Boil your tap water before you drink it, residents in Devon have been told, after 22 cases of a parasitic disease were confirmed.

South West Water has detected what it calls “small traces” of a parasite that can cause a diarrhoea-type disease in the drinking supply around the town of Brixham.

Bottled water stations are being set up in affected areas, the company added, but has told people in Brixham, Boohay, Kingswear, Roseland and north-east Paignton that they should not drink their tap water unless they boil it.

Dozens more cases of upset stomachs are being investigated as the disease appears to be sweeping the area.

The parasite, cryptosporidium, can cause the disease cryptosporidiosis, which can be a serious illness in immunocompromised people, but most healthy people who get it can expect to recover fully.

It is a predominantly water-borne disease and can be caught by drinking contaminated water.

Sarah Bird, consultant in health protection at UK Health Security Agency South West, said: “We advise people in the affected areas to follow the advice from South West Water and boil their drinking water and allow it to cool before use.

“Anyone with a diarrhoeal illness should drink plenty of water to prevent dehydration and if they have severe symptoms like bloody diarrhoea, they should contact NHS 111 or their GP surgery.”

The symptoms of the disease include watery diarrhoea, stomach pains, dehydration, weight loss and fever, which can last for two to three weeks.

Bird added: “For most people, cryptosporidium symptoms can be managed at home without needing medical advice. Those affected should stay off school and work for 48 hours since the last episode of illness and away from swimming pools for 14 days after the last episode of illness.”

Chris Rockey, the head of water quality at South West Water, told the BBC that people should boil water to drink, cook and clean their teeth with in the affected areas, adding that the firm would continue to work with health professionals and monitor the water.

He said he was unable to provide a timeframe for how long the water-boiling would be advised and that an update would be provided when the water supply returned to normal.

A spokesperson added: “We are working with public health partners to urgently investigate the source. We apologise for the inconvenience caused and will continue to keep customers and businesses updated. Bottled water stations will be set up in the affected areas as soon as possible.”

Customers who have been issued with the notice advising them to boil their water will receive an automatic payment of £15, the company said.

The ​Conservative MP for Totnes, Anthony Mangnall, said: “It is enormously frustrating that South West Water weren’t quicker to respond at the first point at when this was reported.

“It started with an initial denial that it was anything to do with their network and of course they have now found the cryptosporidium is in their network and they are responding. Residents were quick to actually point out there was something wrong with the water, they could taste it, and now they are suffering.”

The privatisation of the water industry has failed and it should be brought into public ownership, the Labour MP Clive Lewis has said.

In an early day motion laid before parliament, Lewis said the industry had proved it was not capable of building the infrastructure required to deal with the impact of climate breakdown, including increased flooding and droughts.

Lewis and other MPs will challenge water industry representatives and the regulator Ofwat on Wednesday as MPs on the environmental audit committee (EAC) seek answers on what progress has been made to tackle sewage pollution in rivers and seas.

“Water companies in England have incurred debts of £64bn and paid out £78bn in dividends since they were privatised, debt-free, in 1989 … Water companies paid out £1.4bn in dividends in 2022 even as 11 of them were fined in the same year for missing performance targets,” Lewis said.

Climate change threats, which are making flooding and drought more severe, required a change to the way the industry was managed to build in resilience, Lewis said.

MPs are putting pressure on the industry as the regulator Ofwat prepares to announce whether it will allow Thames Water, which has total debts of £18bn, to hike customer fees by more than 40% and avoid high fines for pollution, in order to get the equity funding it needs to continue operating.

Ofwat is due to give its first public view on private water firms’ business plans in June. The government has assembled a team, under the banner of Project Timber, to draw up contingency plans to rescue Thames if needed, which could include the bulk of its debt being added to the public purse.

But Lewis said a government bailout of Thames Water would send a dangerous signal to other utilities that reckless decisions carry no private risk. He urged Ofwat to reject Thames Water’s request to increase bills, face lower pollution fines and continue to pay dividends.

The EAC will push Stuart Colville, the deputy director of the industry body Water UK, on what progress has been made in the industry to cut pollution. An inquiry by the EAC in 2022 into sewage pollution found that rivers were being subjected to a chemical cocktail of sewage, agricultural waste and plastic pollution which was suffocating biodiversity and putting public health at risk.

But discharges of raw sewage and pollution into waterways from treated sewage have continued and last year water companies discharged raw sewage into rivers and coastal waters for a record 3.6m hours, an increase of 105% on the previous 12 months. The scale of the discharges of untreated waste made 2023 the worst year for storm water pollution.

The data showed that failure to maintain assets and a lack of capacity at treatment plants were the main reasons for the scale of raw sewage flowing from high discharging overflows.

Guardian analysis showed that more than 2,000 overflows owned by a number of companies discharged raw sewage into rivers and seas at a scale that should spark an immediate investigation into illegal breaches of permit conditions.

