Ukraine has fired UK-made Storm Shadow missiles into Russia for the first time since the beginning of the conflict, multiple sources have told the Guardian.

The decision to approve the strikes was made in response to the deployment of more than 10,000 North Korean troops on Russia’s border with Ukraine in what UK and US officials have warned was a major escalation of the nearly three-year-old conflict.

The Guardian earlier this week reported that the UK would soon approve Storm Shadow missiles for use inside Russia after the US president, Joe Biden, agreed to do the same for the similar American Atacms weapons.

It was not immediately clear what Ukraine used the Storm Shadow missiles to target. Unconfirmed images distributed via the Telegram messaging app appeared to show fragments of the missile at a location in the Kursk region. One weapons expert, Trevor Ball, formerly of the US army, said the images circulating did show Storm Shadow fragments though he could not verify if they were current or old pictures.

The strike came a day after Ukraine used US-supplied missiles to strike targets in the Bryansk region. Western officials have indicated that they are specifically targeting the North Korean buildup in the region as well as infrastructure that may be used for a 50,000-strong offensive against a Ukrainian incursion into the region.

Vladimir Putin has warned that the use of US- and UK-made missiles inside Russia’s borders would be tantamount to Nato entering into a direct conflict with Moscow. Western officials have warned that Russia could escalate strikes on critical infrastructure in Ukraine or use other hybrid warfare tactics against targets in Europe and other US allies around the world.

The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said Moscow would respond “appropriately” a day after Ukraine fired six of the newly approved US-made Atacms missiles into an ammunition warehouse in the south-western Bryansk region.

Hours earlier, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, signed a revised nuclear doctrine lowering the threshold for using nuclear weapons amid warnings from Russian MPs that the US action was bringing “world war three” closer.

Overnight, the Pentagon said it had seen no sign that Russia was planning to use a nuclear weapon in Ukraine, and accused Russian politicians of engaging in irresponsible rhetoric.

“We’re going to continue to monitor, but we don’t have any indications that Russia is preparing to use a nuclear weapon within Ukraine,” said Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh.

The US has temporarily closed its embassy in Kyiv after receiving warning of a “potential significant air attack”, advising American citizens to be prepared to move immediately to a shelter in the event of an air raid warning.

Such warnings are rare and likely to be based on specific intelligence. It comes amid reports that the US had approved the provision of anti-personnel landmines to Ukraine – a further step after Washington granted Kyiv permission to use long-range missiles inside Russia.

The embassy said the alert applied to all of Ukraine and advised people to monitor the media for updates. It added: “The US embassy in Kyiv has received specific information of a potential significant air attack on November 20.

“Out of an abundance of caution, the embassy will be closed, and embassy employees are being instructed to shelter in place. The US embassy recommends US citizens be prepared to immediately shelter in the event an air alert is announced.”

The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said Moscow would respond “appropriately” a day after Ukraine fired six of the newly approved US-made Atacms missiles into an ammunition warehouse in the south-western Bryansk region.

Hours earlier, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, signed a revised nuclear doctrine lowering the threshold for using nuclear weapons amid warnings from Russian MPs that the US action was bringing “world war three” closer.

Overnight, the Pentagon said it had seen no sign that Russia was planning to use a nuclear weapon in Ukraine, and accused Russian politicians of engaging in irresponsible rhetoric.

“We’re going to continue to monitor, but we don’t have any indications that Russia is preparing to use a nuclear weapon within Ukraine,” said the Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh.

Overnight in Kyiv there had been intermittent air raid alerts but no major incidents. A fire in an apartment block that was feared to have been caused by debris from a falling drone was in fact caused by a domestic appliance.

Biden’s approval of the provision of anti-personnel landmines to Ukraine, a US official said, was a step that could help slow Russian advances in the east of the country, especially when used with other munitions from the US.

The US expects Ukraine to use the mines in its own territory, though it has committed not to use them in areas populated with its own civilians, the official said.

The US has provided Ukraine with anti-tank mines throughout its war with Russia, but the addition of anti-personnel mines aims to blunt the advance of Russian ground troops, the official added, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The office of Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian defence ministry, the Russian defence ministry and the Kremlin did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The US mines differ from Russia’s because they are “non-persistent”, becoming inert after a preset period, the official said. They require a battery to detonate, and will not explode once the battery runs out.

The move comes amid claims that some of the more than 10,000 North Korean troops deployed to Kursk by Russia’s military have already participated in battles there. A South Korean lawmaker, Park Sun-won, said on Wednesday that its spy agency was still trying to determine the exact number of North Korean troop casualties and whether any had surrendered amid conflicting information.

North Korea has also shipped additional arms for the war in Ukraine, including self-propelled howitzers and multiple rocket launchers, Park, a member of the parliamentary intelligence committee, told reporters, citing the National Intelligence Service.

On Tuesday, Ukraine used US Atacms missiles to strike into Russian territory, taking advantage of newly granted permission from Biden’s outgoing administration on the war’s 1,000th day.

Putin lowered the threshold for a nuclear strike on the same day in response to a broader range of conventional attacks.

Moscow said the use of Atacms, the longest-range missiles Washington has yet supplied to Ukraine, was a clear signal the west wanted to escalate the conflict.

The strike has also prompted renewed fears of a reprisal though hybrid warfare, a chaotic tool of conflict that muddies borders and broadens the scope of a frontline.

