”

Australian researchers have created building blocks out of DNA to construct a series of nano-scale objects and shapes, from a rod and a square to an infinitesimally small dinosaur.

The approach turns DNA into a modular material for building nanostructures – thousands of times narrower than a human hair. Developed by researchers from the University of Sydney Nano Institute and published in the journal Science Robotics, it suggests exciting possibilities for future use of nanobot technology.

As a proof-of-concept, the authors made more than 50 tiny shapes to test their precision and express their creativity. These included a dragon, a dinosaur, and a tiny map of Australia measuring only 150 nanometres wide. (A nanometre is one millionth of a millimetre.)

University of Sydney scientist Dr Shelley Wickham, co-author of the paper and research team leader, said the dinosaur was her favourite because it had both compact and flexible parts and was “not something that could assemble by accident”.

The director of RMIT’s micro nano research facility, Prof Arnan Mitchell, who was not involved with the paper, noted that the approach relied on using DNA as a mechanical object rather than as a chemical. This was interesting, he said, because structures made from DNA were potentially small enough to be used in drug delivery.

DNA could be wrapped around a drug to protect it for delivery to a particular part of the body, he said. “Deliver it to where it needs to go, and then use light or heat or something else to make it unfurl and release the drug.”

With increased complexity and greater control, Wickham said the researchers’ approach could be used to make components for robotic boxes capable of delivering targeted drugs, or in the development of smart materials that could respond to the environment.

“This work enables us to imagine a world where nanobots can get to work on a huge range of tasks, from treating the human body to building futuristic electronic devices.”

Wickham outlined the process. The first step involved making the 3D building blocks, called “voxels”, she said. DNA, extracted from a type of virus called a bacteriophage, was “folded” into a cylindrical shape using an approach called DNA origami and held together with synthetic DNA (made by chemists).

Voxels were formed by self-assembly, Wickham explained, relying on carefully sequenced DNA binding together at pre-determined locations, a bit like velcro or specialised glue.

“We throw in 300 of these staples that all have a unique DNA sequence – like a unique glue – and they find different parts of the scaffold and stitch it together,” she said.

Additional DNA strands incorporated on to the exterior of the voxels, acted as programmable binding sites. These could be used to join voxels together to construct more complex shapes and modular objects, which could be viewed under an electron microscope.

“The results are a bit like using Meccano, the children’s engineering toy,” Wickham said. “As experimentalists, we spent a lot of time designing these on computers. And then we take the DNA and mix it together and it assembles itself.”

Gibson, the maker of famous electric guitars, has issued a cease and desist order to the company behind a range of “Trump Guitars” endorsed by the US president-elect.

Gibson told Guitar World, which first reported the story, it took action because the design of the instruments being sold as Trump Guitars “infringes upon Gibson’s exclusive trademarks, particularly the iconic Les Paul body shape”.

Named for the American musician whom the Guardian once said “basically invented the electric guitar”, Gibson Les Pauls have been sold since 1952 and played by countless rock legends, among them The Edge of U2, Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin and Slash of Guns n’ Roses.

Trump Guitars were announced last week, as the latest in a line of merchandise including Bibles, sneakers, watches and even digital trading cards.

Multiple outlets reported that though Trump has been shown to own CIC Ventures, a company which has offered endorsed products, he does not appear to own or have a stake in 16 Creative, the company behind the guitars.

Nonetheless, last week Trump posted to his social media platform a picture of him holding a guitar emblazoned with a US flag and a bald eagle, with the message: “Coming Soon! The Limited Edition ‘45’ Guitar. Only 1,300 of each Acoustic and Electric Guitars MADE — Some personally signed!”

Trump was the 45th president of the US, between 2017 and 2021. On 20 January 2025 he will become the 47th president, as the Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, failed to take the election this month. The only president previously to serve two non-consecutive terms was Grover Cleveland, a Democrat who served from 1885 to 1889 and 1893 to 1897.

On Wednesday, a website for Trump Guitars featured a picture of the president-elect signing an instrument. Two models were marked sold out: American Eagle electric guitars (priced $1,500) and autographed American Eagle electric guitars ($11,500).

Unsigned ($1,250) and signed ($10,250) acoustic guitars were also offered, each featuring Trump’s slogan, “Make America Great Again”, on its fretboard. The website also offered a Presidential Series guitar, in the Les Paul shape and with Trump’s name on the fretboard, and God Bless the USA acoustic guitars displaying that message, the title of a song by the country singer Lee Greenwood that is also affixed to Trump’s endorsed Bible.