Figures obtained by the BBC on Wednesday revealed United Utilities dumped millions of litres of raw sewage into Windermere in the Lake District in February after a fault took 10 hours to fix.

The bathing water season began on Wednesday, meaning the Environment Agency will begin the testing of 451 bathing water areas across England.

The risk to public health from sewage pollution was exposed in Devon, where the UK Health Security Agency said 16 cases of cryptosporidium, a diarrhoea-type illness, have been confirmed. The waterborne disease can be caused by swallowing contaminated water in rivers and streams.

This Saturday thousands will take to coasts and rivers across the UK to protest about the state of the nation’s waterways, in paddle-out events coordinated by Surfers Against Sewage.

Protests are taking place at West Pier in Brighton and at Gyllyngvase Beach in Falmouth, as well as the Great Ouse river in Bedford.

When the film My Octopus Teacher aired on Netflix in 2020 it was a huge overnight success, going on to win an Oscar the following year for best documentary. The simple but touching tale of the tender bond between film-maker Craig Foster and his young undersea companion had audiences spellbound worldwide. Some, like Sir Richard Branson, even gave up eating octopus after watching the film.

Yet for Foster himself, the overnight fame was emotionally debilitating. “You’re working on this little story that you think a few people might be interested in and suddenly you’re in front of 100 million people,” he says. “I didn’t think it would affect me so much, but it was very difficult. Terrifying, to be honest.”

His ocean front house in Simon’s Town, South Africa, burned down a year and a half ago, and he lost everything. But that was nothing, Foster says, compared with the blind terror he felt after being exposed to such a massive TV audience. It was so different to the quiet life he’d been leading on the shores of the underwater kelp forests, and he couldn’t handle it, he says. His mental health suffered and he had trouble sleeping for months.

But his love for the ocean didn’t change and it was partly his daily sea dives that helped restore Foster’s inner strength and equilibrium.

Now he has re-emerged, not with a new film, but a book, Amphibious Soul, which is published next week.

It is a memoir, he says, but also a video diary, with a QR code that allows readers to link to dozens of Foster’s short films – footage of wild animals and the natural world that he has compiled over decades.

Foster hopes to “awaken the wild side” in people and get them connecting more with nature and species, even if they live in cities – look at how foxes have managed to survive in cities against all the odds, he suggests.

Many of the book’s stories, though, focus on animals most people will never come into contact with. But Foster sees his role as “trying to translate what these animals have taught me”.

Foster was 15 when he had his first face-to-face encounter with a giant octopus.

He had taken a boat out with a friend to a part of the South African coast that’s normally too choppy to swim in. But it was a calm day, he recalls. He took a big gulp of air through his snorkel and jumped off the boat, diving down about six metres (20ft). All of a sudden he was aware of something large looming beside him and saw through his mask a creature with “a bright orange head the size of a rugby ball” and huge tentacles.

“It grabbed my arms and dragged me into its den,” says Foster. “I just knew – if I struggle, I’ve had it.”

So he relaxed his body and let himself be pulled down.

Luckily, Foster was good at holding his breath. After a minute or so the octopus released its grip and the teenager was able to swim to the surface.

It’s an experience that would traumatise most people, but Foster felt a powerful connection. “I couldn’t wait to get back in the water,” he says.

In the book he also describes the time he tracked a 4.5 metre Nile crocodile, considered one of the most dangerous predators in the world, and followed it into its lair.

“When you face what people have put out there as this incredibly scary monster, and it turns out to be this magnificent creature, you lose your sense of fear,” he says.

In another short film we see how an octopus pinches Foster’s camera and turns the tables, with the animal filming the man. It’s a metaphor for the book, Foster thinks, in the sense of “we’re all living a sort of double life”.

“We’ve forgotten that we’re wild animals in the ecosystem,” he says.

Foster talks in the book, too, about his experience of working on land with Indigenous people all over Africa, and learning to track with them.

“They have a much deeper sense of what life is about because they have a deep relationship with the wild,” he says. “We should be listening to them and learning from them.”

For Foster, human connection with animals is key. Although he says he won’t make another octopus film, he has been getting to know a wild otter. He describes feeling “an overwhelming mix of emotions – love, gratitude and a bit of confusion” when it reached out a paw to stroke his face.

Could this be a My Otter Teacher in the making?

Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker railed against Pride month, working women, US president Biden’s leadership during the Covid-19 pandemic and abortion during a commencement address at Benedictine College last weekend.

The three-time Super Bowl champion delivered the roughly 20-minute address Saturday at the Catholic private liberal arts school in Atchison, Kansas, which is located about 60 miles north of Kansas City.

Butker, who has made his conservative Catholic beliefs well known, began his address by attacking what he called “dangerous gender ideologies” in an apparent reference to Pride month, which has been celebrated in June since the Stonewall riots in 1969. He also criticized an article by the Associated Press highlighting a shift toward conservativism in some parts of the Catholic Church.

