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

Sean “Diddy” Combs has tried to reach out to prospective witnesses and influence public opinion from jail in a bid to affect potential jurors for his upcoming sex-trafficking trial, prosecutors claimed in a court filing urging a judge to reject his latest bail request.

The government accusations were made late Friday in a Manhattan federal court filing that opposes the music mogul’s latest $50m bail proposal. A bail hearing is scheduled for next week.

Prosecutors wrote that a review of recorded jail calls made by Combs shows he has asked family members to reach out to potential victims and witnesses and has urged them to create “narratives” to influence the jury pool. They say he also has encouraged marketing strategies to sway public opinion.

“The defendant has shown repeatedly – even while in custody – that he will flagrantly and repeatedly flout rules in order to improperly impact the outcome of his case. The defendant has shown, in other words, that he cannot be trusted to abide by rules or conditions,” prosecutors wrote in a submission that contained redactions.

Prosecutors wrote that it could be inferred from his behavior that Combs wants to blackmail victims and witnesses into silence or into providing testimony helpful to his defense.

Lawyers for Combs did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Prosecutors said Combs, 55, began breaking rules almost as soon as he was detained at the Metropolitan detention center in Brooklyn after his September arrest.

He has pleaded not guilty to charges that he coerced and abused women for years with the aid of a network of associates and employees, while silencing victims through blackmail and violence, including kidnapping, arson and physical beatings.

Two judges have concluded he is a danger to the community and a risk to flee.

His lawyers recently made a third request for bail after the rejection of two previous attempts, including a $50m bail proposal.

In the request, they cited changed circumstances, including new evidence, which they said made it sensible to release Combs so he can better prepare for his 5 May trial.

But prosecutors said defense lawyers created their latest bail proposal using evidence prosecutors had turned over to them and that the material had already been known to defense lawyers when they made previous bail applications.

In their submission, prosecutors said Combs’ behavior in jail shows he must remain locked up.

For instance, they said, Combs has enlisted family members to plan and carry out a social media campaign around his birthday “with the intention of influencing the potential jury in this criminal proceeding”.

Combs encouraged his children to post a video to their social media accounts showing them gathered to celebrate his birthday, they said.

Afterward, he monitored the analytics, including audience engagement, from the jail and “explicitly discussed with his family how to ensure that the video had his desired effect on potential jury members in this case”, they said.

The government also alleged Combs during other calls made clear his intention to anonymously publish information that he thought would help his defense against the charges.

“The defendant’s efforts to obstruct the integrity of this proceeding also includes relentless efforts to contact potential witnesses, including victims of his abuse who could provide powerful testimony against him,” prosecutors wrote.

Donald Trump said on Saturday that Chris Wright, an oil and gas industry executive and a staunch defender of fossil fuel use, would be his pick to lead the US Department of Energy.

Wright is the founder and CEO of Liberty Energy, an oilfield services firm based in Denver, Colorado. He is expected to support Trump’s plan to maximize production of oil and gas and to seek ways to boost generation of electricity, demand for which is rising for the first time in decades.

He is also likely to share Trump’s opposition to global cooperation on fighting climate change. Wright has called climate change activists alarmist and has likened efforts by Democrats to combat global warming to Soviet-style communism.

“There is no climate crisis, and we’re not in the midst of an energy transition, either,” Wright said in a video posted to his LinkedIn profile last year.

Wright, who does not have any political experience, has written extensively on the need for more fossil fuel production to lift people out of poverty.

He has stood out among oil and gas executives for his freewheeling style, and describes himself as a tech nerd.

Wright made a media splash in 2019 when he drank fracking fluid on camera to demonstrate it was not dangerous.

US oil output hit the highest level any country has ever produced under Biden, and it is uncertain how much Wright and the incoming administration could boost that.

Most drilling decisions are driven by private companies working on land not owned by the federal government.

The Department of Energy handles US energy diplomacy, administers the Strategic Petroleum Reserve – which Trump has said he wants to replenish – and runs grant and loan programs to advance energy technologies, such as the Loan Programs Office.

The secretary also oversees the aging US nuclear weapons complex, nuclear energy waste disposal and 17 national labs.

If confirmed by the Senate, Wright will replace Jennifer Granholm, a supporter of electric vehicles and emerging energy sources like geothermal power, and a backer of carbon-free wind, solar and nuclear energy.

