Curiously, Trump also thanks Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping for staying neutral on Iran, saying otherwise “they could have made it much more difficult for us.” Follow the full press conference in our Europe live blog here:
The US president, Donald Trump, will be the guest of honour at a sumptuous dinner at the Palace of Versailles, as the French left criticises Emmanuel Macron for going too far in attempts to flatter him. “Versailles is not gold leaf, Versailles is the real deal,” said Trump of the opulent 2,300-room palace which was once home to France’s Sun King, Louis XIV. “I’m a fan of beautiful places.” Macron’s office said the dinner on Wednesday night would mark the 250th anniversary of the independence of the US, in which France had played an important role by supporting the American revolution. The Palace of Versailles was chosen as a venue because it is “a historic symbol of Franco-American friendship”, an Élysée official said. The French president, under pressure to show he was not fawning over Trump, said it was not a “gala dinner” but instead simply a moment to mark France’s role in American independence. Macron said: “I’m pragmatic. It’s by firm and respectful discussion that one gets results.” The dinner at France’s most spectacular palace – the seat of the French monarchy and a symbol of the French Revolution of 1789 – was seen by French politicians as a way to dangle a carrot for Trump to stay the full length of the G7 summit in Évian-les-Bains and not leave early as he did last year in Canada. “I’m the boss,” said Trump to fellow G7 leaders, including Macron, as the final day of the summit began. Before dinner on Wednesday, Trump will be shown around the palace’s temporary exhibition on the history of French-US relations. He will also tour the Hall of Mirrors, the famed 17th-century gallery built under Louis XIV to project the power and majesty of the French monarchy. Trump has made several negative comments about Macron over the past year, including: “Emmanuel, nice guy but he doesn’t get it right too often.” Before the G7 summit began, Trump said the US would “have no choice” but to apply 100% tariffs on French wine unless Paris scrapped a digital services tax on technology firms. Macron responded that he would stay firm on the issue. Earlier this year, Trump put on an accent and mocked the French president and his wife during a private lunch in Washington. Trump said Macron’s wife “treats him extremely badly”, an apparent reference to a May 2025 video that appeared to show Brigitte Macron pushing her husband’s face as they prepared to disembark from a plane on an official visit to Vietnam. Macron said the comments were “neither elegant nor up to standard”. Fabien Roussel, the head of the French Communist party, said Macron was being “very naive” and “obsequious” in inviting Trump to Versailles after the US president’s hostility towards him and France. “He’s rolling out the red carpet while we’re being fleeced,” Roussel said. Mathilde Panot, the head of the parliamentary group of the leftwing party La France Insoumise, said: “The flattery is not working.” Panot added that Trump had “insulted France and Europe multiple times”. Éric Coquerel, an MP for LFI, said there was too much “grovelling” to a US that was increasingly “aggressive and very imperialist”. Nathalie Loiseau, a centre-right European parliament member who served as Europe minister during Macron’s first term, told France Inter radio that the “flattery” approach to Trump didn’t necessarily work. “He’s not someone who is easy, it’s true. But I’m not sure the more you bow to him, the more he respects you.” But Alice Rufo, a junior defence minister, said this moment of “courtesy” towards Trump at Versailles did not prevent France speaking “frankly and clearly”. Macron has often used the Palace of Versailles as a backdrop for international diplomacy, including hosting Vladimir Putin there in 2017, and staging a state dinner for King Charles in 2023.
Donald Trump has responded to criticism of his ceasefire deal with Iran, warning at the G7 summit that he was prepared to go back to dropping bombs and insisting the deal did not require the US to pay even 10 cents to Iran. At the same time, he has backed a G7 leaders’ joint statement that welcomes the deal but says a follow-on agreement is necessary to rein in Iran’s ballistic missile programme, an issue not directly addressed in the memorandum of understanding that is due to be signed on Friday by Iran and the US. The G7 statement says future negotiations with Iran would benefit from the involvement of a wider group of regional and international actors including the UN nuclear weapons agency, the IAEA. Trump is under attack, including from some of his domestic supporters, for conducting a war against Iran that has ended in a negotiated deal that has met hardly any of its original objectives. At a side meeting at the French-hosted G7 meeting in Évian-les-Bains on Wednesday, he promised that if Iran misbehaved he would “go back to dropping bombs right smack in the middle of their