The mayor of a small town in Sardinia has said thousands of Americans keen to escape Donald Trump have expressed an interest in moving there after he offered homes to them for as little as €1.

Francesco Columbu, the mayor of Ollolai, has staged similarly enticing initiatives in the past as a way to combat depopulation. He released more homes for sale after sensing he was on to a winner when Trump clinched a second term as US president in elections earlier this month.

On Tuesday, Columbu launched a website mainly targeted at disgruntled Americans, inviting them to start planning their “European escape in the splendid paradise of Sardinia”.

Colombu said: “Within a day, we had 30,000 requests [from would-be residents] and over 156,000 visitors to the site.” . He said the objective was not to interfere in US political issues but to create investment and jobs in Ollolai, a town in the mountainous Barbagia region of the Italian island with a population of roughly 1,150.

The project is open to other nationalities too, although US applications would be fast-tracked, he added.

Ollolai claims to be the “birthplace of the global €1 homes phenomenon”, having first offered dilapidated homes for sale in 2018. The scheme attracted a flurry of buyers who then spent thousands on doing the properties up, but rarely do the owners take up year-round residency.

A project to lure digital nomads called Work from Ollolai has been more successful in that respect, with 10 American professionals moving to the village last year and paying just €1 a month in rent. Americans were also picked on that occasion because of the village being the birthplace of a former Mr Universe who was a close friend of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Columbu is hoping that the latest plea for new residents will attract more people able to work remotely. As part of the deal, Ollolai will offer three types of accommodation: free homes to certain categories of digital nomads, €1 properties in need of renovations and habitable ones for up to €100,000 (£83,230).

A team of experts would be on hand to help guide people through the process of buying a property, dealing with paperwork or finding contractors for renovation works.

“The whole point is to revitalise the town and improve the life of inhabitants,” Columbu said. “We are a population of mostly elderly people in a town which is depopulating and we need to invest in our future. We can’t resolve the issue with these initiatives, but at least we are creating a bit of activity.”

Surrounded by nature and blessed with plenty of sunshine, Columbu said any new resident to Ollolai “would want for nothing”. What’s more, the village is part of an area in Sardinia designated a “blue zone” – one of five regions of the world where people live much longer than average.

On top of that, Columbu said the village boasts great culture and delicious food. He joked that if Trump wanted to invest in the village, he would be welcome, although that might defeat the object of his plan.

A Venezuelan man has been convicted of murder in the killing of the Georgia nursing student Laken Riley, a case that fueled the national debate over US immigration during this year’s presidential race.

José Ibarra was charged with murder and other crimes in Riley’s February death, and the guilty verdict was reached on Wednesday by the Athens-Clarke county superior court Judge H Patrick Haggard. Ibarra, 26, had waived his right to a jury trial, meaning that Haggard alone heard and decided the case.

Riley’s family and roommates cried as the verdict was read. Ibarra did not visibly react.

The killing added fuel to the national debate over immigration when federal authorities said Ibarra illegally entered the US in 2022 and was allowed to stay in the country while he pursued his immigration case.

The trial began last Friday, and prosecutors called more than a dozen law enforcement officers, Riley’s roommates and a woman who lived in the same apartment as Ibarra. Defense attorneys called a police officer, a jogger and one of Ibarra’s neighbors on Tuesday and rested their case on Wednesday morning.

Prosecutor Sheila Ross told the judge that Ibarra encountered Riley while she was running on the University of Georgia campus on 22 February and killed her during a struggle. Riley, 22, was a student at Augusta University College of Nursing, which also has a campus in Athens, about 70 miles (113km) east of Atlanta.

Defense attorney Dustin Kirby said in his opening that Riley’s death was a tragedy and called the evidence in the case graphic and disturbing. But he said there was not sufficient evidence to prove that his client killed Riley.

Riley’s parents, roommates and other friends and family packed the courtroom throughout the trial.

Thousands of farmers gathered in central London on Tuesday to protest against changes to inheritance tax announced by the Labour government. Amid the anger at the changes, the Guardian discovered a mistrust of politicians, fear over the future of UK farming and suspicion of Bill Gates

• Location Fort Smith, Canada

• Disaster Wood Buffalo Complex fire, 2023

Olivia is Dene, a member of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, and works in environmental management. In 2023, she was caught up in the massive evacuation when the Wood Buffalo Complex fire broke out, burning more than 500,000 hectares in and around the national park. Across Canada, the 2023 wildfire season was unprecedented in its scale and intensity. Eight firefighters were killed, and about 200,000 people were displaced.