The 28-year-old Butker then took aim at Biden’s policies, including his response to Covid-19, which has killed nearly 1.2m people in the US, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“While Covid might have played a large role throughout your formative years, it is not unique,” he said. “The bad policies and poor leadership have negatively impacted major life issues. Things like abortion, IVF, surrogacy, euthanasia, as well as a growing support for the degenerate cultural values and media all stem from pervasiveness of disorder.”

Butker later addressed the women in the audience, arguing that their “most important title” should be that of “homemaker”.

“I think it is you, the women, who have had the most diabolic lies told to you,” Butker said. “Some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world, but I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world. I can tell you that my beautiful wife Isabelle would be the first to say her life truly started when she started living her vocation as a wife and as a mother.”

The Chiefs declined to comment on Butker’s commencement address.

The 2017 seventh-round pick out of Georgia Tech has become of the NFL’s best kickers, breaking the Chiefs’ franchise record with a 62-yard field goal in 2022. Butker helped them win their first Super Bowl in 50 years in 2020, added a second Lombardi Trophy in 2023, and he kicked the field goal that forced overtime in a Super Bowl win over San Francisco in February.

It has been an embarrassing offseason for the Chiefs, though.

Last month, voters in Jackson County, Missouri, soundly rejected a ballot initiative that would have helped pay for a downtown ballpark for the Royals and an $800m renovation to Arrowhead Stadium, the home of the Chiefs. Many voters criticized the plan put forward by the Chiefs as catering primarily to VIPs and the wealthy.

The same week, wide receiver Rashee Rice turned himself in to Dallas police on multiple charges, including aggravated assault, after he was involved in a high-speed crash that left four people with injuries. Rice has acknowledged being the driver of one of the sports cars that was going in excess of 100mph, and video shows him leaving the scene without providing information or determining whether anyone needed medical attention.

Last week, law enforcement officials told the Dallas Morning News that Rice also was suspected of assaulting a person at a downtown nightclub; Dallas police did not name Rice as the suspect in detailing a report to the Associated Press.

Chiefs coach Andy Reid said he had spoken to the receiver and the team was letting the legal process play out.

Throughout her life, Sarah Thornton hadn’t given much thought to her breasts. They were there, of course, and they’d fed two children. But they had also attracted unwanted attention, and latterly they’d become a source of concern – with a history of breast cancer in her family, and after years of vigilance and tests, in 2018 Thornton was about to undergo a preventive double mastectomy. Preparing for the operation, she realised she still hadn’t given them much consideration, nor what it would be like to have “new” breasts in the form of implants. When they turned out to be bigger than expected, she was shocked, “but in the end,” she says, “it wasn’t the aesthetic form as much as the feeling. It was like losing sentience. And it put me on a quest to understand these things that I’d never thought too much about. These things I’d kind of dismissed as dumb boobs.”

Thornton’s new book, Tits Up: What Our Beliefs About Breasts Reveal About Life, Love, Sex and Society, is a deep dive into the bosom of our fixation with boobs. Writing the book, she says, has transformed how she views her own breasts. “I really did go from dismissing them as a kind of shallow accessory, to thinking of them as a really important body part – one we wouldn’t have a human species without,” she says. “Our top halves have been invaded by male supremacy and I did not realise how deeply patriarchal even my own view of breasts was. I was dismissing them as dumb boobs, partly because they’re positioned primarily in culture as erotic playthings and I didn’t want to just be an erotic plaything.”

She doesn’t want to be a killjoy, she says. “Breasts are not evolutionarily, or universally, erotic. But the sexualisation of breasts causes many women a lot of stress, anxiety and dissatisfaction. That is a real shame, if not a serious political problem, and I think elevating the esteem of this body part that’s so emblematic of womanhood is important.”

I’m speaking to Thornton at home in San Francisco. She grew up in Canada, with a British mother, then spent 26 years in the UK, where she was an arts journalist, academic and author of books including Seven Days in the Art World. She has lived in the US for 12 years, now on the west coast with her wife, the gallerist Jessica Silverman. They often use the word “titties” (“I have a lot of affection for the word,” she says) with their 18-month-old daughter. “I was really struck by the fact that in Chinese one of the dominant slang words is the equivalent of ‘milkies’. That’s just not true in the US, or Anglo-Saxon culture. The only equivalent word would be ‘jugs’, as something that suggests nutritional function, which is the evolutionary raison d’etre of our tits.”

Thornton likes “tits”, and the “tits up” of her book title is American showbiz slang for good luck, a much more positive association than the British version meaning hapless or disastrous. “Tits is the No 1 word used on the internet for breasts,” she says, “and it seemed to me that if women were going to reclaim these words, then we needed to branch out. In the US, men use a much broader vocabulary to describe breasts than women do, and that struck me as a red flag. How come teenage boys can use 10 words and teenage girls use one? It’s like, who thinks they own them?”

