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Wednesday briefing: In a new era of far-right organising, how can we tackle hate?

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 underestimate 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

Lib Dems to urge Labour to drop ‘torpor and timidity’ on EU and rejoin single market

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. Ahead of the 10th anniversary of the Brexit vote next week, Ed Davey will challenge Burnham to scrap Labour’s red lines on the customs union and single market if he becomes prime minister and immediately begin talks on a more ambitious deal with the EU. He will argue on Wednesday for closer economic ties with the EU, even though that would include free movement, as well as a new European security council to counter mounting threats from Russia and the unreliability of the US president, Donald Trump. It marks a significant step towards calling to rejoin the bloc. The Lib Dems took a more gradual approach at the last election, in contrast with 2019, when the words “stop Brexit” appeared in bold on the front of their manifesto. Keir Starmer confirmed on Tuesday that the second EU reset summit would take place on 22 July, despite fears it could be postponed to the autumn with talks over youth mobility in deadlock. In 2024, Labour promised not to rejoin the EU, the single market or the customs union. But in a major speech, Davey will say: “Labour’s red lines are holding Britain back. They are hurting the British people and they are playing into the hands of Farage and Reform. “So my message to Andy Burnham, to Wes Streeting – to whoever the next prime minister may be – is this: drop those red lines. Drop them now, so we can move on from the torpor and timidity that marks out Labour’s approach to Europe so far. “We can put an end to the endless talk of a ‘reset’, that so far seems to just mean saying ‘no’ more politely than the Conservatives did. And we can get on with properly fixing our relationship with Europe.” Davey will argue that the Lib Dems’ plan to join the single market as a member of the European free trade agreement – alongside Norway and Iceland – and form a new UK-EU customs union would fully remove trade barriers to Europe and reverse years of economic damage from Brexit. It would represent “the best hope our country has to stop the chaos and end the crisis – and the biggest step we can take back towards membership of the EU”, he will say. “People are fed up … They know the hard truth that most politicians won’t admit: the Conservatives’ Brexit experiment has failed. And it’s failed all of us. £90bn a year – that’s how much it’s costing us all.” A return to the single market would require the UK to accept free movement, putting Davey on a collision course with the Tories and Reform UK over immigration. EU officials have said they are open to the UK joining the European Economic Area – the European single market – but have ruled out a British proposal for common rules on goods without free movement of people. Charles Michel, a former European Council president, told the Guardian that the EU single market was “not for sale” when asked about the British proposal of a single market for goods. “If the dream in the UK is to build closer ties, but if the consequence is less integrity in the single market, that will not work, because I feel that the single market is not for sale.” He said the UK’s wish “to take the advantages of Brexit … without having any constraints” was not new and had been demonstrated throughout the Brexit negotiations. Michel, who was Belgium’s prime minister at the time of the 2016 referendum, said he expected the EU would react with “a positive spirit” if the UK ever decided to rejoin. He emphasised this was a question for UK politics “if and when there is the readiness for a serious domestic debate”. Lib Dem party sources argued that Brexit had led to the “Boris wave” and small boats crisis, suggesting the UK could negotiate a “very tight” returns agreement under the Dublin framework, while sectors including hospitality, agriculture and social care would benefit from more EU workers. The party is also calling for much deeper defence cooperation with the EU to help guarantee UK security, including the establishment of a European security council and a new rearmament drive to improve the continent’s ability to deliver Nato’s operational requirements. The party, which has 72 MPs, believes the UK could use its defence prowess as a bargaining chip with Brussels to negotiate a better deal, with some EU members already hoping to go further on military cooperation, alongside – rather than instead of – their Nato commitments.

