In the American heartland, they’re excited. Finally, say voters who put Donald Trump into the White House for a second time, they are about to get the president they wanted all along.

Even as leading Democrats decry Trump’s cabinet nominations as “agents of his contempt, rage and vengeance”, the former and future president’s supporters are interpreting the selections as evidence that he has finally broken free of the Washington establishment.

Democrats are fuming that Trump wants to put a vaccine denier in charge of health, former Fox News presenters at the helm of the Pentagon and transportation department, and at the prospect of Elon Musk slashing and burning his way through the sprawling federal bureaucracy.

Even senior Republicans have been less than enthusiastic about some of Trump’s choices. The tapping of the former Florida congressman Matt Gaetz to be the US attorney general ran into the sand after just a few days over allegations of sex with a minor.

But many of those who voted for Trump are weighing other priorities.

Neil Shaffer, chair of the Republican party in Howard county, Iowa, which twice voted for Barack Obama but has swung ever more to Trump with each passing election, has never been an enthusiast for the former president even if he voted for him three times.

“This time around I was still a little lukewarm on the whole thing but I’m very impressed with the people he’s surrounded himself with, especially Tulsi Gabbard and Bobby Kennedy and Elon Musk. With each one of these people there’s a big, big part of their appointment that is reforming and streamlining,” said Shaffer, who works in water conservation for the state.

“I like the idea of bringing people from outside government to look at this with eyes from the real world not Washington DC. Washington DC is not the real world. It’s a made-up puppet regime of dark shadows. You’ve got the military-industrial complex, big pharma, big agriculture pulling all the levers. They want all that money. It’s why we got the way we are with our food. I’m actually mystified that he’s this well organised, that all these names are coming out so quickly.”

Shaffer offers a frequently heard view among Trump supporters that the former president was ill-prepared for his unexpected victory in 2016, and was then captured by big business and the Republican establishment in making cabinet appointments. That, he said, held back Trump’s promise to “drain the swamp”.

“He was inundated with all these lobbyists and corporate interests and individuals who really were there more to perpetuate the system instead of reform the system,” he said.

This time, said Shaffer, Trump has the experience to put in place officials who will represent his ambitions.

Among the most contentious nominations, and popular with the next president’s supporters, is the choice of Robert F Kennedy, scion of the US’s most famous Democratic political family, as secretary of health and human services. His liberal critics see a crank who rejected Covid vaccinations and promoted false claims over links between immunisation and autism.

But more than a few Trump supporters are focused on Kennedy’s longstanding criticisms of the power of the food and agricultural industry over what Americans farm and eat, and the prescription drug makers’ influence on healthcare.

Corporate lobbyists helped ensure that the US government spent more than $100bn subsidising the growing of corn over the past 30 years. Some of that ends up as high-fructose corn syrup now found in most processed foods in the US, from breakfast cereals to salad dressings and soft drinks, and is a major contributor to some of the highest rates of obesity and diabetes in the world.

A meme about the unhealthy ingredients in Heinz tomato ketchup made in the US, including corn syrup, compared with the UK version is doing the rounds among Trump supporters enthusiastic about Kennedy’s appointment. As Shafer sees it, corporations are getting taxpayers to subsidise an industry that is killing them.

“It’s like I heard Bobby Kennedy say the other day, when you go back to the 1960s and what our health was then to where it is now, our DNA didn’t change, our diet changed. And what spurred our diet to change?” said Shaffer.

“The food thing is huge. I’m so happy that he’s going to have a cabinet position.”

Bo Copley, a former miner in West Virginia who now works as a salesman, said he was disappointed that Trump did not behave with more dignity during his first term. He’s not confident that will change but thinks the former president has learned from other mistakes, principally in who he appoints to positions of power.

“Opponents would consider them radical but for the people who support him, he’s putting people in place who will help him get the job done. There are people that would shake up the establishment in Washington DC. We’re not looking for lobbyists to be in these positions. We’re not looking at people from big pharma to be in these positions,” he said.

Copley named Kennedy and Gabbard, the former Democratic congresswoman who switched to the Republicans earlier this year and is nominated as director of national intelligence, as among the choices he most liked.

Nikki Haley, the former UN ambassador who challenged Trump in the Republican primaries, on Thursday criticised Gabbard as “a Russian, Iranian, Syrian, Chinese sympathiser”. But Copley is not alone in welcoming Gabbard’s scepticism about Washington’s escalating military support for Ukraine, including the Biden administration’s decision this week to supply landmines and permit the firing of US-made missiles into Russia.