And so Thornton is keen to reclaim words such as tits. She also appreciates the word “rack”, something, she adds, which gives the impression of “all the cultural baggage” hanging off it. “A liberated rack has no particular appearance, it is what it is and it just works for its owner. A liberated rack isn’t ashamed, it does what it wants to do. So if you want to free the nipple, you go there; if you want to bundle up in a triple-thick sports bra, do that too. There’s not a singular liberated rack, there’s lots of ways to do it. I know this pluralism sometimes feels over liberal, but when it comes to women’s bodies, it’s hard to be liberal enough.”

For many girls, the development of their breasts is often the first time they become uncomfortably aware of heterosexual male attention. When Thornton was 15, her breasts were groped by an older male colleague at a golf club restaurant where she was working. Not long afterwards, at a sleepover, she was assaulted by the much older boyfriend of her friend’s sister in the middle of the night. Her breasts, she writes, “had become defeated fools – boobs in the literal sense – that needed to be buried in oversized sweaters.” Looking back, she says, “it was a significant event in my body’s history. I’m sure that fed into me being the kind of person who was not someone to flaunt my cleavage. I have such deep respect and love for women who love their cleavage, I just wasn’t good at that. I felt so awkward and vulnerable.”

When Thornton came to breastfeed her two older children, now in their 20s, her breasts took on a different meaning, but it wasn’t a particularly positive experience. “I really wish I had loved breastfeeding more than I did. I didn’t love it and it’s partly because my breasts were such a source of conflict for me.”

Thornton’s research took her from strip clubs to cosmetic surgeons’ clinics to donor milk banks. “The whole book is really told through women’s eyes,” she says. For one transgender woman she interviews, breast surgery was “an essential part of her validity as a woman”. The women who donated to milk banks were not exploited subordinate wet nurses but “allomothers” in the millennia-long precapitalist tradition of communal child rearing. In the strip and lapdance clubs – Thornton is in the “sex work is work” camp, which may jar with many feminists – she comes to the conclusion that, for the women who work there, breasts are not so much sex objects “as much as salaried assistants”. One dancer suggested that having men confronted with her breasts felt more humanising – they were also forced to look at her face – than when it was her bottom being objectified.

An artist, Clarity Haynes, who does a portrait of Thornton’s breasts, used to be a stripper. “She said it was fine if she was getting paid for it,” says Thornton, “but she would get so irate if she was just walking down the street and guys decided to ogle her.”

Given our breast-obsessed culture, it’s thrilling to realise that it was only relatively recently that breasts took on quite so much sexual importance. Thornton traces their sexualisation in the west to 15th-century France. “You need breasts to be disconnected from their primary use in order for them to be fully eroticised, and the first real cultural evidence of that is in French Renaissance painting, with portraits commissioned by French kings of their mistresses who had these pristine breasts – you even have the wet nurse in the background with her heavy, saggy milk-filled ‘jugs’ as a contrast to the perky unused breasts of the mistress.”

Thornton argues that there is a strong link between the sexualisation of breasts and higher rates of formula feeding. As formula became more widespread and affordable – in the US, breastfeeding hit its lowest rates in the 1970s – breast fetishism exploded. She believes in the right of women to choose to formula feed – “it would be inconsistent and preachy to tell another woman what to do with her boobs” – but she points out that she has always had a problem around the word “choice”, “because choices are not equal, we don’t make our choices on a level playing field.”

In a culture where breastfeeding in public can be uncomfortable for many women, support to get it established is missing and lack of employment rights can hinder it. Then there are the women who can’t, or won’t breastfeed for any number of reasons. “One of my interviewees was the victim of sexual abuse and she decided prior to giving birth that she would not breastfeed.”

The woman, Elysia, turned out to be such an abundant producer of milk that she ended up donating 80 US gallons to a milk bank that feeds premature babies. Her son also thrived on her milk. “But she never breastfed. She pumped and delivered raw milk to him, fresh, from ‘jug’ to jug. What’s really beautiful about that story is that she totally changed her relationship with her breasts through that experience. These things that she felt excruciating pain and shame around became something she had love for because they nourished her boy so well.”

Breast fashions change, and in the latter half of the 20th century, large breasts were desirable, and women’s feelings about their breasts “started to be influenced by implant shapes – the round Pamela Anderson shape and size”. Even if that is no longer fashionable, “breast surgery is not going away,” says Thornton. “The lift is on the rise.”

Although she met some male surgeons, “one of whom I call Dr More, because it was always more, more and more”, in her book Thornton chose to focus on female surgeons, who tended to have a far more natural and subtle approach. Thornton sat in on one operation on a woman in her 40s who was having her large implants removed and her breasts lifted. In the US, the number of implants peaked in 2007, writes Thornton. Dr Carolyn Chang, whose operation Thornton watches, tells her that “implants, or at least large ones, are becoming less fashionable. Women want athletic bodies.”

When Thornton ventured into the world of bra design, she found a dominance of foam cups that created a smooth, round appearance and hid the wearer’s nipples – a word that is rarely uttered in the industry, which instead prefers to talk about a breast’s “apex” (one notable exception being the Skims “nipple push-up bra”, which features a moulded nipple shape, launched recently with much hype).