With Reuters

Ukraine’s power network is at “heightened risk of catastrophic failure” after Russia’s missile and drone attack on Sunday, Greenpeace has warned, raising fears about the safety of the country’s three operational nuclear power stations.

The strikes by Moscow were aimed at electricity substations “critical to the operation of Ukraine’s nuclear plants” and there is a possibility that the reactors could lose power and become unsafe, according to a briefing note prepared for the Guardian.

Shaun Burnie, nuclear expert at Greenpeace Ukraine, said: “It is clear that Russia is using the threat of a nuclear disaster as a major military lever to defeat Ukraine. But by undertaking the attacks Russia is risking a nuclear catastrophe in Europe, which is comparable to Fukushima in 2011, Chornobyl in 1986 or even worse.”

The pressure group called on Russia to immediately halt its attacks on Ukraine’s energy grid and for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to deploy permanent monitors in substations critical to the country’s nuclear plants. The IAEA conducted one inspection in late October, but has not committed to return.

Though Greenpeace is an independent organisation, it maintains contact with Ukraine’s government. Official Ukrainian sources contacted by the Guardian acknowledged Greenpeace’s technical analysis of the crisis.

In 1986, Ukraine was the location of the world’s worst nuclear disaster, when a faulty design led to an explosion and destruction of a reactor at Chornobyl. Thirty people died within a month, and radioactive material spread into Ukraine, Belarus and Russia and to a lesser extent into Scandinavia and Europe.

On Sunday night and early morning, Russia unleashed a barrage of more than 210 missiles and drones aimed at electricity generation and transmission targets around the country. Hours later, Ukrenergo, the country’s main electricity provider, announced nationwide rationing to help the system recover.

Explosions were heard in the cities of Kyiv, in Odesa and Mykolaiv in the south, in Kryvyi Rih, Pavlohrad, Vinnytsia in central Ukraine and Rivne and Ivano-Frankivsk in the west. Explosions were also heard near Ukraine’s border with Moldova where Ukraine’s grid connects with its neighbour and into the rest of Europe.

Though the attacks are not thought to have directly targeted Ukraine’s three remaining operational nuclear power plants, at Rivne and Khmelnytskyi in the west, and the South Ukraine plant, Greenpeace says Russia was deliberately trying to increase the stress they are under by targeting substations that they are linked to.

On Sunday, the IAEA reported that main power lines from four substations to three nuclear power stations were cut, and that at the Khmelnytsky plant monitors on site “heard a loud explosion”. Two power lines into Rivne became unavailable and output was reduced in six of the nine operational nuclear reactors at the three sites.

The three sites account for about two-thirds of Ukraine’s electricity because previous attacks by Russia have destroyed most of the country’s coal and oil-fired plants, while some of the country’s hydro facilities have also been damaged.

A particular concern is that “severe damage to Ukraine’s electricity system, including substations, is causing major instability”, Greenpeace said, which could mean the extended loss of external power to the reactors. Cooling of reactor and spent fuel requires power, whose stable supply is at risk, the environmental group added.

In the event of a loss of supply, Ukraine’s reactors have on-site diesel generators and batteries to provide essential electricity supply with enough fuel for seven to 10 days, but if fuel cannot be maintained or power be restored the consequences could lead to a nuclear disaster, Greenpeace said.

“Loss of cooling function at one or more reactors would inevitably lead to nuclear fuel melt and large-scale radiological release,” Greenpeace said in its brief. “Most at risk are the people and the environment of Ukraine, but there is the potential for much of Europe and beyond to be severely impacted,” it added, depending on the wind direction at the time.

Prior to Sunday’s bombing, Britain had already accused Russia of engaging in nuclear blackmail at a meeting of the OSCE a fortnight ago. Its 57 members include Russia, so it is one of the few international forums where western countries can engage with Moscow.

“We have also heard Russia threaten Ukraine in this room that it could turn off 75% of its remaining electricity by hitting just five targets,” the UK said in a statement delivered at a meeting in Vienna on 7 November.

“This could only be a reference to Ukraine’s nuclear power plants. Such threats are unacceptable. As is the risk to Ukraine’s nuclear power plants of an unreliable power supply due to Russia’s sustained attacks against Ukraine’s grid.”

British sources indicated they believed that Ukraine’s energy generation had been reduced to about one-third of its pre-war capacity in the spring, though repairs over the summer had improved that figure back to 50%.

The impact of the latest bombing on generation remains unclear, though Ukraine’s energy ministry said on Tuesday that 9GW of power had been lost in 2024, equal to “the peak consumption of countries such as the Netherlands or Finland”.

At the beginning of the war, Russian forces captured Ukraine’s fourth nuclear power plant, the Zaporizhzhia facility, which houses six reactors. The site, on the frontline on the Dnipro river, remains occupied though the reactors are in cold shutdown.

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, the billionaire co-founder of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), 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.”

McMahon was made transition team chair in August, after having donated $814,600 to Trump’s 2024 campaign as of July. She served in Trump’s cabinet in his first administration as the administrator of the Small Business Administration from 2017 to 2019. McMahon chaired America First Action, a super PAC that backed Trump’s reelection campaign, where she raised $83m in 2020. She provided $6 million to help Trump’s candidacy after he secured the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, according to the Associated Press.

McMahon is the former chief executive of 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”.

