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A man armed with a gun and a knife was detained Saturday at State Farm Stadium near Phoenix before Charlie Kirk’s memorial service at that venue on Sunday – with authorities accusing him of brandishing inactive law enforcement credentials and lacking permission to be there.

In a statement released Saturday, the US Secret Service said that it was coordinating with local law enforcement in Glendale, Arizona, to investigate “an individual who was observed exhibiting suspicious behavior at State Farm Stadium”.

“The individual was approached by Secret Service and stated during the encounter that he was a member of law enforcement and that he was armed. The individual is not a member of authorized law enforcement working the event and is currently in custody,” the Secret Service said.

The agency added: “The US Secret Service and local law enforcement are investigating the circumstances as to why he was at the location.”

The man was armed with at least one gun and one knife when he was stopped, according to a law enforcement official who spoke to the Washington Post. The official added that the man presented “inactive law enforcement credentials” and informed the Secret Service that he was there to provide private security.

Sunday’s memorial service for Kirk is expected to draw up to 100,000 attendees to Glendale, where Kirk’s conservative advocacy organization, Turning Point USA, is based. Donald Trump and JD Vance are set to deliver addresses alongside other high-profile White House cabinet members including secretary of state Marco Rubio and defense secretary Pete Hegseth.

Kirk’s widow, Erika Kirk, is also scheduled to speak at the service. Following Kirk’s death, his wife was named the new leader of TPUSA.

The Department of Homeland Security has designated the event a special event assessment rating (Sear) level 1 event, according to multiple reports. Sear level 1 connotes “significant events with national and/or international importance that require extensive federal interagency support”.

According to the event’s website, attendees are to expect TSA-level screening, and guests arriving with bags, even clear ones, will not be permitted entry.

Kirk, 31, was shot to death on 10 September while he was speaking at a college event at Utah Valley University. Tyler Robinson, 22, has since been charged with aggravated murder in Kirk’s killing. Utah state prosecutors say they intend to pursue the death penalty against Robinson if he is convicted.

A British couple who were detained without charge for nearly eight months by the Taliban in Afghanistan have arrived in the UK.

Barbie Reynolds, 76, and her husband Peter, 80, were released on Friday, having been arrested as they travelled to their home in Bamyan province, central Afghanistan, in February.

The couple, pictured smiling by Sky News as they arrived at Heathrow airport on Saturday, were held without charge in a maximum security prison, which included long periods of separation. They had lived in the South Asian country for nearly two decades and ran a training and education organisation.

Their son, Jonathan Reynolds, said the family was “thrilled” and “overwhelmed with thankfulness” that the couple had been released and had returned to the UK. In a statement on Friday, the family said: “We are overwhelmed with gratitude and relief to share that our parents, Peter and Barbie Reynolds, have been released after seven months and 21 days in detention by the Taliban.

“This is a moment of immense joy for our family, and we are deeply thankful to everyone who played a role in securing their release.”

The family said they wanted to extend their appreciation to the emir of Qatar for his leadership and compassion, and also thanked Mohammed Al-Khulaifi and Mirdef Al Qashouti for their diplomatic efforts and support.

The statement said: “Their dedication and humanity have made an unforgettable impact on our lives. We are also extremely grateful to the UK government for its commitment and support to our family, including ensuring that our parents had access to essential medication during their detention and upon release.

“We further thank the US government for its support to the US members of our family, and to the UN special rapporteurs for their intervention and support. This experience has reminded us of the power of diplomacy, empathy and international cooperation.

“While the road to recovery will be long as our parents regain their health and spend time with their family, today is a day of tremendous joy and relief,” the statement added. “We are forever grateful to the Qataris for standing with us during this difficult time.

“Thank you for giving us our family back.”

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The couple had reunited with their daughter, Sarah Entwistle, in Doha, on Friday afternoon. The Taliban have never explained what prompted the couple’s detention. A spokesperson at the Taliban government’s foreign ministry, Abdul Qahar Balkhi, said on X that the couple had “violated Afghan law” and were released from prison on Friday after a court hearing.

He did not say what law the couple were accused of breaking.

