Joost Klein, the Netherlands’ Eurovision contestant who was disqualified from the competition just hours before the grand final, will probably be charged with making illegal threats, Swedish police have said.

The 26-year-old favourite to win was expelled from the competition in Malmö, unprecedented in the 68-year history of Eurovision, after a female member of the production crew made a complaint about an alleged “backstage incident” to Swedish police.

Police spokesperson Jimmy Modin told the Guardian that their investigation was over and that a decision on the charges should come “within the next couple of weeks”. He did not say what the nature of the alleged threats were.

“We expect there will probably be a prosecution,” Emil Andersson, the police officer in charge of the case, told Swedish broadcaster SVT. He said an “accelerated prosecution”, a process that takes around six to eight weeks, will be likely as the altercation did not involve a more serious crime.

The Sydsvenska daily, a Malmö newspaper, said that the crime of making threats usually leads to fines upon conviction.

After Klein was expelled, Dutch broadcaster Avrotros said it was “shocked” by the decision and said that while Klein made a “threatening move” towards a female camera operator, he had not touched her.

“Against the clearly made agreement, Joost was filmed when he had just gotten off stage and had to rush to the green room. At that moment, Joost repeatedly indicated that he did not want to be filmed. This wasn’t respected,” Avrotros said.

The broadcaster claimed it had offered “several solutions” to the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), which runs Eurovision, but Klein was ejected anyway.

The Guardian has gone to Klein and Avrotros for comment.

Organisers would not give more detail of the alleged incident during the competition, but clarified that it “did not involve any other performer or delegation member” due to rumours it had involved Israel’s delegation, amid tensions between contestants around the Israel-Gaza war.

When Israeli singer Eden Golan was told she did not have to answer a journalist’s question about whether her presence “posed a risk”, Klein interrupted to ask: “Why not?”, not long before he was disqualified.

On Monday, the EBU issued a statement amid criticism over how the famously apolitical song contest handled tensions around the Israel-Gaza war, saying that they “regret” that some delegations “didn’t respect the spirit of the rules”.

“We spoke to a number of delegations during the event regarding various issues that were brought to our attention,” the EBU said.

“The EBU’s governing bodies will, together with the heads of delegations, review the events surrounding the [Eurovision song contest] in Malmö to move forward in a positive way and to ensure the values of the event are respected by everyone.”

The EBU confirmed several contestants and delegations had lodged complaints. Portugal’s national broadcaster RTP has complained about a delay in posting their contestant Iolanda’s performance to YouTube after the final, with the EBU saying the delay was due to Iolanda having her nails painted designs inspired by the keffiyeh – Palestinian scarves used to show support for the country.

Ireland’s contestant, Bambie Thug, also confirmed they made multiple complaints in the run-up to the final and accused Israeli broadcaster Kan of “inciting violence” against them during its coverage of their performance.

During the first semi-final, a Kan commentator said Bambie Thug had “spoken negatively about Israel”, adding: “But we can talk about that later. Prepare your curses.”

This may have been a reference to a lyric about placing a hex on an ex in Bambie Thug’s song, but the performer said they felt it crossed a line.

“The broadcaster [Kan] has disobeyed the rules and I hope next year [Israel] won’t be able to compete because of that,” Bambie Thug told reporters after the contest.

Some contestants described the atmosphere behind the scenes this year as “tense” and “horrible”, as thousands protested outside on the streets of Malmö calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.

In a post on Instagram after the grand final, Golan wrote: “To say it was easy would be a lie. But with your support and love it gave me the strength to continue and put on the absolute best performance I knew I can do.”

Lithuania’s entrant, Silvester Belt, who performed after Golan at the grand final, called it a “traumatic experience” on social media, writing: “Going after that country, with the crowd being so intense, was one of the worst things I had to go through. I really did the best that I could in this situation.”

Swiss singer Nemo, who won the contest with their song The Code, said in a press conference after that the experience was “really intense” and that they felt “maybe Eurovision needs fixing a little bit”.

The European Commission also criticised a decision by the EBU to ban audience members from waving the EU flag at the grand final, calling it “completely regrettable” and “mind-blowing”.

Associated Press contributed to this report.

