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Netanyahu rejects US-led 15-point Gaza peace plan in rare public break with Trump

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has rejected a US-backed 15-point peace plan for Gaza in a rare public break with Donald Trump. In a statement on Sunday, Netanyahu said that he was confronting a “wave of rumours about Israeli weakness and Israeli withdrawals on all fronts” and rebuked US pressure to end wars in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran without Israel’s buy-in. On Gaza, he said: “Israel does not accept the 15-point document. The IDF will not carry out any withdrawal until Hamas is disarmed. And when I say the disarming of Hamas, it means heavy weaponry, lighter weaponry, all weaponry. And we are talking about genuine disarmament, not fictitious disarmament. Right now, we are talking with the Americans about this issue.” Trump’s Board of Peace in July proposed the 15-point plan, which mandated that Hamas disarm in exchange for providing a full Israeli military withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and an eventual transition of power to an independent Palestinian National Committee. Trump had said that the agreement would be implemented in stages, but Netanyahu on Sunday said that he wanted a full disarmament first in order to implement the deal. The Israeli leader’s main target in his remarks was the US. Israel has emerged as a key stumbling block in the Trump White House’s plans to broker peace in the region, in Israel’s conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon as well as in the war begun by joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran. And Netanyahu, who is facing tough elections in October and pressure from hardliners in his own government, appears ready to test his relationship with Trump in public in order to shore up his reputation as a defender of Israel at home. Israel had already signalled that it would reject the US-led plan. Soon after Trump announced it last month, Israel stepped up its bombing campaign in the Palestinian territory – strikes killed 18 people last Sunday. Netanyahu’s office had previously indicated it would not back the plan, saying: “The version that has been made public does not reflect Israel’s positions.” But Sunday’s rejection was far more forceful and direct, and appeared targeted at the Trump White House, as Trump and Netanyahu both face difficult elections. “Unlike all those who lecture us, we do what needs to be done for Israel’s security, and we can and know how to stand our ground, even against our best friends when necessary,” Netanyahu said. The head of Trump’s Board of Peace hit back on Sunday, saying the plan remained the “only way forward”. Nickolay Mladenov, the board’s high representative for Gaza, told Israeli television: “The option we are offering today is the only way forward that ensures this tragedy does not happen again.” Netanyahu’s rejection is a blow to Trump’s desire to be seen as a broker of peace in foreign conflicts. With US midterm elections due in November, the White House is desperate to negotiate a peace in Iran in order to reopen the strait of Hormuz and help bring down oil and petrol prices. But the conflicts in the Middle East are interconnected and parallel US efforts have continued to bring peace to Lebanon, where Israel has occupied land in what it says is a buffer zone against Hezbollah, and Gaza, where Gulf allies of the US have decried what they say is an ethnic cleansing campaign being carried out by Israel. Like US presidents before him, Trump has found that Netanyahu can be a difficult ally. Bill Clinton, after meeting Netanyahu for the first time in 1996, is reported to have said: “Who’s the fucking superpower here?” More recently, the Biden administration found that its concerns about the human toll in Gaza were ignored, but continued to publicly back Netanyahu and did not significantly suspend military aid to the country for fear of the political blowback that Netanyahu and his allies in the US could cause. In Trump, however, Netanyahu has found a far more unorthodox and unpredictable counterpart in the White House. Netanyahu is a natural ally for Trump, and he has attacked Democrats before the midterm elections for being weak on supporting Israel. Yet more broadly, support for Israel and its war in Gaza is eroding in the Democratic party, and the Republicans have a presidential frontrunner for 2028 in the vice-president, JD Vance, who is publicly sceptical of Israel and the war in Gaza. Trump will have to decide whether to increase pressure on Netanyahu, potentially alienating some pro-Israel allies, or to allow his efforts for a Gaza peace plan to stall, perhaps indefinitely. The answer will depend heavily on the US president’s own political instincts – are US voters hoping to see Trump emerge as a statesman capable of ending one of the world’s bloodiest recent wars in Gaza, or would a public clash with Netanyahu provoke a revolt among his base? With both countries entering tumultuous election cycles and a generational shift in support for Israel among US voters, the result could redraw the alliance between Israel and the US.