This brought Thornton to the Free the Nipple movement, which began in 2012 to highlight the sexualisation of female nipples and give women the same shirt-free rights as men. In the beginning, Thornton says, she had doubts about it. “I was like, is it really important? After doing the research, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s a really fundamental problem.” She writes that she believes “hiding this fundamental mammalian marker is integral to women’s inequality and disempowerment.” Thornton smiles. “Do you think that’s an overstatement? What I would say is men’s and women’s chests are not treated equally in our society and aren’t associated with the same thing.”

It comes to a point with nipples in particular. Men’s nipples are visible everywhere, but also unnoticed. “I didn’t even notice them until I started working on this book and then I just saw men’s nipples everywhere. A white shirt is a recipe for a male nipple.” Women tend not to be comfortable showing theirs, “and it’s partly because there’s this notion that our breasts are primarily sex objects, they don’t belong to us and if we take our top off, we’re going: ‘Come fuck me.’ I genuinely believe that the dismissal of our breasts for the complex things they are is a serious problem for women.”

She hopes that her book will go some way to help elevate the status of breasts, and that women may feel “less critical, more accepting”. Will sagging, ageing breasts ever not be considered, at best, a joke in our culture? Thornton sighs. “Ageing is not generally accepted. We live in a world that is so fast-changing that the meaning of wisdom has shifted.” She misses her “saggy boobs”, she says. “I wish I could give the affection to them that I now feel.” Before her double mastectomy and implants, she took her breasts on what she calls their “final outing” – to the pool at a fancy hotel and, as she swam, thanked them, and apologised for not appreciating them enough over the years.

She is silent for a while and looks suddenly emotional, then says she recently switched gyms; her new one has a lot of older women. “I see a lot of saggy boobs in the dressing room, and I actually feel love for them, genuine affection.” It took her a few years to accept her new breasts. “I’m very grateful that I dodged the bullet of breast cancer and that the experience led me to a place where I learned a lot.” She remembers one of the women she interviewed, a voluptuous burlesque dancer named Dirty Martini. “She said breasts are a gateway to body positivity and I actually think that’s true for a lot of women. They’re front and centre, part of us.”

Tits Up by Sarah Thornton is published by Bluebird (£20). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com.

A cross-party group of MPs and peers has urged Rishi Sunak to make a U-turn on his oil and gas extraction plans as part of a broader plea to increase efforts to address the climate crisis.

The 50 politicians, including three Conservatives, wrote to the prime minister calling for the UK to regain its international leadership on the crisis by ending the licensing of new oil and gas fields, appointing a climate envoy, and backing the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance.

All countries agreed to “transition away from fossil fuels” at the Cop28 UN climate summit last December, but without a firm timetable for their phase-out. Despite this pledge, however, Sunak has gone ahead with licensing new oil and gas fields in the North Sea.

Caroline Lucas, the Green party MP, who signed the letter from the all party parliamentary group on climate change, said: “When the prime minister entered Downing Street he promised to protect the environment. But instead he has U-turned on once-leading climate policies, approved the largest undeveloped oilfield in the North Sea, and weaponised green policies.

“If the government is to secure any success at future critical international negotiations, then the prime minister must heed the demands of cross-party parliamentarians.”

Current members of the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance, which pledge to phase out fossil fuel production, include France, Spain, Denmark, Ireland, Costa Rica and Sweden. Wales is also a member, as sub-national governments can join.

However, some members have been accused of failing to put adequate plans in place to stop production: for instance, Denmark allows licensing in limited circumstances, and its end date for production is 2050.

The government has also dropped the role of climate envoy, usually filled by either a civil servant or senior politician, who spearheads the UK’s international climate policy.

Many countries have an envoy, with John Kerry, for example, serving in the role for the US under Joe Biden until earlier this year. The letter’s signatories call for the role to be reinstated in the UK, and elevated to parity with a secretary of state.

Robbie MacPherson, a senior political adviser at the Uplift campaign group, said: “At a time of huge global instability and political uncertainty, there is also an imperative for the UK to have its own special prime ministerial envoy for climate.

“The government must have consistent representation and never be left without a high-level political presence at global summits.”

The three Tories to have signed the letter are Zac Goldsmith, the former MP and mayoral candidate elevated to the peerage under Boris Johnson, and who has been critical of Sunak since being sacked as a minister last year; Tracey Crouch, a former sports minister; and Pauline Latham, the MP for Mid Derbyshire. Neither of the MPs will stand at the next general election.

Other signatories include Labour’s Clive Lewis, Alex Sobel and Rosie Duffield, Richard Foord of the Liberal Democrats, and Deirdre Brock of the Scottish National party.

The letter called for Sunak to support the setting of a new global goal for climate finance at the Cop29 summit this November in Azerbaijan. It would aim to help developing countries cut greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to the impacts of extreme weather.