A multibillion-pound “net zero” project backed by two of the world’s biggest fossil fuel firms will be responsible for more than 20m tonnes of planet-heating carbon over its lifetime, according to research submitted to the UK government.

The Net Zero Teesside scheme to build a new gas-fired power station in north-east England is backed by BP and Equinor and says it will use carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology to capture up to 95% of its emissions and bury them beneath the North Sea.

But according to evidence submitted to the government, even if the project’s claims for its carbon capture and storage facility prove accurate, the gas power station would still be responsible for more than 20m tonnes of carbon pollution over its lifetime.

Andrew Boswell, an energy analyst who carried out the research based on Net Zero Teesside’s own figures, said: “When a project produces over 20m tonnes of carbon pollution, it is simply wrong, and misleading, to call it ‘net zero’.”

Boswell calculated that once the “upstream emissions” associated with the project, such as extraction, refining, transportation and methane emissions from the gas – including liquefied natural gas from the US – were taken into account, the power station would emit more than 20.3m tonnes of carbon pollution.

In February the project was given the green light by the energy secretary Claire Coutinho, despite Boswell’s calculations being acknowledged as correct.

A spokesperson for the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero did not dispute the figures but defended the scheme, saying CCS has been described as a “necessity not an option” by the government’s climate advisers. “Power stations with these facilities will provide a stable energy supply, not dependent on the weather, with low emissions. This will be vital to support a secure, largely renewables-based energy system in 2050.”

They added the government’s £20bn investment in carbon capture and storage would drive economic growth and support up to 50,000 jobs.

Boswell, backed by the green industrialist Dale Vince, is taking the government to court to get a judicial review of the decision, which they say falls foul of climate commitments

Vince said: “This is a fake net zero project from two of the world’s biggest fossil fuel companies. How on earth can polluting the atmosphere with 20m tonnes be net zero? The project should not have been allowed to go ahead and that’s why we’re supporting the legal challenge against this fossil-fuelled deception.”

Aside from the upstream emissions, scientists are also sceptical of the efficiency of the carbon capture technology that is at the heart of the Teesside project’s emissions’ calculations. The process aims to capture emissions, rather than release them into the atmosphere, and bury them underground.

A spokesperson for the Net Zero Teesside project said it would help the UK government meet its net zero targets by capturing significant CO₂ emissions. They said there were more than 40 CCS facilities in operation around the world. “National policy is clear, a key component of transitioning to a low carbon economy is the phasing-out of unabated gas generation through the deployment of gas-fired electricity generation with CCS.”

This month the government’s climate action plan was ruled unlawful in the high court, with the judge finding the government’s proposed measures would fail to meet the UK’s climate goals.

Mike Childs, the head of policy at Friends of the Earth, said: “It’s extremely optimistic to claim that CCS would capture 95% of this power stations emissions … the high court found that the government climate action plan was unlawful and ruled it must produce a new one in line with its targets. It’s fanciful to believe that gas-fired power stations with CCS are compatible with a carbon reduction strategy that is fit for purpose.”

A weight loss injection could reduce the risk of heart attacks and benefit the cardiovascular health of millions of adults across the UK, in what could be the largest medical breakthrough since statins, according to a study.

It found that participants taking the medication semaglutide, the active ingredient in brands including Wegovy and Ozempic, had a 20% lower risk of heart attack, stroke, or death due to cardiovascular disease.

The study, presented at the European Congress of Obesity (ECO) and led by researchers at University College London, also found that semaglutide brought about cardiovascular benefits for its participants, regardless of their starting weight or the amount of weight that they had lost. It suggests that those with mild obesity or who have lost only a small amount of weight could have an improved cardiovascular outcome.

Prof John Deanfield, the director of the National Institute for Cardiovascular Outcomes Research and the lead author of the study, said the findings showed that the medication should be routinely prescribed to treat cardiovascular illnesses, and that millions of people across the UK could be taking the medication in the next few years.

“This fantastic drug really is a gamechanger. This [study] suggests that here are potentially alternative mechanisms for that improved cardiovascular outcome with semaglutide beyond weight loss … Quite clearly, something else is going on that benefits the cardiovascular system,” Deanfield said.

The study involved 17,604 adults aged 45 and over with a body mass index of over 27 from across 41 countries. The participants, who had also previously experienced a cardiovascular event such as a heart attack, were prescribed either a 2.5mg weekly dose of semaglutide or a placebo for an average period of 40 months.