Netanyahu rejects Trump’s Gaza plan and vows no withdrawal until Hamas disarms – as it happened

We’re wrapping our live coverage of the Middle East crisis for today. Here are Sunday’s top developments: Israel has rebuffed Donald Trump’s Gaza plan. The country said it would not leave Gaza unless Hamas was “genuinely” disarmed. Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that they were discussing their concerns with the US. “They have ideas; some of them are acceptable to us and some are not, and we know how to stand our ground on these matters,” Netanyahu said. Donald Trump said he’s “low keying it” with Iran as the Strait of Hormuz remains closed. Trump’s comments to Axios came after Iran said it would not agree to a deal until the US met its demands, which included never speaking insulting the country. “We are only semi-negotiating with them,” Trump also told Axios. Although Donald Trump has rebuffed claims that the US is running low on weapons crucial to its war on Iran, a leaked memo indicates that his military leadership is concerned by falling stockpiles. Per the Washington Post, deputy US defense secretary Steve Feinberg on Wednesday told defense industry leaders that they must “drive significantly faster, more aggressive delivery schedules and/or increased production for critical capabilities.” Meanwhile, Trump’s war on Iran continues to draw prominent criticism in the US. New York’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Trump’s complaints about rising costs clash with his policies that has made daily life more expensive. “Donald Trump may be saying that oil companies are making too much money, but what Donald Trump is doing is starting a reckless war in Iran, having closed door meetings with oil companies before his election, saying, you know, you give me money, you give me campaign contributions, and I will do whatever you want,” Ocasio-Cortez said on ABC.

Canadian government steps in as ‘out of control’ wildfires force thousands to flee

Canada’s federal government has announced it will provide urgent assistance to British Columbia after an onslaught of unprecedented fast-moving wildfires forced about 22,000 people to flee their homes in frantic evacuations. A total of 102 wildfires were raging across the province on Sunday, of which nearly half were categorised as “out of control”, according to the BC Wildfire Service. Of those fires, 78 ignited during the past week. The entire community of Summerland, about 30 miles south-west of the city of Kelowna and home to about 12,000 people, was evacuated overnight on Saturday, along with a further 8,000 people around nearby Peachland. About 10,000 others have been told to prepare to evacuate at a moment’s notice. “I approved a request for federal assistance from British Columbia to provide shelter and accommodations for people who have been forced to leave their homes,” said Eleanor Olszewski, Canada’s minister of emergency management and community resilience in a social media post on Sunday. “I have tasked federal officials, led by the government operations centre at Public Safety ‌Canada, to work with the province to ensure support reaches those who need it most,” she said. Efforts to battle the Bald Range wildfire have been hampered by the breakneck speed of its spread. The blaze was first detected late on Friday evening, and grew within hours to more than 40 sq miles (100 sq km) – nearly twice the size of the island of Manhattan – as it raced nearly nine miles toward Okanagan Lake. The province’s premier, David Eby, declared a state of emergency late on Saturday, telling reporters that the blaze had been “like a bomb going off.” Cliff Chapman, BC Wildfire Service’s director of provincial operations, said the prolonged hot and dry weather the province has faced this summer had resulted in “explosive” fire conditions never seen before. Lightning caused by thunderstorms forecast this week could make the situation still worse, he said. Residents were shaken awake in the middle of the night to flee their homes. Jennifer Pascoa, who lives in Summerland, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that she had begun to pack when she saw flames licking the nearby mountains. “It happened so quickly. We came home from the beach, we saw the plume of smoke, and then within an hour, the sky was covered in dark, black clouds,” she said. The British Columbia Wildfire Service said 10 standard helicopters and one night-vision helicopter were involved in the response, but had been hindered by thick smoke, turbulence and large fires. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the country’s federal police force, said they were investigating a possible fatality in the fire near Summerland. Mike Flannigan, a professor of wildland fire at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, BC, said the rapidity of the fires’ spread was indicative of increasingly extreme blazes springing up in Canada and the US. Southern BC and the pacific north-west in the US had had little to no rain in the past six weeks, leaving the regions “bone dry”, he said. “You walk through the forest, it crunches; if you look sideways, you start a fire.” These conditions were being driven by human-caused climate change, he said. “We’re seeing higher intensity fires today than the past … the shorter the timeframe, the more challenging it is.” Before this decade, fire agencies’ policy was that if a blaze was 20km (12 miles) away from a community, there was no cause for immediate concern. The ferocity and speed of these fires meant that such calculations no longer held, said Flannigan, warning that all homes in at-risk regions should have an emergency kit ready to go. “If a fire can run 60km in a day, you should be worried about it,” he said. The Bald Range fire was also an example of how fires could metastasise through the night, he said. Traditional firefighting practices would usually give firefighters a break during nightfall, as the cooler air would slow the burning. “That’s not the case any more. The fire roars through the evening, through the night, and we’re seeing this more and more,” he said. Drought and the sheer power and size of the fires during the day allow them to keep momentum even in the dark. Fire management agencies in BC and Alberta now fight fires after dark using night-vision helicopters. Current conditions indicated that the fire season in BC and the US states of Washington and Oregon could extend into the autumn, Flannigan said. “It looks grim … there’s no rain,” he said, adding that, like California, Canada may begin to have “fire years” instead of a summer fire season. “I’m scared for the coming weeks,” he said.