Trump did not immediately comment, whether through his transition team or the Trump Organization, his New York-based, much-penalized commercial company.

Trump is not known to play guitar, though his series of digital trading cards does include an image of him dressed in the style of Elvis Presley, playing a guitar in the distinctive Gibson shape.

As Guitar World pointed out, Gibson has not shown any tendency to tread softly when it comes to protecting its rights and products. A long-running dispute with Dean Guitars, over the Flying V and Explorer shapes Gibson also introduced in the 1950s, is heading for a retrial.

Western Australia’s endangered Carnaby’s cockatoos can live up to 35 years in the wild, making them one of the longest-lived bird species, according to a study that began in 1969.

Eight Carnaby’s cockatoos aged between 21 and 35 years have been recorded, according to research published in Pacific Conservation Biology.

The oldest bird, at 35 years old, was first recorded as an egg in August 1986. The report co-author Peter Mawson, a researcher with Western Australia’s biodiversity department, said the male cockatoo “looked as healthy as the day he left the nest”, and was still breeding when last sighted in 2021.

Carnaby’s cockatoos are large black birds with white cheeks and tail panels, which only occur in south-western WA. They mature late, produce few young, and have low survival rates in their first year of life, Mawson said.

“They have to live that long to guarantee they can produce enough offspring to replace the breeding pair,” he said. Most of the oldest birds were still with their breeding partner, or in a nest with a nestling when last spotted.

The population at Coomallo Creek, between Perth and Geraldton, has been studied for more than 55 years, with researchers visiting each breeding season during 1969-1996 and 2009-2023. Modern camera technology made it possible to read identifying bird bands, even when the cockatoos were in flight.

The age of wild Carnaby’s cockatoos placed them in the top 2% of long-lived birds recorded according to Australia, UK and US bird band registers, the study said. Shearwaters, albatross, cormorants and petrels were among those reaching maximum life spans of 40-plus years.

Cockatoos were known for their long lives in captivity, the paper said. “There is a saying in Australia, that if you are given a cockatoo for your 21st birthday, you should provide for it in your will as it will probably outlive you.”

Mawson said birds in captivity had the advantage of being fed, and not getting eaten, “but to live more than 30 years in the wild and still be breeding is a pretty impressive effort”.

In the wild, Carnaby’s cockatoos relied on large nesting hollows in ancient wandoo and salmon gum trees, and foraged on native species such as banksias, dryandras, hakeas and grevilleas.

Glenn Dewhurst founded Kaarakin, a black cockatoo sanctuary in Perth, which houses more than 300 birds.

Carnaby’s were messy eaters, Dewhurst said, creating wastage on the ground that provided a food source for other birds and animals.

A lot of native vegetation had not flowered in recent years, he said. “For the first time ever, we’re getting birds that are starving.”

Common in the 1950s, the population of Carnaby’s cockatoos declined due to clearing of their habitat in the wheatbelt, a bounty on the birds to protect pine plantations (revoked in 1982) and traffic collisions on major highways.

Carnaby’s cockatoos have visibly shrunk in number during Mawson’s lifetime. As a child he would see thousands of birds in a flock, he said. “Now, if you see more than a hundred birds in a flock, you’re doing really well.”

In a town of fewer than 1,000 people, it can be hard to keep a secret. And yet no one in McBride, a mountain community in British Columbia, can figure out how a local deer came to be wearing a zipped-up high-visibility jacket – or why the day-glo-clad cervid has been so hard to track down.

The mystery began on Sunday, when Andrea Arnold was driving along the snowy outskirts of McBride on Sunday and witnessed a sight so baffling she slowed her vehicle to a crawl.

“I did more than a double take, to make sure I was seeing what I was seeing,” said Arnold, a reporter for the local newspaper, the Rocky Mountain Goat.

Standing nonchalantly on the roadside was a mule deer clad in a high-visibility work jacket, its legs fit neatly through the arm holes and the zip firmly closed.

She took two pictures before the deer disappeared into the forest, later posting the images on social media, where they drew a mixed response: some suggested that the reflective jacket might keep the deer safe along the highway, but others worried it could get snagged, possibly causing the animal to panic or injure itself.

As Arnold put it, most of the comments boiled down to three questions: “How did it get on the deer and who is responsible? And why would someone do it?”