Of the 8,803 patients in the semaglutide group, 569 (6.5%) experienced a primary cardiovascular end-point event, such as a heart attack, compared with 701 (8%) of the 8,801 patients in the placebo group.

Semaglutide under the brand name Wegovy has been prescribed for weight loss on the NHS since 2023.

Deanfield said that in the 1990s, statins – drugs that lower cholesterol – were considered a medical breakthrough and revolutionary in treating cardiology practice, and he said semaglutide could be seen as similarly groundbreaking in regarding to improving cardiovascular health. “We now have a class of drugs that could equally transform many chronic diseases of ageing,” he said.

Prof Jason Halford, president of the European Association for the Study of Obesity, said that as the medication could be seen to improve cardiovascular health, it could be economically beneficial for it to be prescribed widely.

“I think in the next 10 years we’ll see a radical change in the approach to healthcare,” he said. “Once the costs come down then the cost savings to the NHS will be significant. There are already people in the Treasury thinking about the savings to the economy because of the opportunity to boost productivity. You need to get your workforce as fit as possible.”

About 7.6 million people in the UK are living with heart or circulatory disease, according to the British Heart Foundation.

Another study based on the same clinical trial found that participants who were prescribed semaglutide lost an average of 10.2% of their body weight and 7.7cm from their waist over a four-year period, while the placebo group lost 1.5% of body weight and 1.3cm from the waist.

A separate study looking at a new slimming jab has found that it could be much more effective than those already on the market. Retatrutide, a weekly injection, works by suppressing appetite and also by helping the body burn more fat, according to its phase 2 clinical trial.

The trial of 338 participants living with obesity showed that participants lost 24% of their body weight over a 48-week period. Researchers say it is more effective for weight loss than Ozempic or Wegovy, which only work by suppressing appetite.

Prof Naveed Sattar, of the University of Glasgow, who has worked on trials of other weight loss treatments, said: “Five or 10 years ago, we could never have imagined drugs that would cause this kind of weight loss. The trial suggests retatrutide still hadn’t plateaued, so it’s probably going to see more weight loss. If we give this drug even longer, I think it could reach nearly 30% of someone’s body weight.”

Kristi Noem, the South Dakota governor who was once considered one of Donald Trump’s top vice-presidential contenders, has been banned from nearly one-fifth of the state after two more tribes voted to prohibit her from their lands.

The move by the Yankton Sioux tribe and the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate tribe last week follows criticism from the governor who has – without evidence – accused tribal leaders of “personally benefiting” from drug cartels. The Oglala, Rosebud, Cheyenne River and Standing Rock Sioux tribes banished Noem earlier this year.

Noem has been the subject of controversy in recent weeks after the Guardian reported that the governor described killing a family dog and a goat in her new book.

Noem also falsely claimed to have met the North Korean dictator, Kim Jong-un – in a passage she later said should not have been included in the book – and claimed to have cancelled a planned meeting with Emmanuel Macron, which the French government denied. The controversies appear to have weakened Noem’s chances of becoming the former president’s running mate.

Her dispute with South Dakota tribes heightened after remarks she made at a forum in March, accusing tribal leaders who had been critical of her catering to drug cartels.

“We’ve got some tribal leaders that I believe are personally benefiting from the cartels being there, and that’s why they attack me every day,” Noem said. “But I’m going to fight for the people who actually live in those situations, who call me and text me every day and say: ‘Please, dear governor, please come help us in Pine Ridge. We are scared.’”

The Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate said it had moved to ban Noem after she made statements that were “injurious to the parents of tribal children”, Kelo, a local TV station reported.

In a statement announcing the ban in April, the Rosebud Sioux said the decision was based not only on Noem’s recent comments but an “ongoing strained relationship” with the governor, who took office in 2019.

The tribe cited Noem’s support of the Keystone XL pipeline, her opposition to checkpoints on reservation borders established by the Cheyenne River Sioux and Oglala Sioux during the pandemic, and her support of the removal of “significant sections” of Native American history from state social-studies standards, among other issues.

“Governor Noem claims she wants to establish meaningful relationships with tribes to provide solutions for systemic problems. However, her actions as governor show blatantly otherwise,” the tribe said in a statement.

