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Businessman was ‘preparing champagne’ to celebrate Caruana Galizia murder, court hears

The businessman accused of paying for hitmen to murder the journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia was impatient for the killing to take place, and once texted from his boat to say he was “preparing champagne” to celebrate, a jury in Malta has heard. Yorgen Fenech, the 44-year-old heir to a property empire that includes several Hilton hotels, is on trial in Malta for complicity in the murder of Caruana Galizia. She died in a car bombing in October 2017 after publishing a series of revelations about senior politicians that were so damaging they triggered a snap general election. The key witness in the case, a taxi driver who says he acted as middleman between Fenech and three men already convicted of accepting €150,000 (£128,000) to carry out the killing, took the stand on Friday to begin his testimony. Melvin Theuma, who has been living under witness protection since agreeing to testify in return for a pardon, said Fenech had told him to contact a known criminal and set up the killing because he wanted to protect his uncle Raymond Fenech, the head of the family business. “Bring him here, I need him to kill Daphne because she’s going to publish information about Uncle Ray,” Theuma claimed Fenech had told him. Theuma has previously testified that over time the explanation changed, and the hit was designed to stop revelations about Yorgen himself. The conversation took place in April 2017. The two men were friends, having known each other for years, although Theuma told the jury it was not an equal relationship. “He’s a lion and I’m a mosquito,” Theuma said of the accused. The taxi driver, who had cultivated a friendship with Fenech over a shared interest in horseracing and betting, is regarded by the prosecution as key to securing a conviction. He has given police multiple recordings of conversations he had with Fenech after the murder. Before taking the stand, Theuma had to be certified as fit to give evidence, having previously tried to take his own life. In 2020, having already secured a pardon, he swallowed acid and slit his own throat. He will be allowed to give evidence seated, with his back to Fenech and his lawyers, having previously complained of intimidation. He began his testimony by apologising to the victim’s family, saying: “My cross was too much to bear; I can’t imagine what theirs was like.” After receiving the order from Fenech, Theuma said he went to the docks in Marsa, where the hitmen, brothers George and Alfred Degiorgio and their associate Vincent Muscat, used a warehouse known as the potato shed as a base. “Alfred got into my taxi and I told him ‘I have someone who wants to kill Daphne Caruana Galizia’. “He asked if the person could pay, and I said yes, of course.” Theuma said he never told the hitmen who had sent him. He told the court Fenech had agreed to the price, but then asked him to call off the attack after Malta’s then prime minister, Joseph Muscat, called a snap general election. Instead, he asked Theuma to place a €150,000 bet for him on Muscat securing a second term. When Muscat was returned to power with a landslide victory in June 2017, Theuma said Fenech rang him that night. “He sounded tipsy. He told me to go ahead with the Daphne job. I didn’t do anything, he sounded drunk.” A few days later, he gave Fenech his winnings from the bet – €300,000, minus a commission. Nothing more was said about Caruana Galizia. But a few days later, Fenech summoned him and gave him an envelope stuffed with cash. “I asked him, ‘What’s this?’ He said: ‘It’s the €150,000 to have Daphne killed.’” The hitmen were given a €30,000 deposit and began scoping the journalist’s movements. Theuma was given a burner phone to contact them with. The witness said he took the phone with him to Disneyland for a family holiday, and that Fenech wanted reassurance he had not left Malta without it. The businessman became impatient as time passed. “Yorgen would ask me every few days: ‘When will they kill her?’ Once, he was on his boat and texted me to say he was preparing champagne in case it happened.” Theuma said Fenech helped to plot Caruana Galizia’s routine, identifying a cafe and restaurant that she frequented. The witness broke down as he described the moment he learned of the death from the television news. Wiping his eyes, he said: “I was living a normal life, I didn’t want for anything. Then I turned on the TV and saw that Daphne was dead. My life ended. When she was killed, my life was blown up.” He also revealed he had been in regular contact by text message with Caruana Galizia’s sons, Matthew and Paul. He said: “I was involved in their mother’s murder, and they speak to me. They tell me I will feel better after the trial. But I know I won’t. The remorse is too great.” Fenech, who is on trial for complicity in the voluntary homicide of Caruana Galizia, denies the charges. The trial continues.