Alleged crime boss Daniel Kinahan’s return to Ireland ends global game of cat-and-mouse

A decade after escaping assassination and fleeing into exile, Daniel Kinahan is back in Ireland – but it is not the homecoming he wanted. The alleged leader of the Kinahan organised crime group was extradited from Dubai in an Irish government jet on Sunday and met by a huge security operation in Dublin, marking the end of a global game of cat and mouse with European, US and Gulf authorities. The 49-year-old landed at Casement aerodrome in Dublin on Sunday evening and was taken to the criminal courts of justice in central Dublin to be charged with directing organised crime. A judge told Kinahan that, because of the charge, an application for bail would have to be made to the high court. Kinahan said: “I understand. I think we know I won’t be getting bail, but thank you.” He was then taken 50 miles outside the city to his new home in Portlaoise prison. Tabloid headlines anticipated his return with glee. “Du-Bye!” said one. “Dan and Dusted,” said another. “Kin Air: He’s Coming Home,” said another. It is a moment long sought by law enforcement agencies that named Kinahan as a leader of a cartel said to control about a third of Europe’s cocaine supply, along with running criminal sidelines in firearms and racketeering. As the founder of the boxing management company MTK Global, the Dubliner was also an influential figure in sports and boasted of friendships with Tyson Fury and other champions. Kinahan has not been tried but is braced for conviction and a long sentence, according to clips of an interview that he gave by phone from Dubai to the podcaster James English. “I think I’ve already got life in prison. And we have to go through the dance now.” The married father of five said he had “not been an angel” but that accusations against him were overblown. “I believe in a way I’m a scapegoat.” He had not laundered money through boxing promotion, he said, rebutting one of the allegations against him. Kinahan said he looked forward to familiar Irish treats such as a crisp sandwich. “Get back home and have a little bit of batch bread and a packet of King crisps or Tayto.” The bravado, or fatalism, could not disguise a dramatic fall. From gilded opulence in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), allegedly at the helm of a criminal empire worth hundreds of millions of euros, Kinahan will reportedly become an inmate at the maximum-security A5 unit within A block at Portlaoise. His father, Christopher Kinahan, launched a family enterprise in the 1980s by importing heroin into Dublin. A polished figure with university degrees and a facility for languages, Kinahan senior, better known as Christy, was convicted of drug offences and money laundering while creating a network that spanned Latin America, north Africa, the UK and continental Europe. In 2009, a US diplomatic cable named his son Daniel as “an Irish businessman involved in narco-trafficking throughout Europe”. Soon after, Spanish authorities arrested Christy and Daniel and seized assets, but the Kinahans emerged largely unscathed. That changed when a murderous feud with the rival Hutch gang piled up corpses and led to an audacious but unsuccessful attempt on Daniel’s life at a boxing weigh-in at Dublin’s Regency hotel in February 2016. The death of one man, David Byrne, fuelled further killings. Kinahan was never again seen in public in Ireland and operated from southern Spain before settling in Dubai in the UAE, which had no extradition agreement with Ireland. With his father and brother Christopher junior, Daniel remained alert to surveillance attempts but lived openly and turned MTK Global into a boxing powerhouse. That apparent untouchability evaporated in 2022 when the US offered a reward of up to $15m for information that led to the arrest or conviction of the trio. Washington had been reluctant to get involved until lobbied by the then assistant garda commissioner John O’Driscoll, Greg Gatjanis, who ran the US national security council’s strategy for transnational organised crime, told the MacGill summer school last month. “To this day I hold Ireland, the gardaí, as the model [for international manhunts] of how they handled the Kinahan organisation,” said Gatjanis. “Their drug empire probably did not touch the US, but then he started talking about the effects of the Kinahan organisation and the terror they were inflicting. I went from telling him I couldn’t accommodate sanctions because I could not make a case for it to agreeing to starting up an investigation, and that began the entire sanction investigation.” In May 2025 Ireland agreed an extradition treaty with the UAE and the net began to close. Sean McGovern, a cartel lieutenant wanted for murder and directing organised crime, was extradited that month and jailed for 24 years. Daniel Kinahan was arrested in April this year. UAE authorities rejected his appeal last month, clearing the way for extradition. Irish military personnel are expected to reinforce police during Kinahan’s transfers to court and prison. Kinahan told the podcast he would be subject to a “circus” and “character assassination”. Gatjanis said no organised crime group lasted for ever. “It’s born, it crawls, walks, runs, starts to decline, ultimately dies.”

