Joe Biden should have pardoned Donald Trump on all federal criminal charges the moment they were announced, the Utah senator and former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney said.

“Had I been President Biden,” Romney said, “when the justice department brought out indictments, I would have immediately pardoned him. I’d have pardoned President Trump.”

“Why? Well, because it makes me, President Biden, the big guy and the person I pardoned the little guy. And, number two, it’s not going to get resolved before the election. It’s not going to have an impact before the election. And, frankly, the country doesn’t want to have to go through prosecuting a former president.”

Romney was speaking to MSNBC, in an interview to be broadcast on The 11th Hour with Stephanie Ruhle on Wednesday night.

Trump is the presumptive Republican presidential nominee despite facing 88 criminal charges. Forty-four are federal: four regarding election subversion and 40 retention of classified information. Neither case has reached trial.

Biden could not pardon Trump on his other 44 charges, at the state level. Thirty-four arise from hush-money payments to an adult film star around the 2016 election, an election subversion case now at trial in New York, and 10 concern election subversion in Georgia.

Trump has also been hit with multibillion-dollar fines in civil suits concerning his business practices and a defamation claim arising from a rape allegation a judge called “substantially true”.

When Trump was president, Romney was the only Republican to vote to convict in both Trump’s Senate impeachment trials, for seeking political dirt on opponents in Ukraine and for inciting the deadly January 6 attack on Congress.

Romney told MSNBC: “I think the American people have recognised that President Trump did have an inappropriate affair with someone who was a porn star. I think they realise that.

“I think they realise he took classified documents he shouldn’t have and didn’t handle them properly. I think they understand that as well.

“I think they realise he’s been lying about the election [and supposed voter fraud] in 2020. They know those things. [But] these things are not changing the public attitude.”

Polling has put Trump ahead in battleground states.

In America’s pre-Trump past, Romney lost the 2012 election to Barack Obama. In 2016, as Trump stormed to the White House, Romney wrote in the name of his wife, Ann, rather than support Hillary Clinton. Romney then flirted with accepting a post in Trump’s cabinet, as secretary of state, but found humiliation instead.

According to the author Gabriel Debenedetti, Romney urged Biden to run against Trump in 2020. Romney has said he did not vote for Trump that year, reportedly writing in Ann again.

Romney told MSNBC he liked Biden, who he found “capable” despite widespread claims that at 81 Biden is too old for his job, claims less prevalent regarding Trump, who is 77.

But when asked who he would vote for, Romney did not say Biden.

“I’m not announcing that here and now,” he said. “I’m not going to be voting for President Trump. I made that clear. I know, for some people, the character is not the number one issue. It is for me. When someone has been, well, determined by a jury to have committed sexual assault, that’s not someone who I want my kids and grandkids to see as president of the United States.”

Criticising Biden on the economy and border security – though acknowledging Trump’s role in stopping a bipartisan border measure passing Congress – Romney told MSNBC: “I don’t know if that’s [Trump’s] ambition to bring people together. I’m not sure exactly what it is he hopes to do if he gets a second term.”

Asked about continued surprisingly strong Republican primary performances by Nikki Haley, who dropped out more than two months ago, Romney rejected the idea a that moderate wing of his party could yet seek to retake control.

“My wing of the party, it’s like a chicken wing, all right?” the senator said. “It’s a little tiny thing that doesn’t take the bird off the ground.”

A long-festering split at the heart of Israel’s war cabinet has burst into the open with the defence minister, Yoav Gallant, challenging the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to come up with plans for the “day after” the war in Gaza, and saying he would not permit any solution where Israeli military or civil governance were in the territory.

Gallant’s comments, immediately backed by his fellow minister Benny Gantz, plunged Israel’s leadership into a highly public row, in the midst of the Gaza conflict, raising immediate speculation over his future in the Israeli government and of Netanyahu’s fractious coalition.

In uncompromising remarks, Gallant – whose firing last year by Netanyahu triggered mass protests, a political crisis and an eventual reversal by the PM – publicly demanded that Netanyahu describe plans for a “day-after plan” for Gaza.

Gallant’s comments provoked an immediate political row, with Netanyahu pushing back rapidly with a videotaped statement and a call from the far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, for Gallant to be replaced.

Gallant was backed, however, by his fellow senior minister Benny Gantz, a former chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, who said Gallant had spoken the “truth”.

At a press conference on Wednesday evening in Tel Aviv, Gallant said he had asked for an alternative governing body to Hamas to be found, and did not receive a response.

In his remarks, Gallant criticised the lack of any political planning for the “day after”.