Colombia on the brink: ELN guerrilla group prepares for return to war

As the boat approached the riverbank, camouflaged figures watched from the tree line. Behind them, in the dim understory of the jungle, a commander of the National Liberation Army (ELN) sat with his rifle on his lap, amid the buzz and whine of insects and the thwacks of machetes on bamboo as his troops set up camp, hidden from enemy drones. Colombia’s 62-year old armed conflict is on the brink of a new chapter, with the country’s new president, Abelardo de la Espriella, who takes office on Friday, vowing an end to peace talks and launch a new military offensive. Colombia’s last guerrilla group says it is ready for whatever might come. “Where we can go on the offensive, we will,” said the commander of the group’s Western War Front, who goes by the moniker Yerson. “And if the ELN leadership says we have to carry out a military offensive at the national level, we will. Attacks in cities, in the countryside, wherever.” Yerson and his troops were deep in the Pacific department of Chocó, in an ELN stronghold accessible only after hours of river travel, where humid heat soaks through the cloud cover. Occasional communities, each a line of wooden shacks on stilts, broke the dense forest on the banks. Giant mining barges were moored on the river, with diggers clawing up the riverbed to extract the particles of gold it contains. The ELN and rival armed groups fight to control the San Juan River, its resources and its population. At one point in the journey, armed men from the Gulf Clan, a violent paramilitary group, stopped the Guardian’s boat to question the passengers, before promising to liberate the area from the ELN. Yerson was unfazed. “All of the ELN territories are being invaded by bands of mercenaries,” he said. “They are very violent, but they are not disputing political power.” Colombia’s conflict began in the 1960s, rooted in extreme land inequality and exclusionary politics. Leftwing guerrillas emerged to challenge the state, battling government forces later allied with rightwing paramilitaries, forerunners of the Gulf Clan. Money from cocaine trafficking fuelled all sides. The conflict has killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced millions. Along with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), the ELN was the most important of the guerrilla groups. Founded in 1964, it fused Marxism-Leninism with Che Guevara’s foco theory – the idea that a small armed band in a remote rural area can eventually topple the state – and Liberation theology, which framed the struggle against poverty and oppression as an expression of Christian faith. In their pursuit of revolution, the two groups have carried out killings and kidnappings, and forced the confinement and displacement of civilian populations. The Farc demobilised in 2016 after striking a peace deal with the Colombian state, but the ELN says its members will only lay down arms after the country’s political and economic system has been transformed. “The Farc surrendered in exchange for nothing,” said Yerson, adding that subsequent presidents have failed to fully implement the peace deal, while former Farc combatants have been killed. Gustavo Petro, a leftist who was a guerrilla with the defunct M-19 in the 1980s, was elected president in 2022 on a promise of “total peace”, vowing to make good on the Farcdeal and negotiate with all of Colombia’s remaining armed groups on the left and right. But after a few years, almost all the talks – including those with the largest groups – the ELN, the Gulf Clan and Farc dissidents who refused to demobilise in 2016 – either stalled or collapsed. Yerson rejected the idea that the election of Colombia’s first leftist president meant that the ELN’s goals could be achieved through the current political system. “They handed out lands [to the poor]. They did a kind of pension reform. They were looking for ways to improve healthcare,” he said. “But in the end these are small things. They don’t help with the popular awakening.” In Yerson’s telling, Petro was allowed to take power by the “Colombian oligarchy”, which needed to pacify the people after an explosion of inequality protests in 2019 and 2021, but knew he “was never going to undertake fundamental reforms, that he could be controlled”. Colombia’s political system “is not the democracy it claims to be”, he said. “That is where the trap is.” Now the ELN faces a very different proposition in the form of De la Espriella, a Trump-admiring millionaire who rose to prominence as a criminal lawyer representing accused leaders of the AUC, a rightwing paramilitary group that fought the guerrillas and killed civilians accused of collaborating with them.. De la Espriella has given Colombia’s armed groups a month to submit to him or face the consequences, while promising to deepen security cooperation with the US and build mega-prisons inspired by the Salvadoran president, Nayib Bukele. Security analysts, however, say armed groups have gathered strength and resources in recent years. The ELN has about 6,300 members between armed fighters and unarmed support, spread across Colombia and Venezuela. The 60 or so fighters in the camp were evenly split between men and women, indigenous and Afro-Colombian members. “The majority [of the ELN] has always been the poor, the lowest down,” said Yerson. “Here, as Chocó is more Afro-Indigenous, that’s what we are.” Each of them had a modern assault rifle, either an AK-47 or an AR-15, some with “Made in USA” stamped on the body. One also had a .50 calibre sniper rifle, the bullets of which can punch through vehicles, while another flew a drone. The camp was deep in ELN territory, and they were relaxed. When someone took out a portable speaker and began to play vallenatos – popular Colombian folksongs – they left their rifles resting against trees or slung them over their backs and paired up to dance, suddenly looking like the young Colombians they are. Various groups, including the UN and Human Rights Watch, have accused the ELN of recruiting minors – but Yerson said their rules only allow people over 16 to join. It was impossible to verify details of his troops’ backgrounds, as they had been told not to discuss anything sensitive. Yerson presented two women to be interviewed in his presence, who spoke about the hardship of their lives before joining the ELN, but struggled to answer questions, apparently afraid of saying the wrong thing. Yerson himself described the ELN as “a life choice” for Colombia’s poor, who have few options. “Maybe that’s why they join, but once they are here they come to understand why we are fighting,” he said. The ELN functions by taxing “every commercial entity” in the territory it controls, and in Chocó that means illegal gold mining and logging are their key sources of income, said Yerson. It also carries out kidnappings for ransom. “We are an embryonic state, and every state takes taxes,” he said. “If they can strangle us economically, we will cease to exist as a rebel organisation.” Yerson claimed coca cultivation has disappeared in ELN territory in Chocó. He denied the group was involved in the drug trafficking, but acknowledged it taxes the business like any other. The US, which has given its military a new role to take on “narcoterrorism” across the Americas, might not think much of that distinction. “The question of guilt doesn’t matter to the US. What matters to them are interests,” said Yerson. “We are the only guerrilla group with political principles left standing in Colombia and the world. We will always be something they want to destroy.” He says the ELN will not simply be on the defensive, but will strike back where it can. A car bomb attributed to the group exploded outside a police station near the border with Venezuela last week, injuring 12 police officers and three civilians, and drone attacks have become common. “They have to be legitimate objectives. We don’t put car bombs where the civil population will die,” said Yerson, who pointed to the 2019 suicide car bombing of a police academy in Bogotá that killed 22 as a model. “The comrades could go and make kamikaze attacks of that impact.” Despite the election of De la Espriella and other rightwing leaders across the continent, Yerson was adamant that the ELN was not losing the ideological battle. Voters are being deceived, he said, before quoting the South American revolutionary leader Simón Bolívar: “An ignorant people is the blind instrument of its own destruction. “The ideological battle is not being lost,” he repeated, as if irritated by the phrase. “We are on the right side of history.” Asked whether Colombia was any closer to the ELN’s goals after decades of conflict, Yerson was unsure: “I don’t know. But I can tell you that the only way to win things for the people is through the struggle,” he said. “We’ve been in the struggle for 62 years, and there will be many more.”