The signatories also want a UK biodiversity strategy and action plan, as part of international efforts to conserve species across the planet.

Afzal Khan, the Labour MP for Manchester Gorton, said: “MPs across the political spectrum, in both the House of Commons and Lords, want the government to do more to uphold the UK’s reputation as a global climate leader.

“Instead of chasing after the last drop of North Sea oil, and retreating from responsibility, the prime minister must honour our domestic and global climate goals to send a clear message to world leaders this year.”

A Government spokesperson said: “The UK leads the world in net zero, having halved emissions before any other major economy and set into law one of the most ambitious emissions targets in the world. Tackling climate change, however, is a global challenge, and with the UK accounting for less than 1% of annual worldwide emissions we need to work with other countries in tackling this vital issue head on.

“At COP28, we were pivotal in delivering an agreement to transition away from fossil fuels and are committed to continued collaboration with all international partners in tackling emissions.”

The UK has a competitive advantage over the rest of the world in a third of green products and services, giving it a head start in the race to achieve net zero, according to an upbeat report by a left of centre thinktank.

Firms are well placed to manufacture many of the most crucial green products – from electric trains to heat pump components – despite 40 years of decline that have left the UK industrial base smaller than many of its competitors, the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) said.

The UK is particularly strong in making products and components used for monitoring, measuring and analysing industrial processes that will play a large role in the decarbonisation of the economy – such as the electricity grid and renewable energy generation.

To expand the number of industries capable of manufacturing products that will help achieve net zero, ministers will need to develop a mechanism for supporting businesses that want to expand the range and sophistication of what they produce.

Arguing that ageing industrial plants should be “greened” rather than closed down, the report said state subsidies would allow the UK to make less carbon-intensive steel and avoid an over-reliance on imports that have travelled thousands of miles.

The onshoring of factories to make vital components would shorten supply lines, making the UK “more resilient to future shocks” while also reinvigorating the economy.

George Dibb, the head of IPPR’s Centre for Economic Justice, said the geographical spread of industries primed to support the move to net zero meant the government could level up regions at the same time.

“Over the past 30 years we have slipped sharply behind our global competitors in the quantity and kinds of things we actually make,” Dibb said. “That’s bad for jobs, for living standards, for our security – and for our long-term economic strength as a country.”

“Yet UK manufacturers still have a competitive edge in making some of the products vital for a net zero economy, and with the right government support we have the potential to be world-leading in many more.”

Dibb said all the major products needed to achieve net zero were already available, allowing ministers to use the report as a crib sheet to identify areas in need of Whitehall subsidies.

To assess the UK’s green strengths, the IPPR identified a set of 143 products that could be linked directly to technologies and steps needed to deliver net zero. It found that the UK had a comparative advantage over international rivals in a third.

However, a separate report by MPs also out on Wednesday argues that the UK is ill-prepared to build climate-resilient infrastructure without a huge investment to raise the level of skills in the workforce.

The all-party public accounts committee (PAC) of MPs found that skills gaps in the UK’s workforce were compounded by competition from major global development projects.

“Project management and design are also areas of concern, and [a lack of] skilled professionals in senior positions in particular,” the parliamentary spending watchdog said.

Its report found that 16,000 project professionals must gain accreditation from the government’s project leadership academy to carry out vital work, but only 1,000 have so far.

The MPs found that an “unprecedented” scale of investment was under way across the rail, road and energy sectors with little oversight by ministers or evaluation by civil servants.

The report concluded: “Only 8% of the £432bn spend on major projects in 2019 had robust impact evaluation plans in place and around two-thirds had no plans at all. This is despite high quality evaluation being important to provide evidence for what works, demonstrate value and to make the case for or against further investment.

“Decisions are being made in the absence of evidence, putting value for money at unnecessary risk.”

“Mr Trump, is Todd doing a good job?”

So shouted a pool reporter outside a Manhattan courtroom Tuesday afternoon shortly after Trump’s lead attorney, Todd Blanche, started cross examining former fixer turned prosecution witness, Michael Cohen, in his criminal hush-money trial.

Trump did not reply to that question.

Indeed, this was the same question on everyone’s mind during cross-examination. Blanche tried to lob gotcha questions at Cohen. In turn, Cohen would retort with brief responses, spurring full-throated laughter in the overflow viewing room.

“On April 23, you went on TikToK and called me a ‘crying little shit?’” Blanche asked, in the first of many an awkward salvo.

“Sounds like something I would say.”

“After the trial started, you referred to President Trump as a ‘dictator douche bag’, didn’t you?” Blanche asked at another point, referring to one of Cohen’s social media posts.

“Sounds like something I said.”

Did Cohen say he wanted to see Trump convicted, in a cage, “like a fucking animal?”

“I recall saying that,” Cohen said.

Did he call Trump a “boorish cartoon misogynist?” A “Cheeto-dusted cartoon villain?”