“One of the biggest talking points the first time Donald Trump went into office was he’s going to start world war three and he actually de-escalated conflicts. Now we’ve sent Ukraine billions and billions of dollars when we have people in North Carolina who went through humongous disaster, the hurricane, and we offer them $750 apiece when their entire lives have been wiped out. It’s completely asinine to me,” he said

Then there is Elon Musk. Even before he was nominated to head the new “Department of Government Efficiency”, some were questioning how long the egotistical billionaire would remain in Trump’s favour. But Shaffer is particularly keen on Musk carrying through his promise of deep cuts to government spending after the national debt rose by more than $2tn over the past year.

“I was in DC this summer. I walked past this ginormous education department building every time I left my hotel. I thought there’s no reason for this to be here. If that money was spent in our local communities, the quality of education would skyrocket,” he said.

Copley, too, is enthused at the prospect of Musk “cutting down the wasteful spending that happens in Washington”. He acknowledges that West Virginia, one of the poorest states in the US, is heavily reliant on federal aid to fund education, transport and social services. A relatively high proportion of people on low incomes in the state receive welfare payments and healthcare coverage.

“I know that a lot of West Virginians receive money and receive those kind of payments, but I’m all for revamping those so that people don’t game the system and use them as lifelong crutches,” he said.

For Ed Bisch the desire to tear down parts of the system is deeply personal. He lost his 18-year-old son Eddie to a prescription opioid overdose in 2001, an early victim of an epidemic that has claimed close to 900,000 lives. Bisch voted solidly Democratic all the way up to supporting Hillary Clinton in 2016 in the belief that the party would take on the big pharma interests that caused the opioid epidemic. But little changed.

Then Bisch saw Trump in office and decided he was the president most likely to challenge the drug industry and what he sees as its corruption of American medicine and health regulation.

Bisch is enthusiastic about Kennedy, who is a former heroin addict, and JD Vance as vice-president after he wrote a bestseller, Hillbilly Elegy, about growing up in a region blighted by drugs.

He is also pleased by the nomination of Pam Bondi to be the US attorney general after Gaetz dropped out. As Florida’s attorney general, Bondi shut down the “pill mills” churning out opioid prescriptions at a time when more oxycodone pills were sold in Florida than all other US states combined.

Bisch wants to see Bondi prosecute the Sackler family which owned the company that kicked off the opioid epidemic with the powerful narcotic OxyContin. He’s also counting on Kennedy to follow through on a pledge to “close the revolving door” between the drug industry and its regulators at the Food and Drug Administration which has been accused of allowing the epidemic to take off because of lax oversight and too close a relationship with the drug makers.

Kennedy has repeatedly criticised the FDA for conflicts of interest, accusing it of putting the interests of the pharmaceutical industry ahead of the nation’s health.

Then there is Trump’s promise to finish building the wall on the border with Mexico. That is primarily about immigration but Bisch said it would also help stem the flow of fentanyl, the synthetic opioid that is responsible for most overdose deaths these days.

“I’m excited. Let’s finish the border wall. I agree when people say most of the fentanyl gets in through ports of entry not the open border but once we get the wall built and secure the border, then you can put more resources at the ports of entry. The bottom line is, you’ll never be able to stop it but reducing the supply is a proven way to reduce deaths,” he said.

How the desire to see Trump take on a system that has increasingly come to resemble a corporate oligarchy will square with Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s authoritarian plan to impose rightwing control across the entire US government that would also enlarge the power of big business, remains to be seen. Trump has distanced himself from the plan even though members of his first administration were influential in its creation.

Shaffer is no fan of Project 2025. He takes Trump assurances at face value and believes the next president will see that his supporters want to see the corporate grip on government broken.

“The Democrats have leftwing crazies. We’ve got some wackos out there on the far right and they concocted this list of their priorities. There’s probably some good things in there but there’s a lot of screwball things. I don’t see those people coming to the table,” he said.

“I think Trump is going to have enough free-thinkers and people that have already explicitly criticised a lot of the stuff that’s been going on out there. That will be his guiding force.”