Thailand school shooting: teen suspect killed at least seven people and injured more than 30, officials say – as it happened

We are closing this blog now. You can read more about the Thailand school shooting in our story here.

Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey sign Nato-style defence pact amid deadly Houthi strikes in Yemen

Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey have signed a mutual defence agreement, placing three of the Muslim world’s most influential states into a Nato-style pact, as Riyadh confronts attacks from Iran-aligned Houthis in Yemen. The Houthis and Saudi Arabia have increased their military exchanges in the past month and the first test of the tripartite pact long in preparation may come in Yemen. On Thursday, one of the deadliest days in the conflict for years, the Houthis killed at least 58 Yemeni government troops in missile and drone attacks, according to a military source. A separate attack into southern Saudi Arabia, bordering Yemen, injured 11 civilians. The three Sunni Muslim-led countries are concerned by increasing regional jeopardy after the US-Israeli war on the Shia government in Iran, with Donald Trump unable to contain ‌the conflict. Although the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said the alliance would be open to other countries, some Iranians consider the new alliance a direct threat to Tehran. Hesamoddin Ashna, a former adviser to the Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, said on social media: “The trilateral agreement alters the rules of the peripheral war. Its immediate effect is the reduction of the threat’s effectiveness against the Gulf countries and an increased likelihood of Turkey and Pakistan entering the conflict in the event of an attack on Saudi Arabia. Its structural effect is the creation of a nucleus for a new security order centred on Riyadh, Ankara and Islamabad.” But other Iranians saw the alliance in a wider, less threatening, context reflecting growing Sunni doubts about the reliability of the US security umbrella, and concerns over Israel’s increasingly assertive regional posture. In this reading, the military alliance is considered an attempt by the region to determine its security architecture itself, rather than have it imposed by outsiders, especially the US. It is disputed whether the Houthi group is acting on the instruction of Iran, or instead, as it insists, trying to lift what it regards as a Saudi blockade of Houthi-controlled territory inside Yemen. The present conflict broke out when an Iranian plane flew to the Houthi-controlled capital, Sana’a, supposedly to transport a Yemen delegation to the funeral of the former Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei. Saudi intelligence claimed the plane was carrying Iranian weaponry for the Houthis. Riyadh has already developed a 10-nation naval coalition that is supposed to protect commercial shipping from Houthi attacks in the Red Sea and the Bab el-Mandeb strait. The Houthis say they are firing only on Saudi-linked shipping, and there is no immediate sign that the naval coalition is deterring the Houthis. A Houthi drone strike on Friday killed a further three members of Yemen’s government in an attack on a military camp in Marib. Ten missiles and seven explosive drones were fired. The Houthis said they were reacting to what appeared to be a large Saudi-led military buildup. Saudi intelligence sources say they are picking up reports not just of increased Houthi hostility but likely attacks on Saudi interests by Iranian-backed militia inside Iraq. Saudi Arabia has been working to persuade Trump not to launch massive attacks on Iran. The Mecca joint defence agreement stipulates that an attack on one country will be deemed an attack on all, but whether any conditions are attached to this collective defence pledge is unclear. A Saudi spokesperson, in response to the Houthi attacks, said it did not “seek escalation but we will not allow the current balance of power on the ground to be changed”. Yemeni sources said recently they believed Saudi Arabia was preparing for a major military offensive against the Houthis by sea and possibly by land in central Yemen, in a move to break their chokehold on Saudi oil exports through the southern Red Sea. In a separate attack early on Friday, a Saudi official accused the Houthis of indiscriminately shelling civilian areas in Saudi Arabia, injuring 11 civilians, including a four-year-old child. Maj Gen Turki al-Maliki, a spokesperson for the Saudi-led military coalition supporting Yemen’s government, said the coalition would continue taking all necessary ⁠measures to protect civilians. The attack was in southern Najran province, and injured seven Saudis, one Yemeni, two Egyptians ⁠and one Pakistani national, al-Maliki said. Neither the Houthis nor Iran immediately commented on Friday’s attack. Saudi Arabia and the Houthis have been vying for control of Yemen for more than a decade, but over the past month an uneasy status quo has unravelled, with the Houthis mounting attacks against Saudi Aramco oil facilities. The Houthi movement, which controls Sana’a and much of Yemen’s Red Sea coastline, declared a naval blockade of Saudi Arabia in the Red Sea last month. Saudi Arabia has been leading a military coalition supporting Yemen’s government against the Houthis since 2015. Yemen, already battered by more than a decade of war, has increasingly been drawn into the regional confrontation centred on Iran. The Houthis abandoned a largely successful 2022 truce with the Saudi-backed government. Separately, after the implosion of the separatist Southern Transitional Council (STC) in the south of Yemen in January, Saudi Arabia took greater responsibility for funding and organising the UN-recognised government in Yemen. The STC leadership overreached in December, trying to take control of the whole of the south, but were beaten back by a surprisingly fierce Saudi reaction. Saudi Arabia has subsequently reconstructed Yemen’s government, excluding southern separatists, but the government is struggling to provide services, and the latent support for separatism in the south remains. The bulk of the STC leadership is in exile or under a form of arrest in Riyadh. Iran and Oman have said negotiations on an agreement over the strait of Hormuz are in the “final stage” of drafting. The agreement is expected to be contingent on the US lifting its blockade on Iran’s ports. The strait is crucial to global shipping and energy supplies. Before the war, which began with US and Israeli strikes on Iran in February, about one-fifth of the world’s traded oil and fossil gas passed through the waterway at the mouth of the Persian Gulf. Reuters, Associated Press and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report