Wright will also likely be involved in the permitting of electricity transmission and the expansion of nuclear power, an energy source that is popular with both Republicans and Democrats but which is expensive and complicated to permit.

Power demand in the United States is surging for the first time in two decades amid growth in artificial intelligence, electric vehicles and cryptocurrencies.

Trump also announced on Saturday that he had picked one of his personal attorneys, Will Scharf, to serve as his White House staff secretary. Scharf is a former federal prosecutor who was a member of Trump’s legal team in his successful attempt to get broad immunity from prosecution from the supreme court.

Writing on Twitter the day after Trump’s election, Scharf greeted the news that Jack Smith, the special counsel who indicted the former president for his attempt to subvert the 2020 election, was winding down the Trump case and planned to resign with the words, “Bye Jack.”

A teenage boy in Santa Clara, California, has taken his own life after being bullied by other students for being unhoused, his father said.

Speaking to KTVU, Jose Bautista, the father of 14-year-old Jose Zamora, said his son died last Tuesday after being taunted by students, including those on his junior varsity football team.

“They were spitting on him, hitting him on the back of the helmet,” Bautista told KTVU, adding that he had heard from other students that his son’s teammates at Santa Clara high school had been bullying him for being unhoused and having no mother.

“I miss hearing him, seeing him, I miss picking him up,” Bautista told the outlet, adding that his son had just started at the high school in August as a freshman and Bautista would pick him up after football practice. “He was trying to make me happy … He was trying to be a better child,” he said.

According to Bautista, other football players had found out that his son was living at the Bill Wilson Center, a non-profit shelter that helps youth facing issues including homelessness.

Bautista told KTVU that he and his son became unhoused after they were evicted from their apartment earlier this year and that his son was being treated at the center for mental health concerns.

“We were bonding more. He was waiting for a place to live instead of the shelter,” Bautista told the outlet, adding that he was hoping to find a new home before the holidays.

Following Zamora’s death, Santa Clara police released a statement on Friday, saying that it is currently investigating the tragedy, adding: “We understand the loss of a loved one is a tragic event and we encourage anyone who may be struggling to reach out for help which may include suicide prevention hotlines and or mental health professionals.”

Speaking to the Silicon Valley Voice, a spokesperson for the Bill Wilson Center said that the organization is “aware of the situation and are cooperating with the investigation currently under way”.

Meanwhile, Gary Waddell, Santa Clara’s school district superintendent, told KTVU that “administrators have already taken initial actions in response”.

“We in no way condone bullying, harassment or retribution of any kind and take such allegations seriously. We strive to provide as many facts as possible to the community while preserving our duty to protect the privacy and confidentiality of both students and families,” Waddell added.

Bautista, who held a vigil for his son at Santa Clara high school on Friday, told KTVU that he wants to share his son’s story publicly because “I just don’t want this to happen to other people like it happened to me”.

Along with other family members, Bautista has created an online fundraiser to help with his son’s funeral costs, saying: “In this difficult time of sadness, after the loss of our beloved son, we are thanking the many, many people reaching out to support us. We have been asked by many of you how you can help. As you know, along with the grief of loss, we also have expenses to lay Jose to his final rest … Thank you for any and all support you have provided.”

As of Saturday afternoon, the fundraiser had raised nearly $144,000 from more than 3,700 donors, exceeding its goal of $110,000.

Red squirrels will soon disappear from England unless the government funds a vaccine against squirrelpox, one of the biggest groups set up to protect the species has warned.

Conservationists say the English population of non-native grey squirrels has exploded this year, triggered by warmer winters which enable mating pairs to feed and breed all year round, and estimate that 70% are carrying squirrelpox, a virus which is lethal only to red squirrels.

“We’re facing a huge surge of grey squirrels,” said Robert Benson, founder of Penrith and District Red Squirrel Group, which covers 600 square miles of Cumbria.

“We think they are breeding three or four times a year, and having four or five kits each time, leading to a massive expansion in grey squirrel numbers: 15 or 20 young grey squirrels are moving through the countryside [each year], from each breeding pair.”

Benson founded his group 40 years ago when the first grey squirrel was spotted in the region and recently took on an eighth full-time ranger to try to control the local grey squirrel population, helped by teams of part-time volunteers.