The world will be “unable to cope” with the sheer volume of plastic waste a decade from now unless countries agree to curbs on production, the co-chair of a coalition of key countries has warned ahead of crunch talks on curbing global plastic pollution.

Speaking before the final, critical round of UN talks on the first global treaty to end plastic waste, in Busan, South Korea, this week, Norway’s minister for international development, Anne Beathe Tvinnereim, acknowledged the split that had developed between plastic-producing countries and others. She represents more than 60 “high ambition” nations, led by Rwanda and Norway, who want plastic pollution tackled over its full life cycle. Crucially, this means clamping down heavily on production.

While a “perfect treaty” may not be possible due to the strength of opposition, mainly from oil-producing countries, she hoped a deal could be reached that could be strengthened over time.

“We are not going to land a perfect treaty. But we need to get further. And I think we will. I choose to be hopeful,” Tvinnereim said. “With high-ambition coalition countries, we will continue to demonstrate that there is a big group of countries that sticks to its ambitions. The world desperately needs some leadership now, and some good news.”

This year, various researchers found microplastics in every sample of placenta they tested; in human arteries, where plastics are linked to heart attacks and strokes; in human testes and semen, adding to evidence of the ubiquity of plastics and concern over health risks. The plastics crisis is widely recognised as a threat to human health, biodiversity and the climate.

Two years after a historic agreement by 175 countries to adopt a mandate on negotiations for a global, legally binding treaty to address the whole life cycle of plastics, delegates remain widely divided on what to do – and a deadline is looming. Progress has stalled over a row about the need for cuts to the $712bn plastics industry. The last talks, in April, failed to get an agreement to put production targets – seen as key to curbing plastic waste – at the treaty’s centre.

The final round of talks, which starts on Monday and is due to end on 1 December, is critical.

“We need increased recycling and waste management, of course, but if we don’t reduce production and consumption we will be unable to cope with the volume of plastic in the system 10 years from now,” said Tvinnereim.

Use of plastic could triple globally by 2060, with the largest increases expected in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. Plastic waste is also projected to triple by 2060, with half ending up in landfill and less than a fifth recycled.

An agreement on a “phase out” of a list of single use plastic products globally, as well as bans on poisonous chemicals in plastic – including for food contact plastic and children’s toys – was a “no-brainer”, said Tvinnereim. Many countries already have unilateral single-use plastics bans.

Fractious negotiations have seen divergent views, and countries with large fossil fuel industries such as Saudi Arabia, Russia and Iran, dubbed the “like-minded” group, have eschewed production cuts and emphasised waste management as the main solution to the crisis. Developing nations, which bear the consequences of plastic overproduction overwhelming their inadequate waste systems, are calling for global cuts.

The uncertainty dogging the talks has been exacerbated by the US position. One of the largest plastic producers, the US recently signalled it would support a treaty calling for curbs on production. But the impending return of Donald Trump, a fossil fuel advocate, as US president in January, has led to doubts.

The US would be “very welcome” to join the coalition, Tvinnereim said. There was also opportunity for China and others to show leadership.

A negotiator for one of the “high ambition” countries said: “If we can see China stepping up, as we have seen them do elsewhere and domestically, we have a good chance of creating an effective instrument. If we don’t, it is going to be very difficult.”

Max Verstappen claimed his fourth consecutive Formula One world championship with a solid fifth place for Red Bull at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, which was won in dominant fashion and with consummate control from the front of the grid by Mercedes’ George Russell.

Verstappen delivered strongly to do exactly what was needed in beating his title rival McLaren’s Lando Norris, who came in sixth. Lewis Hamilton gave a superb comeback drive to claim second place from 10th on the grid. Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc were in third and fourth.

The Dutch driver now stands alongside an elite group of drivers, matching the world championship tally of Alain Prost and Sebastian Vettel. Only Juan Manuel Fangio with five and Michael Schumacher and Lewis Hamilton on seven apiece have more. Verstappen is still only 27 years old and on the form he has demonstrated this season further titles are surely within his grasp.

While a win was not really on the cards for Verstappen given the speed of Mercedes and that Red Bull has struggled for pace in Las Vegas, he did enough to close out the title.He leads by 63 points with a maximum of 60 left available at the final two meetings in Qatar and Abu Dhabi.

It is no little achievement by Verstappen, the hardest-fought of his four world championships. He has been outperformed by McLaren for almost all of the second half of the season, and struggled with a car that lacked balance. Verstappen had described it as “a monster”. But to grind out the results he required to maintain his early-season lead and hold his nerve to seal the title was an enormously impressive demonstration of determination and resilience.