Scramble to house hundreds camping in Rome heatwave after squat eviction

Rome authorities are scrambling to find homes for hundreds of people sleeping in tents in extreme heat after talks aimed at saving Italy’s most high-profile centre for housing and social assistance collapsed amid a crackdown by Giorgia Meloni’s government on squatted buildings. The approximately 400 evicted residents of Spin Time Labs, located in a 10-floor building in Rome’s Esquilino district occupied by grassroots groups since 2013, will not be allowed to move back in after its private owner refused Rome council’s offer to buy the property. The residents were forced out at the end of last month. A spokesperson for Italy’s interior ministry, which had set its sights on shutting down Spin Time, confirmed that the owner had taken repossession of the building “in accordance with the law”. The move has reignited political debate over occupied or squatted buildings, which Meloni’s government regard as dens for criminality – including those supported by leftwing associations. Critics have questioned why Meloni and her coalition allies have long been so decisively against Spin Time while the neofascist CasaPound has occupied a state-owned building in the same neighbourhood for more than 20 years, using the premises as its headquarters. People of all nationalities, about a quarter of them children, were forced to evacuate Spin Time on 29 July after a minor fire, which was quickly extinguished by a group of residents before it could spread. The building was locked up by police during safety checks, before being placed under two judicial seizure orders – one linked to the owner’s long-running legal battle to regain possession and the other to the fire. While some people were accommodated by friends and family, more than 200, including elderly people and those with ill health, have been sleeping in tents outside the building. One child was hospitalised this week after suffering breathing difficulties. Rome’s leftwing council, supported by the Catholic church-run charity Caritas, is now seeking alternative solutions. In an interview on In Onda, a talkshow broadcast on the TV channel LA7, the mayor of Rome, Roberto Gualtieri, said the response to the council’s offer had been an “irrevocable no” and that despite presenting what he believed was the best possible deal he “had the impression that the decision had already been taken”. The owner had cited unspecified legal weaknesses in the proposal, Gualtieri said, adding that he felt “irritated” about the situation. He described Spin Time, which over the past decade has transformed into a space offering various social and cultural services, including a food bank, a restaurant and co-working, as “the mirror of a failure of Italy’s Second Republic, which stripped away a pillar of welfare”. The Second Republic is a political term for the era of government that began in the early 1990s. The initiative has provided a lifeline for hundreds of people, including Marco Perilli, an Italian construction worker who was one of the community’s first residents. He became homeless after a divorce. As of Friday, people were still camped outside. Perilli said they would continue to do so until a real solution was found. “We are trying to understand how things will proceed but we resist and will continue to resist. The owner refusing the offer means Spin Time is over, but for us it’s not over – we will find another space.”