We were on evacuation alert. I remember my heart racing because I was like: “This is it. This is happening.” I finished my work day, went home, and I was unsure of what to do, wondering if I could stay and help.

There was going to be a severe wind event the next day. They gave us an eight-hour window to evacuate, because the fire was on the highway. There is one highway into Fort Smith, and you had to drive through the fire to leave. They focused all the fire crews to keep the highway open so people could leave before the fire got too close to town. To avoid traffic, and since we have long hours of light, I was like: “I’ll be fine if I just leave later.”

I showered. I ate supper. I sat down and hung out with my boyfriend. I played some video games, and we went for a cruise around town and took pictures. I took videos of the town, because I was like: “OK, here’s my high school I went to.” One of my best friends is painting a mural in the high school right now. I took a picture of her mural. We’re the only town in the Northwest Territories with a water tower and I took a picture of that. We’re the only place that has a cathedral. Just general, everyday things, where I was like “Hey, I don’t think there’s pictures of these things. I want to document this.”

Then I went home, packed up my vehicle, and every year on the anniversary of buying my house, I take a selfie with my house. I asked my boyfriend to come outside, and I was like: “Hey, come outside with me. Let’s take a picture of the house. This might be the last selfie.”

I posted to TikTok something along the lines of “when you believe your house is going to burn, you take a final selfie with it.” It was just a little clip. That ended up being my first video to go viral.

I’m not big on social media. I like posting for me and for my close friends. Being public makes me anxious. I was really afraid, having that up there. I was torn because Meta had just introduced their policy where no news media was supposed to be online. No one knew what was happening. I felt like, if I took down my videos because of my own fear of being seen, it would be selfish. I kept them up.

I was the highest viewed video for what was going on in the Northwest Territories for a while, specifically, Fort Smith. I took it down when news sources started picking up what was happening. It wasn’t until Yellowknife got evacuated a week later.

I packed up my vehicle, got my dogs in, and I was getting ready to leave. As a wildland firefighter, my boyfriend stayed and I took off. I hadn’t seen any of the burn areas yet. As I drove through, it looked like normal burn. If you’re not used to seeing forest fire burn areas, what that means is there’s standing trees and burnt grass, and the trees might be a little bit darker. It was not normal later.

I took a video of this massive helicopter carrying a water bucket. Nonstop helicopters overhead. All that post said was: “Fort Smith, Northwest Territories is evacuated due to wildfires.” I took a picture of me and my dogs. I know it’s morbid to be like, “I want to record what’s happening,” but when you go through mass emotions and trauma, you start to freak out. I wanted to record things so later on I could remember. I was taking pictures and videos along the way.

I didn’t listen to any music. I didn’t listen to any radio, nothing. I drove in silence for the three hours all the way to Hay River. I got to Hay River at 11 o’clock at night, and my friends had already arrived there. They made me pizza, and we had a beer. We’re sitting there, just talking about it, but the big question was like: “What’s next?” I went to bed, and I did not sleep. I was wired the whole night.

It was supposed to be 80km winds the next day blowing the fire towards town. The gossip was that it was going to hit town. There was no stopping it. The grief process already began, like this is it. Everything’s going to be gone. The next morning, I woke up and heard the people staying with me talking about what to do. That’s when they’re like: “We’re going to leave.” I took off before my friends, because I was by myself, and I told them: “I’m going to get tired at some point, so I want to get as far as I can.”

There’s two popular gas stations. I went by both of those, and there were lineups to get gas. Then I went into the industrial area, which is not paved. I pulled up to a cardlock (gas station) that accepts credit cards, and it’s a place that I’ve been to multiple times. I got out of the vehicle.

That’s when it hit me: the windstorm is here. I could not keep my vehicle doors open. My legs were getting smashed in, and bruised from the doors repeatedly being blown closed on me. My face was burning, because the wind was so strong, it was whipping me in the face with sand.

I have very long hair, and my hair was up and spinning in every which way. By the end of filling up my vehicle and getting in, I had a beehive. My hair was full of dirt. I couldn’t run my fingers through it. It was just straight knots.