Moreover, to do so during a season when the team endured no little turmoil and controversy, was indicative of Verstappen’s maturity and his ability to focus on the job at hand despite the overwhelming noise that was being generated around him. Not least when team principal Christian Horner was accused of inappropriate behaviour by a female employee, a complaint he denied and that was dismissed by an independent enquiry; then his father Jos calling for Horner to be removed as principal and the decision by designer Adrian Newey to leave the team.

As the whirlwind raged around Red Bull and their car was stalled with developments that robbed it of pace rather than making improvements, Verstappen repeatedly turned up and out-drove the machinery, with preternatural calm in the eye of the storm. His drive in Vegas, a controlled piece of execution to do exactly what was required, was a case in point.

For Russell this was a remarkable moment of redemption after the heartbreak of having his victory at the Belgian Grand Prix annulled when his car was found to be overweight. The 26-year-old took the decision in Spa with good grace and displayed enormous maturity to move on from what was a painful moment and has come back with such a strong drive.

It is Russell’s first win in Las Vegas and Mercedes’ first here. The team continue to be somewhat perplexed as to just what sort of performance their car will offer on any given weekend, depending on the circuit and track conditions. Certainly on the streets of Las Vegas, in cool temperatures it had very much found its window and Russell displayed great control and focus to seal a hard-fought race.

Russell held his lead through turn one as Leclerc jumped into second place, while Verstappen crucially also just clung on in front of Norris from fifth and sixth on the grid. It remained tight at the front for the opening laps Russell closely followed by Leclerc, while Verstappen finally made a pass on Pierre Gasly’s Alpine for fourth on lap four.

Norris moved to fifth as Russell began to consolidate as his tyres came to him and the Mercedes demonstrated the pace it had shown all weekend. Leclerc and Norris pitted on lap 10, with the tyre wear clearly an issue. Sainz too was suffering and he pitted a lap later but noticeably Verstappen’s rubber was holding up better, as was that of Russell and Hamilton, with all three drivers staying out.

Verstappen came in on lap 12 to take the hard tyres and emerged still in front of Norris and both Ferraris. With Hamilton and Russell finally both pitting, Russell maintained his lead but now with Verstappen in second and Hamilton in front of Norris. Hamilton set off after Leclerc as Russell maintained a full ten second advantage out front.

Verstappen took his second stop on lap 28 as did Hamilton for new hard tyres. Norris followed on lap 31 while Hamilton on a charge caught Verstappen who, aware of the bigger picture, did not resist and let the British driver ease past on lap 32. When the second stops worked through Russell was still in control out front and Hamilton in second, but with Norris in sixth, the game all but up.

Hamilton had nine second-deficit to Russell but was haring after his teammatewith 13 laps to go. But Russell upped his pace and once more stabilised his lead at seven seconds.

Ferrari enjoyed the better pace over the Red Bull at the close and Sainz and Leclerc both passed Verstappen, the world champion choosing not to take any chances defending too vigorously.

Donald Trump has chosen Brooke Rollins, president of the America First Policy Institute, to be agriculture secretary.

“As our next Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke will spearhead the effort to protect American Farmers, who are truly the backbone of our Country,” the US president-elect said in a statement.

Trump’s nomination of Rollins marks the completion of his top cabinet picks for his incoming administration.

If confirmed by the Senate, Rollins would lead a 100,000-person agency with offices in every county in the country, whose remit includes farm and nutrition programs, forestry, home and farm lending, food safety, rural development, agricultural research, trade and more. It had a budget of $437.2bn in 2024.

The nominee’s agenda would carry implications for American diets and wallets, both urban and rural. Department of Agriculture officials and staff negotiate trade deals, guide dietary recommendations, inspect meat, fight wildfires and support rural broadband, among other activities.

“Brooke’s commitment to support the American Farmer, defense of American Food Self-Sufficiency, and the restoration of Agriculture-dependent American Small Towns is second to none,” Trump said in the statement.

In response to her nomination, Rollins wrote on X: “Thank you, Mr. President, for the opportunity to serve as the next U.S. Secretary of Agriculture. It will be the honor of my life to fight for America’s farmers and our Nation’s agricultural communities. This is big stuff for a small-town ag girl from Glen Rose, TX — truly the American Dream at its greatest.”

