A California-based farm is recalling its carrots, including whole and baby organic carrots, following an E coli outbreak that has infected multiple people across the country.

In a statement on Saturday, Grimmway Farms in Bakersfield said that it has issued its recall of the carrots “that should no longer be in grocery stores but may be in consumers’ refrigerators or freezers”. The recall comes amid 39 reported E coli infections across 18 states, including 15 hospitalizations and one death, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The majority of the infections are in New York, Minnesota, Washington, California and Oregon, the Associated Press reports.

Grimmway Farms said that its carrot products may have been contaminated with Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli, or E coli, a bacterium that can cause serious and sometimes fatal infections in young children, elderly people and those with compromised immune systems.

Grimmway Farms’ recalled products include its organic whole carrots which were available for purchase at retail stores from 14 August through 23 October 2024, as well as organic baby carrots with best-if-used-by dates between 11 September and 12 November 2024.

The carrots, which were shipped directly to retail distribution centers across the US, Puerto Rico and Canada, have been sold under various labels including 365, Bunny Luv, Cal-Organic, Nature’s Promise, Trader Joe’s, Wegmans, as well as O Organics.

According to the Food and Drug Administration, E coli infections can cause severe bloody diarrhea conditions or the development of high blood pressure, chronic kidney disease, and neurologic problems. Symptoms include severe stomach cramps, diarrhea, fever, nausea and vomiting.

The incubation period for E coli in humans can range from 24 hours to up to 10 days, with an average incubation period of three to four days.

Grimmway Farms’ recall comes amid McDonald’s E coli outbreak that has infected at least 104 people – and hospitalized at least 34. The outbreak, which has been tied to onions served on its Quarter Pounders, has been detected in 14 states.

McDonalds has said that it is investing $100m to “accelerate recovery and support the most heavily impacted franchisees” following the outbreak, CBS reported on Saturday.

“A total of $65m will be invested into supporting franchisees who have lost business, targeting those in the states that were most affected,” McDonalds added.

Keir Starmer has vehemently defended the imposition of inheritance tax on farms, as a new analysis suggested farmers are being increasingly squeezed out of the market for agricultural land by wealthy investors.

Amid an battle between the government and the National Farmer’s Union (NFU) over what proportion of farms could be affected by the change, announced in last month’s budget, Starmer said he was “absolutely confident” that the overwhelming majority of farmers would be exempt.

But the prime minister, speaking to reporters on his way to the G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro, suggested this message may not be getting through, adding it was “important for us to keep communicating how that works”.

Ministers have argued that the change will prevent some investors from avoiding inheritance tax by investing in farmland, much of which is often then barely used to produce anything.

A new Labour analysis has shown a big recent growth in wealthy individuals and institutions buying up farmland across England, with a parallel drop in the amount of agricultural land actively used for farming.

While in 2010, such non-farmers were responsible for less than a third of farmland purchases, by last year this had risen to 56%, according to data collected by the property consultants Strutt & Parker.

According to official statistics for agricultural land use, in the last year alone, 400,000 hectares (988,422 acres) was taken out of use for farming. The analysis is linking this to financial advice that recommends the potential tax breaks of investing in farmland.

A Labour source said the party was “asking rich estates and farms with the highest values to pay their fair share”, with the money used to pay for public services that rural communities relied on.

Starmer will be at the G20 summit when farmers protest in central London against the plans, with Tom Bradshaw, the NFU’s president, saying on Sunday that his members felt “betrayed”.

Asked about the anger, Starmer noted what he said was significant government investment in farming, adding: “Obviously, there’s an issue around inheritance tax and I do understand the concern.

“But for a typical case, which is parents with a farm they want to pass on to one of their children, by the time you’ve taken into account not only the exemption for the farm property itself, but also the exemption for spouse to spouse, then parent to child, it’s £3m before any inheritance tax will be payable.

“That’s why I am absolutely confident the vast majority of farms and farmers will not be affected by this. It’s important for us to keep communicating how that works. Over the £3m, it’s then 20% rather than the usual rate and it’s payable over 10 years.”

Bradshaw told Sky News that he had “never seen the united sense of anger that there is in this industry today” and that he expected thousands of farmers to protest on Tuesday.

He said: “The industry is feeling betrayed, feeling angry. The government said that this wouldn’t happen.”

Bradshaw said farming families who were liable would often be unable to raise the money because of the need to reinvest any profits in production, which would be undermined, harming long-term food security.

There was also, he said, the effect on farmers, particularly older farmers who would struggle to adapt to the new regime: “Unfortunately, there are many who already have lost a spouse, that are in the twilight of their careers, that have given everything to producing this country’s food, and they have absolutely no way to plan through that. That is the betrayal that I’m talking about. The human impact of this is simply not acceptable.”

Some farmers have raised the prospect of refusing to supply supermarkets in protest, which Bradshaw said his union did not agree with.