McMahon stepped down from her position as WWE’s chief executive to enter politics. She ran twice for a US Senate seat in Connecticut, but lost in 2010 to Richard Blumenthal and in 2012 to Chris Murphy.

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

McMahon is seen as a relative unknown in education circles, though she has expressed support for charter schools and school choice.

She served on the Connecticut Board of Education for a year starting in 2009. She told lawmakers at the time that she had a lifelong interest in education and once planned to become a teacher, a goal that fell aside after her marriage. She also spent years on the board of trustees for Sacred Heart University in Connecticut.

Trump has promised to close the Education Department and return much of its powers to states. He has not explained how he would close the agency, which was created by Congress in 1979 and would likely require action from Congress to dismantle.

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.

The Swedish navy said it had an “almost 100%” picture of the vessels at the sites of the suspected sabotage of undersea cables in the Baltic as Danish officials said the country’s navy had a vessel shadowing a Chinese cargo ship.

Specialist Swedish underwater search crews were at the site of the Finnish-German cable – one of two undersea fibre-optic cables that were damaged – gathering evidence for Swedish investigators on Wednesday. A cable between Sweden and Lithuania was also damaged.

Naval officials said the information gathered was classified for the Swedish police and prosecutor, but there was an “almost 100% identification” of the ships that were in the area of the two cable breaks.

Denmark had earlier said it had a naval vessel next to a Chinese cargo ship, the Yi Peng 3, anchored in the Baltic between Sweden and Denmark, where the cables were severed in a suspected malicious attack on Sunday and Monday.

The Danish Defence command said: “The Danish Defence can confirm that we are present in the area near the Chinese ship Yi Peng 3. The Danish Defence currently has no further comments.”

According to Vesselfinder tracking data, the last time the cargo ship, which is owned by Ningbo Yipeng Shipping, a company registered in Ningbo, visited a port was on 15 November in Ust-Luga in western Russia, close to the border with Estonia.

Russia has denied any involvement in the cable incidents. On Wednesday the Kremlin said such accusations were “ridiculous” and that it was absurd to accuse Russia without evidence.

Sweden and Finland are jointly investigating the incidents as potential sabotage, with Sweden leading the investigation.

The investigators in Sweden were analysing any potential role by the Chinese ship, according to the Financial Times, but the Swedish government did not comment on this. A government source told the Guardian that information on the incident was “moving very quickly”.

Last year, the anchor of another Chinese vessel, the container ship Newnew Polar Bear – was found to have damaged a gas pipeline between Finland and Estonia. Authorities have not said whether they believed the incident to be intentional or accidental.

Overnight, the Swedish navy used unmanned, remote-controlled submarines to investigate the southern site of the two cables, but warned it would take “several days” due to the challenges of forecast bad weather and the potential for poor visibility.

Jimmie Adamsson, a Swedish navy spokesperson, said the navy had been asked to support the Swedish prosecutor and police with their investigations and ships were sent out immediately. They have been asked to gather evidence at the sites of the two breaks – one 100-150 metres deep (the Sweden-Lithuania cable) and the other 20-40 metres deep (the Finland-Germany cable). They have also been asked to put together a picture of what vessels were there, and at what time.

The navy’s crew, which is trained to search underwater, has performed similar tasks twice before during the investigation into the suspected sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines in 2022.

Adamsson said: “Yesterday [Tuesday], a couple of navy ships left the Swedish ports and went to the most southerly point of the two. They have been working throughout the night until the morning. There was a bit of rough weather.”

At any given time, there are about 4,000 large vessels in the Baltic passing over a web of underwater cables transporting data, electricity and gas across Europe.

The Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, has said that she was “not surprised” by the potential for sabotage. “If the immediate assessment is that it is sabotage and it comes from outside, then it is obviously serious. I am not surprised that it can happen,” she said.

Germany’s defence minister, Boris Pistorius, has already said he assumed the act was sabotage. “No one believes that the cables were accidentally damaged,” he said.

Sweden’s civil defence minister, Carl-Oskar Bohlin, quickly made the link between the movement of ships and the severed cables. “There are ship movements that correspond to this crime on maritime surveillance,” he said.

The Finnish security intelligence service (Supo) said it was “too early to assess the cause of the cable damage” but it was supporting other authorities with their expertise. It said about 200 submarine cable breakages happened every year globally, the most common cause being human activities such as fishing or anchoring.

Members of One Direction and the X-Factor judge Simon Cowell were among the mourners who attended Liam Payne’s funeral.

Payne died aged 31 after falling from a third-floor hotel balcony in Argentina last month, prompting an outpouring of grief from fans across the world.

His former bandmates, Harry Styles, Zayn Malik, Niall Horan and Louis Tomlinson, were among those seen attending the private funeral in Buckinghamshire on Wednesday.

Styles arrived alongside the TV star James Corden, while Cowell arrived with his fiancee, Lauren Silverman.

A horse-drawn carriage carried a dark blue coffin topped with white roses, as well as a red floral tribute, which said “Son” and a blue tribute, which said “Daddy”, to St Mary’s Church in Amersham.

Payne shared a seven-year-old son, Bear, with the singer Cheryl Tweedy, who attended the funeral along with her Girls Aloud bandmates Nicola Roberts and Kimberley Walsh.

Before his death Payne lived in the south-east Buckinghamshire village of Chalfont St Giles, close to his former partner and their son.