“Red squirrels are already under extreme pressure, because the grey squirrels will out-compete them for feed and for territory,” he said. “We’ve already lost them from every county in mainland England, apart from Cumbria and Northumberland.”

Squirrel protection groups in those regions desperately need help from the government to control the local grey squirrel population, he said. “We are at the coal face. England is under extreme threat, and in due course, Scotland will be threatened in the same way.”

He said his group is just one of the many conservation groups across Cumbria and Northumberland working to make sure the red squirrel survives: “Unless we can manage to control that grey surge, the chances are, in two or three years, the red population will begin to disappear.”

The government needs to urgently invest in developing a vaccine against squirrelpox, while there is still a “viable population” of red squirrels alive who can benefit. If that doesn’t happen soon, he said, “we won’t have red squirrels in England, and probably in the United Kingdom, because Scotland too will go, in time … Defra [the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs] and Natural England have to take seriously the threat to our red squirrels”.

He added: “If it wasn’t for the work we do, the red would already have disappeared from this part of the world.”

For the past two winters, he has been finding pregnant and lactating female grey squirrels in December, January and February. “We’re seeing it now, in November. They shouldn’t be breeding at this time of year, but they are.”

Grey squirrels have a natural advantage over red squirrels because they find it easier to digest the tannins found in acorns, a widespread food source which reds struggle to eat.

When squirrelpox is present in the local squirrel population too, the disappearance of reds accelerates and they are replaced by grey squirrels up to 25 times faster. “Every time a red gets squirrelpox, it dies, and it’s a slow painful death,” said Benson.

He said grey squirrels also cause a “huge amount of damage”, especially to growing timber, and feed on song birds and their eggs.

“They cause damage to property too, by getting into lofts and outhouses, chewing through plumbing and electrics. Yet I’m afraid that the conservation of red squirrels seems to be a low priority for the government.”

Defra and Natural England were contacted for comment.

“Your body, my choice” wrote the troll on a post about my mother dying. It was meant to intimidate me. Instead, it’s launched me into strategy mode, thinking through how women and their friends may build the cultural resilience to survive this neo-Trumpian era.

The slogan was coined by white supremacist, antisemitic, misogynist Nick Fuentes. It’s everywhere online. Hateful extremists of his calibre once struggled to find an audience among leprous worms. Fuentes dined with the new president-elect of the United States, Donald Trump, as recently as November 2022. This is the reality we live in now – American women directly, the rest of us by association.

They’re hunting us on the internet, these men. They always did, but Trump’s victory has encouraged more flagrant woman-hating behaviours. I presume they’re merely searching the word “feminist” or “feminists” to find targets in their angry – conspicuously vast – spare time.

They’re certainly not doing the research, because I live in Australia, where my body remains my choice, protected by suites of laws passionately defended by the people even when threatened by anti-abortion politicians. Seventy-six per cent of Australians support abortion rights, with high rates of support among men. Why the difference? Australians have no inherited Puritan fetish for suffering. Being bound forever to someone you don’t love, and paying for kids you don’t want, doesn’t much set you up for a happy and satisfying life.

Our American cousins who’ve had the same realisation, alas, are now at the legal mercy of those who haven’t, won’t, and tend to ban any books that suggest they ever will. But even as an Australian, it’s hard not to feel an encroaching global darkness when Trump’s proposed defence secretary is the latest man to freak out about catching girl germs from female combat soldiers, while in Russia, Trump pal Vladimir Putin is banning “childfree propaganda” supposedly to arrest declining birthrate. The Russian parliamentary lower house voted unanimously this week to punish individuals or entities who promote the terrifying feminist ideology of maybe not wanting kids. One suspects Vlad’s lads would get more of a demographic bounce by not feeding soldiers into the meat grinder of invading Ukraine – an estimated 700,000 casualties to date – but if there’s one thing we’ve learned about population policy anywhere, it’s always easier to blame women than for one second take a hard look at yourself.

So I absolutely get why there’s sudden TikTok interest in the radical Korean feminist “4B” doctrine, where – to avoid the “your body, my choice” gender hatred and the inevitable cruelty that such hatred mobilises – women reject dating, sex, marriage and children and remove themselves as much as possible from mixed-gender social view. In an America where women are bleeding out in carparks due to anti-abortion restrictions on medical care, politicians are agitating to end no-fault divorce, alleged sex offenders are seen as dating gurus and, you know, Trump has just been elected president, let’s be fair – going near anything that could get you pregnant now suggests not the fun possibility of thrills but clear and present danger. Sure, sex is great … but have you ever considered spending 5.4 minutes of your day on something that doesn’t carry lethal risk?