‘I was on my honeymoon!’: Hamish Falconer’s surprise call-up to Burnham’s cabinet

When Hamish Falconer left his career as a Foreign Office diplomat for the hostile environment of a Labour party selection process, one of his last acts was a negotiation to free six hostages from the Taliban. When he won the key marginal seat of Lincoln in the 2024 general election, he did not expect to be back in those offices on King Charles Street quite so quickly – he was appointed Middle East minister just two weeks later. Two years on, he is one among the first three of his generation of MPs to reach the cabinet, and he is back around the negotiating table, this time with the EU. One of his oldest friends, Anneliese Midgley, is another of the three MPs from the 2024 intake to reach the cabinet, as Andy Burnham’s chief whip. Falconer had trusted Midgley – a close confidant of Burnham – to keep him in the loop about cabinet moves. But the tight secrecy of Burnham’s first appointment meant that he was caught off guard by his promotion, while on his honeymoon in Greece. “We got married in June but delayed the honeymoon until recess, and thought: what could possibly go wrong?” he said. “I thought it would be fine; Midge hasn’t told me not to go. Within 24 hours, I got a call saying: ‘Sorry, you have to look at flights.’ I was like: ‘I’m on my honeymoon!’ And the vibe was: you sort of have to be here for your first cabinet meeting. “So a combination of flights managed to get me back and forth, but on the 5am Jet2 flight, I might have been the only person wearing a suit.” He will attend cabinet as minister for European relations, taking the reins of negotiations with the EU for the next joint summit. While he is careful to praise his predecessor, Nick Thomas-Symonds, Falconer said he wanted to up the speed and ambition of deepening ties with the EU. “This is right at the centre of everything this government is trying to do: cost of living, energy,” he said. “Yes, there are some technical questions we need to get right. But the bigger picture is there is a massive wider European agenda. We want to be part of those discussions on security, defence, tech, about where Europe is going.” Falconer is the second generation of his family to attend cabinet – his father, Charlie Falconer, was Tony Blair’s justice secretary. He was long tipped as one of the most ambitious of the new intake of Labour MPs and has spent much of the past two years flying to summits and negotiations on Gaza and Iran. He has answered a record-breaking number of urgent questions in the House of Commons from MPs, on Israel and Gaza, Iran and Sudan and the Chagos Islands. “I found it so strange coming back into the Foreign Office, where apparently I still had stuff I had left there,” he said. “People I knew incredibly well, people I’d had dysentery with in South Sudan, they wouldn’t call me Hamish any more, they would only call me minister. So it was a real head-spin.” When Falconer took on the brief – nine months after the 7 October Hamas massacre and the subsequent Israeli onslaught on Gaza – there was deep suspicion of Labour because of Starmer’s early comments about the right of Israel to cut off energy and water to Gaza. Burnham has since apologised for how disillusioned many voters became with Labour over those comments. “I came in with this knowledge that there had been a lot of upset and concern about what Keir had said … the LBC interview, and so I was determined that we would make a real contribution,” Falconer said. “I feel so proud to be the first Middle East minister who recognised the Palestinian state. I will literally never forget the kids we helped rescue from Gaza, all the students who started their lives here.” But it never felt like enough, Falconer admits. Many in his party wished the government could have gone much further with evacuations, aid and sanctions. “It was a terribly difficult job to do for two years because I would feel that the country was desperate not to see the horrors of Gaza continue … they couldn’t bear – rightly – that there was malnutrition among children, that there was still terrible loss of life,” he said. “There are so many incidents that were burned into my mind. I think over the last two years we did really important and historic things. But nobody could look at the last two years in the Middle East and not feel just such a depth of sadness. And my God, I carried that with me, and will still carry that with me.” Falconer is speaking from his constituency office in Lincoln, yards from the cathedral in a city which is the sole patch of red in a county once solidly Conservative but where Reform have been growing dominant. It is home to the constituency of the Reform UK deputy leader Richard Tice, and the mayor is the former Conservative MP turned Reform UK defector Andrea Jenkyns. There is a palpable sense of relief from Falconer that Labour has some chance, under Burnham, to get another public hearing. “I can see what the alternative is. I see it every day. I work with a Reform mayor – actually that’s probably overstating how practical a conversation I can have,” he said. “I really know what is at stake because it is right outside my city, and this is such an important battle to get right. “The truth is, the right are not offering any answers for the country. I could have snorted with laughter at some of the proposals that were being made by Reform in recent weeks, which were so obviously unserious.” Burnham’s key weak spot has often been said to be foreign policy – and he has made it known he intends to spend far less time on the world stage than his predecessor, which has worried some officials and international leaders who admired Starmer’s commitment to Ukraine and to diplomacy in the Middle East. Falconer said it was “not fair” to describe the prime minister as uninterested. “I’ve known Andy a long time. He is incredibly engaged,” he said. “He’s someone who is good at forming relationships, and that’s so important in international relations.” But the “Makerfield test” should still be applied to foreign policy, how actions will affect the kinds of voters who delivered Burnham his landslide in his Wigan byelection. “It’s not a hard or complicated test,” Falconer said. “I am really focused on delivering something that my constituents will feel in their day-to-day lives. In my constituency office, I’m sat across from a small gas turbine producer. I want to make it easier for them to trade in Europe, to continue to grow. “I know through my job, I can make that better. That is true of businesses right across the city. That is what I think the Makerfield test, the Lincoln test, is all about.”