“Her disingenuous nature towards Native Americans to further her federal political ambitions is an attack on tribal sovereignty that the Rosebud Sioux tribe will not tolerate.”

The tribe said it would acknowledge Noem only after she issues a public apology and presents a “plan of action” for supporting and empowering the Lakota people.

In response to the wave of bans, Noem again repeated her claims about the tribes’ leadership. “Tribal leaders should take action to ban the cartels from their lands and accept my offer to help them restore law and order to their communities while protecting their sovereignty,” Noem said.

Cal Jillson, a politics professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, said that unlike previous disputes, Noem seems to be “stoking it actively, which suggests that she sees a political benefit”. He said it is likely Noem does not mind the focus on this conflict rather than on other recent controversies.

“I’m sure that Governor Noem doesn’t mind a focus on tensions with the Native Americans in South Dakota, because if we’re not talking about that, we’re talking about her shooting the dog,” Jillson said.

With at least five minutes of stoppage time still to run, the stadium announcer asked the Aston Villa supporters to remain in their seats at the final whistle for a lap of appreciation. At that particular moment, it was wishful ­thinking as Villa went for the jugular. Seconds earlier, Moussa Diaby had blasted at goal, forcing Alisson into a smart, right-hand save to prevent an improbable 4-3 comeback victory against Liverpool and bedlam in the stands.

Many fans had spent the ­previous 10 minutes on their feet after Jhon Durán’s late double secured an unlikely point that may prove priceless in the race to secure a Champions League berth. Just when it seemed inevitable Liverpool would yield ­victory from Jürgen Klopp’s final away game, the substitute striker, unpredictable at the best of times, flipped the mood in the stands. His goals, in the 85th and 88th minutes, in this breathless contest may well define Villa’s season.

A point edges Villa closer to fourth and a place in the Champions League. Unai Emery will doubtless be glued to events at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Tuesday, where anything but a Spurs win against Manchester City will secure Villa’s return to Europe’s ­premier competition for the first time since 1982-83.

Villa got off to a disastrous start, Emiliano Martínez turning the ball into his own net with the game a ­minute old and, though Youri ­Tielemans replied, goals by Cody Gakpo and Jarell Quansah looked to have earned Liverpool a relatively simple victory. “Jürgen Klopp, la, la, la, la,” sang the visiting support.

Not so fast. Never have Villa cele­brated a draw quite so emphatically. Before kick-off the centre-circle banner swirled and swayed to the thud of Jeff Beck and Villa hope it will have the stars of the Champions League on the giant flag next season. “Hopefully that gets us Champions League football,” Villa’s captain, John McGinn, said as he addressed a boisterous crowd. For now, one of the league’s last live storylines – the protracted battle for fourth – could run to the final day, when Villa head to Crystal Palace and Spurs visit Sheffield United. The only caveat is that first Spurs must beat the defending champions.

Durán’s equaliser was a touch fortunate, Diaby’s overcooked pass cannoning off his thigh and looping in after the Frenchman skipped clear of Alexis Mac Allister in midfield. It was not the purest of strikes. As Klopp put it, “somebody hit somebody and the ball goes in”. Not that it will bother Durán and Villa. Suddenly Diego ­Carlos’s inconceivable miss on 36 minutes, when he contrived to slice Leon ­Bailey’s cross wide from a yard out at 2-1 down, felt a long time ago.

Conceding inside 62 seconds courtesy of a goalkeeper howler is one way to kill the pre-match buzz. Tielemans, back from a groin injury, surrendered possession on halfway and Harvey Elliott stepped on to the gas, zoomed upfield and played a one-two with Mohamed Salah. ­Elliott sent a ­seemingly harmless cross in from the right but the ball clinked Pau Torres’s left shoulder and that proved enough to bamboozle Martínez at his near post. He shifted from right to left in good time but the ball squirmed through his hands and, while the Villa goalkeeper tried to claw it back with his right glove, the damage was already done.

“I’m so glad that Jürgen is a Red,” came the adoring chant on loop from the visiting supporters, keen to shower Klopp with love on his final away day in charge. ­Martínez’s error stunned the home support but they were soon on their feet, Tom Hanks – one of Villa’s celebrity fans – celebrating Tielemans’s ­leveller. Ollie Watkins toyed with Quansah and then comfortably beat the defender to the byline, where the Villa striker cut the ball back for an unmarked Tielemans to leather in.