I drove south. You lose cell service after a while. You’re in dead zones for hours on time. It was windy, but things were fine. You can see this giant smoke plume coming from a fire from the west. The wind is blowing that fire towards us. I stopped at the 60th parallel, which is the border into the Northwest Territories from Alberta. They have a little park there.

The person that takes care of that park was stressed out. I could see them pacing and walking around everywhere. I was just standing there with my dogs on a leash, watching. He kept pointing at this big smoke bloom, which looked far in the distance. Then I realized there’s closer little ones not very far away. I saw those, and I was like, those are here. Those are right here.

The rest of the drive to Innisfail is blurry. I just remember driving and sobbing and crying. Seeing the photos and videos of what people were going through was terrifying. That fire burnt the highway people were evacuating on. I just missed it. People were in car accidents. People lost their livestock. People were driving through flames.

There was one video some teenagers had posted and they were screaming and yelling, because they were by themselves without an adult in the vehicle. I was so thankful my grandmother and her kids were not evacuating through that, but I was really, really afraid for all my extended family. I was really afraid of the death toll that was going to come out of that.

When we first got to Alberta, we went so far south that there was no evacuation centre and we were on our own. Soon after, word of Yellowknife being evacuated was up in the air. Eventually, because so many people were evacuating, a centre opened up in northern Edmonton, which is where my parents were.

I didn’t elect to take all the help that was there. I feel like I got what I needed. I think the major flaw that happened in places that received us was the lack of awareness. I get they would not know about my town but it’s like, if someone had a dying parent or lost a parent, you’d be very kind about it. I found a lot of people did not realize that is essentially what everyone was going through: grief. It’s hard to have patience for each other when you don’t realize that is actually what’s occurring.

We ended up all separating to not outstay our stay. I went to Sundre and stayed with my friend’s family. This friend is also Indigenous. She took me on this hike that she loves, which was a turning point for me being able to release and relax. She’s like: “It’ll feel like healing because we’re going to go to a waterfall.” I told her: “That’s what I want right now. I just want to be by water. I’m so tired of fire.” I got what I asked for, because it poured rain our whole drive up there. Absolutely poured the whole time for our hike. My friend was like: “I’m so sorry. Usually, this is nicer.” I was like: “No.” I needed to see rain because I don’t think I saw rain all summer.

I was pretty sure that we would not be permitted to go home until Hay River opened up, because there would be no groceries or anything because there’s no fuel along the way. They opened up Hay River, and then they started talking about us. Then a week later we got to go home. This is where things got really emotional.

South of Enterprise is a series of waterfalls that have nice boardwalks. You could see that they’re burnt. That little community was full of vegetation and lush. Driving through Enterprise, it looked like a dystopian film. Everything was grey or black. You could see so many of the homes burnt. These are people on their pensions, for the most part. Enterprise is an older population. I wept for them.

Driving home, I saw all the areas I’ve ever camped and hunted at with my family are gone. The way the fire burned, it surrounded Fort Smith. I was shocked to see how much of the highway going toward my town burnt. The pavement itself was fine.

The eerie thing about the drive was the wooden telephone poles. There were just wires hanging. Some you could see little licks of fire touch the bottom. You’d come across ones where it’s so burnt it looks like a beaver chewing on it, with the transformer bits hanging there loosely. Then, sometimes you’d come across ones where it would be burnt all the way through.

I didn’t receive any damage. I had power when I came home. There was no sewage issues. There’s no water issues. The only thing is we did not have internet for a while.

There’s one major part in returning to town where I knew that if I saw it, it was going to wreck me. That area is outside of town called Salt Mountain. It’s a key spot because that’s where it burnt the hottest and it burnt the hardest. It looks like a nuclear bomb went off. It’s decimated. There’s absolutely no plants. There’s absolutely no vegetation. You would never believe there was a tree there. You’d never believe there was a plant there. It is white ash everywhere for as far as you can see.

I won’t be able to bring my children there one day and explain certain details of a place because it’ll be brand new by the time they get there. When I eventually have a family, I won’t be able to show them the boreal forest as a mature forest. It will be young and it’d be in a totally different stage than what I got to experience. I’m hoping we’ll see a lot healthier forests around here now. Old growth isn’t always a healthy forest. I always knew that was a threat.