Other guests included Payne’s girlfriend, the US influencer Kate Cassidy, who arrived alongside Damian Hurley, son of the model Elizabeth Hurley, as well as the This Morning presenter Rochelle Humes and her husband, the former JLS singer Marvin Humes.

Silence fell among the crowd of fans, some holding photographs and flowers, who gathered outside as Payne’s father, Geoff, and his mother, Karen, arrived and stood next to the carriage.

Another floral tribute depicted bowling pins being knocked over by a ball in reference to one of Payne’s favourite pastimes.

Payne rose to fame in 2010 after appearing as a contestant on the ITV talent show The X-Factor as part of One Direction, which went on to become one of the bestselling boybands of all time.

One Direction had a hiatus in 2016. Payne launched his solo career, releasing his debut solo album LP1 in December 2019.

The singer died on 16 October after falling from a balcony at the CasaSur hotel in Buenos Aires, with an autopsy concluding he had died of multiple traumas and internal and external bleeding.

Fans around the world have held vigils in his memory, as well as creating a shrine to him in his home town of Wolverhampton.

Three people have been charged in Argentina in connection with Payne’s death for supplying narcotics and the abandonment of a person followed by death.

Oil and chemical companies who created a high-profile alliance to end plastic pollution have produced 1,000 times more new plastic in five years than the waste they diverted from the environment, according to new data obtained by Greenpeace.

The Alliance to End Plastic Waste (AEPW) was set up in 2019 by a group of companies which include ExxonMobil, Dow, Shell, TotalEnergies and ChevronPhillips, some of the world’s biggest producers of plastic. They promised to divert 15m tonnes of plastic waste from the environment in five years to the end of 2023, by improving collection and recycling, and creating a circular economy.

Documents from a PR company that were obtained by Greenpeace’s Unearthed team and shared with the Guardian, suggest a key aim of the AEPW was to “change the conversation” away from “simplistic bans of plastic” that were being proposed in 2019 amid an outcry over the scale of plastic pollution leaching into rivers and harming public health.

Early last year the alliance target of clearing 15m tonnes of waste plastic was quietly scrapped as “just too ambitious”.

The new analysis by energy consultants Wood Mackenzie looked at the plastics output of the five alliance companies; chemical company Dow, which holds the AEPW’s chairmanship, the oil companies ExxonMobil, Shell and TotalEnergies, and ChevronPhillips, a joint venture of the US oil giants Chevron and Phillips 66.

The data reveals the five companies alone produced 132m tonnes of two types of plastic; polyethylene (PE) and PP (polypropylene) in five years – more than 1,000 times the weight of the 118,500 tonnes of waste plastic the alliance has removed from the environment in the same period. The waste plastic was diverted mostly by mechanical or chemical recycling, the use of landfill, or waste to fuel, AEPW documents state.

The amount of plastic produced is likely to be an underestimate as it only covers two of the most widely used polymers; polyethylene which is used for plastic bottles and bags, and polypropylene, used for food packaging. It does not include other major plastics such as polystyrene.

The new data was revealed as delegates prepared to meet in Busan, South Korea, to hammer out the world’s first treaty to cut plastic pollution. The treaty has a mandate to agree on a legally binding global agreement to tackle plastic pollution across the entire plastics life cycle.

But the talks, which have been subject to heavy lobbying by the alliance and fossil fuel companies, are on a knife-edge in a row over whether caps to global plastic production will be included in the final treaty.

Will McCallum, a co-executive director at Greenpeace UK, said the revelations had stripped off the thin layer of greenwash hiding the growing mountain of plastic waste oil companies were producing.

“The recycling schemes they’re promoting can barely make a dent in all the plastic these companies are pumping out,” he said. “They’re letting the running tap flood the house while trying to scoop up the water with a teaspoon. The only solution is to cut the amount of plastic produced in the first place.”

Bill McKibben, a US environmentalist, said: “It’s hard to imagine a clearer example of greenwashing in this world. The oil and gas industry – which is pretty much the same thing as the plastics industry – has been at this for decades.”

In response to the allegations a spokesperson for the AEPW said it “respectfully disagrees with the allegations and inferences, including that the organisation’s purpose is to greenwash the reputation of its members … The alliance aims to accelerate innovation and channel capital into the development of effective scalable solutions to help end plastic waste and pollution.”

The AEPW has had a significant lobbying presence at the UN plastic waste talks, which enter their final stages on Monday. Its representatives have consistently argued that reductions in plastic production should not be included in the treaty.

The UK’s new Labour government has shifted the country’s stance and signed a ministerial declaration calling for the inclusion of reductions in production and consumption of primary plastic polymers to sustainable levels in the treaty. The United States under President Biden also shifted its position this summer to support caps on global production. It is not known yet the position of the incoming Trump administration.

A UK government source said: “The government supports an effective treaty which covers the full life cycle of plastics including reducing the production and consumption of plastics to sustainable levels.”

ProfSteve Fletcher, from the Revolution Plastics Institute at the University of Portsmouth, said recently there was now compelling evidence that only a reduction in primary plastic polymer production, or virgin plastic, would deliver a substantive cut in plastic pollution.

Documents from the PR company Weber Shandwick outline how the AEPW was created in 2019 after they were approached by the American Chemical Council seeking ways to counter the “demonisation” of plastic and the growing calls for bans on plastic items.