Hanks was interviewed pitchside before kick-off and said he hoped to witness “a little bit of history”. A pulsating game certainly delivered. “I am exhausted, more than the players,” Emery said, smiling.

As Emery added afterwards, his team rarely lie down. Even after the freakish Martínez error and the manner in which an unmarked Gakpo converted from close range after meeting Joe Gomez’s low cross at the back post to retake the lead. Even after Villa started the second half dreadfully, Liverpool storming into a 3-1 lead three minutes after the restart, Quansah looping a header in off a post. Lucas Digne did little to prevent the Liverpool centre-back making clean contact on Elliott’s cross at the back post. “Martínez is the No 1 but he’s human, he can make a mistake sometimes,” Emery said.

McGinn had said they underachieved by failing to win the Europa Con­ference League but qualifying for the Champions League would be the perfect tonic. Durán, the hulking 20-year-old signed from Chicago Fire 16 months ago, entered in place of the injured substitute Nicolò Zaniolo on 79 minutes and, regardless of Emery’s rallying message, even he surely never envisaged what happened next. Klopp’s perfect goodbye – not for the first time this season – was blemished. Villa, meanwhile, are close to a return to the European elite, a stage Klopp knows well. “Danke für alles,” read a banner in the away end. Klopp doffed his black cap.

The White House has condemned an attack on an aid convoy heading to Gaza by Israeli settlers who threw packages of food into the road and set fire to the vehicles.

Video of the incident on Monday at Tarqumiya checkpoint, west of Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, showed settlers blocking the trucks and throwing boxes of much-needed supplies on the ground. Photographs from the scene showed piles of damaged aid packages and drifts of rice and flour across the road.

Late on Monday, photos began circulating on social media showing the trucks on fire.

Israel has faced heavy international pressure to step up the flow of aid into Gaza, where international organisations have warned of a severe humanitarian crisis threatening a population of more than 2 million people.

“It is a total outrage that there are people who are attacking and looting these convoys coming from Jordan, going to Gaza to deliver humanitarian assistance,” US national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters.

“We are looking at the tools that we have to respond to this,” he added. “We are also raising our concerns at the highest level of the Israeli government and it’s something that we make no bones about – this is completely and utterly unacceptable behaviour.”

Referring to a US report issued on Friday on Israeli compliance with international humanitarian law, Sullivan said that the Israeli state had hindered aid deliveries in the recent past but had improved the flow sufficiently, so as not to be subject to restrictions on military aid that might have been required under US law.

“We believe that there were periods over the last few weeks where there were restrictions that had to be worked through,” Sullivan said. “But at the time we put that report forward, we felt that there was sufficient work being done by the Israeli government with respect to the facilitation of humanitarian aid, that we did not make a judgment that anything had to be done in terms of US assistance.”

Police do not appear to have intervened to stop the looting, though four people including a minor were later reported to have been arrested.

This is not the first time that settlers have tried to stop the flow of aid to Gaza, which is already only a fraction of that needed by the population of the embattled territory.

Last week, Israeli demonstrators blocked a road near the desert town of Mitzpe Ramon to protest against the delivery of aid trucks into the strip. The protesters – who say the aid is helping Hamas and want to block its passage until all Israeli hostages are freed – formed a sit-in protest as they scattered rocks across the road to prevent vehicles from passing, creating standstill traffic.

Israel’s siege of Gaza has created what aid officials are referring to as “man-made starvation”, with the territory facing the threat of mass deaths from famine with children already dying from hunger.

In March, the international court of justice ordered Israel to allow unimpeded access of food aid into Gaza, where sections of the population are facing imminent starvation.

Aid efforts have been further complicated by the temporary closure of the headquarters of the main channel for humanitarian support for Palestinians after weeks of violent protests and arson attacks by Israeli right-wingers.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees announced it was closing its East Jerusalem headquarters on Thursday after a fresh attack by what Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the agency, described as “Israeli extremists”.

Hundreds of starving and stranded brown pelicans have turned up along the California coast in recent weeks in what wildlife advocates have described as a “crisis”.