head”. He angrily rejected suggestions that the US would be contributing to a $300bn (£224bn) investment fund for Iran but did not deny its existence, instead saying payouts by Gulf states were likely to be conditional on Iran’s good behaviour. “Anyone who wants to can invest. What do you expect me to say, no one is allowed to invest? But we’re not investing; we’re not putting up even 10 cents,” he said. “If they [others] want to, they can make this investment. What should I say, no one can ever invest in this country?” He added: “I don’t think the Gulf countries will do this for a while, until they see Iran’s behaviour; this is a matter of behaviour.” Praising the deal he had struck and claiming no previous US president had been as tough on Iran as him, he said: “There is nothing as smart as the market and the market loves it.” Trump said: “The alternative would be a worldwide depression”, arguing that if he had not struck a deal, “the strait [of Hormuz] would never have been opened. They don’t like floating billion-dollar ships up and down the strait when their rockets are flying overhead and there are mines all over the place.” He claimed the price of oil per barrel had fallen to $72 – Brent crude dipped below $80 on Tuesday – and would soon fall below the level it had been at before the war. The G7 proposal for further talks involving European leaders about Iran’s ballistic missiles and support for proxy forces is bound to be rejected by Iran. Tehran has been negotiating exclusively with the US and regards Europe as largely irrelevant. Iran is also likely to reject France and Britain’s plan for a taskforce to escort ships through the strait of Hormuz, a proposal endorsed in the G7 leaders’ statement. On Ukraine, the G7 leaders hailed the battlefield momentum and called for fresh pressure against Russia through sanctions and additional arms deliveries to Kyiv. The G7 meeting in Évian-les-Bains, chaired by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, brings together the world’s most powerful economies: the US, France, Germany, Italy, the UK, Canada and Japan. The joint G7 statement issued on Wednesday morning suggests Trump unusually has been willing to go some way to accommodating concerns of other leaders on issues on which he has been acting unilaterally, particularly in the cases of Iran and Ukraine. The leaders said: “We consider this the right moment to proceed with additional measures, as President Trump has delivered a deal that we support in reopening the strait of Hormuz.” The deal reopens the strait and reiterates Iran’s opposition to possessing nuclear weapons but postpones talks on how to dilute or destroy its stockpile of highly enriched uranium. Trump has said he was open to the stockpile being diluted inside Iran under the supervision of the IAEA. The memorandum agrees to immediately lift US sanctions on Iran’s oil exports and a series of related industries, and to create a $300bn reconstruction fund. The G7 leaders said the agreement, due to be signed on Friday in Switzerland, provided “an historic opportunity to prevent Iran from acquiring any nuclear weapon and tackling the threats related to its regional and ballistic activities. We support and are ready to contribute to its implementation.” Reaffirming the right of transit passage without restrictions or tolls as a bedrock of international trade, the leaders said: “The multinational, independent and defensive initiative led by France and the UK can play an important role to facilitate the resumption of maritime traffic in the strait of Hormuz.” The G7 leaders stated they “strongly support a robust and comprehensive diplomatic follow-on agreement to the memorandum of understanding secured by President Trump that can bring peace and security for all in the region”, implying that the memorandum of understanding was considered too narrow. Europe has been excluded from the talks the US has conducted with Iran since Trump became president, with some claiming the stretched and relatively small US negotiating team has lacked the expertise to match the Iranian side. The G7 statement also calls for further economic pressure on Russia, the first time Trump has put his name to a joint G7 statement on the subject – a decision hailed by the Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, as a gamechanger revealing a new realism by Trump on Ukraine. To accelerate new momentum in Ukraine, the G7 agreed “to increase the delivery of air defence capacities, additional systems and interceptors, and long-range capabilities. We are also ready to consider extending to Ukraine the benefit of licences to allow for an increase in Ukraine’s military production.” Promising to help Ukraine get through next winter, the statement commits to increasing the pressure on the Russian war economy by strengthening sanctions, including those on the oil and gas sectors.