Iran plots to deal Trump a blow in midterms by keeping him entangled in war

Tehran has set out a protracted negotiating timetable designed to keep Donald Trump embroiled in the Iran conflict until the midterm elections, in the hope of inflicting the same ruinous blow on his presidency as Jimmy Carter suffered over the 1979-81 US embassy hostage crisis. For many inside Iran, inflicting meaningful revenge on Trump is a legitimate and self-standing war aim, reflected in the mood of those attending the funeral of the supreme leader Ali Khamenei where demands for retribution were ubiquitous. While Iranian officials since the 1979 Islamic revolution have never trusted the US, that animus is now also directed personally towards Trump. He not only tore up the painfully negotiated nuclear deal in 2018, but he sanctioned the assassination of the military leader Qassem Suleimani and twice involved Iran in negotiations on its nuclear programme only to launch wars against it. He shows no remorse for the killing of the country’s supreme leader, or for the attempt on the life of Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian. As the countdown to November’s midterms begins, what could be Trump’s political demise has become a subject of obsessive speculation in Tehran. Iranian media track the US president’s waning ratings, attributing the decline to the war’s unpopularity and high oil prices. The changing politics of the Democrats is minutely examined. But the focus on the midterms became more obvious this week when the deputy foreign minister, Kazem Gharibabadi, told the official IRNA news agency that after agreeing a route for commercial shipping through the strait of Hormuz, it would take two to four months to reach the second phase of negotiations on Iran’s nuclear programme. The original plan – to commence the nuclear phase of the talks within 30 days of signing June’s memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the US – had been jettisoned by the Trump administration, Gharibabadi said. To get to that second stage, he laid out an obstacle course including the lifting of sanctions, the end of the US blockade of Iranian ports, the unfreezing of Iranian assets and new commitments on non-belligerence in a process that could last well beyond the midterms. If Tehran gets its way on this timetable, Trump will be going to the polls with no Iranian commitment on nuclear weapons, only a hefty economic bill for a failed war. “This raises the very likely scenario of continued cycles of conflict between the US and Tehran over the strait,” said Jason Brodsky from United against a Nuclear Iran, an advocate of the war. “There won’t be any true quiet before the midterm elections – Tehran has no interest in giving this to the Trump administration … It will continue to play games.” Mehr News, an agency close to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, published a piece saying Iran had given Trump a major dilemma. “Continuing the war could increase political and economic pressure on the government and exacerbate the decline in his popularity. On the other hand, backing down, or moving towards reducing tensions, could also be interpreted by some of Trump’s supporters as a retreat from his campaign slogans,” it said. From this perspective, the outcome of this war will not be played out on the battlefield, but at the ballot box. The agency suggested the outcome could affect the course of American domestic and foreign policy for years to come. Few in Iran take Trump’s statements at face value. But his denials that the midterms affect his Iran strategy are treated with special scepticism. Iranian media point to comments from Marc Zell, chair of Republicans Overseas Israel, who has said: “It’s all about the midterms … the American public simply is tired of war and the administration is navigating the pre-election waters adroitly in order to avoid a Democratic takeover of Congress.” Such remarks fuel the debate inside Iran about how much the midterms should be part of Iran’s calculus. Some believe the loss of Congress will inhibit Trump or lead to his impeachment; at the very least, it may mark the end of the war’s funding. Mostafa Zahrani, a former Iranian diplomat, argued electoral defeat “will make it inevitable that Trump will not be able to go back to war and will take the negotiations seriously”. Others such as Nasser Hadian, a professor of international relations at Tehran University, disagree, advocating cashing in on Iran’s victories now rather than waiting for Trump to become weaker. “If he loses, he’ll have less incentive to reach an agreement with Iran, because in that case he’ll be weakened, and Israel and others will find it much easier to attack him – something they don’t dare do now,” he said. “Those who say we should wait for the midterm elections have no understanding of politics in America.” Iran’s pleasure in seeing Trump defeated would indeed be reduced if he felt he had nothing left to lose, but its diplomats overall believe the US president’s freedom to act will be constrained by the unpopularity of more conflict and by Republican presidential candidates’ anxiety to wrap this up. Trump would also be at risk of seeing his whole second term consumed by a disastrous war. The bigger question is what Iran itself wants to achieve. Agreeing to keep the dispute simmering until November is not an answer to that question – one that Iranians are better at debating than resolving. Pezeshkian, working in alliance with Mohammad Ghalibaf, the chief negotiator, repeatedly says he does not want endless war, and insists that almost all the supreme national security council concur. He still has faith in the MoU, saying it should be the cornerstone of Iran’s foreign policy. But the conservative newspaper Kayhan describes the memorandum as worthless since the US always breaks its commitments. “Accordingly, officials should know that the strait of Hormuz is not a bargaining chip and should not be opened as a passage for America,” it said. Both hardliners and moderates envision the war leading to a new regional security architecture. But the hardliners put the emphasis on America’s expulsion and see this as something less to be negotiated and more to be enforced using control of the entry points to the strait of Hormuz as a lever to close US bases. Pezeshkian says he sees a place for legitimate US investment in Iran, while the former foreign minister Javad Zarif, in an essay this week, argued Iran in “a post-polar era would benefit from not depending solely on Russia and China in future”. If Iran developed “a balanced and multifaceted foreign policy”, Tehran would not be forced into relationships based on necessity, he wrote. “Continuing uncontrolled tensions with the United States not only imposes direct costs on Iran, but also makes it more difficult for other countries, even close partners such as China and Russia, to cooperate with Iran.” Just as Trump cannot resolve from one sentence to the next what he thinks of Iran, nor can Iran agree what it thinks it can get from America.

Friday briefing: What the Jason Arday row reveals about equality in modern Britain