They were forced into marriage and abused. Now women facing exploitation in China have a glimmer of hope

Last summer, Xiaocao, a softly spoken woman in her 40s, received a tip-off that in Lüliang, a small city in China’s Shanxi province, vulnerable women were being forced into marriages. Along with another volunteer, she wanted to investigate. After leaving Beijing, the two volunteers travelled south for hours, on trains and in rental cars. A few villages turned out to be dead ends. But on the final day of their trip, the women stopped in a county where they’d heard about a woman with learning disabilities who was “married” to two brothers. Soon, they found her. “She could see we didn’t mean any harm, so she stopped and chatted with us,” says Xiaocao, who asked to be referred to by her nickname because of the sensitive nature of her work. The woman ultimately declined their assistance. But her case is just one of possibly thousands across China that activists pursue in an attempt to identify and help vulnerable women who have been either abused or trafficked. Instead of advocating publicly, these activists are working behind the scenes to offer hands-on support to women they fear are being failed by the state. In a four-part series, the Guardian analysed the changing status of women across Chinese society. The series examines how women are responding to government restrictions and shifting social and economic conditions, in different aspects of their lives. The ‘chained woman’ incident The trafficking and exploitation of women in China gained global attention after a case in 2022. Every detail was shocking: A woman chained by the neck in a filthy shed. The eight children she’d given birth to. Local officials’ initial defence of her marriage to the man who had tied her up. The case of the “chained woman”, a woman with a mental illness who was later named as Xiao Huamei, quickly went viral after being posted online by a vlogger in 2022. And despite the efforts of the authorities to contain the reaction, the incident inspired a new type of feminism in China, one that operates in the shadows. The Chinese government says that tackling trafficking is a priority, but activists say that the government’s plans lack transparency. In 2021, the Chinese government launched a 10-year action anti-trafficking plan that said investigation methods should be “modernised and upgraded”. In April this year, the supreme people’s court claimed the number of trafficking and abduction crimes involving women and children has declined nearly 80% since 2012. But in recent years, China has dramatically reduced the number of legal judgments that are available online, making it hard to find details about cases or to check the official claims. Traditional social norms in rural areas mean that many cases are never reported in the first place. A US government report published last year about trafficking in China said: “Some forced marriage cases … were mediated at the village level; these proceedings rarely culminated in a guilty verdict.” Since Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, he has cracked down on all forms of civil society, including organisations working to eradicate sexual harassment, domestic violence and discrimination. Despite this, new groups of women across China are taking action. Since Xiao’s case, more and more privileged women have become willing to speak up for rural women with disabilities, a feminist activist who asked not to be named said. The activist said that as “anti-marriage, anti-childbirth” attitudes become more common among urban women, many have become more sensitive to the idea that in rural areas, women are being forced into marriages and childbearing against their will. Activists are focused on helping women who they see as the victims of trafficking, exploitation and abuse. As well as being bought or sold into marriages, some are forced into relationships that they’re unable to consent to. Celine Liao, a PhD candidate at the University of Washington who studies feminism in China, said that prior to the “chained woman” incident, “trafficking was not at the centre of mainstream feminist discourse” online. But since 2022, “feminists and the broader public have become significantly more sensitive to trafficking-related issues. In subsequent cases … there has been stronger public pressure on prosecutors to examine whether trafficking was involved”. A world away from the modern, wealthy cities of Beijing and Shanghai, Xiao’s case triggered an outpouring of anger from those who saw another example of a society failing to protect its most vulnerable. Activists have been spurred on by the sense that Xiao’s story was not unique. In February, news spread of another case. A man in the poor, mountainous region of Guangxi in southern China was discovered with a wife who had learning disabilities, with whom he had had nine children. “I dare not call this human trafficking. I have no evidence. But I want to ask: how could a woman with intellectual disabilities ‘voluntarily’ have nine children with a man? Could she express consent?” the legal blogger Li Yuchen wrote in an article that was soon censored. ‘An indictment of the society we live in’ Women have responded in a range of different ways. Some, like Xiaocao, physically travel to places where there are reports of exploitation, to investigate cases. Others use their spare time to monitor national anti-trafficking efforts. Some have lobbied internationally to raise awareness of the issue in China – a highly risky move in today’s climate. Nearly all of them operate under a cloak of anonymity because of the fear of retribution from the authorities, who, despite officially supporting the cause, treat independent activists harshly. An analysis published by researchers from Renmin University found that of the more than 1,200 female victims of trafficking mentioned in judicial case files between 2017 and 2020, 20% lived with a physical or mental disability. And many cases, like the woman who Xiaocao discovered in Shanxi, are not reported. In February, Free Nora, a media collective that was launched in the wake of Xiao’s case, published an article marking the fourth anniversary of the case. It described it as “an indictment of the society and history we live in” and published a lengthy analysis of the government’s progress and shortcomings in protecting the rights of rural women, based on publicly available judicial statistics. It concluded that progress was “insufficient”. The article, and Free Nora’s WeChat account, were later deleted. Six people, including the husband, were later convicted of crimes relating to Xiao’s case. The authorities launched a special operation to uncover similar incidents which resulted in the discovery of more than 1,000 missing women and children. But efforts to investigate the problem more deeply have been quashed. Activists have noted that Chinese law criminalises the buying and selling of women, but it does not cover cases in which vulnerable women are forced into marriages. The Chinese government did not respond to a request for comment. For now, women like Xiaocao are limited to trying to help women on a case-by-case basis rather than pushing for more wide-ranging reforms. But Xiaocao is studying to be a lawyer to better equip herself to advocate for women and children. She believes the government has failed to take the problem seriously enough, despite the renewed push since Xiao’s case. “I don’t think it’s realistic to rely on the authorities to crack down on this,” she says. Additional research by Lillian Yang and Yu-chen Li