“That is not an NFU tactic,” he said. “We do not support emptying supermarket shelves. But I do completely understand the strength of feeling that there is amongst farmers.”

The NFU has warned farmers attending the protests not to bring heavy machinery to the protest, emulating farmers in other countries who have blocked roads with tractors. Starmer said those protesting were entitled to express themselves – but said the police would respond appropriately.

“They are entitled to express their views. I do understand their concerns. It’s important I reiterate the support that is going in, it is quite considerable,” he said. “As to how the protest takes shape and what the response is, that will be a matter for them and the police for how they respond to it.”

It was an England salvo of devastating power, three goals in five minutes early in the second half and it did more than reframe an occasion that had been flat and forgettable up until then. It gave Lee Carsley the win that he wanted on his sixth and final game as the interim manager; one to seal England’s promotion back into the Nations League’s A section. With five wins and just that one off-night against Greece at Wembley, it added up to job well done.

Carsley will hand over to Thomas Tuchel with the team in good health, a new generation also pushed. Carsley had previously given first caps to Angel Gomes, Morgan Gibbs-White, Noni Madueke, Curtis Jones, Lewis Hall and Morgan Rogers. Here, there were two more debuts – for Tino Livramento from the outset and Taylor Harwood-Bellis as a substitute.

What a night it would be for both, especially Harwood-Bellis, who scored with a thumping header with one of his first touches from a Jude Bellingham cross. That made it 5-0. Ireland were long since broken, Harry Kane – who else? – precipitating an alarming crash.

Kane was back in the starting XI after his high-profile omission from Thursday’s 3-0 win over Greece in Athens and, after he laboured dreadfully in the first half, it was his sumptuous pass that got Bellingham in to win a penalty off Liam Scales, the Republic of Ireland defender’s woe compounded when the foul was deemed to be a second yellow card offence.

Kane scored from the spot, his 69th England goal in 103 caps. But this was a night for the next wave because it was not just Harwood-Bellis who found the net for the first time at this level. Anthony Gordon, Conor Gallagher and Jarrod Bowen did likewise, Ireland’s 10 men swept aside.

Newcastle’s Livramento provided the cross for his clubmate Gordon to hook home a volley while Gallagher touched home after Marc Guéhi had flicked on a Madueke corner. That completed the flurry for England but they were in no mood to stop, the remorseless Bellingham teeing up Bowen after a well-worked free-kick routine. Bowen had only just come on as a substitute.

The game had been framed in part by the first meeting between the nations in this group in September, when Ireland were disappointing in the 2-0 loss in Dublin. Few England fans expected anything other than victory here and not only because Ireland were depleted by injuries, missing a handful of likely starters. England would have to wait, the first half a virtual write-off from their point of view.

Heimir Hallgrímsson set Ireland up in a 4-5-1 formation, the captain Nathan Collins – a centre-half by trade – sitting in front of the defence. The idea was to be compact, committed, hard to break down.

Madueke, fresh from his barnstorming performance in the win over Greece, had one early run past two green shirts. His pull-back found its way to Curtis Jones, whose shot was deflected over. Kyle Walker headed off target from the corner and the first half descended into stodgy fare. England were slow to move it in possession, the patterns predictable. With 11 men banked behind the ball, Ireland kept Carsley’s team in front of them with ease.

Kane’s toils in the first half were pronounced. It was unfortunate that Bellingham chose to put him in a foot-race with Collins midway through the period, which he was never going to win. Still, it was a bad look. Moments earlier, Kane had failed to control a clipped ball into the area from Hall; it was all so tight. There was a heavy touch from Kane that led to Scales slamming into him to win a showy tackle and the frustrations seemed to bubble over in first-half stoppage time, Kane throwing Jayson Molumby to the ground to incur a yellow card.

Madueke had been booked earlier for a foul on Callum O’Dowda, with Bellingham’s complaints about the decision earning him a yellow card. He was also booked for dissent in Athens and he will be suspended for England’s next game.

Ireland had shouted loudly for two penalties before the interval, the first when Guéhi had a handful of Evan Ferguson’s shirt as they tussled. The second came when Walker stooped to guide a header back to Jordan Pickford, blocking Sammie Szmodics in the process, who tumbled over. It was risky from Walker. The referee, Erik Lambrechts, did not see enough in either appeal. He could easily have given the first.

That only deepened Ireland’s frustration after the break when England got the penalty to completely turn the game around. Never write off Kane. It has become a truism. It was the captain whose masterpiece of a pass provided the spark, a flat and perfectly calibrated diagonal from the left putting Bellingham up against Scales in the area. He jinked inside; Scales lunged and caught him. When the penalty was awarded, Gordon turned and simply applauded Kane.

Kane did what he does, a little stutter in his run-up before he banged past Caoimhín Kelleher. The red card for Scales was a body blow for Ireland. They would continue to rain down.