Good morning. Instinct told me we should avoid this story. Europe is on fire, Gaza is besieged and Donald Trump remains in control of the world’s largest nuclear arsenal. Allegations against British sociologist Jason Arday of CV-zhuzhing and plagiarism in his PhD thesis (“An exploration of peer-mentoring among student teachers’ to inform reflective practice within the context of action research”) felt rather parochial by comparison. Then there’s the context: 41-year-old Arday was a Black Cambridge professor. It’s hard to believe pure academic rigour motivated his initial accusers or those now engaging in vitriolic DEI-bashing. Others rushed to defend Arday – a well-rehearsed reaction learned from a cycle of bad-faith, culture-war attacks. Many of us simply aren’t sure what to say. And yet … Arday’s case has proved inescapable this week; the fallout now prompting a far-reaching debate about academia, hiring practices, inequity and structural racism; the standards and expectations of Black people in public life. Today, we explore all this, with the help of Guardian columnist and the Long Wave writer Nesrine Malik. That’s after the headlines. Five big stories US news | A federal judge has temporarily halted an order requiring Donald Trump to turn over detailed financial information about his business empire to the BBC as part of an ongoing libel lawsuit. UK politics | The government is “urgently” identifying any grooming gang perpetrators who may still be eligible for early prison release after concerns were raised about a potential loophole in the system. Gaza | Donald Trump’s Board of Peace, which was set up in January to oversee the reconstruction of Gaza, has finally issued its first construction contract: a project to build a military outpost. Heatwave | Temperature records have been broken in several countries across central and eastern Europe as the extreme weather that has caused wildfires and droughts across the continent continues. Science | Scientists have made the first viruses designed by artificial intelligence in a milestone that raises hopes for new medicines but also concerns over how to ensure the technology remains safe. In depth: ‘Why would I lie?’ In First Edition this week, I’ve written about Nigel Farage and Gianni Infantino’s latest scandals. During my reporting, I was struck by the extent of their previous indiscretions, while both have managed to maintain and grow their positions of power. Arday has already resigned. It was only last week that the Telegraph suggested more than 100 passages of his PhD thesis closely resembled the work of another student. That story didn’t appear in isolation. Two academics in particular had been complaining about Arday, Nathan Cofnas and David Harris, both of whom had previously expressed what politely may be called “controversial” views on race. Arday rejected plagiarism claims. An investigation by Liverpool John Moores University, where he completed his doctoral research, did not uphold complaints against him. Cambridge University had previously defended Arday, labelling complaints a “vile smear campaign to undermine his credibility”. Then on Saturday, the Guardian’s Lanre Bakare published a story detailing further claims. Senior academics told Lanre the plagiarism allegations held. “I think it’s plagiarism and it’s obvious,” one said. “There is, in my judgment, a case to answer here,” said another. Lanre’s reporting also looked at other statements Arday has made about his life and career. Arday claimed to have completed 30 marathons in 35 days, to have run 600 miles in six days, and to have raised £5m (sometimes more) for charity, accomplishments he altered on questioning. Arday told the Guardian he had been the target of a series of violent threats: a severed pig’s head sent to his family home; twice he was confronted by an intruder on Cambridge University property, the second time with a knife. Despite extensive investigation – including interviewing the butcher said porcine noggin supposedly came from – the Guardian was unable to find evidence to support these claims. When asked about this, Arday stood by his story. “To be honest with you, I thought you’d just believe me,” he said. “Why would I lie?” On Wednesday, Cambridge University announced it was opening an investigation into Arday. Last night, senior dons at Cambridge demanded an inquiry be held. “I am accountable for the mistakes I’ve made,” Arday said in an interview, adding, “the positioning of me as this kind of liar and fantasist is totally unacceptable”. Lanre spoke to Arday on the phone regularly, and they met twice in person, once at Arday’s flat. “He’s clearly a very intelligent guy,” Lanre tells me, “and seemed very affected by what’s gone on, under a lot of pressure.” Arday was emotional on their first meeting. Lanre thought this was a result of the strain criticism had put on him. “Now I look back and think maybe it was because he knew all sorts was going to come out.” Arday’s memoir, Great and Unfortunate Things, is due to be published this month. It details a remarkable story: raised in a south London council house and diagnosed with autism and global developmental delay, Arday has spoken of only learning to talk at 11, and to read at 18. Aged 37, he became Cambridge University’s youngest ever Black professor. As his publisher says of the upcoming book: “Along the way there were improbable triumphs and heartbreaking setbacks … and more than one occasion when everything seemed poised to fall apart.” *** Tokenism? Nesrine has been closely following this story. “There are so many aspects that one can pick as the defining theme,” she tells me. “DEI and its flaws and weaponisation; expectations – high or low – of Black people in elite society; the resonant and evocative plotline of an alleged fantasist in high academia.” The breadth and complexity of the case makes it challenging to unpick, especially for Black people who live and work within media, academia or politics, and to whom the job of parsing the story falls: “these bourgeois, white-collar spaces that are gatekept by white people” as Nesrine puts it. “It’s difficult,” Nesrine says, “not to feel this is about all of us – and discomfort arises. First, the sense that perhaps you are also perceived as someone who has embellished their capabilities and is being indulged by white people who want a Black face in a certain space.” And secondly, “a more subtle, gnarlier feeling: is there a way in which one has been indulged, held to different standards to white peers, in this post-Black Lives Matter eagerness on the part of liberals to accessorise and to tokenise with Black people?” *** Post-BLM “It was clear at the time when Black Lives Matter (BLM) grew in 2020, that it would be turned into a movement of meaningful, but not material, symbolism,” says Nesrine. As expected, “institutions, primarily staffed and led by white people, did then look for ways to give themselves a break by doing the high-visibility, low impact bare minimum”. Cambridge only had five Black professors when Arday was hired. It’s a conversation that’s long overdue, at least in part due to fears that it’ll be co-opted by the right, Nesrine believes, else progressives will fall “into the trap of dismissing the fundamental value of DEI, representation and visibility”. When in fact, much of what has been constructed in the wake of BLM is “corporate, capitalist, board-led … not the sum of what these big, roaring movements for racial justice have been asking for.” In essence, this is a white version of DEI, where it is possible unqualified people may have been elevated in order to appear acceptable in the face of calls for racial justice. Nesrine says that it would be negligent not to consider that Arday’s rise, and rapid fall, is a consequence of these institutional responses. Yes, any academic could be proved a cheat or a liar; many have. “But having thoroughly interrogated it, it appears that so much was allowed to pass, both in terms of alleged plagiarism and sloppiness, because the reward was having a Black person from such a completely different background burnish the institution’s credentials.” *** The gatekeepers That doesn’t mean we should dismiss the potential of lofty institutions to tackle racial inequality and injustice, Nesrine adds. It’s about calibration. “Racial justice must be a coordinated effort that cascades down across the classes. Yes, in the boardroom and the academy and the corporate world; yes in prisons and in the Home Office and in policing.” This, says Nesrine, is where whatever we wish to call those who preside over these environments – the progressive left, liberal institutions, the political