She added: “Who’s ready to make agriculture great again!”

The America First Policy Institute is a right-leaning thinktank whose personnel have worked closely with Trump’s campaign to help shape policy for his incoming administration. Rollins chaired the Domestic Policy Council during Trump’s first term.

As agriculture secretary, Rollins would advise the administration on how and whether to implement clean fuel-tax credits for biofuels at a time when the sector is hoping to grow through the production of sustainable aviation fuel.

The nominee would also guide next year’s renegotiation of the US-Mexico-Canada trade deal, in the shadow of disputes over Mexico’s attempt to bar imports of genetically modified corn and Canada’s dairy import quotas.

Trump has said he again plans to institute sweeping tariffs that are likely to affect the farm sector.

He was considering offering the role to the former US senator Kelly Loeffler, a staunch ally whom he chose to co-chair his inaugural committee, CNN reported on Friday.

In a separate announcement on Saturday, Trump urged Randy Fine, a former gambling industry executive and current Florida state senator, to run in a special election to represent the state’s sixth congressional district in the House of Representatives.

Trump’s endorsement of Fine comes after he named Mike Waltz, Florida’s current sixth congressional district representative, to serve as his national security adviser.

Writing on Truth Social, Trump called Fine “an incredible voice for MAGA”.

“Should he decide to enter this Race, Randy Fine has my Complete and Total Endorsement. RUN, RANDY, RUN!” Trump added.

Rich and poor countries concluded a trillion-dollar deal on the climate crisis in the early hours of Sunday morning, after marathon talks and days of bitter recriminations ended in what campaigners said was a “betrayal”.

The developing world will receive at least $1.3tn (£1tn) a year in funds to help them shift to a low-carbon economy and cope with the impacts of extreme weather, by 2035.

But only $300bn of that will come in the form they are most in need of – grants and low-interest loans from the developed world. The rest will have to come from private investors and a range of potential new sources of money, such as possible levies on fossil fuels and frequent flyers, which have yet to be agreed.

Mohamed Adow, director of the Power Shift Africa thinktank, said: “This [summit] has been a disaster for the developing world. It’s a betrayal of both people and planet, by wealthy countries who claim to take climate change seriously. Rich countries have promised to ‘mobilise’ some funds in the future, rather than provide them now. The cheque is in the mail. But lives and livelihoods in vulnerable countries are being lost now.”

Some of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable countries fought hard during two weeks of fraught negotiations at the Cop29 UN summit in Azerbaijan’s capital Baku for a bigger slice of the money to come directly from developed countries. They also wanted more of the available finance to go to the countries most in need, instead of being shared with bigger emerging economies, such as India.

Two groups of particularly vulnerable nations, the Alliance of Small Island States and the Least Developed Countries, walked out of one meeting in protest late on Saturday afternoon, but later returned.

The talks were high-stakes from the start, as they opened just days after Donald Trump won re-election as US president. Trump intends to withdraw the US from the Paris agreement when he takes office in January and is likely to be hostile to providing any climate finance to the developing world.

Faced with the prospect of reconvening next year with a Trump White House in place, many countries decided that failure to agree on a new financial settlement in Baku was too much of a risk.

Developed countries insisted they could not offer any more, owing to their own budgetary constraints. “We will shoulder all the risk” if the US fails to contribute to climate finance in future, pointed out one negotiator.

Many developing world countries, including India, Bolivia, Cuba and Nigeria, reacted furiously to the deal.

Green campaigners also slammed the deal. Claudio Angelo, of the Observatorio do Clima in Brazil, said: “Rich countries spent 150 years appropriating the world’s atmospheric space, 33 years loitering on climate action, and three years negotiating [a financial settlement] without putting numbers on the table. Now, with the help of an incompetent Cop presidency and using the forthcoming Trump administration as a threat, they force developing countries to accept a deal that not only doesn’t represent any actual new money but also may increase their debt.”

India raised last-minute objections but failed to prevent it from being gavelled through by the Cop president, Azerbaijan’s environment minister Mukhtar Babayev. The country said it “could not accept” the settlement.

The host country was strongly criticised for its running of the Cop. Oil and gas make up 90% of Azerbaijan’s exports and fossil fuel interests were highly visible at the talks.