Big UK businesses including Ovo, SSE and BT Openreach are urging the government to stick to current electric car targets as struggling carmakers pile pressure on ministers to relax the rules before industry talks this week.

The businesses said the zero-emissions vehicle (ZEV) mandate, which forces carmakers to sell greater numbers of electric cars each year, is an essential part of the plan to reduce the carbon and air pollution emissions caused by vehicles on Britain’s roads.

Clive Selley, chief executive of Openreach, the BT subsidiary that builds broadband infrastructure, said the government needed to “cut through the noise and listen to businesses who are already investing large sums in the switch” when considering the future of the mandate.

“Don’t waver on the ZEV mandate,” Selley said.

Carmakers, however, are increasingly vocal that the mandate needs to be watered down as their global profits come under pressure and sales of electric cars slow.

Carmakers with factories in the UK, as well as those involved in the new charging infrastructure, are due to discuss the mandate as well as weak consumer demand for electric cars with the transport secretary, Louise Haigh, and the business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, this week.

After weekend reports that the Japanese manufacturer Nissan intended to use the meeting to warn ministers that the UK car industry is reaching a “crisis point”, Haigh said she would look at “flexibilities” but insisted that the mandate “will not be weakened”.

She told LBC Radio on Sunday: “There has been a downturn in demand on a global level so we are absolutely in listening mode – we want to discuss how the current situation is affecting them, but we are not diluting our ambition.

“I’m meeting with Nissan tomorrow, and the business secretary, the energy minister and I are meeting with a number of automotive manufacturers later in the week in order to discuss the challenges that they face on a global scale.”

Carmakers are hoping to achieve an easing of the rules for the next few years to allow them to sell more hybrids, which combine a polluting petrol engine with a smaller battery. Another option – although expensive – would be to reintroduce some purchase subsidies for consumers.

One of the big concerns is that without a change of heart there could be UK job losses. Stellantis is due to give a decision on a review of the future of its Vauxhall van factories at Luton and Ellesmere Port, after threatening to close them unless market demand for electric vehicles picks up and the UK loosens regulations.

The mandate means 22% of manufacturers’ electric car sales this year must be electric, rising to 80% in 2030 – although in practice various loopholes mean most carmakers appear on track to avoid fines if they overshoot.

The industry meeting will also include several companies that are likely to express support for the mandate.

Alex Thwaites, director of electric vehicles at Ovo, which has 4 million customers across Britain, said it provided “certainty for both UK drivers and the automotive industry”, and added that industry and government should be making “the switch to electric vehicles an easier choice”.

Some energy companies stand to lose out if the ZEV mandate is relaxed because it will hit demand for electric charging at home and at their dedicated charge points. SSE, for example, is investing heavily in a joint venture with the French oil company TotalEnergies to install 3,000 ultra-rapid charge points.

Nathan Sanders, managing director for distributed energy at SSE, said it was “vital the government continues to maintain a supportive policy environment with a strong zero-emission vehicle mandate at its core” for it to continue to invest.

While delaying the EV transition would ease the short-term pressure on manufacturers, many activists as well as industry analysts argue that doing so could hurt the UK car industry in the longer term, as a host of Chinese electric car manufacturers would probably race to fill the gap.

Dominic Phinn, head of transport at Climate Group, which works with companies on climate action, said: “There is absolutely no justification for tinkering with the groundbreaking tool that has put the UK in the fast lane of the global EV transition. Carmakers face a simple choice: scale up EV manufacture now and seize a huge economic opportunity – or be left behind by those who do.”

Far-right groups are seeking to hijack a farmers’ protest in London against tax changes introduced by the chancellor, Rachel Reeves.

Extremists, including close associates of Tommy Robinson, have been using social media to urge supporters to turn up at the protest on Tuesday, as farming leaders sought to remind those attending of their responsibilities.

The event is being eyed as a major opportunity for exploitation by the far right, who are seeking to promote Jeremy Clarkson as a hero after he claimed the UK government had a “sinister plan” to “ethnically cleanse” farming communities.

The former presenter has become a meme on far-right social media accounts as activists and extremist influencers applauded his comments. Nick Griffin, the former leader of the British National party, posted a picture of himself in the broadcaster’s Oxfordshire pub.

“Jeremy Clarkson nails it,” said Griffin, as he shared Clarkson’s comments.

Paul Thorpe, a far-right YouTuber, published a video message urging his followers to join the protest, stating: “I’ll be there to support our farming community and I hope as many of you patriots will be there too.”

Activists from the extremist group Patriotic Alternative have been staging stunts for some time in an attempt to piggyback on farmers’ concerns. Their rivals in another far-right group, Homeland, have also sought to drum up support on the back of Clarkson’s comments.

Conspiracy theorists are expected to also be out in force to promote a narrative that there is a globalist plot to control food supplies.