The alliance paid Weber Shandwick $5.6m for its work in 2019, according to US tax returns.

The documents state the alliance was intended to change the conversation away from “short-term simplistic bans of plastic” and create “real, long-term solutions” for managing waste, like recycling.

But documents filed in California in September, where the attorney general, Rob Bonta, is suing ExxonMobil, argue the company has deceived the public for 50 years, with misleading public statements and slick marketing, about the recyclability of plastic.

The UN treaty talks start as plastic production continues to soar. Between 2000 and 2019 the global annual production of plastics doubled, reaching 460m tonnes. Plastic waste has more than doubled, from 156m tonnes in 2000 to 353m tonnes in 2019, only 9% of which was ultimately recycled, according to an OECD report.

An AEPW spokesperson said: “No single organisation can solve the plastic waste challenge alone and the Alliance is cognisant of the fact that we are just one among many stakeholders who contribute with solutions … our mandate is to identify solutions that support the collection, sorting and recycling of plastic and promote a circular economy for plastics.”

ExxonMobil said in a statement: “Plastics aren’t the problem – plastic waste is. We support a broad set of solutions to address plastic waste and are doing our part to contribute, including through advanced recycling, the Alliance to End Plastic Waste, and by supporting the global treaty’s goal of eliminating plastic pollution by 2040.

“Instead of suing us, California officials could have worked with us to fix the problem and keep plastic out of landfills … We’re bringing real solutions, recycling plastic waste that’s difficult to recycle by traditional methods … We have been direct with our customers about the plastics and products we sell. We stand by our public statements.”

Shell and TotalEnergies declined to comment. ChevronPhillips and Dow did not respond to approaches for comment.

The American Chemistry Council said: “In January 2019 ACC and its members launched the AEPW to help end plastic pollution. For years AEPW has operated as an independent and separately incorporated organisation. ACC has no role in AEPWs governance or decision-making.”

Oil and chemical companies who created a high-profile alliance to end plastic pollution have produced 1,000 times more new plastic in five years than the waste they diverted from the environment, according to new data obtained by Greenpeace.

The Alliance to End Plastic Waste (AEPW) was set up in 2019 by a group of companies which include ExxonMobil, Dow, Shell, TotalEnergies and ChevronPhillips, some of the world’s biggest producers of plastic. They promised to divert 15m tonnes of plastic waste from the environment in five years to the end of 2023, by improving collection and recycling, and creating a circular economy.

Documents from a PR company that were obtained by Greenpeace’s Unearthed team and shared with the Guardian, suggest a key aim of the AEPW was to “change the conversation” away from “simplistic bans of plastic” that were being proposed in 2019 amid an outcry over the scale of plastic pollution leaching into rivers and harming public health.

Early last year the alliance target of clearing 15m tonnes of waste plastic was quietly scrapped as “just too ambitious”.

The new analysis by energy consultants Wood Mackenzie looked at the plastics output of the five alliance companies; chemical company Dow, which holds the AEPW’s chairmanship, the oil companies ExxonMobil, Shell and TotalEnergies, and ChevronPhillips, a joint venture of the US oil giants Chevron and Phillips 66.

The data reveals the five companies alone produced 132m tonnes of two types of plastic; polyethylene (PE) and PP (polypropylene) in five years – more than 1,000 times the weight of the 118,500 tonnes of waste plastic the alliance has removed from the environment in the same period. The waste plastic was diverted mostly by mechanical or chemical recycling, the use of landfill, or waste to fuel, AEPW documents state.

The amount of plastic produced is likely to be an underestimate as it only covers two of the most widely used polymers; polyethylene which is used for plastic bottles and bags, and polypropylene, used for food packaging. It does not include other major plastics such as polystyrene.

The new data was revealed as delegates prepared to meet in Busan, South Korea, to hammer out the world’s first treaty to cut plastic pollution. The treaty has a mandate to agree on a legally binding global agreement to tackle plastic pollution across the entire plastics life cycle.

But the talks, which have been subject to heavy lobbying by the alliance and fossil fuel companies, are on a knife-edge in a row over whether caps to global plastic production will be included in the final treaty.

Will McCallum, a co-executive director at Greenpeace UK, said the revelations had stripped off the thin layer of greenwash hiding the growing mountain of plastic waste oil companies were producing.

“The recycling schemes they’re promoting can barely make a dent in all the plastic these companies are pumping out,” he said. “They’re letting the running tap flood the house while trying to scoop up the water with a teaspoon. The only solution is to cut the amount of plastic produced in the first place.”

Bill McKibben, a US environmentalist, said: “It’s hard to imagine a clearer example of greenwashing in this world. The oil and gas industry – which is pretty much the same thing as the plastics industry – has been at this for decades.”

In response to the allegations a spokesperson for the AEPW said it “respectfully disagrees with the allegations and inferences, including that the organisation’s purpose is to greenwash the reputation of its members … The alliance aims to accelerate innovation and channel capital into the development of effective scalable solutions to help end plastic waste and pollution.”

The AEPW has had a significant lobbying presence at the UN plastic waste talks, which enter their final stages on Monday. Its representatives have consistently argued that reductions in plastic production should not be included in the treaty.

The UK’s new Labour government has shifted the country’s stance and signed a ministerial declaration calling for the inclusion of reductions in production and consumption of primary plastic polymers to sustainable levels in the treaty. The United States under President Biden also shifted its position this summer to support caps on global production. It is not known yet the position of the incoming Trump administration.