In Newport Beach in southern California, lifeguards came upon two dozen sick pelicans on a pier last week. The Wetlands and Wildlife Care Center in Huntington Beach, the non-profit caring for the animals, said they had treated more than 100 other birds who were anemic, dehydrated and extremely underweight.

“They are starving to death and if we don’t get them into care, they will die,” said Debbie McGuire, the center’s executive director. “It really is a crisis.”

Bird Rescue, a non-profit that operates wildlife centers in northern and southern California, reported taking in more than 235 sick pelicans in the past three weeks. At least 40% of the pelicans have significant injuries after becoming entangled in fishing line and hooks, the non-profit said.

The California department of fish and wildlife (CDFW) confirmed in a statement last week that high numbers of the federally protected species are showing signs of malnutrition. The agency said that since late April it has received increased reports of brown pelicans stranded from Santa Cruz county to San Diego county, and that wildlife rehabilitation facilities “began admitting an unusually high number of debilitated pelicans”.

“Most birds are coming in cold, emaciated and anemic – essentially starving to death,” Dr Rebecca Duerr, Bird Rescue’s research and veterinary science director, said in a statement. “Many of them are exhibiting severe injuries – especially from fishing hooks and line.”

Most pelicans in northern California have come from Monterey and Santa Cruz, while birds in southern California have been rescued from unusual places, including a lake at SoFi Stadium and a fire station in Malibu, Bird Rescue said.

Many pelicans have died. The cause is still unclear, though the CDFW said the animals appear to be succumbing to problems related to starvation. Some wildlife experts have pointed out that the birds are malnourished despite the bounty of marine life along the Pacific coast.

In 2022, a similar event saw nearly 800 pelicans admitted into wildlife care facilities – about half of which were released, according to the CDFW.

The agency said it was conducting postmortem exams of the birds who died this year and testing those currently under the care of wildlife rehabilitation centers.

The Wetlands and Wildlife Care Center reported nearly 100 pelicans in its care on Friday. The first step in caring for the sick animals is to warm them, Dr Elizabeth Wood, the center’s medical director, said in a video.

“The great news is the vast majority are recovering if we can get them through those first few critical hours of hypothermia,” she said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report

Rain sluiced down on a grey Dublin afternoon but the crowd clustering around the portal ignored the downpour and waved at a man cycling towards the screen on a sunny morning in Manhattan.

He gazed back, waved and wobbled before recovering his balance and vanishing down Fifth Avenue, eliciting a cheer from the sodden observers on North Earl Street.

Monday was day five of a live stream that has connected Ireland’s capital with New York via an interactive sculpture and webcam that allows people to see, but not hear, each other.

Seconds after the cyclist, a woman appeared walking her dog. She stopped, stared at the screen and grinned. She picked up her dog and waved his paw. The crowd in Dublin, huddled under umbrellas, gave another cheer. “I wish I’d brought my dog,” said Amy Ferguson, 24.

The fleeting, playful interactions between people separated by 3,000 miles and five time zones exemplified the hope of authorities when the art installation launched on 8 May. “Two amazing global cities connected in real time and space,” said New York’s chief public realm officer, Ya-Ting Liu.

“I would encourage Dubliners and visitors to the city to come and interact with the sculpture and extend an Irish welcome and kindness to cities all over the world,” said Dublin’s lord mayor, Daithí de Róiste.

Not all, however, have followed that utopian exhortation. Some on the Irish side have flashed body parts, while others displayed images of swastikas and the twin towers aflame on 9/11. One man made a theatrical show of snorting what appeared to be cocaine. Police escorted away a woman who was grinding against the portal.

“Portal to hell: NYC-Dublin live video art installation already bringing out the worst in people,” lamented the New York Post, which blamed Dublin’s “Guinness-glugging patrons”.

Suzanne Byrne, 33, who lives near the portal in Dublin, said she was not surprised. “Why did they put it here? They’re all mad on this street. At night-time it’s like The Purge,” she said, citing the dystopian film franchise.

Designed by a Lithuanian artist, Benediktas Gylys, each structure has an 8ft-wide screen and weighs 3.5 tonnes. The New York portal is at the junction of Broadway, Fifth Avenue and 23rd Street. Its Dublin counterpart is at the corner of North Earl Street and O’Connell Street, the heart of the inner city. The project is to continue until autumn, though some commentators have wondered if provocative behaviour will curb the experiment.