Trouble has marred similar farmers’ protests in Europe, including in the Netherlands where police fired shots at tractors. But the organisers of the protest, a group of farmers who fear the changes brought in by Reeves will decimate agricultural businesses, say they want no troublemakers or political point scoring.

They said: “The organisers remind all attendees of their responsibilities to, not only themselves, but also, the reputation of the farming industry. Trouble will not be tolerated and organisers continue to work closely with the Metropolitan police to ensure the safety of all involved, given the family nature of the event.”

Olly Harrison, who farms cereals near Liverpool, is one of the organisers of the protest and has nothing to do with the far right, nor do the others behind the event. “The event is nonpolitical,” he said. “We have invited representatives of all political parties to speak and we don’t want our event used for political point scoring. We want it focused on the farmers and the troubles we are facing at the moment.”

Andrew Meredith, the editor of Farmers’ Weekly, warned of “the damage one loose-lipped person can do to a cause”, adding: “The organisers of the march have it exactly right in making repeated calls for all participants to uphold the farming industry’s reputation and make this a positive event.”

A debate has been taking place in the farming community about whether Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform UK, should speak. He offered to, but some were worried he would make the event about him and take attention away from the cause.

Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrat environment spokesperson, was considering speaking at the event and said of Farage: “Most problems [farmers] face are Brexit related. He’s done far more damage to them than this government.” Steve Reed, the environment secretary, is understood to have turned down an invitation to attend.

The organisers do not want attention taken away from the issues at hand. Farmers are concerned they will be hit by a tax bill that will eat up their profits and force them to sell; Defra figures show 66% of farms could be hit by a surprise inheritance tax they have not budgeted for, despite Treasury claims the change will only apply to a quarter of farmers.

During the budget Reeves also announced a shock cut to farming subsidies, which are a hangover from the EU, of 79%. Farmers were expecting a more tapered cut: at the top end of the scale, a farmer receiving £62,000 last year was expecting £38,000 this year but will get £7,200.

A wave of wellies is preparing to pound the streets of Westminster on Tuesday, as groups of farmers bring their anger over the government’s budget changes to inheritance tax to the capital.

For decades, agricultural properties have been passed down tax-free to heirs, but that will change from April 2026, when farms and other business property are brought under the remit of inheritance tax.

The changes mean those inheriting will have to pay 20% of the value of the agricultural and business property above £1m, although this is half the headline 40% rate.

The changes to agricultural property relief (APR) and business property relief (BPR) have stoked more fury in the farming community than perhaps any other recent issue.

It prompted the usually mild-mannered president of the National Farmers’ Union (NFU), Tom Bradshaw, to accuse the government of not understanding farming, while warning that the measures will probably push up food prices.

In response, some 1,800 farmers and growers will head to London on Tuesday to hold meetings with their local MPs. It will be a mass lobbying event organised by the NFU aimed at exerting pressure on the government over a policy the union says was designed to target wealthy people who buy up land, but will end up hurting small food producers.

Bedfordshire arable farmer Freya Morgan will be attending, after feeling dismayed by the government’s budget measures, which she considers “a tax on farming”.

Morgan, 60, inherited her parents’ farm after both of them died in the last few years, and grows crops such as wheat, oats and barley. Until the budget on 30 October – as is common in a sector with an ageing workforce – she was planning, in time, to pass the family 450-acre farm on to her 27-year-old son Josh.

“What I am doing, I am doing for him. He has a business and has a passion for it,” she said. “We are asset-rich but cash-poor, and we rely on our assets to be able to raise funds to carry out farming activities.”

Morgan and many others feel let down by the new crop of Labour MPs, many of whom were elected for the first time in July when rural constituencies turned away from the Tories.

They are still clinging to hope that holding parliamentarians’ feet to the fire may force a government U-turn, even as disputes rage between the Treasury and the environment department over how many farms will be affected by the inheritance tax changes.

Anger arising from the budget measures is also threatening splits in the farming community over the best way for food producers to voice their collective discontent.

Five farmers, who came together on budget day in a WhatsApp group chat called APR BPR, are bringing thousands more food producers to London on Tuesday to a rally which they insist is a “complement” to the NFU’s political lobbying.

Herefordshire cereal farmer Martin Williams, one of the organisers, said he had been moved to action after the budget measures became the latest event to affect food producers, following a string of challenges in recent years including extreme weather, Brexit and accompanying trade deals, and subsidy changes, as well as surges in input costs resulting from the war in Ukraine.

“When do we say, ‘hang on a minute’? You can’t just keep coming for agriculture,” Williams said.

Others are preparing for more militant action, among them Welsh farmer Gareth Wyn Jones, whose family has tended the same land for more than 375 years, but in more recent times has amassed a sizeable social media following.

Starting on Sunday, he will go on strike and stop delivering any food for a week. He is calling on food producers who can afford it to join in.