establishment – have “colossally failed to take the demands and energy of these racial justice movements seriously, or convert them into anything meaningful”. Instead, they wanted symbols and gestures and easy fixes. “Not to figure out what to do about poverty, social mobility, safety. The difficult, practical things.” At this moment, Nesrine says, to focus exclusively on Arday is negligent: “Really, it’s a story about the white liberals, and the world they create in which Black people thrive or not.” Expectations and standards for Black people, Nesrine continues, change quickly and dramatically, and often collide. “In certain instances the feeling is that one has to be extremely high-achieving and rigorous and do 10 times better than your average white counterpart to be let in,” she says, “In others, it appears that a really good backstory can be retold for institutional plaudits”. “This white liberal marketplace creates models of achievement for Black people to try to adhere to. That’s the way in. And the positions are so few, and the reward so high.” Nesrine is clear – this isn’t about agreeing with or justifying Arday’s actions. “I’m just saying that, as far as Black minorities are concerned, none of this happens on their own terms.” What else we’ve been enjoying I loved reading about this incredibly noisy creature, whose spectacular racket sounds like “a jet taking off” for our invertebrate of the year series. Poppy I’d not heard about Raz Segal’s case until I read Alice Speri’s reporting: the Israeli professor had a job university offer withdrawn after labelling Israel’s actions in Gaza “a textbook case of genocide”. Michael Our profile of Alessia Russo gave me the hugest sense of joy. Talking about how her love for the team has grown and what it was like for her to take part in the Arsenal parade. Poppy I scored embarrassingly poorly on this fun, modern dating terms quiz, but at least I learned something about the perils of being Shrekked. Michael I thought Zoe Williams was very good, on the dilemma of how to process someones’ death – and how to honour their character in the aftermath, and how it applies to Rod Liddle. Poppy Sport Cycling | Marlen Reusser retained the overall lead in the Tour de France Femmes from rival Demi Vollering after another broiling stage through central France saw Kim Le Court take the second Tour stage win of her career in Tournon-sur-Rhone. Football | Uefa has doubled down on its threat to boycott Fifa-run competitions and reiterated its loss of confidence in Gianni Infantino’s presidency. Athletics | London has submitted its bid for the 2029 World Athletics Championships after reaching an agreement with West Ham to allow it to host the event in September. Something for the weekend Our critics’ roundup of the best things to watch, read, play and listen to right now TV The Shards | ★★★★★ It looks as though uber-showrunner Ryan Murphy has pulled out of his dive and is beginning to find his glorious groove again. The Shards, Murphy’s adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’s metafictional/autobiographical novel of the same name, is a marriage made in pop-culture heaven. It is the 80s, it is Los Angeles and so, as well as metaphors for the coming Aids epidemic, there is a literal killer at work. Young women get heavy-breather phone calls, go missing and then turn up horribly mutilated and deeply dead. By the time the third victim is found, the serial killer has been nicknamed the Trawler and bloody pentagrams are appearing on doors and in homes, leading to the city living in fear. The serial killer storyline pulls the story along, but its heart is in the longing for an era gone by, for youth flown, even with all its sorrows and insecurities. Lucy Mangan Music Ravyn Lenae: Blue Island | ★★★★☆ The first thing you hear on Blue Island is another earworm pop chorus, followed by a squeal of feedback and a distorted electric guitar arpeggio that feels faintly grungy. Lenae’s list of inspirations for the album features not just Santigold and Janet Jackson but Blondie, the Cranberries, the Sundays and, most surprisingly, Martin Rev. And there’s palpable glee in the album’s sudden stylistic shifts. The 90s R&B-infused Never Let Me Go and Babygirl rub up against In & Out’s sparkly alt-rock; Potential proceeds along prettily enough in pop-ballad form before it unexpectedly erupts into a squall of guitar noise and a ferocious, juddering rhythm that sounds remarkably like Squarepusher or Aphex Twin. Blue Island isn’t as jarring as that suggests, partly because of the unifying power of Lenae’s voice – a lovely, breathy soprano – but largely because the writing is buffed to a state of pop perfection. Its collage of styles makes for an original, idiosyncratic pop album. Alexis Petridis Film Hunt for the Wilderpeople | ★★★★☆ The recent sad loss of Sam Neill is a great opportunity to revisit one of his greatest roles, in this tremendous family film from 2016, a goofy mix of Butch and Sundance and Chaplin’s The Kid. Neill plays Hector, a grouchy old buzzard who works on a farm on New Zealand’s North Island. The property is owned by his big-hearted wife Bella (Rima Te Wiata) who works as a foster parent, regularly taking in troubled kids. Glum, taciturn Hector is not best pleased when Bella takes in Ricky, the toughest and most recalcitrant teen the state authorities have ever dealt with. But then an awful fate intervenes and Hector and Ricky go on the run together in the jungle, being tracked by the pitiless forces of the state who want to put the boy into “juvie”. Neill gives a lovely, gentle and wise performance. Peter Bradshaw Game Big Walk (Switch 2, PS5, PC) | ★★★★☆ A brilliant and whimsical new online co-op puzzler from House House, the Melbourne-based studio behind the 2019 viral hit, Untitled Goose Game. You are a bug-eyed, gangly limbed kind of bird person, and you and up to 12 players step out into a somewhat eerily photorealistic open world to uncover its mysteries. Quickly, you come across challenges which veer from the straightforward to the brain-scrambling. The beauty of Big Walk lies in how it tasks you with working together, conversing verbally and physically, to access its most enchanting sights. Big Walk eschews the pernicious aspects of digital life for a gentler, less overbearing experience that seems expressly designed to foster enriching connections and childlike playfulness. Lewis Gordon The front pages “Cambridge ‘unleashed grotesque racism’ with Arday appointment”, is the Guardian’s front page. The Times writes “Fraud alert over loans to foreign students”, the Telegraph has “Tories to end social housing for foreigners”, and the Mail says “Foreign nationals face social housing ban under Tories”. Elsewhere, the FT splashes “EasyJet accepts £5.7bn Apollo offer in latest foreign swoop”. The Express writes “We are failing sex gang victims once again”. The Mirror has “Andrew: My ‘stalker ordeal’”, while the i Paper says “Every river and lake in England polluted with toxic chemicals”. Lastly, Metro leads on “Sitting room only at pubs?” The Latest Why has Kemi Badenoch given a former neo-Nazi an advisory role? Joshua Bonehill-Paine, a former neo-Nazi activist, has been offered a role as an adviser to the Conservative party by Kemi Badenoch after he withdrew as a Tory candidate for next year’s local elections. The role will reportedly be focused on how young men become radicalised. Bonehill-Paine was convicted of harassing a Jewish MP and has previously described himself as a ‘nationalist, fascist, theorist and supporter of white rights’. He says he has carried out counter-extremism work since he was released from prison. Lucy Hough speaks to the Guardian political correspondent Ben Quinn. Cartoon of the day | Rebecca Hendin The Upside A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad Bogotá, Colombia is a city celebrated as a cycling success-story – nearly 900,000 bicycle trips are made daily across the city of 10 million people. Yet women account for only 28% of those trips, a 2023 survey found – a statistic that city officials are looking to address as part of their bid to become carbon neutral by 2050. Schemes such as the Mamacitas en Bici, set up in 2018 by Eliana González, are encouraging and empowering mothers and caregivers to see cycling as a viable option. “I realised how important it is to have safe spaces where we can move through the world as women, in a body that is treated differently by society and subjected to violence,” she says. Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday Bored at work? And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow. Quick crossword Cryptic crossword Wordiply