A pair of matching portals in 2021 connected Vilnius, Lithuania’s capital, with Lublin in Poland. The artist Paul St George connected London and New York in 2008 via a device called the Telectroscope, which had Jules Verne-style dials and flourishes.

The cold and wet did not deter tourists and natives from lingering and taking selfies at Dublin’s portal. Most were delighted, all curious. They watched a young New Yorker speed-walk past the screen, only to return and gaze in puzzlement as people waved at her. She laughed, indicated her watch, mimed typing and mouthed “gotta go to work” before vanishing.

“I saw it on Instagram and had to come. It’s cool,” said Sarah Jackson, 23, a student. She was phlegmatic about the reports of rowdiness. “It’s a bit wild. It shows the good and bad of Dublin.”

Sandy Garrido, 32, a tourist from Chile, said she first saw it on TikTok. “It’s so fun to connect with people this way.”

Justin Miller, 28, an American who is studying history at Trinity College Dublin, said he had half-jokingly asked friends in the US to visit the New York portal. He shrugged off the Irish side’s notoriety. “Hopefully it’s mainly a positive thing rather than people being weird. It shouldn’t take away from the fun.”

Johnny McEntee, the former White House Trump aide closely linked to plans for radical federal government reform should Donald Trump win re-election, stoked outrage with a TikTok video in which he claimed to give unhoused people fake money, thereby to ensure their arrest.

“So I always keep this fake Hollywood money in my car,” McEntee said in the video posted last week by The Right Stuff, a dating site for rightwingers of which McEntee is a co-founder.

“So when a homeless person asks for money, then I give them like a fake $5 bill. So I feel good about myself. They feel good. And then when they go to use it, they get arrested. So I’m actually like helping clean up the community, you know, getting them off the street.”

The video included a caption: “Just a joke. Everyone calm down.”

But that only pointed to the outrage it stoked.

Tara Setmayer, a former Republican operative now an adviser to the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, called McEntee “a cruel, indecent POS”, or piece of shit.

“I can’t imagine being this awful as a human being,” Setmayer added. “Which explains why I’m proudly not Maga [a Trump supporter] and working so hard to defeat this ilk.”

David Corn, the Washington bureau chief of Mother Jones magazine, asked: “How broken must you be to do this and think it’s funny?”

In 2018, McEntee was bruised but not broken by his own unhousing: from the White House on the orders of John Kelly, the former US Marine Corps general who was Trump’s second chief of staff.

A former college football quarterback, McEntee was Trump’s “body man”, an aide who follows the president closely to make sure every need is met. Kelly reportedly fired him over security clearance issues related to an online gambling habit.

In 2020, McEntee returned to the White House as director of the Presidential Personnel Office. Though the Atlantic would later quote a “high-profile” Trump cabinet secretary as calling McEntee “a fucking idiot”, the same outlet quoted another senior official as saying, “He became the deputy president.”

As described by the Atlantic, McEntee led a fierce drive for loyalty which “made the disastrous last weeks of the Trump presidency possible … back[ing] the president’s manic drive to overturn the election, and help[ing] set the stage for the January 6 assault on the Capitol”.

McEntee is widely reported to be involved in preparations for a Trump second term meant to feature far-reaching reforms, under the label Project 2025, and purges of government officials deemed insufficiently loyal.

As McEntee’s video about giving unhoused people fake money spread around the internet, however, some observers pointed to a possible problem with federal law, should he ever prove not to be joking.

Under 18 US Code section 480: “Whoever, within the United States, knowingly and with intent to defraud, possesses or delivers any false, forged, or counterfeit bond, certificate, obligation, security, treasury note, bill, promise to pay, bank note, or bill issued by a bank or corporation of any foreign country, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.”

Jannine Mancilla, 32, and Nicole Macias, 34, bonded over a shared love of DIY fashion and hand-me-downs, and frustrations with an environmentally-destructive industry and a throwaway culture that creates huge amounts of waste. So they came up with a radical idea: asking people to offer up their old clothes – for free. Their Los Angeles clothing swaps have grown from humble origins to “overwhelmingly” popular events that receive hundreds of pounds of clothing donations each month, helping attendees save the planet and keep money in their pockets.