A UK government source said: “The government supports an effective treaty which covers the full life cycle of plastics including reducing the production and consumption of plastics to sustainable levels.”

ProfSteve Fletcher, from the Revolution Plastics Institute at the University of Portsmouth, said recently there was now compelling evidence that only a reduction in primary plastic polymer production, or virgin plastic, would deliver a substantive cut in plastic pollution.

Documents from the PR company Weber Shandwick outline how the AEPW was created in 2019 after they were approached by the American Chemical Council seeking ways to counter the “demonisation” of plastic and the growing calls for bans on plastic items.

The alliance paid Weber Shandwick $5.6m for its work in 2019, according to US tax returns.

The documents state the alliance was intended to change the conversation away from “short-term simplistic bans of plastic” and create “real, long-term solutions” for managing waste, like recycling.

But documents filed in California in September, where the attorney general, Rob Bonta, is suing ExxonMobil, argue the company has deceived the public for 50 years, with misleading public statements and slick marketing, about the recyclability of plastic.

The UN treaty talks start as plastic production continues to soar. Between 2000 and 2019 the global annual production of plastics doubled, reaching 460m tonnes. Plastic waste has more than doubled, from 156m tonnes in 2000 to 353m tonnes in 2019, only 9% of which was ultimately recycled, according to an OECD report.

An AEPW spokesperson said: “No single organisation can solve the plastic waste challenge alone and the Alliance is cognisant of the fact that we are just one among many stakeholders who contribute with solutions … our mandate is to identify solutions that support the collection, sorting and recycling of plastic and promote a circular economy for plastics.”

ExxonMobil said in a statement: “Plastics aren’t the problem – plastic waste is. We support a broad set of solutions to address plastic waste and are doing our part to contribute, including through advanced recycling, the Alliance to End Plastic Waste, and by supporting the global treaty’s goal of eliminating plastic pollution by 2040.

“Instead of suing us, California officials could have worked with us to fix the problem and keep plastic out of landfills … We’re bringing real solutions, recycling plastic waste that’s difficult to recycle by traditional methods … We have been direct with our customers about the plastics and products we sell. We stand by our public statements.”

Shell and TotalEnergies declined to comment. ChevronPhillips and Dow did not respond to approaches for comment.

The American Chemistry Council said: “In January 2019 ACC and its members launched the AEPW to help end plastic pollution. For years AEPW has operated as an independent and separately incorporated organisation. ACC has no role in AEPWs governance or decision-making.”

Iran has offered to keep its stock of uranium enriched up to 60% – below the purity levels required to make a nuclear bomb – the head of the UN nuclear inspectorate, Rafael Grossi, has confirmed amid the threat of restored European sanctions over Tehran’s nuclear activities.

“I think this is … a concrete step in the right direction. We have a fact which has been verified by us. It is the first time Iran has agreed to take a different path,” Grossi said in Vienna on Tuesday.

The move negotiated by Grossi with Iranian officials, including the President Masoud Pezeshkian on a visit to Tehran last week is designed to head off a move at the IAEA board this week by European diplomats to request a comprehensive report on Iranian compliance that could lead to the snapback of UN sanctions. The nuclear agreement covering Iran’s nuclear activities formally expires in September, 10 years after it was negotiated in 2015.

A snapback would involve the re-imposition of security council sanctions from earlier resolutions on Iran in the event of “significant non-performance” of Iran’s commitments under the nuclear deal.

“I went last week and I got something, and by moving step by step and getting concrete results the trajectory may be less confrontational,” Grossi said.

Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Aragchci, has however hinted that the Iranian offer of a cap on enrichment might be withdrawn if the European powers – France, Germany and the UK – insist on commissioning the report. Grossi said he had spoken to Araghchi on Tuesday night but there had been no Iranian threat or warning during the conversation.

Aragchi said in a statement: “If the other parties ignore Iran’s goodwill and interactive approach and put non-constructive measures on the agenda at the meeting of the governing council through the issuance of a resolution, Iran will respond appropriately and proportionately.”

He said the offer to freeze the stockpile was a sign of goodwill, but the European powers are likely to regard the Iranian offer to cap the 60% stockpile as less groundbreaking than either Grossi or the Iranians do. Grossi clearly believes it is a sign of constructive progress after nearly two years of impasse.

He added that four new experienced nuclear inspectors were being allowed into Iran.

European powers are worried both by Iran’s continued refusal to give IAEA inspectors access to its nuclear sites, and also by the steady increase in its stockpile of nearly weapons-grade uranium. The strikes and counter-strikes between Israel and Iran this year has led to a growing debate inside Iran whether it should drop the fatwa on producing a nuclear weapon with some Iranian officials claiming they had already mastered most of the techniques necessary to do so. Iran has always claimed that its nuclear work is solely for peaceful civilian purposes.

Israel and the US have both said they will not allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon, but the incoming Trump administration has so far put the emphasis on tightening economic sanctions against Iran rather than a military attack on Iran’s nuclear sites.

In its latest report to the IAEA board, the IAEA said Iran’s stockpile of 60% enriched uranium had increased by 17.6kg to 182.3kg (402lbs). Assuming no change, that means Trump would enter office in January with Iran having enough nuclear fuel for four atomic bombs. It would take Iran just a few days to convert the 60% material into weapons-grade material.