Human rights experts have alleged that six multinational construction equipment conglomerates may be aiding and abetting war crimes by supplying excavators and bulldozers to Israel, after photos and videos showed the Israeli military using their equipment to demolish villages in south Lebanon. The Guardian geolocated and verified images showing the Israeli military using excavators made by six companies – Caterpillar, Volvo, Hyundai, Doosan, Hitachi and Komatsu – to destroy homes, public utilities, shops and other structures across southern Lebanon. Israel has levelled entire villages inside the “yellow line”, a 608 sq km area occupied by Israel along the Lebanese-Israeli border. At least 46 villages in south Lebanon have suffered heavy damage, most of it caused by demolitions carried out after the 17 April Lebanon-Israel ceasefire, according to a satellite analysis by Bellingcat. The Israeli military said it was destroying Hezbollah infrastructure, with Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, calling for “all homes in Lebanese villages near the border” to be destroyed to “remove threats”. However, Human Rights Watch has said that Israel’s wide-scale destruction of villages could amount to wanton destruction – a war crime. Displaced residents have watched from afar as videos show craters and vast fields of rubble where their family homes once stood. Much of that destruction is being carried out by excavators and bulldozers produced and sold to Israel by foreign companies. Two pictures taken by the Associated Press on 12 and 15 April in the Lebanese border town of Mays al-Jabal show excavators from all six companies among flattened houses, as well as Hyundai, Caterpillar and Komatsu excavators actively destroying homes. Videos from the Lebanese border towns of Naqoura and Debel in April also showed the Israeli military using foreign-produced excavators to destroy homes and other infrastructure. Surveillance footage captured the Israeli military using a Volvo excavator to destroy solar panels and water infrastructure in Debel, a key source of electricity and water for the residents of the besieged town. The Israeli military, commenting on the incident in Debel, said the actions seen in the video were “not in line with the IDF’s values”, and that the incident was under investigation. Human rights experts said that supplying the construction equipment that enables the Israeli military to destroy homes and villages in south Lebanon could make these companies complicit in any war crimes and potentially lead to their executives facing legal consequences. Foreign companies should stop supplying heavy construction equipment to Israel until they are assured that it will not be used in war crimes, the experts said. “Businesses carrying out activities that contribute to serious international law violations in Lebanon, such as the extensive destruction of civilian property, may expose themselves, or their individual directors and managers, to the risk of prosecution for complicity in war crimes,” said Mark Dummett, the deputy programme director and head of business, security and human rights at Amnesty International. Dummett added that Israel’s “longer track record” of using military and civilian excavators to carry out demolitions in the West Bank, often in violation of international law, should have already raised concerns among companies continuing to supply equipment to Israel. He said: “Any basic corporate human rights due diligence process would have flagged the risks of the company contributing to these abuses and should have triggered robust measures to ensure that their machinery and equipment were not involved in abuses.” For decades, the Israeli military has used foreign-produced excavators to demolish the homes of Palestinians, often in circumstances that could amount to forced displacement and war crimes. Most recently, Caterpillar has come under scrutiny after the majority of US Democratic senators voted in April to block a $295m sale of Caterpillar D9 bulldozers to Israel. Caterpillar’s D9 armoured bulldozer has become notorious for its use by the Israeli military to demolish homes and for crushing the nonviolent US activist Rachel Corrie to death in 2003 in Gaza. Four of the six companies identified in Lebanon – excluding Hitachi and Komatsu – were named in a report by the UN special rapporteur, Francesca Albanese, as companies that profit from Israel’s displacement of Palestinians. Evidence of their products being used to commit widely documented abuses has seemingly not given some of these companies pause. Instead, companies such as Caterpillar have signed new multimillion dollar deals to supply the Israeli military with equipment. Now, excavators from Caterpillar and other multinationals are being used to systematically destroy dozens of villages in south Lebanon, after decades of similar destruction in Palestine. Much of this destruction has been carried out by the placing of charges, as in the case of the town of Qantara, where the Israeli military used 450 tonnes of explosives to level structures there. But the Israeli military has also used excavators to destroy border villages, relying on civilian contractors who bring in their construction equipment to assist with the demolitions. According to Haaretz, some