Extreme heat breaks temperature records in central and eastern Europe

Temperature records have been broken in several countries across central and eastern Europe as the extreme weather that has caused wildfires and droughts across the continent continues. Countries including Slovakia, Austria and Hungary registered record temperatures. On Thursday, the Slovakian hydrometeorological agency said a new high of 42C (108F) had been reached in Dolné Plachtince. Authorities in Poland were forced to shut down the Kozienice and Połaniec coal-fired power plants after critically low water levels in the Vistula River limited cooling water supplies. The disruption removed about 1.3GW of capacity from Poland’s power system. On Wednesday, the Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, had urged employers to look after their staff and provide air conditioning and cold water. In Germany, climate activists demanding an end to the use of fossil fuels demonstrated outside the chancellery against the lack of government action to keep people safe from extreme heat. An estimated 11,900 people across the country have died from heat this summer, according to new estimates from the Robert Koch Institute. “This extreme heat and its consequences are the result of a fossil fuel policy that is completely irresponsible and extremely dangerous,” said Annkatrin Schwirten, from Fridays for Future Berlin. “We must not become accustomed to thousands of heat-related deaths every summer.” The Hungarian prime minister, Péter Magyar, wrote on X on Thursday that the nuclear power station which had been temporarily powered down would be going back online. “Good news: we are already nine centimeters above the Danube’s Sunday low point, and rain is expected in the Austrian catchment areas,” he wrote. “One of the turbines at the Paks nuclear power plant is operating. Regardless of this, on today’s hot day there will still be a strong need for voluntary reductions in electricity consumption.” The brutal heat and continuing drought conditions are being supercharged by the escalating climate crisis, and experts warn these are putting huge pressure on local populations, critical infrastructure and wildlife across the region. Paweł Pomian, from EKO-UNIA, a Polish environmental organisation, said “power plants driving climate change were increasingly becoming its victims”, adding that the impact of this summer’s extreme conditions, fuelled by the burning of fossil fuels, should be a “wake-up call not only for Poland, but for the whole of Europe”. “The faster we develop wind and solar power – technologies that require the least water to generate electricity – the better we can protect both energy security and our rivers,” he said. The scorching heatwaves have also deprived vegetation of moisture and primed much of the continent for wildfires. About half a million hectares have burned across the EU since the start of the year, mostly in Spain and France, according to data published by the European Forest Fire Information System on Thursday. A further 292,000 hectares (721,000 acres) have burned in Ukraine. The severity of fire weather – the hot, dry and windy conditions that make it harder to battle blazes when they break out – has set new records for the time of year, by alarming margins in some countries. In Austria, which had a record high temperature of 41.2C on Wednesday, cumulative fire weather is more than twice as severe as the previous record for this time of year. In Czechia, which registered a new national temperature record earlier in the summer, fire weather by early August was more than 50% worse than the previous record, and in Slovakia it was 32% worse. Last week, a rapid analysis by the World Weather Attribution consortium found that global heating had made last month’s hot, dry and windy weather at least 20 times more likely in Spain and twice as likely in France.