BlackRock, the world’s biggest asset management company, faces a complaint at the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for allegedly contributing to environmental and human rights abuses around the world through its investments in agribusiness.

Friends of the Earth US and the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil accuse BlackRock of increasing investments in companies that have been implicated in the devastation of the Amazon and other major forests despite warnings that this is destabilising the global climate, damaging ecosystems and violating the rights of traditional communities.

The complaint, revealed exclusively to the Guardian, was filed under the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, which are recommendations from governments to private companies on responsible business conduct. In the absence of legally binding international regulations, these are seen as a reference for corporate accountability.

The influence of BlackRock is enormous. It manages more than $11tn in assets, more than the combined government spending of the world’s 10 wealthiest countries. Although investment decisions are the responsibility of its clients, this giant financial institution provides advice and facilitates investments.

Two thirds of the assets BlackRock manages on behalf of clients relate to retirement. Highlighting the forward-looking nature of these pension funds, the company website notes: “BlackRock’s mission is to create a better financial future for our clients, by building the most respected investment and risk manager in the world.”

That claim is countered by the new complaint, which states that pension funds and other assets managed by BlackRock are threatening a stable future because they provide capital for companies responsible for deforestation of tropical rainforests, which adds to global climate disruption.

“We hope this complaint prompts BlackRock to fulfill its obligations under international frameworks and steer investment away from agribusinesses driving climate chaos and gross human rights abuses,” said Gaurav Madan, senior forest and land rights campaigner at Friends of the Earth US.

BlackRock said the case was spurious. “This complaint is meritless. As a fiduciary, our focus is to help our clients achieve their selected investment goals. The overwhelming majority of holdings referenced are held in index funds chosen by our clients themselves, and we cannot selectively divest from them,” a spokesperson said in an email statement to the Guardian.

At an industry level, asset management companies say they cannot use clients’ money for third-party objectives because it is up to individual investors to select funds and allocate money. Finance firms have also previously argued that they are not responsible for index funds, which are investments in a range of assets in a given industrial, national or regional sector.

Friends of the Earth say the latter argument has been challenged in several international contexts, including an earlier OECD case against the Swiss Bank UBS over its use of index funds connected to a company allegedly involved in the Chinese government’s mass surveillance of Uyghurs in Xinjiang. In 2021, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has also confirmed there is a business relationship between a financial institution and an investee company in the context of minority shareholdings and index fund investments.

To support their complaint, Friends of the Earth investigated publicly available data on BlackRock’s shareholdings between January 2019 and June 2024 in 20 agribusiness companies that have been implicated in environmental and human rights abuses, operating in the palm oil, pulp/paper, soy, cattle, timber and biomass sectors. It found BlackRock has more than $5bn invested in these companies, an increase since 2019 of $519m. In each of the companies is it a top 10 shareholder.

Conservation organisations and Indigenous peoples have repeatedly asked BlackRock to stop financing companies that deforest the Amazon and violate communities’ land rights, said Dinamam Tuxá, executive coordinator of the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB). “BlackRock has failed to prevent its investments from endangering entire peoples’ way of life,” he said in a statement. “For the sake of our future, we call on BlackRock to stop making excuses and stop funding companies driving deforestation, biodiversity loss, and violence against our communities.”

The need for stronger action was apparent in a recent report showing that destruction of global forests rose last year and is now higher than when 140 countries promised three years ago to halt deforestation by the end of the decade. The combination of land clearance, forest fires and global heating has pushed the Amazon closer towards a point of no return. Many areas are currently experiencing the worst drought on record.

More broadly, major US financial institutions have been accused of watering down public commitments on the climate and nature crises. Last month, Client Earth filed a complaint in France alleging BlackRock greenwashed investments in fossil fuel companies through “sustainable” funds. In July, JP Morgan Chase, the world’s biggest investor in fossil fuels, was warned by US senators that it may have misled investors and the public by backtracking on its already weak climate and environmental commitments.

The watchdog NGO Stand.earth also condemned five of the world’s biggest banks, for having environmental and social guidelines that failed to cover more than 70% of the Amazon rainforest. On the streets, the climate finance movement has staged protests outside several Wall Street institutions, including Citi, Bank of America and major insurers.

A rolled R is a sound that many struggle to produce, but research suggests it evokes the same curious response in people the world over: an association with a jagged line.

While onomatopoeia describes words that sound like the noise they describe – such as “bang” – sound symbolism is a broader concept, in which sounds map on to a wider range of meanings, such as shape, texture or size.

One of the best known examples is the bouba/kiki effect, whereby people typically match the nonsense word “bouba” to a blobby shape and “kiki” to a spiky one.

Now researchers say they have found an association that appears even more widespread, revealing a rolled – or trilled – R sound is consistently matched with a jagged line.

“It’s the strongest case of sound symbolism [to date]. So your speech sounds, which are supposed to be arbitrary, have meaning,” said Dr Marcus Perlman from the University of Birmingham, the co-author of the study.

Writing in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Perlman and colleagues reported how they analysed data from 903 online participants and 127 in-person participants. Overall, participants spoke 28 different languages including Zulu, Palikúr, English, Farsi, Spanish, Russian, Japanese and Mandarin Chinese.