Jannine Mancilla: All of us at Radical Clothes Swap are first-gen Mexican American and grew up with an immigrant, sparse mentality. I grew up with hand-me-downs from my siblings and cousins. We had that cookie container that never had cookies in it, that we would reuse to hold a sewing kit. I grew up mending my own pants. When skinny jeans were a thing, I would sew them by hand.

Nicole Macias: I still get my brothers’ hand-me-downs. There’s nothing like a beat-up old shirt or a sweater to sleep in or just hang around in. Bipoc communities have always done this because we’re resourceful. It was ingrained in our upbringing and our lifestyle. A lot of times we’ve had to, because we couldn’t afford to buy new wardrobes every new school year.

In 2021, I was invited to participate in a back-to-school community event for young people, and I thought about what I could bring that wouldn’t require the kids to spend money. I had been inspired by a company called Suay Sew Shop that does textile repurposing and has a free rack at their store.

I was blown away by that concept – you could just grab a sweater off a rack and it’s free. So I decided to have a free rack at the back-to-school event. I donated five items from my own closet and did a shout-out on social media asking people for clothes they wanted to get rid of.

The response was overwhelming. I got all types and sizes of clothing: pajamas, winter coats, jeans, dresses, shorts, workout clothes, you name it. I couldn’t even fit all the bags in my car and had to borrow a friend’s catering van to haul everything with me.

After that I did four more swaps and ended up with more and more clothes. Jannine, who I’d never met, hit me up on social media and she was like: “Hey, I like what you’re doing. I’ve done this before. Do you want to team up?” I had already agreed to a community event in [the Los Angeles neighborhood of] Inglewood and told her to come. She was like: “Yeah, let’s do it.”

I showed up with my clothes, my wagon and some hangers. Jannine showed up with a canopy and a table and some hangers. We were hanging clothes from the canopy. It was so ugly, but people loved it.

Jannine: People were so thrown off by the concept that it was all free.

We are ruled by capitalism, and if people aren’t profiting, they don’t take an interest in it. Giving out something for free without expecting anything in return is radical.

We don’t ask anything of people. We don’t even ask them to post and tag us. When we created an Instagram, we were throwing out names. Nicole threw out the word “radical” and we were like: “Wait, that fits, because what we’re doing is very, very radical and unheard of. Who just gives out clothes or anything for free without expecting anything in return?”

That’s how we came up with Radical Clothes Swap. There’s literally no catch: you’re keeping money in your pockets and saving the environment a little bit by shopping for free.

Nicole: At first people were unsure, but now we have a following. Since March, we’ve probably held about five per month. Angel City Brewery is our main swap, every second Saturday of the month. We’re also at the Rivian Pasadena Hub every last Sunday.

We typically get up to 100-plus folks that visit us and, on average, about 50 of those people donate clothes to swap. We’ve estimated that each of those people donates about 6-10lb of clothes, so we receive up to 500lb of clothes per event. We tend to go home with extra donations, which we store for future events.

A lot of people don’t understand that a lot of thrift stores are so overwhelmed with donations that sometimes they just throw clothes away. For people who do thrift, they’re also starting to find that the quality is not good. A lot of it is fast fashion that’s priced at regular store prices.

Jannine: What also makes it different from thrift stores is the connections that people make. It’s so beautiful to see people come to our events who don’t know each other, and then we turn around and we see them laughing and talking. It’s not just a place for people to shop for free, but to build community and make connections with other like-minded folks.

When we were growing up it wasn’t cool to wear second-hand clothes, but now it is. White people are thrifting more, so prices are rising because there’s more demand. In a way, this is us taking back that power that we’ve had, something that we’ve always done.

Nicole: Our end goal is to open up a physical space where we can host more educational workshops, like mending and fabric dyeing. We’d love to expand outside of Los Angeles and California.

I feel like Bipocs are always the trendsetters, and this concept of swapping is coming full circle. There’s no money involved. There’s no exchange. It’s community at its core, just giving back.

• The DIY Climate Changers is a series about everyday people across the US using their own ingenuity to tackle climate change in their neighborhoods, homes and backyards. If you would like to share your story, email us at [email protected]