Those 5.4 minutes are perhaps better temporarily invested in how they may navigate away from the place where immediate choice over their body is most likely to be taken away – and that’s intimate, domestic environments. Yes, even in sunny Australia, almost 70% of sexual assaults by men of women occur in a residential location. And while Australians don’t have the same political limits to our freedom as women do in Russia or America, we have an intimate-partner violence problem informed by the gendered hatreds that manifest in other cultures, in other ways. November has been a brutal month here; 11 women were killed in a period of 16 days.

Does maximising self-protection have to mean eschewing men and sex completely and joining 4B? No, of course not… but it does mean, perversely, heeding the Putinist recognition of the power of cultural persuasion – blocking the messages, fighting attempts at social coercion and building safer relationships. As individuals, in friendship groups, in families, in communities, we must resist the thousands of years of aggressive romance narratives that overwhelm stories for and about women, encouraging us to pursue “true love” and the attainment of partnered relationships (and, crucially, social witness to them) as the apogee of female social triumph.

What keeps girls most safe from the abuser with the “your body, my choice” worldview is a strong group of female friends, independent living and a driver’s licence. These are the attainments we should encourage everywhere, with the message that when you’ve got them, you’re ready for a relationship, and men who don’t respect them paste a red flag on themselves.

The discourse around intimate partner violence in this country and elsewhere has ever been “why didn’t she leave?”. In this tense and fragile time for women, it’s on those who still see women and girls as human beings to consider just what we all did to push her into danger in the first place.

He has trained would-be assassins and marshalled invading hordes, Napoleonic forces and Roman regiments, but movie military adviser Paul Biddiss found himself in the midst of his biggest Hollywood skirmish last month when the actor Saoirse Ronan made a powerful intervention about women’s personal safety.

Ronan, a guest on Graham Norton’s BBC chatshow sofa, sparked a nationwide debate about women’s security fears when she interrupted fellow actors as they discussed techniques that Biddiss had taught the casts of both Gladiator II and the new drama series The Day of the Jackal.

Paul Mescal, who opens in cinemas this weekend in the lead role in Ridley Scott’s epic Gladiator sequel, swapped details of his new combat skills with Eddie Redmayne, star of the Sky Atlantic show based on Frederick Forsyth’s thriller, when Ronan unexpectedly made her intervention.

Mescal asked: “Who’s actually going to think about that?” when discussing using his phone as a weapon, then Ronan pointed out that women do – they think about how to physically protect themselves daily.

“That’s what girls have to think about all the time,” she said. “Am I right, ladies?”

Within 24 hours, Ronan’s words had been repeated across the airwaves and social media thousands of times.

“Saoirse was absolutely right,” said Biddiss, a Parachute Regiment veteran, this weekend, in his first interview since the viral incident. “It was a bit of a shock to suddenly be at the centre of such an important moment. Paul and Eddie were just enjoying a bit of banter about whether anyone would ever think to use their mobile phone as a weapon, as I’d suggested.

“But, as Saoirse then said, phones, along with everything else inside a handbag, are always on the mind of a woman who is walking alone. All these items can be used, and particularly a mobile phone, which is carried in the hand a lot.”

Redmayne, Mescal and his Gladiator co-star Denzel Washington, also a guest that night, accepted her intervention with good grace. Speaking this weekend on RTE’s The Late Late Show, Mescal backed Ronan’s view, saying: “Saoirse was spot on, hit the nail on the head, and it’s also good that … messages like that are gaining traction, like that’s a conversation that we should absolutely be having on a daily basis.” The actor added that Ronan is “quite often the most intelligent person in the room”.

Biddiss was picked to work with Scott on the long-awaited second Gladiator film after working with him on Napoleon. He was hired because of his experience at handling large numbers of supporting artists, and training film “extras” to behave like military forces from different historic eras.