To carry out the experiment, researchers presented each participant with images of a jagged line and a smooth line, and instructed participants to imagine moving their finger along the marks. Participants then were played two sounds – one of a trilled R and one of an L sound – and asked to match each sound to a line. In the online experiments, a choice was made after each sound, whereas during the in-person experiments, choices were made after both sounds had played.

The results revealed that, overall, participants matched the jagged line with the rolled R and the smooth line with the L sound in 88% of the online trials and 98% of in-person trials – higher rates than have been found for the bouba/kiki effect. Analysis of the online-only data revealed the associations held regardless of which sound was played first, but was stronger for the trilled R and jagged line.

And while some languages do not show evidence of the bouba/kiki effect, this was not the case for the new pair of sounds. “It was consistent across all the languages,” Perlman said.

Perlman said previous research by the team that looked at a range of languages found words used to refer to rough textures were statistically far more likely than chance to have an R sound in them, and that, when plotted on a graph, the rapid rise and fall of intensity during a trilled R resembles the contours of a crinkle-cut crisp.

“This particular case of sound symbolism seems to have a big influence on vocabularies in different languages,” he said. “I think it shows that speech sounds are not just acoustic objects, but they also have a texture and a shape to them.”

The House ethics committee is expected to meet on Wednesday to vote on releasing a report examining allegations of sexual misconduct against former Republican representative Matt Gaetz, Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the US justice department.

The panel has previously said it was investigating claims that Gaetz “may have engaged in sexual misconduct and/or illicit drug use, shared inappropriate images or videos on the House floor, misused state identification records, converted campaign funds to personal use, and/or accepted a bribe, improper gratuity, or impermissible gift”.

The justice department launched its own inquiry into accusations that Gaetz engaged in a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl, but the department closed its investigation last year without filing charges. Gaetz has consistently denied the allegations.

Two women testified to congressional investigators that Gaetz paid them for sex and that he was seen having sex with the 17-year-old, a lawyer for the women has said.

As the ethics committee is evenly split between the two parties, it would take only one Republican siding with every Democrat on the panel to have the report released. But prominent Republicans, including House speaker Mike Johnson, have cautioned against releasing the report on Gaetz, who resigned his seat immediately after Trump announced his nomination as attorney general.

“I think that would be a Pandora’s box,” Johnson told CNN on Sunday. “I don’t think we want the House ethics committee using all of its vast resources and powers to go after private citizens, and that’s what Matt Gaetz is now.”

But other Republicans, including Senator Markwayne Mullin, have suggested the report should be at least made available to the senators who will vote on confirming Gaetz’s nomination.

“I believe the Senate should have access to that,” Mullin told NBC News on Sunday. “Now, should it be released to the public or not? I guess that will be part of the negotiations. But that should be definitely part of our decision-making.”

Democrats have appeared open to the idea of releasing the report. Nearly 100 House Democrats signed a letter requesting the ethics committee’s findings be released, noting that there is some precedent for issuing reports on former members who resigned amid scandal.

Representative Susan Wild, the top Democrat on the ethics committee, said Monday that she supported the report’s release, echoing comments made over the weekend by a fellow Democrat on the committee, representative Glenn Ivey.

“It should certainly be released to the Senate, and I think it should be released to the public, as we have done with many other investigative reports in the past,” Wild told reporters, per NBC News. “There is precedent for releasing even after a member has resigned.”

If the report is released, it could damage Gaetz’s prospects of Senate confirmation, but Trump has floated the idea of installing his nominees via recess appointment to circumvent the confirmation process.

Italian police have recovered a trove of funerary treasures, believed to have belonged to Etruscan princesses, that were illegally excavated from a vast underground tomb in the Umbria region.

The finds, which included eight urns, two sarcophagi – one containing the remains of a woman aged between 40 and 45 – and beauty accessories, originated from a hypogeum that has been traced to an influential Etruscan family who lived between 300BC and 100BC.

Part of the ancient burial site was discovered in 2015, by a farmer who was ploughing land close to the town of Città della Pieve.

An investigation by Italy’s art-crime squad began earlier this year when detectives came across photos of the relics, which have an estimated value of €8m, that two “tomb raiders” had posted online in their search for buyers abroad.

The suspects were two local businessmen, one of whom had posted a photo of himself alongside the loot.

Police tapped the phones of the alleged thieves and were soon led to an area next to the originally discovered site that had been ransacked. One of the suspects is the owner of the land. The pair have been arrested on charges of theft and trading stolen goods.

Among the relics were four bronze mirrors, a bone comb and a perfume jar that still contained traces of its scent, as well as jugs that were commonly used by Etruscan women during banquets. It was one of the most significant discoveries of Etruscan artefacts made as a result of a police investigation, experts said.

The Etruscan civilisation thrived in Italy, mostly in Tuscany and Umbria, for 00 years before the arrival of the Roman Republic, and signs of its presence are scattered across both regions.

In 2022, a collection of bronze statues preserved for thousands of years by mud and boiling water were discovered in a network of baths built by the Etruscans in San Casciano dei Bagni, Tuscany.

The 24 partly submerged statues, which dated back 2,300 years, included a sleeping ephebe lying next to Hygeia, the goddess of health, with a snake wrapped around her arm.

Italian police regularly recover relics stolen by tomb raiders, who for years have made a fortune by digging their way into Italy’s archaeological sites and stealing treasures to sell on to art traffickers around the world.