Italy condemns Spain’s ‘unacceptable’ border controls as Ceuta fallout intensifies

Italy’s foreign minister has called Spain’s decision to impose retaliatory checks on travellers from Italy “incomprehensible and completely unacceptable” as people making their way between the two EU countries were left grappling with the effects of the escalating feud. Spain started carrying out spot checks on visitors from Italy at midnight on Saturday. The tit-for-tat move came after Rome infuriated Madrid by launching checks on 1 August for travellers from Spain in response to the recent influx of about 72,000 people into Ceuta, a Spanish territory in north Africa. Spanish officials were swift to point out that the Italian checks made little sense, given that by 1 August, the border in Ceuta was back under control and the vast majority of those who had arrived had been returned to Morocco. Ceuta is not part of the Schengen free-movement zone, Madrid has repeatedly stressed, meaning there is little chance of onward travel to continental Europe without EU citizenship or residency. The checks by Italy had led to “intolerable” scenes at Italian airports, Spain’s foreign minister, José Manuel Albares, told reporters. “This measure is, first and foremost, an attack on the dignity of the Spanish people, but, secondly, it is a torpedo fired at the hull of European unity,” he said. In an interview published on Sunday in La Stampa, Italy’s foreign minister defended the move by Rome. “Some order needs to be brought in: we’re not against Spain, but we have a duty to protect our borders,” said Antonio Tajani, voicing concerns about some of the migrants potentially holding jihadist views. “What is incomprehensible and completely unacceptable is Spain’s reaction.” He pushed back against the suggestion that Rome’s actions were symbolic, given the remote possibility of anyone making it to Italy from Ceuta. “Where do they go after arriving in Spain? Italy, as a destination, is the country most at risk. We’re not Germany or Norway.” When asked if Italy’s response was proportionate, Tajani pointed to the reports of fresh calls online for a mid-August mass crossing. “We hope to be able to lift the suspension soon, as soon as the risk is no longer present,” he said. Italy’s interior minister publicly praised Spain last week for its handling of the crisis, but Tajani blasted Spain for not being “as vigilant” as it should have been. He linked the influx to Spain’s recent regularisation programme, describing the move to provide working migrants with papers as a “negative message that puts everyone’s safety at risk,” despite the EU’s earlier dismissal of any connection between the Ceuta influx and regularisation. Italy’s government has long criticised Spain’s efforts to regularise undocumented migrants, even as it quietly works on similar plans to give nearly 1.1 million work permits to foreign workers by 2028. Speaking to the Financial Times, one researcher described the Italian government’s efforts as a “disguised amnesty.” Spain and Italy both have a long history of regularisation programmes. In 2002, Tajani’s party, Forza Italia, carried out one of Italy’s largest such programmes, issuing just over 634,000 permits. Even so, the perception of differences in their approach to migration has pitted Madrid and Rome against each other, with Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, seeking to position herself as a hardliner on migration while Spain’s Pedro Sánchez – who has defended the need for foreign workers to grow Spain’s economy and stave off demographic collapse – said Italy had registered the highest number of irregular crossings in recent years in the EU, with figures that are double those of Spain. In recent days, the row has widened to include people making their way between the two countries, a route used by more than 8 million last year. “It’s ridiculous that we’re in this situation,” Elisa Fabbri, 41, told Spanish news site Eldiario.es as she left Madrid-Barajas airport on Saturday. Israel Pérez, a Cuban-born Spanish citizen, described it as an “absurd spiral” that risked pulling everyone down. “If we keep imposing checks on each other, in the end we’ll all end up losing,” he said. “This shouldn’t be happening between two European countries.” In Italy, opposition politicians accused Meloni of unleashing an “unfounded diplomatic crisis” that would ultimately harm Italians. “The cynical propaganda of the Meloni government has produced what was predictable: a boomerang that Italians will pay dearly for,” said Nicola Fratoianni, the leader of the Greens and Left Alliance. “This is a colossal mistake.” The EU commissioner for migration, Magnus Brunner, said on Saturday that he had been in contact with the interior ministers of the two countries. “Both confirmed that the internal border controls are temporary,” he said on social media. “Spanish authorities assured us the events in Ceuta will have no lasting effect on the Schengen area. That is why there are signals from Italy that controls could be lifted soon.” The row between Rome and Madrid after the events in Ceuta hints at sensitivities over migration across the EU, particularly as governments in Italy, France and Poland prepare to face off against far-right challengers in upcoming elections. But the latest Eurobarometer poll, which tracks public opinions every quarter, suggests the focus on migration may be out of step with Europeans’ top priorities. When asked about the topics that should be a priority for the European parliament, migration ranked sixth, behind issues such as the cost of living, the defence and security of the EU and the economy and job creation.

Most X accounts posting about Belfast and Southampton unrest were based outside UK