He spent eight months on the project. Sometimes it was necessary to work while a desert sand storm raged around ranks of new recruits who had been provided with masks and goggles to cover their faces. But Biddiss said the most difficult challenge on Gladiator II, filmed in Malta, Britain and Morocco, was reproducing a particular battle scene with the Praetorian Guard.

“It was very hard to choreograph this drill because Ridley wanted the men to move together in a coordinated way that was very hard to achieve,” he said.

While the adviser has often worked on location, reproducing large military encounters, his expertise also covers creating the illusion of proficient gun handling and espionage practice. “I find, as do the secret services, that females are much more surveillance aware and much more situationally aware. They need to be,” Biddiss said.

“Men are generally not like that. Their initial instincts, when you train them, are more predatory, and so they miss things. As a result, women are much harder for professionals to follow.”

Playing the role of a hired assassin for The Day of the Jackal, Redmayne needed to learn covert techniques and, in training, was told to follow a fictional agent called Zara, a role taken by Biddiss’s wife, Debbie. “He found it hard. It is proof that women are so much more aware and harder to track on the street,” Bidiss said.

“Even with my knowledge of the techniques,” he added, “I would find it more difficult to follow a female agent.”

Biddiss also trained the British actor Lashana Lynch, who starred in the latest James Bond film and plays Bianca in The Day of the Jackal. She was instructed in surveillance, lock picking, close-quarters weapons training and the kind of “dirty fighting” that was once practised by Special Operations Executive agents during the second world war.

“During world war two, the women working for SOE were among the very top performing agents. There are many stories that are not widely known yet, and I would like them to come out so these women could get the credit they deserve,” Biddiss said.

“And today it’s true that using a mobile phone as a weapon, which is what Eddie was talking about with Graham Norton, is a real thing. You can gain enough time to get away from an assailant like that. You can also use the screen as a mirror to watch someone who’s following you.”

One of the UK’s biggest water companies is fighting a legal battle to block public access to data on treated sewage it is discharging into Windermere in the Lake District.

United Utilities initially claimed that data from phosphorus monitors at sewage treatment works at the lake “was not environmental information”. It later claimed the information on phosphorus – which can pollute watercourses when at high levels – was “internal communication” and exempt from disclosure.

It is also trying to block the release of data on ammonia checks from a plant at Cunsey Beck where hundreds of fish were killed in a pollution incident in 2022 that was caused by an unknown source. The water company is fighting the rulings by the freedom of information watchdog to disclose all the data to the public.

Matt Staniek, the founder of the Save Windermere campaign, said it was “disgraceful” that United Utilities was repeatedly blocking the public from access to environmental information on potential pollutants. The water company has not commented on the costs to date of fighting the cases.

“United Utilities is withholding information which would tell us even more about the true impact of discharges of raw and treated sewage into Windermere,” he said. “There is an overwhelming public interest in understanding how a water company is polluting England’s largest lake.”

David Black, the chief executive of Ofwat, the water regulator, said earlier this year that he expected water firms to have a culture of transparency. “Customers have paid companies to install monitors and collect their data,” he said. “They have a right to see what it says.”

The legal battle comes as a new report obtained by the Observer reveals that United Utilities has presided over suspected illegal sewage spills for more than 500 days over a period from 2018 to 2023 in Windermere and the surrounding area. The analysis by expert Peter Hammond is based on data obtained by Save Windermere and the Windrush Against Sewage Pollution campaign.

Windermere is on the frontline in the sewage scandal that has polluted so many of the UK’s rivers, coastal waters and lakes. Residents in Windermere say England’s largest lake is now regularly blighted by blooms of potentially toxic blue-green algae, which are fuelled by sewage pollution.

Save Windermere requested data in January from phosphorus monitors on treated effluent at Windermere’s wastewater treatment works on the eastern side of the lake. It is concerned that treated effluent may be threatening the ecology of the lake, as well as raw sewage discharges. United Utilities refused to release the information under the environmental information regulations, classifying it as internal communications. It also tried to claim it was not environmental information.

It said the information was “non-regulatory” and was collected for operational purposes, and may not be as accurate as regulated sampling. It said it was not in the public interest to disclose the information because it might inhibit “free and frank” discussions and have a “chilling effect” on site management.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) ruled that the information should be disclosed, concluding: “If the phosphorus monitoring is accurate enough to be used for operational purposes … and to indicate the level of toxins present in the water, there is a public interest in this information.” The ICO has also ruled that United Utilities should disclose information it was withholding on ammonia sampling data and turbidity data (measuring cloudiness in water) at Near Sawrey wastewater treatment works on Cunsey Beck, a site of special scientific interest which flows into Windermere.