Saudi Arabia also played a highly obstructive role, according to many insiders. In one extraordinary development, a Saudi official attempted to alter one key text without full consultation. The petro-state also tried repeatedly to remove references to the “transition away from fossil fuels” which was agreed at last year’s Cop28 summit.

“It was clear from day one that Saudi Arabia and other fossil fuel-producing countries were going to do everything in their power to weaken the landmark Cop28 agreement on fossil fuels. At Cop29 they have deployed obstructionist tactics to dilute action on the energy transition,” said Romain Ioualalen, of the pressure group Oil Change International.

The US and China – the world’s two biggest economies, and biggest emitters of greenhouse gases – are normally key nations at the annual “conference of the parties” (Cop) under the UN framework convention on climate change. But neither played much of a public role in Baku, allowing other countries to drive the talks. The US delegation is still made up of officials from Joe Biden’s administration, but the looming presidency of Donald Trump cast a pall over their participation.

The deal will mean China will contribute to climate finance for the poor world voluntarily, unlike rich countries which are obliged to provide cash.

Ani Dasgupta, chief executive of the US-based World Resources Institute thinktank, said: “Despite major headwinds, negotiators in Baku eked out a deal that at least triples climate finance flowing to developing countries [from a previous longstanding goal of $100bn a year]. The $300bn goal is not enough, but is an important down payment toward a safer, more equitable future. The agreement recognises how critical it is for vulnerable countries to have better access to finance that does not burden them with unsustainable debt.”

It is Friday night on a forested military base in western Finland. A group of women dressed in camouflage with matching purple beanie hats are sat in a dark tent discussing how their perspectives have changed since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

“I didn’t think it was a real threat that Russia would attack us,” says Sari, 42, who works in sales and lives in a nearby town. But then, she adds: “They attacked Ukraine. I saw that it is possible that we are next.”

The mother of two, who describes herself as a “realist”, was moved to join this weekend-long “surviving without electricity” course by her patriotic values, but she also wants to be more prepared with practical skills for day-to-day life. She is one of about 75 women taking part.

While a power cut is a situation that could be brought on by a storm – as happened for tens of thousands across Finland last week – they are also skills that could prove crucial in a potential Russian invasion or hybrid attack.

The training course, known as Nasta, is one of 40 put on by the Women’s National Emergency Preparedness Association around Finland. Others include cybersecurity, mental resilience, wilderness skills, snowmobile driving and information influencing. After the invasion of Ukraine, applications for the courses soared. Not only does Finland have a history of war with its neighbour, but they also share a 830-mile land border.

Tytti, 36, has felt so anxious about relations with Finland’s hostile neighbour that she has been avoiding the news. Attending the course, she says, “is my way to confront my fears”.

Both women have been on one-day shooting courses in the last year or so, but do not like handling guns.

In the short term, Hannele, 67, is more afraid of the kind of hybrid warfare Finland is already experiencing, such as cyberwarfare and disinformation, than the prospect of imminent military combat. She is surprised by how many young women have been taking up arms. Still, she is curious to know: “How does it feel to shoot something?”

Until a few hours ago, most of the women, the youngest of whom is 18 and the oldest 70, did not know each other. But on this sub-zero snowy night in Lohtaja, near the town of Kokkola, they have already set up camp under a tall canopy of pines by torchlight, made a wood fire in a burner at the centre of the big military tent and made a plan for where everybody is going to sleep.

Throughout the weekend, the group will learn how to survive in a crisis – including how to build and put out fires, cook outside, deliver first aid, stay warm and build a toilet.

There is a rota for keeping the fire stoked overnight. Some of the group are using a big piece of tarpaulin to fix a leak in the tent.

While there is no official military interaction between the two neighbours, Finnish intelligence services describe Russia as Finland’s greatest national security threat and is in little doubt there is a hybrid war under way.

Last week, the Finnish foreign minister, Elina Valtonen, released a joint statement with her German counterpart expressing her “deep concern” about the suspected sabotage – one of two in the Baltic – of an undersea cable between Finland and Germany.

“The fact that such an incident immediately raises suspicions of intentional damage speaks volumes about the volatility of our times,” it said. Finland has since launched a joint investigation with Sweden, which, like Finland, has become a Nato member since the invasion of Ukraine.

Helsinki also accuses Russia of using proxies, including asylum seekers, to aggravate its neighbour; there have been suspicious break-ins at water treatment facilities and issues with GPS jamming.