In the days since the deer was spotted, speculation has produced few leads – or culprits.

Sgt Eamon McArthur of the BC conservation officer service told CTV News he did not want to speculate on how the jacket ended up on the cervid, although he noted: “Deer are not predisposed to wearing clothes.”

McArthur allowed that it was probable that a resident was involved, but he cautioned: “Even if you can get close enough to the wildlife to put it in a sweater or a jacket or boots or what have you, we recommend highly against that.”

Under the province’s wildlife act, it is illegal to “worry, exhaust, fatigue, annoy, plague, pester, tease or torment” an animal – a provision that would almost certainly apply to wrangling a deer into a jacket.

Conservation staff have so far been unable to locate the deer despite its distinct and unfortunate appearance, and have appealed to the public for tips.

If they eventually locate it and the animal appears in distress, McArthur says the team will remove the jacket.

But sedating an animal, especially deer, comes with its own risks. A phenomenon known as capture myopathy, which is common in deer after they are sedated, can prove fatal.

McArthur said officers are hoping the jacket falls off naturally.

“It’s astonishing [to] me that someone was able to get it on the deer without serious injury to either party,” said Arnold. “I hope the jacket comes off either on its own or with help from conservation officers before it becomes a problem for the deer.

“Treating wild animals in a domestic manner … especially putting clothes on them, is not advisable.”

Donald Trump’s cabinet picks have been eclectic and often controversial but a unifying theme is emerging, experts say, with the US president-elect’s nominees offering staunch support to fossil fuels and either downplaying or denying the climate crisis caused by the burning of these fuels.

Trump ran on promises to eviscerate “green new scam” climate policies and to “drill, baby, drill” for more oil and gas, and his choices to run the major organs of the US government echo such sentiments, particularly his picks relating to the environment, with Lee Zeldin chosen as the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, Chris Wright as energy secretary and Doug Burgum as interior secretary.

“With these choices it looks like Project 2025 is back with full force, and it will be the blueprint for the Trump administration 2.0,” said Daniel Esty, an environmental policy expert at Yale University, in reference to the rightwing manifesto that calls for the deletion of environmental and climate protections.

“Some people didn’t think Trump would actually try to execute this but it looks like he really is going to pull back on climate change commitments, against the tide of history.”

A standout nomination is that of Wright, chief executive of the Colorado-based gas drilling company Liberty Energy, who has no government experience but was a major donor to Trump’s campaign and has frequently appeared on Fox News, and various podcasts, to extol the use of fossil fuels.

“There is no climate crisis, and we’re not in the midst of an energy transition either,” Wright said in a video posted online last year. He has denied that extreme weather is worsened by rising global temperatures and said that any impacts are “clearly overwhelmed by the benefits of increasing energy consumption”. Wright has opined that “carbon pollution” and even “clean energy” are “nonsense terms” that have been “made up by alarmists”.

Trump has said in a statement that his team will slash “totally unnecessary regulation” and “drive US Energy Dominance, which will drive down Inflation, win the AI arms race with China (and others), and expand American Diplomatic Power to end Wars all across the World”. The statement did not mention the climate crisis or the need to move away from fossil fuels.

Scientists are clear that the human and economic costs of the climate crisis are real, and far outstrip the action required to shift to clean energy. This energy transformation is already under way, with investment in renewables outpacing fossil fuels globally for the first time last year, with solar being installed at three times the capacity rate of gas in the US in 2023.

“He’s the most worrisome of these folks,” Esty said of Wright. “He’s the closest thing there is to a climate denier, which sets him apart from policymakers across the world.” Sean Casten, a Democratic member of Congress, was more pointed: “Chris Wright is a science-denying, self-serving, sanctimonious fracker who consistently puts the wants of energy producers over the needs of American energy consumers.”

Wright’s views will be at home within the Trump administration, however, with several other cabinet picks expressing doubts over established climate science and actions to cut planet-heating emissions. Zeldin, the putative EPA head, said in 2014 he was “not sold yet on the whole argument that we have as serious a problem as other people are” with global heating, adding in 2018 he did not support the Paris climate agreement, which Trump is again expected to withdraw the US from.

Marco Rubio, nominee for secretary of state at a time when the international community is struggling to avert disastrous global heating, previously said he did not accept the climate is changing and while he has modified this view more recently he has criticized policies to lower emissions and “the left’s climate change alarmism”.