Hunting was really hard for people this year. You had to go so much further, and even if you went on boats, you’re going into areas that are still burning. We can still see it. It’s still smouldering. You can still smell it. You can see it on the highway. It’s not gone. I always thought climate change was something that affected other people. Tuktoyaktuk, which is on the Arctic Ocean, is slowly eroding away due to warmer weather, less sea ice. I still view climate change as affecting the Arctic-Arctic, not me. Then, I’m a victim of it.

This testimonial was produced with the help of the Climate Disaster Project; thanks to Sean Holman, Aldyn Chwelos, Darren Schuettler, Ricardo Garcia, Cristine Gerk, Tracy Sherlock, Lisa Taylor.

• Edited by Tracy Sherlock, Julia Townsend, Sean Holman, and Aldyn Chwelos. Design and development by Harry Fischer and Pip Lev

Almost 120 countries came together in Dubai last year at the Cop28 climate talks to pledge one of the most ambitious green energy targets in the history of the UN climate talks.

The plan put forward was to triple the world’s renewable energy and double its energy efficiency by the end of the decade in an attempt to cut the world’s reliance on fossil fuels.

It was an “ambitious yet achievable goal”, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), which could play a pivotal role in cutting the world’s emissions to keep global heating in check.

But in a year, the world’s progress has struggled to keep up with the pace required to meet these goals.

Government renewable energy targets ‘unchanged’

The world’s renewable energy capacity was about 3.4 terawatts in 2022 – or 45 times the size of Great Britain’s total power system – but to meet the Cop28 targets countries would need to reach just over 11TW by 2030.

The global energy thinktank Ember said in a January report that a tripling of renewables was “entirely achievable”. But in its most recent report it found that national targets by governments were “almost unchanged” and still added up to just over a doubling of the global renewables capacity by 2030.

Of the more than 130 countries that signed up to the pledge, only eight had updated their renewable targets by October, according to Ember, resulting in only a modest increase in overall renewable energy targets globally.

To date, the global industry is on track to reach 7.2TW by the end of the decade, according to Ember’s analysis of targets for 96 countries and the EU as a bloc. This is a 2.1-times increase from 2023, which would still leave a shortfall of 3.7TW.

The analysis has been confirmed by the International Renewable Energy Association (Irena), which is responsible for providing the official progress report of the UAE Consensus energy goals set at Cop28.

Francesco La Camera, Irena’s director general, said the organisation was raising the alarm on the “significant gaps” that stand in the way of reaching the Cop28 goals. The new goals set by countries at Cop29 “must mark a turning point and bring the world back on track”, he said.

The good news is that although government targets fall short of the Cop28 goals, the growth of the renewable energy industry may be ready to surpass the limited ambition of global governments.

The IEA believes the world’s renewable energy capacity is on course to outpace the 2030 goals set by governments to roughly equal the power systems in China, the EU, India and the US combined.

The global energy watchdog’s influential annual renewables report identified solar power as central to the world’s looming renewables surge, and it could account for 80% of all new renewable power added globally by the end of this decade. This is due to declining costs and support from global governments, and China in particular. The rate of growth in the global wind power industry is expected to double between 2024 and 2030 compared with the previous six years, it said.

This boom in renewable energy beyond the targets set by governments puts the Cop28 goal within reach – but still not on track to be achieved. The IEA has said global leaders need to recognise the “critical importance of building power grids” to speed up the connection of at least 1.6TW of renewable capacity which is in advanced stages of development and waiting for a grid connection.

Under the IEA’s more optimistic view of global energy, renewables will grow 2.7-times greater by 2030, narrowly short of the commitment made by world leaders to triple renewables by the end of the decade to cut the world’s reliance on fossil fuels.

Energy efficiency at half the rate of the last decade

While the world’s renewable energy target is almost within reach, its energy efficiency target appears to be slipping away despite its crucial role in cutting the reliance on fossil fuels.

Under the goal of doubling energy efficiency, the annual energy intensity improvement rate must increase from 2% in 2022 to 4% between 2023 and 2030. This will require faster progress in making homes, businesses and factories more energy efficient and the electrification of multiple sectors, including transport, building and industry.

But in the year since countries agreed to double energy efficiency there has been only a weak improvement of about 1% in 2024, according to an IEA report published before Cop29. This is the same rate recorded for 2023, and about half of the average rate over the 2010-19 period, it noted.