contractors are paid based on the number of buildings they destroy. The construction equipment is supplied directly to the Israeli military and to local partners in Israel, where they are sold commercially to civilian construction firms. Because the Israeli military outsources its demolition work to civilian contractors, it means that any excavator or bulldozer exported to Israel – even if not sent to the military directly – could be used to destroy homes in Lebanon or Gaza. In the past, construction companies supplying heavy equipment to Israel have said they are not responsible for and cannot control how their products are used once they are sold. Volvo, Komatsu, Hitachi and HD Construction Equipment – which operates the Hyundai brand – said they had internal policies to ensure that human rights were respected, including in their contracts with dealers who sell their equipment. Volvo, Hitachi and Komatsu said they had limited ability to control what customers did with their products once they were sold to dealers, while HD Construction Equipment said the equipment bearing the Hyundai logo pictured in Lebanon was not sold by them and was “entirely unrelated”. Caterpillar did not reply to a request for a comment and Doosan is no longer being produced. However, business and human rights experts have said that pleading ignorance does not hold much weight given the abundance of evidence that their products are being used in human rights abuses. Alreem Kamal, an international lawyer who works on corporate accountability in the Middle East, said: “The documented use of similar equipment in contexts such as Gaza means that companies cannot plausibly claim that they were unaware of the risks. “The harm is foreseeable, and they bear a responsibility to take appropriate measures accordingly. Failure to do so may expose these companies to legal, reputational and financial consequences.” The UN has set out guidelines for corporations under the UN guiding principles on business and human rights. Under the UN principles, companies have a responsibility to avoid causing or contributing to human rights violations, and to mitigate human rights abuses directly linked to their products. The guidelines are nonbinding, but Sweden, Japan, and South Korea – where Volvo, Komatsu, Hitachi, Doosan and Hyundai are headquartered – have developed national action plans to implement the UN principles. The US, where Caterpillar is based, does not have an action plan. There is a legal precedent of executives and corporations being held accountable for selling products used in human rights violations, starting with the Nuremberg trials. Thirteen directors of IG Farben, a German chemical conglomerate, were charged for selling to the Nazis Zyklon B, the gas used to murder Jewish people and others during the Holocaust. In recent years, national courts are increasingly holding companies and their executives accountable for complicity in crimes committed abroad in conflict settings. French courts convicted the French cement company Lafarge and four former executives in April 2026 for financing terrorism for their role in paying armed groups in Syria, including Islamic State. In Sweden, a court case is continuing against two former executives of the Swedish oil company Lundin Energy, now Orrön Energy, who are accused of complicity in war crimes in what is now South Sudan. Both former executives deny the allegations. Kamal said: “The broader trend is clear: scrutiny of corporate involvement in atrocity crimes is growing and the impunity that has long protected them is steadily eroding.”
A group of tram drivers in Milan have been suspended from their jobs amid an investigation into a WhatsApp group in which they allegedly exchanged sexist and vulgar comments about images of female passengers. Milan prosecutors placed at least one employee of ATM, the city’s public transport firm, under investigation on Tuesday for allegedly accessing an IT system without authorisation and for hacking a CCTV system to obtain images of female passengers. Searches of the homes of five other male employees and the confiscation of their mobile phones and other devices have been ordered, according to reports in the Italian press. The drivers allegedly commented on photos taken from CCTV that homed in on the legs, faces, breasts and thighs of female passengers. The allegations emerged after a woman travelling on the number 15 tram on Saturday noticed an off-duty driver, still wearing his uniform and sitting in front of her, viewing a WhatsApp group chat on his phone allegedly containing such images along with sexist comments and jokes about the women’s bodies. Realising the images had come from CCTV, which is installed on every tram in Milan for safety purposes, she took a photo of the chat on the off-duty driver’s screen and sent it to a high-profile feminist activist who reported it to ATM. ATM, which is conducting an internal inquiry, said in a statement: “ATM has acted promptly and with the utmost attention to fully clarify the episode, verify the proper use of company tools, protect