More than half the accounts that posted on Elon Musk’s X about the rioting in Belfast and the civil disorder in Southampton in June were based outside the UK, an analysis by the Guardian can reveal. Of the 8,672 accounts whose combined posts about the events exceeded 1,000 views, just 45.3% were shown as from the UK, according to the social media platform’s own location function. One in six (16.8%) came from the US, 4.5% from Ireland, and about a quarter from all European countries other than the UK. Seven of the 12 most-read tweets about Belfast and Southampton came from the US – including one from Musk himself and two other US “alt-right” commentators – while an eighth was linked to North America. The analysis underlines that US rightwing actors are seeking to influence the UK and boost their position on X in moments of disorder – an exploitation of flashpoint events that has only intermittently attracted political attention in Britain. Nearly a third of all 43,000 posts on X relating to the two incidents contained racist or anti-immigration comments. Almost one in 10 relating to Belfast contained calls for violence or paramilitary or vigilante action. Imran Ahmed, the chief executive of the Centre for Countering Digital Hate, said the data demonstrated that X had become “a weapon of choice” for hostile foreign actors seeking to manipulate shocking and divisive content. Their goal, he added, was “to amplify local tragedies and crises, intensify racist narratives, and incite violence in communities they have never set foot in and to whom they have no real connection.” A post from Musk after the life sentencing of the killer of 18-year-old Henry Nowak, who had been falsely accused of racism by police after being stabbed in Southampton, has been viewed more than 28m times. “Legacy mainstream media, same ones who wrote about George Floyd millions of times, are dead silent about Nowak,” Musk posted shortly before 3pm on 2 June, in effect promoting his own platform at a time of heightened tension and disorder in the Hampshire port. Eleven police officers were injured on the night of 2 June in Southampton as people claiming to protest over Nowak’s murder marched to the site of his death. This followed a rally, addressed by the far-right activist Tommy Robinson, outside the city’s main police station. Musk is based in the US and has not visited the UK since November 2023. A Guardian analysis last month found he posted about race and immigration in the UK twice as often as he did about SpaceX in the run-up to the aerospace company’s initial public offering in June. Security experts including Fiona Hill, a former adviser to the US and UK governments, have warned that the UK is a soft target for online manipulation by overseas actors because it does not take the idea of civil, or “psychological”, defence seriously. Dr Julia Ebner, a researcher at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and the University of Oxford, said flashpoint episodes such as in Southampton and Belfast had become “strategic events” for far-right actors seeking to amplify and exploit them. “They are using the UK as a negative example, smearing the UK to promote their own narratives of western civilisational decay or social collapse,” Ebner said. “But the other purpose is to influence UK politics, and European politics more widely,” using crisis moments to “promote a strong, strengthened far-right wave across the world”. Four of the top 12 most-seen tweets came from UK accounts: two were by the leader of the Restore Britain party, Rupert Lowe, whom Musk has endorsed; another was from GB News, while the most popular, with 37.6m views, was written by the “anti-woke” rightwing political commentator Konstantin Kisin. Other accounts located in the US were anonymous, though familiar. @EndWokeness posted a blurry still image