Fatih Birol, the IEA’s executive director, earlier this month described energy efficiency as “a key pillar of secure, affordable and inclusive energy transitions”.

Being more efficient in how homes and businesses use energy could deliver over 70% of the projected decline in oil demand and 50% of the reduction in gas demand by 2030 in the IEA’s forecasts.

“The IEA is working closer than ever with governments around the world to ensure that it remains a top policy priority. Fortunately, the policies and technologies to accelerate efficiency progress are readily available today, and many governments are taking important steps forward,” Birol said.

The IEA points to the EU’s revised regulations to achieve a zero-emission building stock by 2050 as one key example of the progress required. China’s overhauled appliance standards and tougher national targets for efficiency are another. In the US, tighter fuel economy standards for heavy-duty vehicles will play a role too, it said.

Nevertheless, to align with global targets, new policies need to arrive more quickly around the world, and many existing ones need to be tightened, according to the report. “What we hope to see now is faster and stronger policy responses across the globe,” Birol said.

There is just one local authority inspector for every 878 farms in England, Scotland and Wales, according to a report, which says that the current welfare system is continuing to fail animals.

Researchers for the Animal Law Foundation found that only 2.5% of the more than 300,000 UK farms were inspected at least once in 2022 and 2023, a marginal decrease from 2018-21 when Covid-19 might be expected to have affected inspection rates.

When inspections did take place, 22% of farms were found not to meet animal welfare law standards but only 1% of non-compliances were prosecuted, a slight increase from 2018-21.

Edie Bowles, solicitor and executive director of the Animal Law Foundation, said: “Our data shows that the current system is failing animals. Animals continue to be mistreated by those who have a legal responsibility to take care of them and rather than be held accountable for their actions, apparent complacency and disregard for those legal protections stops this from happening on a system-wide basis.

“It is vital that the protections available to animals mean something in practice. Asking for laws to matter is not a big ask, it is simply the fulfilment of promises already made to the public when parliament enacted those laws in the first place.”

Local authorities are the main enforcement bodies for farmed animal welfare in England, Scotland, and Wales, while in Northern Ireland enforcement falls on the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (Daera). As of 29 March 2024, there was a ratio of one inspector for every 62 farms a year in Northern Ireland, according to the report.

In 2022, local authorities received 4,982 complaints relating to farmed animal welfare and launched 25 prosecutions, the researchers found. Last year, they received 4,778 complaints and began 36 prosecutions.

The Animal Law Foundation attributes the low rates of inspections and enforcement to several factors, including “the fragmented and opaque regulatory framework”, which it says makes it difficult to identify the public body responsible for monitoring and enforcement, and in turn to hold them to account.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Welsh and Scottish governments, and Daera have overall responsibility for farm animal welfare law and policy in England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, respectively.

With the exception of Daera, they delegate day-to-day enforcement of the relevant laws to local authorities and executive agencies, such as the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA), the Food Standards Agency, and Food Standards Scotland.

Cllr Heather Kidd, the chair of the Local Government Association’s safer and stronger communities board, said: “Councils that carry out welfare related activities on farms do not receive funding from central government for this work, but carefully juggle priorities and resources to ensure the welfare of farmed animal can be protected.”

The APHA and Daera both said they take their responsibilities in relation to animal welfare very seriously and took appropriate enforcement action, which does not always involve prosecution.

The Cosla, for Scotland’s local authorities, was also approached for comment.

Earth’s surface temperature is heating up

“The era of global boiling has arrived” is what the UN chief, António Guterres, presciently declared last year. In 2024, he has continued to be proven right; a report by the EU’s space programme has found it is “virtually certain” that 2024 will be the hottest year on record. The scientists found global temperatures for the past 12 months were 1.62C greater than the 1850-1900 average, when humanity started to burn vast volumes of coal, oil and gas. The chart below shows just how quickly global surface temperatures have climbed, and this year is on track to be the first to hit 1.5C above preindustrial temperatures.

… which we experienced as extreme heat

And for some, it felt even hotter. Southern Europe is facing more and more heat stress days, defined as days that feel hotter than 32C, as the chart below shows. This data is from a report by Copernicus, which found that large parts of the area had two full months with “strong heat stress”, reaching 60 days in total over the season. A few areas in Greece and western Turkey experienced “strong heat stress” on every day of the summer, and about two months of “very strong heat stress”. Though some have the luxury of air conditioning to escape the rocketing temperatures, our reporting this year found groups including migrant workers and prisoners faced stifling, dangerous heat with no respite.