The couple had five children, 17 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren, who live in the UK and US. Their eldest son, Simon, died in 1993.

Anti-immigration protesters have clashed with anti-racist counter-protesters in tense scenes in Glasgow this afternoon, a week after the largest far-right event in decades, organised by the activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, known as Tommy Robinson, took place in London.

The statue of Scottish statesman Donald Dewar, father of the Holyrood parliament, was surrounded by union flags bearing the words: ‘Stop the boats’, and ‘Unite the kingdom’.

Further down Buchanan Street, one of the city’s main shopping thoroughfares, representatives from trade unions as well as anti-racism and Palestinian solidarity groups carried signs and banners reading ‘Bairns not bigots’, ‘Aye welcome refugees’ and ‘God hates fascists’.

By 1pm, hundreds of people waving placards reading ‘The people will not be silenced’ and ‘Just a worried mum’ had gathered at the steps leading up to Glasgow Royal Concert Hall for the ‘unity rally’, which was first advertised by a podcaster called John Watt.

A number of other groups, including Save our Futures and Our Kids’ Futures, which has been coordinating protests against an asylum hotel in Falkirk, stepped in and encouraged their supporters to attend after Watt announced on social media that he was pulling out ‘due to unforeseen circumstances’. Last week, the Daily Record revealed that Watt had been convicted of abusing two former girlfriends in 2018.

There was a significant police presence and febrile atmosphere with the ‘unity’ protesters blocked in at the top of Buchanan Street, while the larger group of counter-protesters amassed further down the pedestrian thoroughfare. Those making speeches to the anti-immigration protest struggled to make themselves heard above chants of “shame on you” and heavy beats from the anti-racists’ superior sound system, which blasted out sing-a-long hits by Abba and Chappell Roan.

Standing by the steps leading up to the concert hall, three women held aloft a banner bearing a colourful portrait of the far-right Christian activist Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated two weeks ago in Utah. They praised Kirk, saying “he wasn’t scared to say what other people are afraid to say” and bemoaned lack of Christian teaching in modern Scottish schools while “too many other religions are being brought in”.

One of the women, Laura Dunsmore, a nurse, said it was important to emphasise that the protest wasn’t only about illegal immigration. “It’s about the state of the country, the state of the world. You can’t access healthcare, our streets are crumbling. We can’t vote our way out of this. We need change at a higher level.”

Further down the wide street, holding a handmade placard reading “This mum welcomes refugees”, Cat, a software technician from Glasgow’s southside, was jigging to pop hits along with her partner and baby. “I felt I should lean in to the ‘mum’ bit especially because they are saying they want to protect women and children, and as a woman and a mum I’m not worried about asylum seekers. I’m far more worried about those guys over there”.

She said it was important to come to the counter-protest to show solidarity in particular after the scenes in London last weekend.

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As groups at the edge of the protest began pushing and shoving, police moved quickly to separate the two groups, closing off access routes for Saturday shoppers and tourists who expressed alarm or irritation at the disruption.

After concluding their speeches, the ‘unity’ rally had begun to disperse by 3pm, declaring the event a success, while a hardcore of counter-protesters continued to dance along to disco hits in a more carnival atmosphere.

Areas of Glasgow have been draped in Saltires in recent weeks, in a direct parallel with the Operation Raise the Colours movement, which has co-opted the St George’s cross in England, with ownership of the blue and white cross of St Andrew becoming a new cultural and political battleground in Scotland.

Last summer, Scotland escaped the racist violence that spread across England and Northern Ireland after the horrific Southport killings last July. But a year later, the landscape is very different, with recent polling for More in Common suggesting that Reform was neck and neck with Scottish Labour in voting intention for next May’s Scottish parliament election. Immigration appears to be a top concern for Scottish voters for the first time and the Scottish government is facing a refugee housing crisis in Glasgow, Scotland’s largest city.

Finland’s president, Alexander Stubb, has said security guarantees for Ukraine, which are being discussed by the so-called “coalition of the willing”, would compel the European countries that sign to fight Russia if Moscow launched military action against Ukraine again in future.