“This is a statement to show government that this could be the future,” he said. “It’s not to starve people, but have them understand what the future is going to look like when there isn’t going to be food there 24/7.”

The gloomy outlook for the rural economy is expected to be felt in Nottinghamshire later in the week when agricultural businesses bring their latest equipment to the Midlands machinery show.

Machinery manufacturers and dealers, along with builders and tradespeople, are expecting to feel the pinch as farmers cut back on investment.

SAM Sprayers, which has built crop sprayers in Norfolk since 1973, is “waiting for the dust to settle”, said director Thomas Sands, whose father, Neal, founded the business.

The overwhelming majority of the firm’s sprayers, costing upwards of £250,000, are sold in the UK. Weeks away from moving into a brand-new factory, Sands is left wondering whether this will be a good long-term investment.

“We’ve not got decisive knowledge yet how this will affect our market,” Sands told the Observer. “A lot of our farmers are very angry.”

“Welcome back,” Joe Biden told Donald Trump, his predecessor and successor, as the pair shook hands in the Oval Office. For Biden, it was important to show the world that America can still conduct a peaceful transfer of power. “A transition that’s so smooth it’ll be as smooth as it can get,” Trump said.

It was an outward show of permanence and stability. But behind the two men a fire was burning fiercely in the grate. TV comedian Stephen Colbert observed: “I do think it was fitting that they held the meeting in front of a roaring metaphor for the future.”

Trump will not be president for another two months but he is already dominating the Washington agenda again. This week a flurry of controversial and extremist picks for his cabinet and other high-ranking administration positions came at a hectic pace and with a level of provocation that made heads spin.

The choices included a Fox News host, a tech billionaire, an anti-vaccine activist, an alleged apologist for Russia’s Vladimir Putin and a congressman once embroiled in a sex-trafficking investigation. The lineup raised fears of authoritarianism or chaos – or both – once Trump and his allies are back in the Oval Office.

Tara Setmayer, a former Republican communications director on Capitol Hill, said: “Their entire political brand is shock and awe. Prior to Trump’s re-election it was notional. Now they have the power to execute all of their depravity with the full backing of American government power virtually unchecked. I don’t think the people who voted for Donald Trump, allegedly because of economic angst, have a full appreciation for what that means.”

Trump, who has promised not to be a “dictator” except on “day one”, will enter office with far fewer guardrails and checks on his power than last time. He will return to Washington with a Republican-controlled Congress and a conservative supreme court, containing three justices he appointed, that ruled he is largely immune from prosecution.

He has said of his day one plans: “I want to close the border, and I want to drill, drill, drill.” The immigration issue animated his successful election campaign, often couple with racist rhetoric and falsehoods. Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, told Fox News: “We know that on day one he is going to launch the largest mass deportation of illegal immigrants in American history.”

To make it happen he is bringing back Tom Homan, the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement during his first administration, as his “border czar”. Homan, 62, has said he will prioritise deporting immigrants illegally in the US who posed safety and security threats as well as those working at job sites.

He will receive zealous ideological backing from Stephen Miller, deputy chief of staff for policy. An immigration hardliner, the 39-year-old was a vocal spokesperson during the presidential campaign for Trump’s priority of mass deportations. At a rally at Madison Square Garden in New York, he adopted nativist language as he asserted that only Trump would stand up and say “America is for Americans and Americans only.”

Trump also announced that Kristi Noem, the governor of South Dakota, will serve as the next homeland security secretary, responsible for everything from border protection and immigration to disaster response and the Secret Service. Noem, 52, rose to national prominence after refusing to impose a statewide mask mandate during the coronavirus pandemic.

A mass deportation effect could face logistical problems as well as a barrage legal challenges from immigration and human rights activists. But when Trump takes the oath of office on 20 January, his team will be expected to hit the ground running.

Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “The world needs to strap in because the first day of the Trump administration has been in the planning for at least a couple of years and so the white papers, the executive orders are already in files and ready to be pulled out.

“We can expect certainly that some of the most radical ideas about curtailing immigration into the United States and then the expelling of unauthorised immigrants within the United States will get a boost from the president making a speech or a press conference followed up with directives to the executive branch. That’ll be off and running day one.”

Jacobs added: “We can also expect a pretty sharp attack on the independence of the judiciary. This is going to be a rupture in the generations-old practice of political independence in terms of the Department of Justice. That’s coming to an end.”

Trump has long said the biggest mistake of his first term was choosing the wrong people. He had arrived in Washington as the first president without prior political and military experience and relied on others for personnel recommendations. He felt frustrated at and betrayed by officials who slow-walked or ignored directives they saw as ill-advised.

Having beaten Vice-President Kamala Harris in the 5 November election, Trump is determined to avoid that mistake second time around. His blitz of announcements this week shows the premium he places on absolute loyalty.