of a black man attacking a white man in Belfast on 8 June, saying the full video was “too graphic” to post. It attracted 16.3m views. The assault, a stabbing in which the victim, Stephen Ogilvie, lost an eye, prompted three nights of racially motivated rioting targeting non-white people in Belfast. An asylum seeker from Sudan was charged with attempted murder and at least 23 people were arrested. The @EndWokeness account, which has 3.9m followers, was cited by a parliamentary committee after it amplified a false claim that the 2024 attack in Southport, in which three girls were killed, was carried out by a Muslim man. The account has been linked by an open source analyst to Jack Posobiec, a rightwing influencer who promoted the Pizzagate conspiracy, a false accusation that leading US Democrats were engaged in satanic child abuse at a child-friendly pizza restaurant in Washington DC. Another leading poster was the US rightwing influencer Benny Johnson, who accused the New York Times of writing nothing about Nowak and thousands of pieces about the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020 – though Nowak was murdered in the UK. The analysis of the most-viewed accounts did not reveal any posts from Russia or China – both countries that have been behind online disinformation campaigns – though it is possible that posters successfully disguised their locations using virtual private networks (VPNs). X shows location data for most profiles, inferred by the platform from user IP addresses, though government accounts are excluded. Last November, after the feature was introduced, X’s then head of product, Nikita Bier, said it was more than 99% accurate. When it was launched, it revealed that some pro-Scottish-independence accounts were based in Iran. But there were signs of inauthenticity in popular posts. Two of the top most-seen tweets came from the US-based C3 (@C_3C_3) account, accusing “legacy media” of not reporting about the Nowak case. Its profile picture is a baby wearing a Make America Great Again cap; the username has changed 14 times previously. One UK account, which tweeted at least six times about the murder of Nowak, with almost 3,800 combined views, had changed its name more than 400 times. NewsSceneUK – subsequently changed to BritifyFooty – wrote in one tweet about the “huge crowd of patriots outside #Southampton Police Station”. Accounts posting from overseas that changed their usernames more than 20 times included one in Kenya that wrote after the Belfast stabbing: “When the state fails to protect people, the streets find their own language.” Another, from Europe, described the Nowak case as “a globalized, calculated and malicious evil” affecting “every White person and every White nation”. Close to a third – about 13,000 – of the Belfast and Southampton tweets, whether from the UK or abroad, were racist or anti-immigrant, according to the Guardian analysis. When analysed separately, a quarter of the posts that were only about Southampton were racist or anti-immigrant, compared with a third of those that were only about Belfast. One UK-based poster, writing a day after the Belfast stabbing, claimed they hoped the attacker was British-born because “race is the issue, not immigration status”. The post registered 2m views. Valerie Wirtschafter, an expert on online foreign influence operations from the Brookings Institution, a US thinktank, said she believed violent events such as those in Belfast and Southampton were “a point of exploitation” in which “outside agitators” had an opportunity to make a disproportionate impact. Their position was helped by X and other social media companies cutting content moderation, she said, but in particular by “algorithms and how they collide with the basic cognitive processes of humans. We are more attracted to things that are shocking.”