“Security guarantees in essence are a deterrent. That deterrent has to be plausible and in order for it to be plausible it has to be strong,” Stubb told the Guardian, in an interview in Helsinki before travelling to New York for the UN general assembly.

He said the guarantees would only come into effect after a future deal between Ukraine and Russia, but insisted that Russia would have no veto over their format.

“Russia has absolutely no say in the sovereign decisions of an independent nation state … So for me it’s not an issue will Russia agree or not. Of course they won’t, but that’s not the point,” he said.

After the Paris meeting last month, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, told reporters that 26 nations had committed to be part of a “reassurance force” in Ukraine, with some of them committing to be present “on the ground, in the sea or in the air”.

However, the big question many in Kyiv have is whether the arrangements would come with concrete commitments. When asked if the guarantees would mean European countries were saying they would be ready to engage militarily with Russia in the case of future aggression against Ukraine, Stubb said: “That is the idea of security guarantees by definition.”

It is far from clear that there is political will for this kind of commitment in most European capitals, however, where promises to a postwar Ukraine have usually been framed more as “reassurance” than as firm commitments. Up to now, the policy of most western countries has been to offer support to Ukraine but minimise the risk of a direct conflict with Russia. But Stubb said any guarantees would be meaningless if not backed up with real force.

“Security guarantees in essence are a deterrent and that deterrent has to be plausible, and in order for it to be plausible it has to be strong. And that means also strategic communication, so we’re not making security guarantees into the air, but we’re making real security guarantees and Russia knows that,” said Stubb.

Stubb has emerged as a key player in peace negotiations in recent months, forging a close relationship with the US president, Donald Trump, including through rounds of golf. The personal connection has meant that Finland, with a population of just 5.6 million, has been able to play an outsized role in communications between Trump and European leaders. Stubb said he and Trump are still in contact regularly, “by phone and other means” and that he expects the pair to have a bilateral meeting this week.

Stubb has said on several occasions this year that Trump was beginning to lose patience with Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, but so far Trump’s occasional tough words on Putin have not translated into action, and a series of Trump-set deadlines for progress to be made on arriving at a peace deal have passed without much follow-up. Instead, Trump rolled out the red carpet for Putin in Alaska last month.

Stubb said he thought progress was being made, but “it’s not a big bazooka, it’s step-by-step”. On the question of whether there is a point when Europe has to accept that the US is not a reliable ally when it comes to Ukraine negotiations, Stubb said his nation had little option but to try as hard as possible to be friendly with the Trump administration.

“I think it’s the job of the president of Finland to get along with the president of the United States, whoever he is,” said Stubb. “Foreign policy is always based on three pillars. It’s values, interests and power. Small states only have values and interests … but we can have influence instead of power. Engagement is better than disengagement, come hell or high water,” he added.

Last week, Stubb was in Kyiv where he met with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and said he came away from the trip “confident” that Ukraine could continue fighting a long war if necessary, dismissing suggestions to the contrary as “fake news”.

Stubb said much of the focus at the UN this week will be on Palestine, but that he hopes to have several meetings with Zelenskyy and others related to Ukraine. On security guarantees, he said an “American backstop” would be necessary to give them real force, and conceded that there is not yet a full sense of what the Trump administration is willing to commit.

However, the talk of guarantees may all be purely hypothetical if progress is not made first on a negotiated end to the war. Zelenskyy has said many times he is willing to meet with Putin, as demanded by Trump, but Putin has said he would only meet Zelenskyy in Moscow, or if numerous Russian demands are met first.

Stubb conceded that there did not currently appear much chance of bringing Putin to the table. “This war is too big for him to lose. He has made probably the biggest strategic mistake in recent history, certainly since the end of the cold war, and he has failed in all of his strategic aims. It’s a question when he comes to the negotiating table, hopefully sooner rather than later, but right now I’m quite pessimistic,” said Stubb.

A two-year-old drowned in a vehicle that was swept away by flood waters in southern California, and the child’s father had to be rescued by authorities, officials said Friday.

The deadly emergency unfolded amid sudden heavy rain east of Los Angeles that unleashed mudslides which plowed into homes and trapped drivers for hours on roadways.