His early to-do list could include imposing sweeping tariffs on imported goods, pardoning supporters involved in the 6 January 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol, pulling the US out of the Paris climate agreement, reversing protections for transgender students in schools and fulfilling his campaign promise to end the war between Ukraine and Russia “in a day”.

Some have been relatively mainstream selections reassuring to the political class. They include Susie Wiles, 67, who will be the first woman to serve as White House chief of staff, and Senator Marco Rubio, 53, now in line to become the first Latino in the role of secretary of state. Rubio is seen as a foreign policy hawk who has previously taken a hard line on foes including China, Iran and Cuba.

Elise Stefanik, 40, a Republican congresswoman and staunch Trump supporter, has been named as Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations. Mike Waltz, 50, a Republican congressman and retired Army Green Beret, is set to be his national security adviser. And John Ratcliffe, 59, a former director of national intelligence, will serve as director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

But other picks have almost seemed to be political performance art, designed to goad and outrage Democrats (“owning the libs”) and impose a loyalty test on the Senate Republicans who will have to decide whether to confirm or reject Trump’s cabinet members, judges and ambassadors.

On Tuesday night Trump picked Pete Hegseth as his defence secretary. The 44-year-old is a co-host of Fox & Friends Weekend on Rupert Murdoch’s conservative Fox News network and once said he “hasn’t washed hands in 10 years” because “germs are not a real thing”. Hegseth, a military veteran, has opined that women should not serve in combat and expressed disdain for the so-called “woke” policies of Pentagon leaders.

In his recent book, The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free, Hegseth wrote: “The next president of the United States needs to radically overhaul Pentagon senior leadership to make us ready to defend our nation and defeat our enemies. Lots of people need to be fired.”

A day later Trump named Tulsi Gabbard, 43, a former Democratic congresswoman and critic of the Biden administration, as his director of national intelligence. Gabbard served in the army national guard for more than two decades, deploying to Iraq and Kuwait. But she secretly met with Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in 2017 and blamed the US and Nato for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Rick Wilson, a co-founder of the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group, said: “So far the candidates range from the unserious to the terrifying. Tulsi Gabbard is going to send a shock wave through the intelligence community and not in a good way. I can tell you that her Putin sympathies being rather evident to everyone around her is going to become a major issue. I’m not sure Tulsi Gabbard can be confirmed.”

Perhaps most outlandish, Trump selected Matt Gaetz, a Florida congressman and “Make America great again” provocateur, for attorney general. The position of America’s top law enforcement official is potentially central to his plans to carry out mass deportations, pardon January 6 rioters and seek retribution against those who prosecuted him over the past four years.

The decision prompted howls of derision and doubts over whether Gaetz, 42, will receive Senate confirmation. He was once the subject of a justice department investigation into sex-trafficking allegations involving underage girls, although it ended last year with no federal charges against him.

The staunch Trump loyalist was also under scrutiny by the House ethics committee over allegations including sexual misconduct, although that investigation in effect ended on Wednesday when Gaetz resigned from Congress. Republican and Democratic senators on the judiciary committee that would review Gaetz’s nomination are calling for the findings to be made available to them.

Senator Dick Durbin, the Democrat who currently chairs the judiciary committee, said Gaetz “would be a disaster” in part because of Trump’s threat to use the justice department “to seek revenge on his political enemies”. John Bolton, a former national security adviser to Trump, described it as “the worst nomination for a cabinet secretary in American history”.

Then, on Thursday, Trump delivered the coup de grace by saying he will nominate Robert Kennedy Jr, 70, to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. Kennedy is one of the most prominent anti-vaccine activists in the world. Long advancing the debunked idea that vaccines cause autism, he has said vaccines have caused a “holocaust” and travelled the world spreading false information about the Covid-19 pandemic.

Kennedy, the nephew of President John F Kennedy, has also said he would recommend that water agencies stop adding fluoride to drinking water and made a variety of other claims not backed by science, such as questioning whether HIV causes Aids and suggesting antidepressants lead to school shootings.

Adding to the mix, Trump named Mike Huckabee, 69, as ambassador to Israel. He has rejected a Palestinian homeland in territory occupied by Israel, calling for a so-called “one-state solution”. He has also denied that the West Bank, seized by Israel from Jordan in the 1967 six-day war, is under military occupation.

Meanwhile the tech billionaire Elon Musk, 53, a campaign surrogate and increasingly close ally, and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, 39, will lead lead a newly created Department of Government Efficiency. Trump said the pair will reduce government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut waste and restructure federal agencies.

Newt Gingrich, a former Republican speaker in the House of Representatives, defended Trump’s team selection as an effort to bypass the establishment. “Einstein once said, thinking there’ll be a different outcome by doing the same thing over and over again is a sign of insanity,” he said.

“We’ve been told now for decades that the American people think we’re on the wrong track. We keep hiring people who are marginally more off the track a half-inch and we get the same result. Well, Trump is going to move the track by many feet.”