customers and the thousands of employees who work correctly every day in service of the city.” It is unclear whether the images came from the CCTV system on just one tram or several, or if they were shared beyond the group chat. Marco Maria Donzelli, the president in Lombardy for Codacons, the Italian consumer watchdog that filed a formal complaint with Milan prosecutors, said: “This is a very serious incident that requires clarity, because if the facts that have emerged are confirmed, we would be faced with serious offences punishable by our criminal code, which would also pave the way for civil claims for compensation by the victims.” The leaders of various transport unions said in a joint statement that “respect for human dignity and gender equality are essential values”. The issue of online misogyny is prevalent in Italy. There was outrage last summer after a pornographic website featuring doctored images of prominent women, including the prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, came to light. Meloni criticised the circulation of AI-generated deepfake images of her in May, including one depicting her in lingerie.
Albert Einstein throws a party at his lakeside house at which he presents to his guests his latest invention: a time machine. So opens the opera Chronoplan, started in the late 1920s by the composer Julia Kerr, who took the score with her when she fled Nazi Germany with her family in early 1933, its planned premiere having been halted following Hitler’s takeover. The wider family story was chronicled in When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, an autobiographical novel by Kerr’s late daughter, Judith, in which passing references are made to her mother playing the piano. But Kerr’s reputation as one of the most gifted musicians of her time was widely forgotten after the family’s dramatic escape, which brought her composing career to an end. Until now. On a recent blustery afternoon, descendants who had travelled from London gathered in the garden of Einstein’s former summer house in Caputh, south-west of Berlin, in the location where Chronoplan was set, to celebrate the life and works of Julia Kerr. Compositions which had been found wrongly catalogued and gathering dust in archives were performed by the singer-actor Ruth Rosenfeld and pianist Norbert Biermann, who has spent much time reconstructing them. Julia and her husband, Alfred, who was considered the leading theatre critic in Weimar-era Berlin, were occasional guests at Einstein’s house, along with other cultural figureheads of the day, such as the composer Richard Strauss and the authors George Bernard Shaw and Arthur Schnitzler, all of whom feature in the opera. The wooden house, financed by the prize money from Einstein’s Nobel prize, was where friends enjoyed intimate intellectual soirees and boat trips on the nearby lake before Einstein, who like the Kerrs was Jewish, and many others in their circle were forced into exile. Christian Leitmeir, a historical musicologist from the University of Oxford, first came up with the idea of looking into Julia Kerr’s musical life after reading When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit to his son. “There were fleeting descriptions of her playing the piano and composing. I was intrigued, but I could find no reference to her in the encyclopedia of female composers,” he said. After searching in the archives of the Academy of Arts in Berlin he discovered Kerr’s handwritten scores, which had been incorrectly catalogued under her husband’s name, in the literature and drama section. Meanwhile, Sonja Westerbeck, dramatic adviser to the State theatre in Mainz, rediscovered Chronoplan, which was given its world stage premiere earlier this year, almost a century after it was written. Westerbeck, who was at the Caputh gathering, said: “Julia Kerr has spent too long as the sub-clause in the story – it’s time to bring her back to the fore”. The Kerr family was invited to Berlin by the curators of a new Exile Museum due to open in early 2028 which will bring together Julia, Alfred and Judith’s stories, alongside those of others forced to flee. The rediscovery of Kerr’s work comes amid a surge in scholarly and public interest in forgotten female composers, many of whom have been unjustly expunged from the history of classical music. George Kerr, a civil servant who is Julia’s great-grandson, said he had only recently become aware of Julia’s artistic life. “I’m very inspired to learn of how immensely talented and creative she was,” he said. “Yet she was compelled by circumstances to put the composing aside in order to provide for her family. She’d have been delighted I’m sure that such a keen interest is now being shown in her work when she was so overlooked in life.” As readers of her novel will know, Judith’s stuffed pink rabbit was left behind in Berlin, but Julia managed to take the score of her incomplete opera with her, across half of Europe. But on arriving in England, she had to put her ambitions aside to become the family’s breadwinner, working as a secretary and translator, as