Lives and incomes lost as Ebola takes toll on Bunia’s public-facing workers

Justin Keno watches more than 400 pupils stream through the Nelson Mandela school’s gate each morning, and wonders which of them might be carrying Ebola. The institution’s principal has done everything he can to prevent the spread of the virus: installing hand-washing basins at the entrance, providing alcohol-based hand rub for parents, making pupils bring packed lunches instead of eating in the canteen, and banning food sellers from outside the gates. But he knows the virus moves in ways he cannot control. “Children come from everywhere, including neighbourhoods declared epicentres,” he said in his office in Bunia. “We cannot know which child comes from a confined area. If one is infected, it could reach many children very fast.” Nearly six years after the last Ebola outbreak in Ituri in the Democratic Republic of the Congo was declared over, residents of the province’s capital, Bunia, have for the past month found themselves reliving their fears as another epidemic takes hold. The health ministries of the DRC and neighbouring Uganda announced outbreaks of Ebola on 15 May, but the virus is thought to have been circulating undetected for weeks before then. The epidemic, which the World Health Organization has declared a public health emergency of international concern, is caused by the rare Bundibugyo virus, which has no vaccine or approved treatment. Responders are racing to contain the virus, which has caused 136 deaths from 676 confirmed cases in the DRC as of 10 June, according to a government report. In Uganda, it had caused two deaths from 19 confirmed cases as of 6 June, according to WHO. The DRC report also noted that the outbreak in the country had spread to three new health zones – all in North Kivu and Ituri provinces. The previous Ebola outbreak in Ituri lasted from July 2018 to June 2020, and also affected neighbouring North Kivu province. Overall, it involved 3,470 cases and 2,287 deaths, making it the largest in the country and second-largest globally. Modelling by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the US shows that the current outbreak could affect more people than the largest on record, which occurred in west Africa from 2014 to 2016 and infected more than 28,000 people, killing more than 11,000. First identified in 1976 in what is now the DRC, Ebola is a highly contagious and often fatal viral disease that affects humans and non-human primates. It spreads through body fluids or contaminated materials and causes organ damage, blood vessel impairment and sometimes severe internal and external bleeding. Ebola’s economic cost People living Bunia said the economic toll of the virus was beginning to bite. Sylvie Guilaine was forced to close her used-clothes business because of the fear of contracting the disease in the high-contact operation. “Someone comes, touches a shirt, tries it on, throws it away. Another picks it up,” she said. “That can contaminate. I stopped completely.” She’s now a bricklayer’s assistant, and she soaks her work clothes in bleach before entering her house, delaying greeting her children. “They can cry but will have to wait until I have washed,” she said at Bunia general hospital, where she and colleagues were constructing a new Ebola treatment centre. “[Ebola] does not want dirt. It wants cleanliness. But it kills entire families – five, six, seven people. That is what I fear,” she said. Yves Buakya, a motorcycle taxi rider, has seen his earnings plunge since the outbreak started. He explained: “Before, two passengers could share the bike. Now they refuse. Some prefer to walk rather than take a moto [a motorcycle taxi]. I spend hours waiting [for passengers].” Buakya says Ebola is real but he also suspects that some organisations are profiting from it. To protect himself, he prays every morning and drinks traditional remedies made from guava leaves. He has a message for fellow residents: “Respect the