The oceans are heating, too

Last year’s marine heatwaves shocked scientists, as waters warmed to previously unthinkable levels. And it appears this was not an anomaly: in the first half of 2024, ocean surface heat levels soared above the heights they reached the previous year.

… which we experienced as extreme rainfall

Warmer waters have a higher rate of evaporation, which supercharges rain clouds and intensifies rainfall. It makes the devastating hurricanes such as those seen in the US this year far more likely. The chart below, based on Lancet data, shows that 61% of all global land during the period of 1994-2023 had an increase in extreme rainfall compared with the period between 1961 and 1990.

… and drought

While some parts of the world faced extremely heavy rain, others that rely on thriving rivers had their waterways dry up. The Amazon in particular suffered this year, with drought putting inhabitants at risk. The chart below shows almost half of global land area was affected by drought for at least one month this year, and it also displays how drought is increasing as the planet heats.

We continue to emit planet-heating greenhouse gases

We’ve known about the problems coming our way for decades, yet humanity continues to burn fossil fuels, causing gases such as carbon dioxide and methane to build up in the atmosphere and boil the planet. This chart shows how the amount of carbon in the atmosphere is building; the concentration of CO2 reached 420 parts per million (ppm) in 2023, which is 51% greater than before the industrial revolution. Methane concentrations hit 1,934 parts per billion (ppb), a rise of 165% from preindustrial levels, and nitrous oxide hit 336.9 ppb, a rise of 25%.

There is no sign of us stopping

Despite countries having signed up to the Paris Agreement – pledging to reach “net zero” in coming decades, which would mean not emitting more carbon than is absorbed into the land and sea – there is no sign of this happening. This year is on track to set another new record for global carbon emissions. Data indicates planet-heating emissions from coal, oil and gas will rise by 0.8% in 2024. Emissions have to fall by 43% by 2030 for the world to have any chance of keeping to the 1.5C temperature rise target.

Sea levels are rising as ice shrinks

The heating planet is causing ice to melt, and in turn this water goes into the sea, causing levels to rise. Not only that, but it causes a vicious circle. As heating melts the sea ice, it reveals darker water that absorbs more of the sun’s heat, causing more heating. Scientists think the changes in the Arctic may be responsible for worsened heatwaves and floods in Eurasia and North America. Sea levels are inexorably rising as ice on land melts and hotter oceans expand. Sea levels are slow to respond to global heating, so even if the temperature rise is restricted to 2C above preindustrial levels, one in five people in the world will eventually experience their cities being submerged, from New York to London to Shanghai.

But we are building more renewables

A glimmer of hope is that the green economy is finally taking off, with record renewables being built around the world. The Renewable Capacity Statistics 2024 report released by the International Renewable Energy Agency (Irena) shows that 2023 set a new record in renewables deployment in the power sector by reaching a total capacity of 3,870GW globally. Countries such as China are driving this trend, producing dizzying amounts of renewable energy, but developing nations are lagging behind despite massive economic and development needs. While China’s capacity increased by 63%,and Asia’s as a whole by 69%, Africa’s increased by only 4.6%.

… and driving more electric cars

These charts show how electric cars are taking off across the globe, though their popularity is not evenly distributed. In 2023, just under 60% of new electric car registrations were in China, just under 25% in Europe, and 10% in the US – together making up nearly 95% of global electric car sales combined.

Linda McMahon, co-chair of Donald Trump’s transition team, has been named as the president-elect’s pick for education secretary in his upcoming administration.

In a statement, Trump extolled the “incredible” job McMahon has been doing as transition team co-chair and said: “As Secretary of Education, Linda will fight tirelessly to expand ‘Choice’ to every State in America, and empower parents to make the best Education decisions for their families. … We will send Education BACK TO THE STATES, and Linda will spearhead that effort.”

The nomination comes after McMahon’s co-chair on the transition team and billionaire founder of the financial firm Cantor Fitzgerald, Howard Lutnick, was named as Trump’s pick for commerce secretary.