Alfred spoke no English. After his death in 1948, she returned to Berlin and worked as an interpreter at the Nuremberg Trials and for the US president John F Kennedy when he visited Berlin in 1963. In 1952, Chronoplan was recorded by Bavarian Broadcasting, becoming the first opera to have a radio premiere, in what Leitmeir said was a reflection of how visionary the work was. “Her music was very eclectic,” he said. “She was like a magpie absorbing all the influences around her from a range of different genres.” Corresponding with her family, Julia called the six days spent recording it “the most wonderful of my life. Darlings, practically everything sounded exactly as I have heard it in my head for 20 years. Nobody can take that away from me ever and I know now that I can write music,” she wrote. Julia Kerr died in 1965. Her grandson Tim Kerr, a retired high court judge, remembered her as a “powerful figure, very single-minded”. He added: “She’d play lovely little tunes she had written on the piano and I’d play the same melodies on the recorder. But I really knew nothing about her music, or that she had been or would be taken seriously as a composer. As is often the case, her life has been filtered through that of her husband, and perhaps to an even larger extent overshadowed by that of her daughter, Aunt Judy, who was more famous than all of them put together.” Best known in the UK for her picture book The Tiger Who Came to Tea, Judith Kerr, who died aged 95 in 2019, is most famous in Germany for When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, where it appears consistently in the school curriculum. In a letter to her mother in 1952, Judith Kerr recalled how unhappy Julia had been at not being able to have her works performed.
Good morning. Ten years after the murder of the MP Jo Cox by a rightwing extremist in the run-up to the Brexit referendum, her sister Kim Leadbeater, now herself a MP, issued a clear and urgent summons. In an interview on our Today in Focus podcast, she proposed that political hatred in Britain is worse now than at the time of her sister’s killing, but insisted “those voices who are sowing the division are in the minority.” “They are very loud. But the rest of us then have got a duty to drown them out and tell the good stories of this country,” she said. But what if one of those loud voices belongs to Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, who owns one of the largest social media platforms, reinstated Britain’s foremost far-right agitator on to it and amplifies a highly networked transnational far-right movement to his 240 million followers? The start of the week was dominated by debate about keeping children safe around social media – today I want to talk about another online harm that is fomenting offline violence and contributing to a feeling and a reality that British streets are hostile, particularly for people of colour. I discussed all of this with political correspondent Ben Quinn, who has reported on the far right across the UK for more than a decade. Before that, the headlines. Five big stories UK news | A Russian warship fired warning shots within a few hundred metres of a British pleasure yacht sailing across the Channel amid a period of heightened tensions between London and Moscow. UK politics | The Lib Dems will urge Andy Burnham to end Labour’s “torpor and timidity” towards the EU as they call for the UK to rejoin the single market, in a notable strengthening of their own position. Middle East | Iran’s top diplomat has said a peace deal with the US would require Israel to withdraw from Lebanon, as concern grows that Israel could undermine diplomatic efforts to finally end the Middle East war. Media | A BBC presenter lauded by the corporation for his appeal to young male audiences has a history of making abusive and misogynistic remarks about women, whom he has variously called “slags”, “sluts”, “psychos” and “bitches”, the Guardian can reveal. US news | Joe Biden’s decision to seek a second term was “a terrible mistake” that cost Democrats the presidency and may have permanently damaged his legacy, Hillary Clinton has declared. In depth: ‘Planning is being done quite openly and explicitly’ The racist disorder on the streets of Belfast, Glasgow, Southampton and elsewhere followed what is now a familiar pattern, says Ben. They can be described as “trigger events” and they’re transnational: the far right take a tragedy such as the death of Henry Nowak or the stabbing of Stephen Ogilvie, attach it to an existing narrative about immigration, usually disregarding the specific facts of each case, and call for offline protest. In Belfast, this resulted in ethnic minority families being burnt out of their homes. We also saw it in the race riots that followed the Southport killings in the summer of 2024, which were similarly fuelled by online misinformation. In the space of just two years, the mechanics have changed significantly, Ben tells me, with far-right organising happening in plainer sight than ever. “After Southport, far-right activists gathered and planned