measures. Wash your hands. Avoid unnecessary contact. Even if you think Ebola is politicised, protect your life.” Richard Ngongo, an airline travel agent, is counting losses as the outbreak affects movement in the province, a business centre and migratory hub that borders Uganda and South Sudan. “Flights are blocked. My cash registers are empty. We were waiting for the high season, for holiday travellers. Now nothing,” he said from his office. At the workplace, he has a sanitiser gel and a non-contact infrared thermometer for customers, who he said complied without resistance. He said no health team had ever come to sanitise him at work and urged more effort: “The message must be spread in churches, in communities, everywhere.” Georgette Kalume, who runs a secondhand clothes shop, said members of her Jehovah’s Witness congregation had stopped going door to door to preach to people, and were now using WhatsApp. She decried the fact that she had never received an Ebola awareness visit. “Not the government, not humanitarians,” she said. As the outbreak continues, medics in eastern DRC are struggling with shortages of basic equipment to protect themselves and prevent the spread of the virus, partly due to aid cuts, logistical challenges and the large size of the outbreak. Last week, the International Rescue Committee warned that basic protective equipment was likely to run out within days due to border closures with Uganda and Rwanda, where many supplies are sourced, and insecurity along transport routes. Africa CDC said that, as of 4 June, only a quarter of the critical supplies needed for the next three months had arrived in the DRC and Uganda. Thirty-four healthcare workers so far have been infected with the virus, and seven have died from it. Disinformation is fatal At Elikya hospital, Dr Yazid Yassine said the isolation ward was full, despite the number of beds increasing from six to more than 18. He is relentless, despite the deaths of other Ebola responders in the line of duty: “A soldier does not fear the battlefield. Better to die there than at home.” At ISIG University, academic secretary Maki Mugeni Sagesse has managed to prevent infections on the campus. He has installed chlorinated basins and does awareness sessions before lectures. He has lost five people close to him to Ebola in the past month alone. He praises the government’s efforts in setting up treatment sites and doing public awareness announcements, but said more must be done. “Go to ordinary people. Use megaphones in neighbourhoods. Use local languages. Train neighbourhood chiefs to sanitise 10 houses each,” he said. Dr Charles Kachindi, who works at CME Nyankunde hospital, told of a grim situation at the facility, saying it currently had 10 confirmed cases and 15 people had died. Testing, he said, was not as helpful as it might be as results for samples took up to three days to arrive – and sometimes not all of them came back. He appreciates the government’s efforts in trying to control the spread but warns: “We are not yet on a plateau.” Despite the growing danger of the virus, information gaps mean that some Bunia residents are not convinced that it is real. Yassine has watched patients arrive too late after believing rumours that the outbreak is fake and visiting traditional healers. “Disinformation has been rife,” he said. “People say Ebola was created by health workers to get funding. Some say it is poisoning.” People have become hostile, he said. “When we go into the community, people watch our movements. In this period, you cannot buy a motorcycle. They will say: ‘That is Ebola money,’” he said, smiling. Yassine said he had received death threats. “A man told me: ‘My family member died in your care. One day we cross paths, you will follow the same path.’” For Ngongo, the airline operator, the reality is beyond question. “I have never read in any manual that an epidemic can be invented. When you see doctors dying, do you think they would accept to die for a lie?”