In June 2022, hundreds of fish were killed in a pollution incident at Cunsey Beck, which receives discharges from the sewage works. A cause for the fish kill was never established by the Environment Agency, but its investigation was later found in an independent report to have been undermined by a series of failings.

United Utilities is appealing to the first tier tribunal against the decisions to disclose the information requested by Save Windermere. A hearing on the cases, which are likely to be joined, is expected early next year.

Last month, United Utilities was reprimanded by the ICO for failing to properly handle requests from the public on environmental information. It said there had been numerous cases where “United Utilities has erroneously refused to deal with a request for information on the basis that the information being requested isn’t environmental”.

United Utilities said it is more committed to being more transparent and making information even more accessible. It says it will continue to engage with ICO processes.

A Russian spy ship has been escorted out of the Irish Sea after it entered Irish-controlled waters and patrolled an area containing critical energy and internet submarine pipelines and cables.

It was spotted on Thursday east of Dublin and south-west of the Isle of Man but Norwegian, US, French and British navy and air defence services initially observed it accompanying a Russian warship, the Admiral Golovko, through the English channel last weekend.

The Irish navy ship the LÉ James Joyce escorted it out of the Irish exclusive economic zone (EEZ) at about 3am on Friday with the air corps continuing to monitor its movements as it headed south.

Its presence has raised fresh concerns about the security of the interconnector cables that run between Ireland and the UK carrying global internet traffic from huge datacentres operated by tech companies including Google and Microsoft, which have their EU headquarters sited in Ireland.

The sighting of the Russian intelligence ship came as British defence forces monitored other Russian vessels near its eastern coastal waters. On Thursday, British jets were also scrambled to monitor a Russian reconnaissance aircraft flying close to UK airspace, the Ministry of Defence said.

The ship was also spotted on Monday and Tuesday west of Cork, where there are another set of connectors between Ireland and France, some offering transatlantic interconnection.

At one point it was positioned just inside the Irish EEZ, 5-7km (3.1 to 4.3 miles) north of the cables connecting Ireland and the UK.

Edward Burke, an assistant professor in the history of war at University College Dublin, told the Examiner the situation was alarming.

“Once again we see the Russian navy probing the defences of western Europe. It’s yet another wake-up call – one that we shouldn’t need – that Ireland needs to bolster its naval capabilities and deepen its maritime security partnerships in Europe,” he said.

It is understood defence forces in Ireland observed the ship operating three drones over Irish waters, raising fears it was conducting surveillance.

Concerns over critical infrastructure around Europe have been raised on multiple occasions this year after the alleged sabotage of the Baltic gas pipeline and undersea internet cables between Finland and Estonia. In August, China admitted that a Hong Kong-flagged ship damaged the pipeline but said it was accidental.

The Yantar is officially classed as an auxiliary general oceanographic research vessel with underwater rescue capabilities. It is tasked by an arm of the Russian defence ministry and is separate from its navy.

It can deploy deep-diving submersibles and has been seen operating close to seabed infrastructure on a number of occasions by open source intelligence analysts, according to Navy Lookout intelligence analysts. The analysts said the ship’s mission was “probably more about strategic signalling and intelligence gathering” than sabotage.

Irish and British defence forces have worked together since the vessels entered waters off the coast of the UK with a significant multinational operation put in place.

The Yantar was travelling with Golovko and a tanker, Vyazma, and both vessels were monitored throughout their journey in the English channel by RFA Tideforce and HMS Iron Duke.

They then handed over surveillance to the French as it headed out of the English channel with the British navy also shadowing another Russian vessel heading north towards the Baltics.

When the Yantar broke away from the Golovko and headed north into the Irish sea, it was shadowed by HMS Cattistock, with the operation becoming public when the ship activated its automatic identification for about four minutes on Thursday when it was south of the Isle of Man.

According to reports, it switched off its transponders transmitting its position after entering the Irish EEZ but the Irish vessel continued to shadow it.

They tried to make contact with the ship but Russian personnel did not respond and at about 3am on Friday it left the waters and headed south.