But the rapid-fire onslaught has left many in Washington dazed and confused about the prospect of Trump’s first day in office. Setmayer, co-founder and chief executive of the Seneca Project, a women-led super political action committee, said: “I expect chaos and a series of constitutionally questionable actions exponentially worse than what we saw on day one last time. It’s already started. There will be many of us who said, we warned you.”

She added: “The Trump administration is going to plunge America into a cross between The Hunger Games and The Celebrity Apprentice, unfortunately at great expense to the future of our democracy and the humanity of millions of Americans who will suffer at the hands of this gallery of degenerates. The American electorate fucked around and now they’re going to find out.”

Plastic bottles are reviled for polluting the oceans, leaching chemicals into drinks and being a source of microplastics in the human body.

They even cause problems with recycling. When plastic bottles are mixed with cardboard in recycling bins, in the wet winter months the sodden cardboard wraps around the plastic bottles and trays, causing havoc at recycling plants.

New figures now suggest that plastic contamination in paper and card jumps by 40% between November and March and as a result the UK sends an extra 5,000 tonnes of plastic waste to landfill or incineration.

The government is expected to signal in the next few weeks whether it will continue a Conservative policy which planned to allow councils to collect “co-mingled” recycling or if it will insist that paper, plastic, glass, metal, food and garden waste should be separated at source.

The data on contamination comes from DH Smith, which recycles about a fifth of all paper and card in the UK at its Kemsley papermill in Kent. “We’ve built up a wealth of data over a few years and we can see this seasonal effect where contamination levels increase through the wetter winter months,” said Jonathan Scott, DH Smith’s technical operations director.

Recycling in England has stalled, according to official figures released in September, with the household recycling rate falling from 44.6% in 2022 to 44.1% last year.

In the three other nations of the UK, the rate increased. Overall the UK generated 191.2m tonnes of waste in 2020, the majority from construction and demolition, down from 222.2m tonnes in 2018.

In 2021, Boris Johnson’s government introduced the Environment Act as a replacement for EU regulations and started consulting on a deposit return scheme for drinks bottles, an extended producer responsibility (EPR) scheme where companies should pay for the cost of disposing of packaging they create, and minimum standards on bin collections.

Progress has been slow. EPR was delayed after lobbying by food and drink companies and fees will be levied from October 2025. The deposit return scheme for England and Northern Ireland was announced by environment minister Mary Creagh last month and excludes glass, although schemes already exist in Scotland and Wales.

Chris Mills, program lead for policy and insights at Wrap, the recycling campaigners, said there were environmental and economic benefits from separating waste, but there was a trade-off since it would be hard for people in communal buildings to have lots of separate collections.

“We think a degree of separation is definitely beneficial,” he said.

Andy Graham, the District Councils Network environment spokesperson, said recycling rates could be raised through better education and the government needed to create a national approach rather than a “patchwork”.

“We really need a sustainable funding package for three years for us to be able to achieve any real difference,” he said. “We’ve got an increase of deliveries to homes – Amazon, for example is one of the key proponents of cardboard for home deliveries and some of that volume is unnecessary.”

Amazon has said that it has reduced the weight of its packaging by an average of 41% since 2015 and has replaced single-use plastic with paper and cardboard in Europe.

In the end Viktor Orbán didn’t, as he’d promised, celebrate Donald Trump’s win with “several bottles of champagne”. He was in Kyrgyzstan, he apologised, “where they have different traditions” – so it was vodka. But it was still a “fantastic result”.

“History has accelerated,” Orbán crowed at an EU summit in Budapest last week. “The world is going to change, and change in a quicker way than before. Obviously, it’s a great chance for Hungary to be in a close partnership and alliance with the US.”

Hungary’s illiberal prime minister – and the EU’s disrupter-in-chief, lauded by Trump as a “very great leader, a very strong man” – was not the only figure on Europe’s nationalist right to hail the president-elect’s larger-than-expected victory.

Geert Wilders, the Dutch anti-Muslim firebrand whose Freedom party finished first in last year’s elections and is the senior partner in the ruling coalition, also posted his congratulations, jubilantly urging Trump to “never stop, always keep fighting”.

Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, commended a “historic friendship” which “will now grow even stronger”, while Alice Weidel of Alternative for Germany (AfD) hailed a defeat for “woke Hollywood”, adding that Trump “is a model for us”.

Europe’s fast-advancing far-right parties, in power in eight EU member states and knocking at the doors in more, have long seen in Trump a powerful ally who shares their populist, nation-first, conservative, Eurosceptic and immigration-hostile views.

But what can they actually expect to gain from Trump 2.0? For all their enthusiastic words, analysts and diplomats say, Europe’s mini-Trumps will probably not get much – and may even find themselves worse off. What’s more, some appear to realise it.

Certainly, there may be some political upside to basking in reflected Trumpian glory. “The coming Trump presidency will most probably embolden Europe’s far right and illiberal actors,” concluded experts at the Centre for European Reform thinktank.