Alleged ice-cream cartel in Japan investigated as sweltering summer looms

Authorities in Japan have raided six of the country’s largest ice-cream firms for allegedly colluding to raise the price of their products, provoking anger from frozen snack aficionados as they face a cruel summer ahead. Officials from the Japan Fair Trade Commission (JFTC) on Tuesday carried out searches of the corporate headquarters of Akagi Nyugyo, Ezaki Glico, Lotte, Meiji, Morinaga Milk Industry and Morinaga & Co due to suspicions they had violated antimonopoly laws. An official at the JFTC told the Guardian that it is not issuing a statement on the raids, but all six companies have confirmed they are under investigation by the commission and say they are fully cooperating. The companies are suspected of colluding to use inflation in food prices to raise the prices of their products beyond the increase in raw material costs. Senior executives in the companies face allegations they held meetings and exchanged emails for years to coordinate the timing and scale of retail price rises for ice-creams and other frozen desserts, according to news agency Kyodo and public broadcaster NHK. Public broadcaster NHK covered the raids in its main evening news bulletin, using a graph to show viewers how the price of two flagship frozen delights – Meiji’s ice-cream and Morinaga Milk’s six-pack choco-ice bites – jumped in lockstep four times between June 2022 and September 2025. Morinaga Milk issued a statement on its website saying it was “subject to an on-site inspection by the Japan Fair Trade Commission on suspicion of violating the Antimonopoly Act. We take this very seriously and will cooperate fully with the commission’s investigation.” According to sources familiar with the matter, this is the first JFTC investigation into a suspected ice-cream-related price cartel. The Japanese market for ice-cream and frozen snacks hit a record 663bn yen ($4bn) in the fiscal year to March, driven by increasingly hot summers and price rises. Japan’s already sweltering and sweaty summers are being intensified by climate breakdown, with record high temperatures being logged regularly in recent years. In April, authorities announced a new term for days when the mercury tops 40C, kokusho, which translates as “cruelly hot”. Adding to this summer’s woes are shortages in air-conditioner pipe coverings. The coverings of the pipes contain naphtha, the supply of which has been disrupted by the Middle East crisis, hitting installations of new air-conditioner units.

Ukraine war briefing: Moped ban in Crimea as official says noise is Kyiv plot using youth