McMahon was made transition team chair in August, after having donated a whopping $814,600 to Trump’s campaign as of July. She previously served in Trump’s cabinet in his first administration as the administrator of the Small Business Administration from 2017 to 2019.

Since 2021, McMahon has served as Washington DC-based thinktank America First Policy Institute’s board chairperson and chair of its Center for the American Worker.

A former Senate candidate in Connecticut, McMahon is also the chair and chief executive of Cantor Fitzgerald and a former executive of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), which she co-founded with her husband, Vince McMahon.

In October, McMahon was named in a new lawsuit involving WWE. The suit alleges that she and other leaders of the company allowed the sexual abuse of young boys at the hands of a ringside announcer, former WWE ring crew chief Melvin Phillips Jr. The complaint specifically alleges that the McMahons knew about the abuse and failed to stop it.

An attorney for the McMahons told USA Today Sports that the allegations are “false claims” stemming from reporting that the couple deems “absurd, defamatory and utterly meritless”.

A Ukrainian strike using American-made missiles to hit targets deep inside Russia using American-made weaponry, has prompted renewed fears of reprisal through “hybrid warfare” – a chaotic tool of conflict that muddies borders and broadens the scope of a frontline.

Over recent years, European nations have witnessed a spate of incidents – cyber-attacks, arson, incendiary devices, sabotage and even murder plots. The aim of such episodes, security officials believe, is to sow chaos, exacerbate social tensions among Ukraine’s allies and disrupt military supplies to Kyiv.

Mark Rutte, the Nato secretary general, has warned that Russia’s “intensifying campaign of hybrid attacks” highlights the way in which Moscow is quickly shifting the frontline from Ukraine “to the Baltic region, to western Europe and even to the high north”.

Such efforts to spread mayhem have taken many forms: even before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Moscow was linked to broad disinformation campaigns during the 2016 US election and the Brexit referendum, meant to sow discord and confusion among the electorate through social media.

But the strategy can also narrow to a tighter focus: Estonia fended off a hacking campaign by Russia in 2022, the same year Norwegian police arrested several Russian nationals equipped with drones and cameras who were located near oil and gas infrastructure.

“What is new about attacks seen in recent years is their speed, scale and intensity, facilitated by rapid technological change and global interconnectivity,” Nato said in June. “Counter-hybrid support teams” would provide assistance, but it was primarily up to individual countries to protect themselves.

On Tuesday, Matthew Miller, US state department spokesperson, said Washington was “incredibly concerned” about the threat of hybrid warfare and that American diplomats were in close contact with European allies.

Recent incidents have included several conspiracies that could apparently have led to murder or even mass casualties. Over the summer, US and German intelligence reportedly foiled a Russian plot to assassinate European defense industry executives, including the CEO of the leading German arms manufacturer, Rheinmetall.

Last month, British counter-terror police revealed that they had been investigating a suspected Russian sabotage plot involving incendiary devices hidden on a plane to the UK that may also have been a dry run for a similar attack on the US and Canada.

But some of the plots appear to have been crude and amateurish: French intelligence officials believe that a group of Moldovans were recruited to carry out a low-budget antisemitic graffiti campaign using star of David stencils across Paris, in an attempt to amplify societal divisions against the backdrop of the Israel-Gaza war.

And the challenge in fending off hybrid attacks lies in the vast array of possible targets – which could include military bases, transport and telecoms infrastructure – and the plausible deniability of the attacks.

In January, a group called the Cyber Army of Russia Reborn infiltrated a water tower in Texas, releasing tens of thousands of litres of water before state officials halted the attack.

“Disabling cyber-attacks are striking water and waste-water systems throughout the United States,” Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, and Michael Regan, the EPA administrator, wrote in a letter to state governors earlier this year. “These attacks have the potential to disrupt the critical lifeline of clean and safe drinking water, as well as impose significant costs on affected communities.”

In many cases, the most vulnerable infrastructure is also poorly protected. A recent cyber-attack on a Canadian facility that treats the wastewater of 1.2 million people avoided catastrophe because the hackers were only able to breach “a limited component of the digital systems”. But the incident exposed the deep weakness of water-treatment facilities across the country.

Ken McCallum, the head of MI5, warned in October that Russian GRU military intelligence was engaged in a campaign to “generate mayhem on British and European streets” using proxies that “further reduces the professionalism of their operations”.