The two-year-old boy who drowned was in his family’s vehicle when it was swept off the road by flood waters Thursday night in Barstow, according to a statement from the city. The boy’s father was separated from his son as they were both swept away by the water, and the father was later rescued, according to officials. The boy’s body was found Friday.

Meanwhile, near the San Bernardino national forest, authorities rescued 10 people traveling in at least six vehicles who were stranded on state route 38 in the area of Jenks Lake, the local fire district said. The route is narrow and winds through towering trees, curving back and forth up the mountainside and linking cities east of Los Angeles with the resort town of Big Bear Lake.

Christopher Prater, a public information officer for the San Bernardino county fire protection district, said no one was hurt in the area of Jenks Lake, and no one is reported missing.

The mudslides affected the tiny mountain communities of Forest Falls, Oak Glen and Potato Canyon, the county’s fire protection district said in a statement. One home in Forest Falls had giant tree trunks flung in its yard and piled so high they reached the roof.

Forest Falls was walloped by mudslides three years ago. That was just two years after wildfires ripped through the area, leaving burn scars, or areas where there is little vegetation to hold the soil.

Intense rains pounded the area for more than an hour Thursday afternoon as remnants of Tropical Storm Mario reached the mountainous region, the US’s National Weather Service (NWS) said.

Kael Steel told KNBC-TV he was driving down the mountain from Big Bear to head to an amusement park when the rain started pounding.

“Suddenly we started seeing rocks and stuff coming down the side of the mountain,” he said.

Steel said cars were turning around telling him the road was blocked. So he headed back up the mountain but was blocked again. He turned around once more and said the road he had crossed 30 seconds earlier had been wiped away.

“There’s no road there any more,” he said.

The route was still closed as of Friday, the California Highway Patrol (CHP) said.

Authorities planned to assess the hillside areas affected by the slides to determine the extent of the damage.

“The community obviously has been impacted fairly significantly,” Prater said. “How bad, we don’t know yet.”

With the possibility of more storms forecast for Friday, San Bernardino county fire officials asked residents to stay alert, and an evacuation warning was in effect for mountain communities already affected by Thursday’s storm. By Friday evening, the evacuation warning had been lifted, the San Bernardino county sheriff’s office said in a post on X.

Forest Falls saw 1.5in (3.8cm) of rainfall in an hour, and another half inch (1.3cm) after that – far more than the arid southern California region usually sees, said Kyle Wheeler, a meteorologist for the NWS in San Diego.

The rain also fell much faster, Wheeler said, adding that the rainfall rates for summer thunderstorms in the region are more typically about a half inch (1.3cm) per hour.

“They got almost two inches of rain in a two-hour time period,” Wheeler said. “The fact that it happened in such a flood-prone location is just an unfortunate event.”

JD Twitch, the Scottish DJ and producer celebrated as one half of the duo Optimo, has died aged 57.

The artist, whose real name was Keith McIvor, had been diagnosed with an untreatable brain tumour, which he announced in July. He died on Friday in Glasgow’s Prince and Princess of Wales Hospice, his DJ partner Jonnie Wilkes (AKA JG Wilkes) announced.

“In a 28 year partnership he changed my life immeasurably and together we took our work in directions and to places few people are lucky enough to explore,” Wilkes said. “I am forever grateful for everything he bestowed on me, both as a partner in music and as a friend.”

McIvor grew up in Edinburgh in a family who “had the most middle of the road, blandest music taste imaginable”, he later said, but after moving to Glasgow to go to university in 1986 he became involved in club culture across both cities.

He began DJing electro and EBM (electronic body music) at a club night in Edinburgh, graduating to house and techno as those styles reached the UK and the acid house era began. The night was shut down by police after a brawl between football hooligans, but McIvor began a new night called Pure with the blessing of the authorities by making it a members only event. “It gave us the chance to start again from scratch and do a club 100% on our own terms,” he said. “Out went anything to do with all the awful Madchester-related music and in came a completely different crowd.”