Crimea, the peninsula annexed by Russia from Ukraine in 2014, has banned riding moped scooters, quad bikes and motorcycles at night-time, saying they sound like ⁠drone attacks and suggesting children are doing it deliberately at Kyiv’s behest. Sergei Aksyonov, the Russian-installed governor of the illegally occupied peninsula, said the ban would be in place between 8pm and 6am from Wednesday onwards. Oleg Kryuchkov, Aksyonov’s adviser, claimed ‌separately on Telegram: “The enemy is recruiting your children for night-time rides … The moped ⁠noise hampers the work of defence systems. Their engines sound similar [to drones].” Ukraine has recently intensified drone attacks on Crimea, nominally the home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet – targeting the peninsula’s supply routes and triggering a fuel crisis. A limit of 20 litres (5.3 gallons) of fuel per car at petrol stations would continue, Mikhail Razvozhayev, the governor of Crimea’s biggest city, Sevastopol, posted on Tuesday. Long lines of motorists queueing in Russian-controlled Crimea, southern Krasnodar region in Russia proper, and elsewhere underscore the sensitive domestic fallout from Ukraine’s strikes. A Ukrainian drone attack started a fire at the refinery that is the ⁠largest fuel supplier to the Moscow region, and two industry sources told Reuters that it had halted operations. The strike on Gazprom Neft’s refinery in south-east Moscow on Tuesday damaged a primary refining facility that accounts ⁠for 53% of the plant’s capacity. Emergency services said the ⁠fire was put out and did not affected operations – information that was contradicted by Reuters sources. Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president, said the Moscow refinery was hit from a distance of 500km (310 miles). “This is a just response to Russian strikes – and to the dragging out of a war that must be ended.” Gazprom Neft did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The US could soon reinstate sanctions on Russian oil shipments, Donald Trump indicated, as leaders at the G7 summit moved on Tuesday to put the war in Ukraine back on top of their agenda. Trump said the sanctions on Russia – partly waived by the US due to the Iran war, ostensibly to help lower oil prices – can go back in place as more oil moves through the strait of Hormuz. “Soon we’ll be able to do that because the oil is now flowing. We’re in a position to do that soon.” Russia should make peace with Ukraine, the US president said after a “very good” meeting with Zelenskyy. “Look, Russia should make a deal,” Trump told reporters, adding that too many young men were dying on the battlefield on both sides. “I’m gonna do whatever I can.” The German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, said of Trump’s statement: “I found him to be very cooperative, and ‌I also saw him listening very attentively. And ‌in that respect, once again, it gives me a certain degree of optimism that we here, as Europeans and as Americans, are now doing everything we can, together, to end the war.” Zelenskyy told Reuters that G7 leaders agreed Russia was not winning the war and they discussed additional sanctions targeting Russia’s oil exports, its banking sector and its military production. Two European diplomats, however, told Reuters that Trump had been noncommittal on imposing further US sanctions on Moscow. A French diplomat said G7 leaders committed to providing Kyiv with more air defence capabilities. A Ukrainian ⁠Su-24M bomber aircraft crashed on a mission in ⁠the Khmelnitskyi region ⁠in western Ukraine on Tuesday ⁠and its two-member crew was killed, ⁠the Ukrainian air ‌force said. Ukraine is estimated to have about a dozen of the ageing SU-24 family of warplanes. They are used to launch the Scalp/Storm Shadow cruise missiles supplied by Britain and France. Russian strikes on Ukraine killed at least eight people on Tuesday, officials said. A drone strike in Nikopol, central Dnipropetrovsk region, killed “a mother and son – a woman of 87 and a 51-year-old man” as well as a third person not immediately identified, said the regional governor, Oleksandr Hanzha. “The enemy targeted people ‌walking along the road with an FPV drone,” Oleksandr Hanzha said on Telegram. He posted a blurred photo of a wheelchair on a ‌road and what appeared to be a body underneath. Russian shelling of the Donetsk region city of Sloviansk killed three people, while drone strikes on the southern Kherson region killed two people and wounded 16, according to officials. Five Russian ⁠attacks on the ⁠south-eastern Ukrainian ⁠city of Zaporizhzhia left one ⁠person dead, three injured and set ablaze ⁠a home ‌and a ‌shopping centre, ‌said Ivan Fedorov, the regional governor. Repairs to the nearly 1,000-year-old Kyiv Pechersk Lavra monastery in Kyiv could take around two years, an official said ⁠on Tuesday. A ⁠Russian attack on the complex set fire to the roof of the Dormition Cathedral within ⁠the vast Unesco world heritage site. More than ‌80% of the 11th-century cathedral’s roof had been damaged, but firefighters managed to prevent the fire from spreading inside the cathedral, Maksym Ostapenko, director general of the complex, was cited as saying by Interfax Ukraine news agency. A Russian artist critical of Vladimir Putin and the Chechen leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, has been shot and killed in ⁠the eastern Polish town of Biała Podlaska, a prosecutor has said. Local media identified the victim as Robert ⁠Kuzovkov, who was also known by his artistic pseudonym, Semyon Skrepetsky. Pjotr Sauer writes that five shots were fired at the ⁠victim, including one ⁠to the head, in the attack on Monday, according to Marcin Kozak, a spokesperson for the district prosecutor in Lublin. Two Belarusians ⁠had been detained but no one had yet been charged. Other Russian exiles suspected Kadyrov was responsible. The Chinese ⁠embassy in London said it had complained to British ⁠authorities about sanctions on several entities, including four from ⁠China, for allegedly supplying key military equipment to Russia. “China has consistently promoted peace talks and strictly controlled exports of dual-use goods,” an embassy spokesperson said. “Normal exchanges and cooperation between China and Russia should ⁠not be disrupted or affected.” Britain’s latest sanctions package, announced on Tuesday, includes cracking down on third-country suppliers of critical military equipment to Russia in China, Thailand and Turkey. The US extended by 15 days until 1 July a sanctions waiver on Serbia’s Russian-controlled oil company NIS, allowing it to continue importing and processing crude, the firm said. Washington has demanded since early 2025 that Russia’s sanctioned Gazprom Neft sell it stake in NIS, which has been threatened by US financial sanctions that have been repeatedly postponed. Talks on the sale of the Russian-held stake in NIS to Hungary’s MOL energy company have gone on for months, with the US Treasury’s foreign assets control office extending the deadline for their completion until 16 June.