“Trump will strengthen far-right parties not just by normalising and amplifying their ideas, but by boosting their electability.” His win legitimises their grievances and rubber-stamps their sovereigntist vision; history seems to be moving their way.

Besides Orbán, Meloni, Wilders and Weidel, Europe’s longstanding Trump admirers include Marine Le Pen of France’s National Rally (RN), Slovakia’s prime minister Robert Fico, Austrian chancellor Karl Nehammer and Serbia’s Aleksandar Vučić.

They may well be joined after elections next year by Andrej Babiš in the Czech Republic, and – with both France and Germany, the EU’s traditional powerhouse, weakened by domestic political crises – their influence is plainly on the rise.

Some experts argue selected European far-right leaders could be strengthened personally by Trump’s win: Meloni, for example, has put in the groundwork, praising his brand of politics as a model for Italy and regularly travelling to his rallies.

Common views on issues ranging from immigration to abortion, and her flourishing rapport with Elon Musk, could see her become Trump’s “main interlocutor in Europe”, said Lorenzo Castellani of Rome’s Luiss University.

Hungary’s foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, expressed much the same ambition for Orbán. “We can have a good hope that Hungarian-American political cooperation will return to its peak form,” he said: Orbán and Trump have “similar thoughts”.

But the dynamics are a lot more complicated than that. While Europe’s far-right leaders may align comfortably with Trump in their hostility to immigration and international institutions, there are also significant differences.

Meloni’s staunch support for Nato and continued international aid to Ukraine in its struggle against Russia’s full-scale invasion, for example, will not be greeted with enthusiasm by the more isolationist voices in the incoming US administration.

Similarly, Orbán’s cosy “all-weather comprehensive strategic partnership” with China, which Hungary has welcomed with open arms as a key economic partner and foreign investor, is a long way from Trump’s aggressively hardline approach to Beijing.

As US Republican Mitch McConnell put it, “when Chinese state enterprise says jump, Hungarian officials ask how high”. Those words “caution against any guarantee of deeper [US-Hungary] collaboration”, foreign policy expert Zsuzsanna Szelényi said.

Trump’s promised America first trade policies could also prove complicated to negotiate for Europe’s far-right parties. As members of the EU’s single market, they could not respond individually to US-imposed tariffs and a likely trade war.

Le Pen’s lukewarm response to Trump’s second triumph – in marked contrast to her joy at his first in 2016, which she hailed even before he had officially won – reflects widespread concern over the consequences of Trump 2.0 for EU industry and jobs.

“Americans have freely chosen their president,” Le Pen said. “This new political era should contribute to the strengthening of bilateral relations and the pursuit of constructive dialogue and cooperation on the international stage.”

Her protege, Jordan Bardella, even echoed French president Emmanuel Macron, saying that for “us French and Europeans, this US election should be a wake-up call … an opportunity to rethink our relationship with power and strategic autonomy”.

Far-right voters in Europe are far from uncritical of Trump’s brand of politics, polls suggest: a pre-election YouGov poll found, for example, that people who backed Le Pen would rather have Kamala Harris in the White House than Trump.

“Trump’s attitude towards Europe … will be harmful to far-right parties’ core electorate – think inflation, de-industrialisation, job losses,” said Catherine Fieschi of the European University Institute. “Trump is bad news for them.”

The idea that Trump himself “gives a damn about building relationships with these people strikes me as very very unlikely”, Fieschi added. “He will think about them on a case-by-case basis, and see whether he can extract something.”

Faced with the concrete threats to the continent posed by a second Trump presidency that promises to be even more radical than the first, the EU that Europe’s far-right parties have so long reviled may start to look a little less unattractive.

Orbán may be strong at home, said Szelényi, “but Hungary is small, deeply integrated in the EU, and its people like being Europeans. The country’s progress and success is far more dependent on the success of the EU than on anything else.”

Like other far-right leaders, said Catherine de Vries of Bocconi University in Milan, Orbán has “tried to play both sides, be strategically ambiguous. The thing about Trump is, he’s not going to let you do that. He’ll force you to make a choice.”

Europe’s populists will continue to “say Trumpian things, especially if they have an election coming up”, De Vries said. “But when push really comes to shove – Europe’s security in Trump’s hands, Nato not guaranteed – then maybe quite a few are going to say, maybe we need to work on this in Europe.”

Far from uniting Europe’s far right in triumph, Trump’s return could actually deepen the conflicts between them. Ultimately, concluded Fieschi, Trump “is going to make the lives of Europe’s far-right leaders, as Eurosceptics, a lot harder. They’re going to be caught between staying Eurosceptic, lining up with Trump and hurting their base – or lining up with the EU, shedding their specificity and losing voters. They’ve been ‘out-populist-ed.’”

Additional reporting by Angela Giuffrida in Rome