Can the Mounties regain Canada’s trust after race, sexism and public safety scandals?

With their bright red tunics, dark blue breeches and beige Stetsons, the officers of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police offer a globally recognised symbol of Canada. The Mounties, as they are colloquially known, have been featured across popular culture for decades, from Hollywood films to the Simpsons. But the RCMP is now facing an increasingly uncertain future amid questions about its core role and because of a string of scandals that range from systemic racism to sexual harassment and public safety failures. “We need to modernise and transform the RCMP, but we are a very long way away … unfortunately, the future doesn’t look particularly bright,” said Kent Roach, a law professor at the University of Toronto, who this week published a book about the pressures on the RCMP. On a national level, the RCMP handles security, including foreign interference and terrorism, but also offers local policing in 150 municipalities and 600 Indigenous communities, which cover eight of the country’s 10 provinces and all three territories. Those local policing contracts are set to expire in 2032, and even though the date is six years away, provincial leaders have called on the federal government to “urgently begin negotiations” for “new police service agreements”. “The federal government must provide a clear decision on the future of RCMP contract policing,” provincial premiers said in a joint communique following a meeting in Prince Edward Island last month. The request for clarity on the contracts appears to have been prompted in part by the resignation of Justin Trudeau and his replacement as prime minister by Mark Carney. As one of his last acts in office, Trudeau argued in March 2025 for widespread reform of the RCMP, recommending the force abandon boots-on-the-ground policing to focus on national security. But the Carney government has bucked Trudeau’s suggestions and instead has increased pay for RCMP cadets and has committed an additional $1.8bn in spending over four years to the RCMP’s policing budget. One of the reasons for the investment in the RCMP is pressure from the US Donald Trump administration to crack down on supposed border issues, said Roach. But Roach argues that it is unfeasible for the RCMP to continue in its current form because of structural issues: Mounties typically operate in small, often temporary detachments in Canada’s rural communities and territories where they do not speak local Indigenous languages. That language gap feeds a historical lack of trust among First Nation communities, due to the force’s colonial roots as a force of repression. Canada’s first prime minister, John A MacDonald, created the North-West Mounted Police in 1873, which eventually became the RCMP in 1920. From its inception, the force enacted government rules that restricted the movement of Indigenous people and, from the 1930s, RCMP officers were used to force Indigenous children to attend abusive residential schools, according to the force’s own records. The strained relationship between the RCMP and Indigenous peoples has been exacerbated by a series of high-profile cases. The deaths of the Indigenous men Dale Culver in 2017 and Jared Lowndes in 2021 after violent interactions with RCMP officers led to a public outcry. And after the 2016 murder of Colten Boushie, the official watchdog for the RCMP found that the force discriminated against his family. The Mounties are also accused of systemic sexual harassment: a 2021 class action lawsuit resulted in the federal government paying more than $125m to 2,304 female RCMP members who said they had experienced sexual assault and harassment while on duty. In the past decade, the RCMP has contended with two mass killings that led to wider criticisms around the force’s abilities to keep the public safe. In April 2020, a man dressed as a Mountie killed 22 people in a rampage in Nova Scotia. A government inquiry found that a string of RCMP missteps worsened the attack, as the force failed to share information with the public and with its own officers. Then, in September 2022, the RCMP came under further criticism over its slow response to a stabbing attack which killed 11 people in the James Smith Cree Nation community in Saskatchewan. In recent years, several scholars have called on the RCMP to be disbanded and replaced with a national service better equipped to confront 21st-century security threats, including cybercrimes. Roach argued that Canada should be looking to other models rather than the RCMP’s “one size fits all” approach to all jurisdictions. “The way the RCMP trained … is very much out of touch,” he said. “The RCMP seems stuck in a very paramilitary and frankly colonial approach,” he said. Public Safety Canada, the federal agency responsible for national security, said Ottawa was in discussions with provinces and territories on “policing needs beyond 2032”. It said community protection would be achieved through hiring more RCMP officers and investing more in the force.