A rat sighting in New Zealand can trigger an urgent response. Meet the ‘ghostbusters’ hunting them down

In many places around the world, discovering a rat in your garden would barely register a second thought. But in parts of New Zealand, a single rat, possum or stoat can trigger an urgent response, as the country embarks on a world-leading project to eradicate introduced predators by 2050 to save its unique wildlife from further decimation. Wellington resident Davin Hall knows first hand. In March he noticed large tunnels cutting through the compost bin at his home. He suspected a rat and after two weeks of trying to catch the pest, he called in the cavalry: a team of pest-catchers who will try all methods possible to hunt down and kill a single rat. “It’s kind of like this idea of Ghostbusters,” says James Willcocks, project director at Predator Free Wellington, which hunts down pests in the New Zealand capital. “If we get any intel from the public that might be a suspected rat then we need to be able to deal with that immediately.” The team fields roughly five tip-offs a week and each is treated with urgency. First, they set out to determine whether there is a rat, says Philip Wisker, Predator Free Wellington’s eradication technical officer. Occasionally, people call in with reports of rat faeces in their shed, which sometimes belongs to the wētā – an unusual endemic insect. The difference lies in the smell – wētā poo “smells like nutmeg, spicy”; rat poo smells “quite pooey”, Wisker says. A dog detector team is then sent out to sniff out signs of rats, followed by the “capture team” who sets up cameras, traps and bait. When they find the rat – and they almost always do – it is promptly sent off for genomic sequencing, to determine if it is local or has travelled into the region. In Hall’s case, they had success. The intruder was a “giant rat”, 529 grams heavy and 495mm long with a meaty tail and piebald coat. The Norway rat – a species that arrived in New Zealand on European ships in the 1700s – was one of the largest the Wellington team had caught. A similar response plays out if a stoat is spotted on Waiheke Island, in Auckland’s Hauraki gulf, where just a few remain, and again for possums in Akaroa, near Christchurch, and Otago Peninsula in Dunedin, where they have been eliminated. In regions where eradication efforts have been successful, or are close to it, locally run predator-free projects are increasingly relying on residents to call in tip-offs to their “hotlines” when they see, or suspect, a predator has returned. “If we can activate those 20,000 sets of eyes and ears that are a community – or the 212,000 eyes and ears living in Wellington city – then we’ve got the most sensitive detection network anywhere in the world,” Willcocks says. Who ya gonna call? 0800 NO RATS New Zealand’s only endemic mammal species are bats and marine mammals. Subsequently, its birds evolved in unusual ways – the country is home to more species of flightless birds, both living and extinct, than any other place in the world. Isolation from land-based mammals left the country’s birds largely defenceless against introduced predators. An estimated 25m native birds are killed annually by rats, stoats, possums, and cats, and 50 bird species have gone extinct, according to the Department of Conservation. Predator Free Wellington has, over 10 years, managed to eradicate rats from Miramar peninsula, a 15-minute drive from the city centre. Now it is in phase two of its project – elimination in a number of nearby suburbs before it expands further into the city. It has achieved this through extensive trapping and monitoring networks, a large volunteer workforce, widespread community buy-in and now, residents calling 0800 NO RATS when they see a pest. Since the project began in Wellington, the population of native birds on Miramar peninsula has increased by 500%. In Waiheke, populations have increased by 99% since 2020. Still, the teams refuse to become complacent. Rats can breed multiple times a year and catching a single interloper early can stop it re-establishing a population. Expert dog handler Sally Bain is one of the rat-catchers. On the Miramar peninsula, she scours the coastline for signs of rats, with her two highly trained dogs, Kimi and Rapu, who lead with their noses to the air. A rat was recently discovered in a rat trap here, prompting a search of the area. Close to a small construction site, the dogs become animated. Rats regularly hide in cars, cabins and construction materials, Bain says, and the dogs’ interest in the site could either signal there are more rats hiding there, or this was where the dead rat had originated. Stamping out rats in a city of people is no small task. Day after day, Bain traverses Wellington’s tricky hilly terrain hunting them down. When asked what drives her, Bain says: “Humans weren’t the only ones who suffered when we turned up here.” “It’s about what you save, not what you kill.” For Wellington residents like Hall, those efforts and the wider buy-in from the community – from building and setting traps to keeping their eyes open for rats – have been “remarkably successful”. He says: “We’ve got kererū … pooping on people’s cars and sitting on powerlines, a family of kākā who live in the area and chase each other around. All these native birds have come back and getting rid of the rats means they get to stay.”