Meanwhile, Pete Hesgeth, lined up to be head of the Department of Defense, itself one of the largest polluting entities in the world, has said climate change has become a “religion”. He said in 2019 “it’s all about control for them”, while appearing on Fox News. “That’s why climate change is the perfect enemy. They get to control your life to deal with it no matter what’s happening.”

Another Fox personality, the former Republican congressman Sean Duffy, is primed to be secretary of transportation, despite having no prior experience in an arena that produces more emissions than any other in the US.

Duffy, who in the 1990s appeared in MTV reality shows including The Real World: Boston, pondered this month on Fox: “If you say the climate’s changing, is it coming from CO2 or is it coming from the sun? Why is the climate changing?” The world is heating up because of combusted fossil fuels and deforestation, not the sun.

Even Robert F Kennedy Jr, once a hero to the environmental movement and an advocate for climate action, has shifted his views, attacking “this fixation upon carbon” and endorsing Trump, who has called the climate crisis “a big hoax”. Kennedy, a fierce opponent of vaccines and wind farms, has been nominated to be health secretary.

Burgum, the potential interior secretary, is a moderate compared to these other picks, having accepted that the climate crisis is real and even, as governor of North Dakota, setting a target for the state to be carbon neutral, albeit via unproven carbon-capture technology rather than emissions cuts. He is set to be Trump’s overall energy czar, tasked with driving up fossil fuel production, as well as managing a fifth of the US landmass in his interior role.

“North Dakota governor Doug Burgum is a proven leader and values an all-of-the-above energy approach,” said Heather Reams, president of the center-right Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions group. “Republicans recognize current federal processes are too bureaucratic and oftentimes prevent new energy projects from ever breaking ground.”

Reams added that speeded up permitting under Burgum promises “the opportunity to lessen our reliance on adversarial supply chains, reinvigorate our manufacturing sector, encourage investments and reduce global emissions”.

But Burgum is still a vocal supporter of oil and gas drilling, with his family leasing 200 acres of farmland in North Dakota to energy company Continental Resources, run by another major Trump backer in Harold Hamm. Burgum, along with Hamm, helped set up a Mar-a-Lago dinner between Trump and oil executives in which the president-elect asked for $1bn in campaign donations while vowing to gut environmental regulations if elected.

“I think under his own agenda Burgum would do a fine job, but I think he’s been brought in because of his allegiance to the Project 2025 blueprint,” said Esty.

“Overall, I think we will see a significant pullback in the breathability of air and drinkability of water, in the protections Americans have come to expect. I don’t think Trump will dramatically shift US energy production because we are already producing a lot of oil and gas but he certainly won’t be phasing them out. It’s an administration that will cause damage.”

Lidia Thorpe has been suspended from the Senate under an archaic and little-used rule of the chamber for making “inappropriate and sometimes abusive comments”, after she appeared to throw paper at Pauline Hanson during a tense parliamentary debate on Wednesday.

Government Senate leader Penny Wong moved for Thorpe to be suspended from the Senate from Wednesday night until the end of Thursday – the last scheduled sitting day of the year. The vote passed 46-11, with only the Greens opposing the motion, which was supported by Labor, the Coalition, One Nation, Ralph Babet, Jacqui Lambie and David Pocock.

Wong said there had been “multiple instances” where Thorpe had made “inappropriate, sometimes abusive comments” towards other senators and then disrupted proceedings by refusing to withdraw her comments. The suspension came just hours after Thorpe angrily interjected during a debate sparked by Hanson unsuccessfully attempting to have former Labor senator Fatima Payman investigated for an alleged section 44 citizenship issue

The Senate president, Sue Lines, said Thorpe’s behaviour was “not acceptable” and that such behaviour “will not be tolerated”.

“Despite attempts to work with Senator Thorpe, she’s increasingly engaged in such behaviour in the Senate,” Wong said.

“This fortnight alone, the senator has been censured by the Senate, sworn in the chamber, repeatedly made offensive gestures when leaving the chamber and made comments, resulting in First Nation senators from across this chamber feeling functionally unsafe, and all of that was prior to today’s incident.

“This behaviour would not be tolerated in any workplace, and we cannot tolerate it in our workplace.”

Coalition Senate leader Simon Birmingham called the motion to suspend Thorpe a “line in the sand” moment, claiming the independent senator had “crossed a line” in her actions on Wednesday.