Nasta has been running since 1997. Although its training is non-military, it is part-funded by the Finnish Ministry of Defence and receives substantial support from Finland’s National Defence Training Association. It has a membership of approximately 100,000. In the aftermath of Russia’s invasion on 24 February 2022, interest surged to unprecedented levels.

There were so many people queueing for a place on the courses that the system collapsed, says Suvi Aksela, Nasta’s communications and organisation manager, who compares getting a place on one of the subsidised courses to getting in-demand concert tickets. “Sometimes the courses are full within one minute.”

In the days after the invasion, the phone calls “just kept coming and coming and coming”, she says. The first question was often “what can I do?” And the second was “where can I learn how to shoot?” The third, she adds, was “how I can I find out about my bunker?” A recent inventory by the interior ministry found that Finland has 50,500 bunkers for its population of 5.6 million – part of the legacy of a Soviet Union attempt to invade the country during the second world war.

“The shooting bit kind of surprised me,” says Aksela. “Because we have our military personnel – the soldiers, the professionals – then we have a huge amount of reservists. If I am the one that has to pick up the gun, then we’re in deep trouble.”

The popularity of shooting in Finland has soared in the last two years. Earlier this year, the government announced a plan to open more than 300 new shooting ranges to encourage people to take it up as a hobby to bolster national defence. The number of Finns applying for gun licences has also risen significantly.

Aksela advises callers to start with their at-home contingencies. Finnish households are encouraged to have enough supplies to survive unaided for at least 72 hours – food, water, medicine and access to a battery-powered radio – in case of an emergency.

The courses are most popular among university educated middle-aged women from the Helsinki area, says Aksela. As well as Russia’s close proximity to Finland, the collective memory of fighting the Soviet Union during the second world war also plays a significant role in informing the seriousness with which the perceived threat from Russia is taken by the Finnish public.

“It’s because of our history. It’s because of, obviously, our location. The neighbour isn’t very friendly, hasn’t been – even before [2022]. So we’re just very aware of the risks. A lot of countries let go of their conscription, Finland never did. So for us it’s common sense,” says Aksela.

The obligation to contribute to national defence is part of the Finnish constitution and all men are required to undertake military service (women can apply but on a voluntary basis).

The Finnish intelligence and security service, Supo, has warned that Russia treats Finland as an unfriendly state and as a target for espionage and “malign influence activities”.

The Supo deputy director, Teemu Turunen, said hybrid war is coming in multiple forms, including via proxies, cyberattacks, threat to critical infrastructure, disinformation and espionage. Russia, he said, is using asylum seekers as “tools for their own purposes” by inadequately guarding the Russian-Finnish border, which is why the eastern border remains closed and has been for most of the last year.

“The modus operandi of Russian intelligence services is more aggressive, it’s a more serious threat and they are using other means,” he said, including a threat to critical infrastructure and sabotage.

He added: “It’s very clear that this is the number one threat to Finnish national security: Russian state actors. And even blurring the lines between using proxy criminal organisations or other types of proxies.”

But, he said, it is important not to assume Russia is behind every potential incident. “It’s important to understand that Russia is not omnipotent. They are trying to exaggerate their capabilities.” Russia has more urgent priorities than Finland, he added, such as its own stability and the war in Ukraine. “So it is not that Russia could do anything, anywhere, anytime. They try to make us fear that, but it’s not the case.”

Asked how the election of Donald Trump affects Finland’s security and preparedness, he warned “the threat from the Russian side is not going away” and that as the US increasingly turns its focus to China, Europe must “step up and improve preparedness”.

Finns, he said, are “quite cool-headed about the threat”, but preparedness is at the heart of that. “Intelligent preparedness as well as societal resilience. It’s all part of the whole-of-society approach that Finland has and we have had for a long time already.”

But at the Nasta course, many have been activated by more recent events.

Walking back to camp from breakfast, the ground white with fresh snow, Aija Kuukkanen tells me she first tried to sign up for a course in spring 2022. “I had seen these kinds of courses previously, I knew they existed, but the final decision was because of this war,” the 58-year-old, who works in a tractor factory, says. “I wanted to get more information and get prepared somehow.”

Merja Majanen, 67, a retired bank manager from Rovaniemi, who has run disinformation courses in her home town, says the fact that hundreds of women have travelled from around Finland to do these courses is proof of the level of anxiety.