Gallant’s comments come after months of tension between the two men and recent reports in the Hebrew media that senior IDF officers had become concerned that the lack of an alternative to Hamas was forcing the IDF to return and fight in areas where they claimed Hamas had already been defeated, including northern Gaza, which has seen heavy fighting this week.

“As early as October 7, the military establishment said that it was necessary to work towards finding an alternative to Hamas,” Gallant said, adding, “the end of the military campaign is a political decision. The day after Hamas will only be achieved by actors who replace Hamas. This is first and foremost an Israeli interest.”

Gallant said that military planning “was not raised for a discussion, and worse, no alternative was brought in its place. A military-civilian regime in Gaza is a bad and dangerous alternative for the state of Israel.

“I will not agree to the establishment of a military government in Gaza,” he said, adding a “civilian-military regime in Gaza will become the main effort in there and come at the expense of other arenas. We will pay for it in blood and victims – and it will come at a heavy economic cost.”

The comments by Gallant appeared to be the culmination of growing frustration with Netanyahu among Israel’s military leadership.

Gallant added he would not support a controversial plan for compulsory enlistment of ultra-Orthodox Jews, appearing to throw down a direct challenge to Netanyahu to fire him.

Replying to Gallant, Netanyahu once again ruled out a Palestinian administration in Gaza while Hamas still exists, adding that Hamas’s destruction must be pursued “without excuses”.

Netanyahu said: “After the terrible massacre, I ordered the destruction of Hamas. IDF fighters and the security forces are fighting for this. As long as Hamas remains, no other actor will run Gaza – certainly not the Palestinian Authority.”

Ben-Gvir and the communications minister, Shlomo Karhi, quickly called for Gallant to be fired from his position.

“Such a defence minister must be replaced in order to achieve the war’s goals,” said Ben-Gvir, adding: “From [Gallant’s] point of view, there is no difference between whether Gaza will be controlled by Israeli soldiers or whether Hamas murderers control it. This is the essence of the defence minister’s conception, which failed on October 7 and continues to fail even now.”

Netanyahu will be acutely aware of the huge political risks of firing Gallant for a second time after his previous forced climbdown.

The husband of Stormy Daniels said there is a “good chance” that the couple will leave the US if Donald Trump is acquitted in his criminal trial over paying hush-money payments to the adult film star.

“I think if it’s not guilty, we got to decide what to do. Good chance we’ll probably vacate this country,” Barrett Blade told CNN host Erin Burnett on Tuesday.

“If he is found guilty, then she’s still got to deal with all the hate. I feel like she’s the reason that he’s guilty from all his followers, so I don’t see it as a win-win situation either way.”

Blade’s comments come after Daniels appeared in court last week to deliver lurid and powerful testimony on her alleged sexual affair with Trump nearly 20 years ago.

Among the questions she said Trump asked her was: “What about testing? Do you worry about STDs?”

Daniels also said Trump compared her to his daughter Ivanka, saying: “You remind me of my daughter. She is smart and blonde and beautiful and people underestimate her as well.”

She testified that upon returning from using the bathroom in Trump’s hotel room, she found him on the bed, wearing boxer shorts and a T-shirt. Daniels said she tried to leave but Trump stood between her and the door.

“He said, ‘I thought we were getting somewhere. I thought you were serious about what you wanted,’” Daniels recalled.

Daniels and Michael Cohen, Trump’s former fixer, are at the center of Trump’s historic criminal case. Prosecutors allege that Cohen allegedly worked alongside tabloid publisher David Pecker to bury unfavorable stories that would potentially affect Trump’s 2016 presidential bid, and that Cohen facilitated a $130,000 hush-money payment to Daniels shortly before the election.

Trump has since been charged with falsifying business records. Prosecutors allege that the former president falsely listed his repayments to Cohen as legal service fees.

Trump’s defense team attempted to discredit Daniels, with lawyer Susan Necheles at one point saying: “You have a lot of experience in making phony stories about sex appear to be real.”

“That’s not how I would put it,” Daniels replied. “The sex in the films is very much real, just like what happened to me in that room.”

In a more pointed question, Necheles asked, “You were looking to extort money from president Trump, right?”, to which Daniels responded: “False.”

Blade was asked on CNN about accusations that Daniels made up the affair. “I think she’s a brilliant writer,” Blade said. “So she would have written something way better than what she said about the Trump story.”

He went on: “She wants to move past this. We just want to do what … normal people would get to do in some aspects, but I don’t know if that ever will be, and it breaks my heart.

“Everybody has their agenda for her at this point, and I don’t see people fighting back for her.”