Pure became a core event in the Scottish house and techno scene, but McIvor – who grew to find DJ culture “all pretty boring” – began another event in 1997 that gave voice to the breadth of his catholic taste. Taking its name from the track Optimo by New York punk-funk band Liquid Liquid – which McIvor would go on to remix – the Sunday night event at Glasgow’s Sub Club alongside DJ partner JG Wilkes (Jonnie Wilkes) ran every week until 2010.

McIvor said the pair were not “aligned to any one particular musical movement” – championing electroclash, punk, new wave, soft rock and a range of other styles alongside dance tracks, and hosting bands such as LCD Soundsystem and TV On the Radio as well as guest DJs. Optimo pre-empted the open-mindedness of the internet age, and became lauded as one of the most significant events in global dance culture. Thereafter McIvor and Wilkes continued to DJ internationally under the Optimo name.

McIvor was also a producer, and as Optimo’s star rose he was sought after as a remixer for the likes of Franz Ferdinand, Róisín Murphy, Manic Street Preachers, Florence + the Machine and more (“Discogs tells me I did 108 remixes, though it’s probably a few more,” he said in 2023). McIvor also founded the label Optimo Music (plus spin-offs such as the Brazil-focused Selva Discos), and Optimo created acclaimed compilation albums such as How to Kill the DJ (Part Two). McIvor also curated the soundtrack to Beats, a 2019 film set in the 90s rave scene in Scotland, and put out music under the alias Tomorrow the Rain Will Fall Upwards.

McIvor announced his illness in July 2025, saying: “My symptoms weren’t immediately diagnosed, and my health declined very rapidly over just a few weeks … I am currently trying to process this news and prioritising spending precious time with the people I love.”

Wilkes added in his tribute to McIvor: “I am forever grateful for everything he bestowed on me, both as a partner in music and as a friend. Keith’s intensity and passion for life, for music, for creativity and for positive change simply never let up. He was formidable. His belief in people and the idea that standing together, that our collective strength is powerful was unwavering. I loved him for that.”

After thanking hospice staff and others, he added: “Keith left us far too soon. He will go now to travel those space-ways but I know his energy remains in every one of us who had the privilege of knowing him. I love you forever Keith.

The average reading and math scores of American high school seniors fell to their lowest levels in two decades in 2024, according to new national data released last week.

The results, from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), found that, on average, reading scores for 12th graders were 10 points lower in 2024 than they were in 1992, when the test was first administered, and that math scores fell to their lowest levels since 2005, when the math assessment began.

The test, administered by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), which is part of the US Department of Education, assessed roughly 19,300 12th-graders in math, 24,300 in reading and 23,000 eighth-graders in science between January and March of last year.

The report found that 35% of seniors “performed at or above” the NAEP’s “proficient” level in reading, and 22% were at or above that level in math.

It also stated that 45% of 12th graders scored below the NAEP’s “basic” level in math, marking a five percentage-point increase from 2019. In reading, 32% of students scored below the basic level, which was a two-point increase from 2019.

“These results are sobering,” said NCES acting commissioner Matthew Soldner. “The drop in overall scores coincides with significant declines in achievement among our lowest-performing students, continuing a downward trend that began before the Covid pandemic.

“Among our nation’s high-school seniors, we’re now seeing a larger percentage of students scoring below the NAEP basic achievement level in mathematics and reading than in any previous assessment.”

One lingering effect of the pandemic present in the report was chronic absenteeism. The report found that about a third of 12th-graders reported missing three or more days of school in the month before the test, up from 25% in 2019.

“Students are spending less time learning,” said Thomas Kane, an education economist at Harvard. “And when they are present, instruction is less efficient because teachers are constantly reteaching material.”

Robert Balfanz, a professor at John Hopkins University School of Education, said easy access to information online and the use of online assignments may also be leading some students to treat in-person school attendance as optional.

“In their minds, they tell their parents, ‘Look, all my assignments are online, I can do them even if I’m not at school,’” Balfanz said.

But while the Covid pandemic and school closures had major effects on learning, experts say the academic decline began before 2020.