Birmingham accused the Greens of a “shameful double standard” in opposing the suspension motion for Thorpe, claiming the minor party members would not tolerate similar behaviour from other senators.

The Greens senator Larissa Waters said the minor party did not think the behaviour was appropriate but believed Thorpe’s suspension was not “an appropriate and proportionate response to that action”.

“Let us all reflect on how we behave, but let those of us who live with white privilege remember that institutionalised racism doesn’t affect us as it does people of colour,” Waters said.

“I’m sure anyone who was in the chamber would realise that the behaviours that were undertaken this morning came following an attempt by another senator to exclude a different senator of colour, and it was in the context of the debate that had racially charged overtones.”

Hanson earlier on Wednesday attempted to have the now independent senator Payman, who was born in Afghanistan, investigated for an alleged section 44 citizenship issue. Hanson alleged Payman had not provided enough documents to prove she had revoked that citizenship, and on Wednesday morning attempted to table her own documents relating to her attempt to refer the issue for investigation.

In response, Thorpe appeared to rip up a paper copy of Hanson’s motion and threw it in Hanson’s direction. Some pieces of the paper appeared to hit Hanson.

Shortly after, Thorpe walked out of the chamber, holding up her middle finger.

Hanson said she was “pleased” to see Thorpe suspended from the Senate, claiming she had experienced a number of “barbs” and “jabs” while sitting near her in the upper house.

“Each and every one of you know that since Senator Thorpe has been in this place, it has been the downfall of this chamber because of her aggression towards calling each and every one of us, who is white, that we are colonialists, that we have stolen the land,” Hanson said.

“That’s not what this place is about, and that’s why I’m pleased to see … something had to be done to rein it in.”

Guardian Australia has contacted Thorpe for a response.

Joseph Darville has fond memories of swimming with his young son off the south coast of Grand Bahama island, and watching together as scores of dolphins frolicked offshore. A lifelong environmentalist now aged 82, Darville has always valued the rich marine habitat and turquoise blue seas of the Bahamas, which have lured locals and tourists alike for generations.

The dolphins are now mostly gone, he says, as human encroachment proliferated and the environment deteriorated. “You don’t see them now; the jetskis go by and frighten them off.

“There’s a lot going on. It’s a tragedy – and continues to be a tragedy,” says Darville.

Now, he fears further acceleration of the decline, with the scheduled opening next year of Carnival Cruise Line’s vast Celebration Key resort, now under construction on the island’s south coast.

The sprawling entertainment complex across a mile-long beach, already stripped of its protective mangroves, will ultimately bring up to an additional 4 million people a year to the island, Carnival says, with four of its ships able to dock simultaneously.

Concerns about giant cruise ships bringing multitudes of tourists, and pollution, to the ecologically fragile Bahamas are nothing new. Neither is the concept of foreign-owned cruise companies buying land to build private retreats exclusively for their passengers: Disney’s Castaway Cay, a private island near Great Abaco, last year celebrated its 25th birthday.

But if only for their scale alone, Celebration Key and two other expansive developments just like it, either recently opened or being built elsewhere in the 700-island archipelago, represent a worrisome new threat, campaigners say.

Cruise companies have spent at least $1.5bn (£1.1bn) since 2019 buying or leasing land in the Caribbean, according to a Bloomberg analysis in May, and Darville wonders what that means for the future of his beloved islands.

As executive chair of the environmental group Save the Bays, he was part of an alliance that fought against the Grand Bahama development, as well as Disney’s Lookout Cay at Lighthouse Point, which opened on Eleuthera island in June, and Royal Caribbean’s Royal Beach Club at Paradise Island, which broke ground in April.

“It has to stop somewhere; we have to preserve something for our future generations, for our own native Bahamians,” Darville says. “We cannot always be seduced by these cruise lines and other developers who come in and eat what’s left of our country.”

The “seductions” he sees are the cruise lines touting the supposed economic advantages to the Bahamas of being allowed to buy and develop land, promoting what he claims are questionable environmental credentials, and pledging community investments for locals in terms of jobs and grants for small businesses and education.

Such messaging has been well received in a country still struggling to recover from Hurricane Dorian in 2019, the worst natural disaster in its history, which prompted the near-collapse of the tourism industry.

An unemployment rate that reached almost 20% after the storm and subsequent Covid-19 pandemic has finally dropped back into single figures, but a stroll around once-bustling Freeport, the largest town, cruise port and commercial hub of Grand Bahama, provides plenty of evidence of the island’s decline.