in private on Telegram, then X was used to amplify those plans. Facebook was used for a different purpose , creating astroturfing initiatives and meetings to get local communities involved in far-right activity.” “After the sentencing of Henry Novak’s killer, planning is being done quite openly and explicitly on X and discussions are taking place there.” This was amplified by Musk himself, who shared details of planned demonstrations across Britain and Northern Ireland , which were seized on by rightwing politicians elsewhere in Europe. Likewise, we see Musk and others seizing on events in Europe on a fairly regular basis, though they don’t appear to have sparked the same sort of unrest. An event that gets shared online again and again, says Ben, even though it was two years ago – is the mass stabbing at a rightwing demonstration in the German city of Mannheim, in which a police officer died and five others were injured by an Afghan national. It’s impossible to overestimate Musk’s impact on what X users regularly see on their feeds. Guardian analysis earlier this year found that he has, at times, posted almost daily about alleged threats to the white race. And there are countless other examples of his influence on political activity in the UK, a country he does not live in nor hold any elected role in, such as endorsing and promoting politicians like Rupert Lowe, who called for “millions” of deportations after the Belfast stabbing. Ben also points to the proliferation of AI-generated images, videos and songs deliberately designed to inflame local anger, such as the multitude of memes generated after the police released the harrowing bodycam footage of Nowak’s arrest, as well as more generalised fakery of “migrant gangs” of men assaulting white women. TikTok is also emerging as a platform to keep an eye on. “When images or footage from attacks are shared there,” says Ben, “it marks a moment when something crosses over into a place for large numbers of folks who are not necessarily politically engaged see it.” *** The piggyback effect The riots in Belfast were grim enough, but they could have been worse, Ben suggests, had a figure like Tommy Robinson attended in person rather than encouraging from the social media sidelines. “I don’t think the British far right quite understood the Northern Irish dynamics,” he says, for example describing the man who fought off Ogilvie’s attacker with an Irish hurling stick as a British patriot. He also notes many of the long list of proposed protest assembly points pushed by Robinson – who was meeting Elon Musk’s father at a luxury hotel in Moscow as he urged his supporters on to British streets – failed to materialise. “The numbers are not really there unless it’s something that Robinson spends months organising, like the Unite the Kingdom rallies.” What the far right find more effective offline is to “piggyback on an authentic local event”, Ben explains, like the protests against the Bell Hotel in Epping last year, after an asylum seeker who was living there sexually assaulted a 14-year-old girl and a woman. “Those protests grew bigger because there was buy-in from many local people, as well as Reform councillors and extreme far-right characters.” *** The normalisation of hate speech This highly networked online activity also has consequences for the language we use – and that in turn, as I wrote about last week, matters for how safe people from minority communities feel. At these protests, Ben has witnessed how “the language and slogans people use jump from X to the real world”. “A phrase like ‘re-migration’ was beyond the pale a few years ago,” says Ben. The explicitly racist concept advocates for the mass expulsion of non-white residents, regardless of nationality. “It is now used by Tommy Robinson on a routine basis. It’s something that may, in time, make its way into mainstream conservative discourse.” In multitude ways, on X in particular, hate speech is becoming normalised. Earlier this week, the Guardian reported that the social inclusion thinktank British Future is accusing X of giving racists “impunity” after the platform refused to bar posts using the N-word and P-word. *** Deplatforming division After the racist riots in Belfast, Keir Starmer vowed to crack down on platforms fuelling division. We know that ministers plan to amend the Online Safety Act to require social media firms act faster to remove inflammatory content when off-line violence erupts, but this won’t take effect until mid-July at the earliest. In the meantime, the government is leaving any official reprimand of X to Ofcom. You’d be forgiven for wondering if it’s credible that effective regulation of the far right is going to come from an organisation whose recently departed chair, Michael Grade, argues that the voice of “the white majority” has not been heard properly in recent times. Nevertheless, Dr Avaes Mohammad, a researcher with British Future who worked on their X project, argues that – while it may seem a thankless task – there is merit in continuing to report offensive posts and informing Ofcom when they’re