“The uncomfortable truth is that American students have been significantly losing ground for more than a decade,” Eric Hanushek, an education economist, wrote in an opinion piece last week. “The pandemic didn’t break American education – it was already broken.”

Kane said the decline among lower-achieving students began some time around 2015 and has continued.

“It’s clearly not just the pandemic,” Kane said. “It should be troubling to everyone, and we need to find a solution.”

Experts point to a range of potential factors beyond absenteeism that could be contributing to the decline, including increased screen time and smartphone use, declining student engagement, and the rollback of test-based accountability since the expiration of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2015.

Carol Jago, a longtime English teacher and literacy expert at UCLA, told the Associated Press last week that students today read fewer books and spend less time with longer texts.

“To be a good reader, you have to have the stamina to stay on the page, even when the going gets tough,” Jago said. “You have to build those muscles, and we’re not building those muscles in kids.”

Balfanz added that the constant exposure to short-form and visual media in students’ daily lives may be making academic focus more difficult.

One potential solution, he said, could be to add more dedicated reading time into school days – and restricting smartphones in classrooms.

Kane noted that academic declines are appearing in other countries as well, which suggests a broader global trend that could be linked to increased screen use.

Some US states have already passed laws restricting phone use in schools. Kane believes that there needs to be a national effort to assess the impact and effectiveness of those policies to see whether they work and ought to be implemented in more areas.

The role of smart phones and social media in academic performance came up this week during a Senate hearing on the NAEP results.

Martin West, the vice-chair of the National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees policy for the NAEP, told lawmakers that the rise of “smartphones and social media platforms targeting youth” is one area they should investigate.

“We lack direct evidence of a causal link between smartphones and learning, but I’m convinced that this technology is a key driver of youth mental health challenges, a distraction from learning, both inside and outside of schools, and a deterrent to reading,” West said.

Rebecca Winthrop, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, testified that student disengagement was exacerbated by the pandemic and is being amplified by social media. She endorsed actions such as smart phone bans, higher academic expectations, and adopting more engaging teaching styles.

The NAEP results also reignited the debate around the federal government’s role in education, with US education secretary Linda McMahon saying last week that the lesson from the results “is clear”.

“Success isn’t about how much money we spend, but who controls the money and where that money is invested,” she said. “That’s why President Trump and I are committed to returning control of education to the states so they can innovate and meet each school and students’ unique needs.”

Representative Tim Walberg, a Republican who chairs the House education committee, agreed and said that “by returning education to the states, we can empower parents and local communities and ensure every child gains the skills necessary to succeed”.

But Democratic representative Bobby Scott pushed back, writing that the NAEP results “reinforce the urgent need for sustained federal investment in academic recovery and educational equity”.

“Now is not the time to retreat from our responsibility to provide every child, regardless of zip code, with the opportunity to succeed,” he added.

Balfanz believes that “some collective effort at the national level” is needed to support states and districts in implementing proven solutions. He emphasized the need to “set targets and goals and strategies” and help build the capacity at the local level to be able to achieve them.

Kane said that he agrees that states need to take a “more aggressive role in helping to reverse these trends” but that the federal government also needs to prioritize partnering with states “in a concerted, coordinated effort to answer two questions: finding effective ways to lower absenteeism and measuring the impact of the cellphone bans”.

“Something fundamental in US schools is broken,” Kane warned. “And we need to fix it.”

Northern Ireland faces a “permacrisis” from recurring race riots and may need to use military bases to shelter people burnt out of their homes, government documents reveal.

Officials fear the region faces prolonged instability and that a single incident, local or international, could spark widespread disorder.

The stark warnings say some displaced families have “gone off-grid” for security and that authorities may struggle to provide safe emergency accommodation if renewed unrest erupts.

Stormont officials painted the bleak portrait – in emails, meeting minutes and other documents obtained by news website the Detail and shared with the Guardian – amid a summer of anti-immigrant violence in Ballymena, Larne and other towns that forced scores of families to flee.

“This is a permacrisis situation due to the recurring nature of public unrest,” an official at the executive office of the first minister, Michelle O’Neill, and the deputy first minister, Emma Little-Pengelly, noted during a multi-agency meeting between government departments and police on 3 July.