The waterfront 542-room Grand Lucayan resort, formerly the grande dame of Grand Bahamian tourism, sits mostly empty, abandoned and awaiting a buyer, with only a small portion of the development still open.

The adjacent straw market, once a thriving hub of souvenir stalls, entertainment and refreshment, is largely bereft of customers, even when a cruise ship is in town. And taxi drivers can spend a day or more waiting at the airport or cruise terminal without earning a fare.

It is hardly surprising, then, that the cruise companies, amplified by the Bahamian government, honed their pitches for land deals to receptive ears, focused on the jobs they would create and the dollars they would bring in.

Carnival, for example, says all but two of the 31 construction companies working on Celebration Key are owned by Bahamians. Job fairs over the summer, offering employment with perks including medical insurance and paid time-off, were swamped.

Disney says it created more than 200 “high-quality” jobs for locals at Lookout Cay, has invested more than $1m into the local economy since it opened, and has promised almost as much again for playgrounds, sports fields and infrastructure for the island’s students.

On Paradise Island, Royal Caribbean’s deal for the 7-hectare (17-acre) site included a promise that Bahamians “will be invited” to own up to 49% of the venture.

The websites of all three projects are also heavy with words and phrases such as “environmental commitment”, “sustainability” and “responsibility”.

Meanwhile, Isaac Chester Cooper, the Bahamas’ tourism minister, continues to cite a Tourism Economics study, prepared for Carnival in 2019, stating that the “development, construction and ongoing operation of Celebration Key” would create thousands of Bahamian jobs and generate a $1.5bn boost for the Bahama’s GDP.

By contrast, Carnival Corporation recorded an all-time high $21.6bn annual revenue in 2023; Royal Caribbean’s revenue increased 57% year-on-year to $13.9bn; and that of Disney’s Magical Cruise Company, while smaller at $2.2bn, still represented a rise of almost 91%.

Cooper did not return a request for comment from the Guardian.

Darville concedes it is harder to push an environmental message in such circumstances. “Whenever there’s word there’s going to be cruise ship development coming to the Bahamas, the first thing the government looks at, and the people generally, is how many people will be employed, what economic benefits we’re going to derive,” he says

He says that ignores the environmental impact and damage caused by developments on previously pristine Bahamas beaches. Mangrove destruction is a particular concern, given the protection the trees provide against storm surge from hurricanes.

But campaigners say the projects are also significantly detrimental to wildlife, in water and on land, as well as precious coral reefs already imperilled by rising sea temperatures.

At Lookout Cay, Disney built a half mile-long pier to allow cruise liners to dock, driving countless support posts deep into the seabed. The company insisted that “viable individual corals within the pier’s footprint were expertly relocated to improve the health of struggling coral reefs in the area”.

Darville is sceptical and worries about the effect on coral reefs and fish populations of thousands of people in the water slathered in chemical-based sunscreens. “When Disney was putting out its proposal, no matter what they said or how they did it, there was going to be a catastrophic impact,” he says.

Gail Woon, executive director of the educational non-profit group Earthcare, and partner of the Global Cruise Activist Network, an alliance of industry critics, says previous developments in the islands that were touted as environmentally friendly turned out to be anything but.

She cites a private golf resort where residences can cost tens of millions of dollars, but construction and operations destroyed coral just offshore.

“We had coral reef biologists testify that if you put a golf course on the beach and fertilise the grass, the run-off will go into the ocean and kill the coral because they can’t take large amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus,” she says.

“They went ahead and did it anyway, then where there should have been pristine sand and clear water they have these big clumps of green and brown macro-algae that smothers the corals. They were destroying the product they were trying to promote.”

Through projects such as Earthcare’s EcoKids, Woon and others around the Bahamas are working to educate the next generation about environmental challenges facing the country and the world.

It’s a message reinforced at Conservation Cove, a small but thriving living laboratory east of Freeport where cruise ship tourists and pupils on school field trips learn the importance of coral reefs and mangrove restoration.

Javan Hunt, mangrove nursery coordinator at Conservation Cove, says: “If you make decisions based on ignorance you allow people to run over you, or sell you something that’s not in your best interest.

“So for me the most important thing is to educate those coming up, so that in five years, 10 years and beyond, they can make informed decisions – and won’t just smile when someone is presenting shit to them and telling them it’s treasure.”