I must commend the Guardian and Damian Carrington for the excellent reporting on the views of leading climate scientists (‘Hopeless and broken’ Why the world’s top climate scientists are in despair, 8 May). I have experienced climate despair, which has led me to take part in non-violent protests, and I can certainly bear witness to the fact that this kind of collective action goes a long way to offset the despair. However, protest is not for everyone. There are other ways to play our part.

We can help to accelerate the energy transition. Some 51% of final energy consumption is for heating and cooling, and 32% is for transport, according to the International Energy Agency, so we must ditch the old boiler and invest in a heat pump, and swap our petrol car for an electric model. By fitting solar panels, we can also generate renewable energy to power both transport and heating. Having done these things myself, I have found that the lightening of my carbon footprint brings with it a lightening of climate despair.

If we support the drive to achieve net zero, we should also join the dots and realise that this means we each have to live net zero lives. Collective acceptance of this may be one of the “social tipping points” that would accelerate the solution. We need to make it socially unacceptable to drive combustion cars and heat our homes with fossil fuels.

The Guardian is one of a few major newspapers worldwide that is prepared to give the climate crisis the prominence it deserves. Maybe it can be one of the first to help bring about this social tipping point.
John Coghlan
Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire

Your article (World’s top climate scientists expect global heating to blast past 1.5C target, 8 May) and editorial in the same edition (The Guardian view on the climate emergency: we cannot afford to despair, 8 May) highlight the strong emotions felt by the climate science community about where we are in terms of tackling climate change. The words – hopeless, infuriated, scared – stand in contrast to the usual dispassionate language of climate science. Your editorial cautions against despair because it is counterproductive. And yet conversations about climate action continue to be coloured by depictions of a dystopian future.

Over the past few months, Climate Outreach and More in Common talked to more than 5,000 people across Britain. We’re hearing something a bit different from ordinary people: that government action and investment in tackling climate change makes many people feel positive. The majority want to press ahead with net zero, believing it will be good for the UK. They have hope.

Climate action happens when people feel a sense of agency – when we believe that we can do something, and that what we do matters. This is the conclusion of a vast amount of social science research – and our own work at Climate Outreach. If we’re to avoid the version of the future that experts fear, we urgently need a new climate conversation.
Rachael Orr
CEO, Climate Outreach

Your editorial is absolutely right that social and political tipping points on climate action are on the horizon, which is why scientists – while their warnings must be urgently heeded, together with the information that every 0.1 degree is important – are not best placed to prophesy our climate fate.

A business-as-usual society with added technology will not do. Solar panels, electric buses and a circular economy are essential for a livable planet, but without social innovation they will only deliver us to a cleaner disaster.

Ending financialisation of public services and the crisis of “too much finance”, cutting working hours (with a four-day week without loss of pay for starters) and introducing a universal basic income – to free up human time, energy and talents to be directed well – are the kind of foundational changes that can and must be part of climate action.

Scientists are not the experts here. Grassroots political activists, campaigners, independent thinkers, indigenous traditions and the people collectively, through participatory democracy, can see and deliver the path to human societies living within the physical limits of this fragile planet while caring for climate and nature.
Natalie Bennett
Green party, House of Lords; author of Change Everything: How We Can Rethink, Repair and Rebuild Society

It doesn’t require a survey to know that the global mean temperature rise will breach 1.5C before 2030. In 2023, Jim Hansen demonstrated that the rate of warming, 0.18C per decade since the early 70s, has increased to 0.27C per decade since 2010. The reasons for the acceleration in warming are not entirely clear, but two important possibilities are the rapid rise in atmospheric methane since 2008, and the loss of aerosol cooling from legislation limiting the sulphur content of fuels used for shipping. The IPCC are therefore deluded if they are claiming that the 1.5C limit is still achievable.
Dr Robin Russell-Jones
Founder, Help Rescue the Planet

Thank you for your explainer article “What are the most powerful climate actions you can take?” (What are the most powerful climate actions you can take? The expert view, the guardian.com, 9 May). The experts you interviewed are quite right in saying that the most powerful action is to vote, but one is quite wrong in saying that “individual action can only amount to a drop in the bucket”. Telling people that they’re just a drop in a bucket is not going to motivate them to act.

In New York state back in the 70s, Consolidated Edison asked consumers to save electricity because of the fuel crisis. In response, it was said that individual consumers saved so much electricity that the utility applied for a rate hike.

No one set out to destroy the environment. Survival once meant grabbing everything we could get and doing everything the cheap and easy way. Now we can and must act differently. Voting is fine, but all of us drops in this bucket must also change our consumption habits. Billions of individual decisions put us in this hole; billions of individual decisions will get us out.
Gregory Johnson
Bergesserin, Bourgogne, France

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Could this be a My Otter Teacher in the making?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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