not taken down. “As citizens, we’re all capable of gathering data.” Elsewhere, I heard a powerful argument for collective action from Pat Younge, media consultant and former chief creative officer of BBC Television Production, who called on Starmer to regulate social media platforms as we do broadcasters and other news organisations. On an episode of the podcast Over the Top, Under the Radar, Younge said: “Starmer needs to grow a pair – we need to act and the public will be with him. Because this isn’t free speech, it’s an abuse of power and that’s what we need to treat it as.” But it’s too easy to personalise this around Starmer’s weakness, he added: “Where are the trade unions? Where is civic society? Our institutions are being hollowed out and we need organisations to take a stand.” What else we’ve been reading This yarn of a long read by Tobias Jones is a fascinating tale involving funerals, arrests and divorces; football ultras, a lottery winner, and 1970s terrorist group the Red Brigades. One to enjoy with our morning coffee. Michael Segalov, newsletters team Jessica Murray meets three “stubborn northern working mums” took on the developers and helped push through the biggest ever overhaul of the archaic leasehold system. Libby Into free holidays and cheap fizzy wine? Zoe Williams has you (OK, us) covered. She writes about discovering a secret scheme that lets you buy tax-free plonk while visiting France … for free. Bon voyage, mon ami! Michael World Cup 2026 On the pitch France 3-1 Senegal | A spluttering first-half performance gave way to a second period characterised by a combination of physical intensity and technical ability, with a record-breaking double for Kylian Mbappé. Argentina 3-0 Algeria | Lionel Messi’s splendid hat-trick secures thumping victory over Algeria and ties him with Germany’s Miroslav Klose as the World Cup’s all-time leading goal scorer. The best of the rest | Erling Haaland punished Iraq with a brace of goals against the Group I underdog, while in Miami Uruguay’s Maximiliano Araújo scored a late equaliser as they battled back to secure a 1-1 draw with Saudi Arabia. Off the pitch You’re fired | Tunisia confirm Hervé Renard as their new manager, having sacked Sabri Lamouchi after just one World Cup match, a 5-1 drubbing by Sweden. Picture perfect | After going viral with his bizarre official competition portrait, maverick Uruguay manager Marcelo Bielsa defends the unconventional image. Dream or nightmare? | Meet the football fans being paid £37,000 to watch every World Cup match from inside a glass box in the heart of New York’s Times Square. Today’s fixtures • Portugal v DR Congo, 6pm BST on BBC • England v Croatia, 9pm BST on ITV • Ghana v Panama, 12am BST on ITV • Uzbekistan v Colombia, 3am BST on BBC The front pages “Russian warship opens fire in the Channel to warn off British yacht”, is the Guardian’s front page today. The development dominates most titles, with the Telegraph running “Russian warship fires shots in Channel”, the Times says “Russian warship fires at yacht in the Channel”, and the i Paper has “Retired UK couple reveal ‘scary’ clash in Channel with Russian warship”. The Express says “Putin’s warship opens fire” the Mail, similarly, has “Putin opens fire in the Channel” and the Sun’s take is “Vlad fires on Brit OAPs in Channel”. Elsewhere, the FT leads with “SpaceX races past Amazon as fifth most valuable group”, the Mirror has “It’s not too late for Labour”, and Metro ahead of England’s World Cup match against Croatia says “Here we owe!”. Today in Focus: The Latest Can Trump be convinced to back Ukraine? Donald Trump has urged Russia to ‘make a deal’ with Ukraine as the leaders of G7 countries meet on Tuesday and try to put the conflict back at the top of the agenda. European leaders are hoping to capture Trump’s attention for long enough to speak to him about Ukraine, with the US president’s focus more on the US-Israeli war against Iran. Erling Haaland punished Iraq with a brace of goals against the Group I underdog, while in Miami Uruguay’s Maximiliano Araújo scored a late equaliser as they battled back to secure a 1-1 draw with Saudi Arabia. – watch the full episode here. Cartoon of the day | Rebecca Hendin The Upside A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad Children in the Netherlands are some of the most healthy and happy kids in the world, and it may all be because of a century-old walking tradition. Avondvierdaagse (which literally translates to “four-day evening walk”) is a Dutch walking festival where children, parents and teachers embark on a 5-10km excursion. Come rain or shine, approximately and half a million people take part every year in 700 locations across the Netherlands. The extended walk allows children to connect with their community and helps build resilience. “I like that it’s something that happens each year and you get exercise out of it,” says Ansel Howard, 13. “It’s something that people have been doing for a long time and that you can do with friends and family and just enjoy.” 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