Cohen, calm as ever, similarly confirmed these statements sounded like things he would say.

To be clear, Blanche’s attempt to trip up Cohen by pointing out animosity toward Trump makes sense strategically. Prosecutors allege that Trump cast reimbursement for a $130,000 hush-money payment to the porn star Stormy Daniels as legal expenses for Cohen, constituting falsification of business records.

Cohen’s testimony put Trump squarely at the center of this alleged scheme, with him telling jurors Tuesday that he paid Daniels “to ensure that the story would not come out, would not affect Mr Trump’s chances of becoming president of the United States”

“At whose direction, and on whose behalf, did you commit that crime?” prosecutor Susan Hoffinger asked him.

“On behalf of Mr Trump,” Cohen said.

So Blanche needs Cohen to look bad, to mitigate the damage of these statements.

“You were actually obsessed with President Trump, weren’t you?” Blanche asked.

“I don’t know if I would characterize it as obsessed, but I admired him tremendously.”

“You publicly said he was a good man?”

Yes.

“You said that he’s a man who cares deeply about this country?”

“I said that,” Cohen responded.

“That he’s a man who tells it straight?” Cohen said, “Yes, sir.”

“And that all he wants to do is make this country great again?”

“Sounds right.”

“At that time, you weren’t lying, right?”

“At that time, I was knee-deep into the cult of Donald Trump, yes,” Cohen said.

Blanche asked Cohen about items that are shown on his podcast’s website, including a shirt with Trump in an orange jumpsuit, which he showed in court. He also showed a photo of a coffee mug that reads: “Send him to the Big House not the White House.”

That’s also a reference to President Trump, correct?

“Correct,” Cohen said.

Didn’t Cohen wear that shirt on his TikTok channel last week? Wasn’t he encouraging people to buy it?

“At the merch store,” Cohen said.

Even when Blanche got Cohen to admit that he wanted to see Trump convicted, he answered with a comically underwhelming: “Sure.”

So eyebrow-raising were Blanche’s initial questions to Cohen – what did he say about him, the attorney, and his associate, another Trump attorney? – that Judge Juan Merchan appeared irked.

“Why are you making this about yourself?” Merchan asked Blanche during a sidebar after this first set of questions. Blanche, for that matter, insisted, “I’m not making it about myself, your honor,” and said he had the right to press Cohen on bias against both his client and lawyers.

“Please, don’t make it about yourself,” Merchan instructed at the sidebar’s conclusion.

Trump, who appeared to nod off repeatedly throughout Cohen’s testimony, did not seem disturbed by the day’s developments. As he left court for the day, Trump told the reporter pool: “It was a very, very good day.”

Blanche will resume his cross-examination of Blanche on Thursday. He told the court that he expects his cross will take all day.

Is there a surer bet in football than Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City doing what they need to do – in other words, win and keep winning – when they have the Premier League title within their grasp?

On the three previous occasions that they have been involved in neck‑and-neck races for the line under Guardiola – the margin for error slim to non-existent – they have never slipped. Their winning sequences have been long and ­devastating. Here we are again, City closing on yet another title, a sixth in total under Guardiola, this victory an eighth in a row when the pressure is at its most acute.

For one night only, everybody connected to Arsenal had turned into Tottenham fans. They were des­perate for their hated rivals to do something neighbourly. Any kind of result for Spurs would have kept Arsenal on top of the table before the final set of fixtures on Sunday.

It did not happen because this is not how it goes with City, ^­however close it was in the final stages, ­however excruciating it must have been for Arsenal to watch. Because with City leading through an Erling Haaland goal shortly after the second-half restart, Spurs had the chances to equalise.

Stefan Ortega was the unexpected City hero. Guardiola’s starting goalkeeper, Ederson, had been forced off with a facial injury after a shud­dering collision with Cristian Romero. ­Ederson did not want to come off; he was incandescent and took out his feelings with a kick at the seats in the technical area. Yet everyone at City would have reason to thank Ortega.

The goalkeeper made a huge block to deny Dejan Kulusevski, on as a Spurs substitute, before ­keeping him out again at close quarters. But that was trumped in the 86th ­minute when Brennan ­Johnson robbed Manuel Akanji and sent Son Heung‑min clean through. With north London holding its breath for so many reasons, Ortega saved again.

Guardiola had thrown himself to the ground in anticipation of Son scoring as everybody expected him to do. He has hurt City on many ­occasions in the past. But when Ortega blocked, Ange Postecoglou raged at the heavens. It was the ­latest illustration of Spurs’ achilles heel under Postecoglou – the frequency with which they have failed to master the big moments.

City had survived and they enjoyed a calm finale when Haaland made it 2‑0 from the penalty spot after Pedro Porro had fouled another substitute, Jérémy Doku. The move was sparked by the excellent Phil Foden; he had also been involved in the ­opening goal and City will be crowned again if – or surely when – they beat West Ham on Sunday.