She takes comfort from not living close to the Russian border. “If I lived in the eastern parts of Lapland, I would be even more concerned.”

Talks on a new trillion-dollar global deal to tackle the climate crisis dragged on late into Saturday night, as rich and poor countries fought over how much cash was needed, and who should pay.

Rich countries want to offer only about $300bn out of the $1.3tn a year needed from their own coffers, with the rest to come from other sources including potential new taxes and private investors.

Poor countries said this was too ­little, and relying on loans or the private sector would push them further into debt. Ali Mohamed, Kenya’s climate change envoy, representing the African group of negotiators, said grants and loans at very low interest rates from developed countries should make up $600bn of the money needed. “Anything lower than that will not help the world tackle climate change,” he said.

There was drama throughout an intense Saturday of talks in Azerbaijan’s capital Baku, where the two-week Cop29 UN conference was supposed to finish on Friday night. Early in the morning, developed countries including the UK, the US and EU members were pushed into raising their offer from an original $250bn a year tabled on Friday, to $300bn. Poor countries argued for more, and in the early evening two groups representing some of the world’s poorest countries walked out of one key meeting, threatening to collapse the negotiations.

Mohamed Adow, director of the Power Shift Africa thinktank, said: “The moral compass of the world – the most vulnerable countries – have walked out after [the rich] failed to honour the promises they have made on climate finance.”

Ed Miliband, the UK energy secretary, cancelled his flight home and vowed to stay as long as it took to get a deal. “I’ve always said there is a will to get a deal but we need to find a way,” he told the Observer. “It is in our national self interest to work with others and tackle the climate crisis and I will stay as long as there is a chance to get an agreement.”

Saudi Arabia was widely accused of disrupting the talks throughout, and in an extraordinary development attempted to alter one key text without full consultation.

Eamon Ryan, Ireland’s environment minister, told the Observer: “It has been the fossil fuel interests that want to maintain the status quo. But the vast majority of the world recognise the status quo endangers us all.”

The host country, Azerbaijan, also came in for fierce criticism. Much of the practical responsibility for running the negotiations falls to the host presidency, such as ensuring that drafts of a possible deal are properly consulted on, and helping countries quickly identify their areas of common ground and disagreement, to craft a coherent package of measures.

Germany’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, furiously accused the host country – a large oil and gas producer, which is dependent on fossil fuels for 90% of its exports – of favouring countries understood to be Saudi Arabia and its allies. “We will not allow the most vulnerable, especially the small island states, to be ripped off by the few rich fossil- fuel emitters who have the backing, unfortunately, at this moment of the president [of the Cop],” she said.

There was speculation that key aspects of a potential deal, such as reaffirming the “transition away from fossil fuels” that was the main outcome of last year’s Cop28 talks, would have to be postponed to a future meeting. That would infuriate many countries, rich and poor, frustrated by how the annual change of host helps countries that seek to block progress to unpick agreements made in previous years.

“It was clear from day one that Saudi Arabia and other fossil fuel-producing countries were going to do everything in their power to weaken the landmark Cop28 agreement on fossil fuels. At Cop29 they have deployed obstructionist tactics to dilute action on the energy transition,” said Romain Ioulalaen, of the pressure group Oil Change International.

The US and China – the world’s two biggest economies, and biggest emitters of greenhouse gases – are normally key nations at the annual “conference of the parties” (Cop) under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. But neither played much of a public role in Baku, allowing other countries to drive the talks. The US delegation is still made up of officials from Joe Biden’s administration, but the looming presidency of Donald Trump cast a pall over their participation.

China is said to be not blocking the potential deal, which would see it contribute to climate finance for the poor world voluntarily, unlike rich countries that are obliged to provide cash.

Some weary observers were still hopeful of a deal as the clock ticked on late into the night in Baku, and a trickle of delegates filed out of the conference centre with cases and bags to catch their flights.

“The deal must deliver a transformative scale of finance that prioritises the urgent needs of communities bearing the brunt of the escalating climate crisis,” said Harjeet Singh, global engagement director for the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative. “True progress will be measured not by promises on paper, but by tangible support for the most vulnerable, ensuring that justice and equity remain at the heart of climate solutions.”

Additional reporting Dharna Noor and Patrick Greenfield in Baku