Jair Bolsonaro’s son sentenced to four years in jail for seeking US interference in father’s Brazil coup trial

Brazil’s supreme court has sentenced Eduardo Bolsonaro to four years and two months in prison after finding him guilty of courting US ⁠interference in his father’s coup plot trial last year. The office of Brazil’s ‌prosecutor general had ‌charged Eduardo Bolsonaro – who lives in the US - courting interference from the Trump administration to help Jair Bolsonaro’s case, by imposing sanctions on the court’s justices and tariffs on Brazilian goods. His father, the former far-right president, is serving 27 years in prison for plotting a coup in 2022 after losing the elections to Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. The younger Bolsonaro, a former lawmaker, moved to the United States in 2025, months before ‌the trial that convicted his father of plotting a coup. In the US, he has been active in building support, especially from the Trump administration, for his father. Eduardo Bolsonaro said in a statement after Tuesday’s conviction that he had not been properly notified about the court’s legal ⁠process. He had previously told Reuters that his work in the US was not aimed at getting his father acquitted by Brazilian courts, but at forcing the ‌Brazilian supreme court to punish officials who, according to the son, were not complying with Brazil’s constitution. In July last year, a Brazilian supreme court judge ordered that the bank accounts and assets of Eduardo Bolsonaro be frozen over allegations that money being sent to him by his father was bankrolling his efforts to lobby the Trump administration to help Bolsonaro avoid punishment for the alleged coup attempt after the 2022 election. Bolsonaro served one term as president from 2019 to 2022. In March, the former president was allowed to temporarily be placed under house arrest for three months due to ill health after being diagnosed with pneumonia and treated in an intensive care unit. Bolsonaro’s lawyers argued that his health problems, many of which stem from a knife attack in 2018, warranted him being granted house arrest for humanitarian reasons.