Spurs’ Champions League hopes are over; they will need a point at Sheffield United on the last day to ensure fifth place and a Europa League finish and it was Aston Villa who were confirmed as the Premier League’s final representative in Europe’s premier competition. Their delight at a first qualification since they played in the old European Cup in 1982-83 knew no bounds. City also celebrated wildly.

It had been a gripping evening, the subplots bubbling furiously, chief among them the one that talked to who the Spurs fans would be sup­porting. On one level, it was incre­dibly strange, given that they were shooting for a Champions League ­finish; on another, it was entirely logical because, well, it was Arsenal.

Guardiola had needed time to work things out because ­Postecoglou sprang surprises with his tactics, even if the emphasis on attack endured, on taking risks. Missing eight injured players, including three left-backs, Postecoglou had asked Micky van de Ven to shuffle over from central defence to fill the problem position. He also started with a new-look box midfield, with his attackers, Johnson and Son, high and wide.

The atmosphere in the Spurs seats was best described as subdued. ­Perhaps the home fans were simply ­trying to process what Postecoglou was doing. It was impossible to say that it did not work. Or perhaps it was something else.

City had their moments in the first half, even if some of them were nearly but not quite in terms of ­finding the killer pass. Foden unloaded a volley after a Pierre-Emile Højbjerg slice that Guglielmo Vicario saved ­brilliantly; Josko Gvardiol volleyed off target from a difficult angle. On the stroke of half-time, Radu Dragusin celebrated wildly after heading clear a goalbound Bernardo Silva shot.

City made errors on the ball, uncharacteristic ones that added to the weird vibe and Spurs had a few flickers before the interval, the biggest one coming early on when ­Rodrigo Bentancur extended Ederson.

City played with greater intensity after half-time, Kevin De Bruyne fully extending Vicario. Spurs almost led, Ederson denying Son at close quarters and then City did. Foden made it happen, winning the ball, getting away up the left and crossing. When it went all the way through, Silva ushered in De Bruyne and he fed ­Haaland. “Are you watching ­Arsenal?” the Spurs fans chanted.

The tension simmered. Bentancur raged when replaced by Kulusevski, kicking the seats as Ederson would do. It was Ortega who would make the difference.

The US, Germany and other countries are putting the climate crisis at the heart of their national security plans but the UK is failing to do likewise, experts have told the government.

Extreme weather and heat are killing increasing numbers of people, damaging economies and forcing millions around the world to flee their homes, adding to an already unstable geopolitical situation, MPs were told on Tuesday at a select committee hearing.

The climate crisis has become a “threat multiplier” that can add to instability and the risk of unrest in many countries and is therefore an international security issue, parliament’s environmental audit committee was told. The increasing dangers of floods, droughts and other damage to vital infrastructure also makes the climate crisis a national security problem within the UK.

But while the US has taken a “whole government” approach to the crisis, ordering the security services to focus on climate risks in their assessments, the UK has lagged behind, according to experts giving evidence.

Erin Sikorsky, the director of the Center for Climate and Security in the US, said: “The US government has put climate change and national security at the front of its foreign security policy agenda under [president Joe] Biden. The Department of Homeland Security has been involved.”

Even though most of the Republican party leadership and the former president Donald Trump have been vehemently opposed to action to cut greenhouse gas emissions, when it comes to national security there has been cooperation on the climate. “It has really been a bipartisan issue for over a decade,” Sikorsky said.

Germany has also integrated climate considerations into all government departments. Kira Vinke, of the German Council on Foreign Relations thinktank, said. “[There has been a] whole government approach, seeing it through a national security and human security lens.”

In the UK, however, not enough has been done to adapt to the impacts of extreme weather and prepare for future risks, said Lady Brown, the chair of the adaptation subcommittee at the government’s statutory adviser, the Climate Change Committee.

“We are not seeing implementation and action,” she said. “We are not very ready at all [for the impacts of extreme weather].”

Helen Adams, a senior lecturer on disaster risk reduction at King’s College London, said part of the problem in the UK was that there was not enough interest in the issue from Downing Street.

“We are not acting at scale, things are not getting to a high enough level [of government],” she said. “It has to come from the top down.” Stark warnings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the body of the world’s leading climate scientists, were “not getting to the highest level”, she warned.

Rishi Sunak, the prime minister, made his biggest speech yet on national security on Monday in which he said that the UK faced turmoil at home and abroad.

“More will change in the next five years than in the last 30,” he said. “I’m convinced that the next few years will be some of the most dangerous yet transformational our country has ever known … There are storms ahead. The dangers are all too real.”

Yet he failed even to mention the climate crisis in his analysis, despite the world’s leading scientists and many other governments highlighting that rapidly intensifying global heating is one of the biggest risks the world faces.

On climate policy and the target to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions, his only words were negative: “In a more unstable world, where dictators like Putin have held us to ransom over energy prices, I reject the ideological zeal of those who want us to adopt policies that go further, faster than any other country, no matter the cost or disruption to people’s lives.”