The documents reveal that officials took the public housing register offline for at least six weeks, lest it identify potential targets, and that last year foreign health workers were offered personal safety alarms, security escorts and police “reassurance patrols”.

The disclosures are included in hundreds of pieces of correspondence obtained through freedom of information requests by the Detail. The official exchanges, spanning June and July, show the extent of concern that recent racial violence could escalate into a much graver outbreak.

Immigrants have trickled into Northern Ireland since the 1998 Good Friday agreement but ethnic minorities still account for just 3.4% of the population, far below the rest of the UK. Even so, a campaign of vandalism and intimidation has for years targeted non-white families, especially in loyalist areas of County Antrim.

Riots in England in July 2024 spread to Belfast, where mobs targeted foreign-owned businesses. Ballymena erupted in June this year when mobs attacked the homes of Roma families and other foreigners. A vigilante group in east Belfast that styles itself the Belfast Nightwatch First Division challenges dark-skinned males to produce identity documents. Copycat groups have reportedly spread to other parts of the city.

The Stormont documents show how officials are bracing for more crises. “Support centre locations cannot be shared,” said one Department of Communities official in June after masked men torched a leisure centre in Larne that had sheltered families displaced from Ballymena.

Council staff organising emergency accommodation faced intimidation, the official wrote. “These concerns could reduce the ability to open centres due to staff fears – realistically (my view) secure MoD sites might be only option.” The riots subsided in mid-June, averting the need for Ministry of Defence sites.

Officials struggled to keep track of people “decanted” from certain areas, especially those who went “off-grid”, raising concerns that children were missing school. Unaccompanied asylum seeker children in the care of health trusts were told to lock doors and windows, to keep their phones charged and other security measures.

A spokesperson for Stormont’s executive office said authorities had established a strategic coordination group and recovery coordination group for a “joined up” effort to improve community relations and mitigate the risk of further unrest. “Work to tackle racism and hate is a key part of our wider good relations work to build a more inclusive place for everyone.”

Patrick Corrigan, Amnesty International’s Northern Ireland director, said the documents showed the “terrifying impact” of racist violence. “The likelihood of more racist violence seems certain. What is less clear is whether the Northern Ireland authorities are ready to step up to keep people safe.”

Geraldine Hanna, the Northern Ireland Commissioner for victims of crime, said the displacement of vulnerable people, especially children, was deeply distressing and required urgent action. “The events in August 2024 and June 2025 were not isolated incidents but part of a disturbing pattern of violence and intimidation that has left many victims traumatised and entire communities living in fear.”

Immigrant advocacy organizations and activists are bracing for a crackdown from the federal government following threats from the Trump administration to root out and criminally prosecute non-profit groups it believes are sympathetic to “leftwing” politics.

Donald Trump and his closest allies have periodically threatened immigrant rights activists and nonprofits, including those that distribute food and water to migrants or provide immigrants with legal services, with arrest. But their rhetoric has been heightened in the days following the killing of rightwing activist Charlie Kirk this month.

Over the last week, JD Vance described civil rights groups as a “domestic terror movement”, while Stephen Miller, a top Trump aide and the architect of the US president’s mass deportation agenda, vowed that the administration would hold nonprofits, including immigrant-rights and police-reform organizations, “criminally liable” for what he baselessly described as “coordinated attacks” on Ice agents.

And on Tuesday, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (Ice) followed up with a warning: “Anyone – regardless of immigration status – who assaults an Ice officer will face federal felony assault charges and prosecution to the fullest extent of the law.” The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), meanwhile, has expanded its definition of “threats” to include the filming Ice operations.

For Brandon Lee, communications director of the immigrant rights non-profit the Illinois Coalition For Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR) the threats represented “yet another moment where the Trump administration is attempting to curtail speech, curtail organizing, to scare our people”.

“This is another example of the atmosphere of fear that the administration is trying to create,” said Lee.

Advocates and activists told the Guardian that they are advising staff and volunteers to practice caution while assisting immigrants and filming raids, while also maintaining that they will not “comply in advance” and give up their first amendment rights to document immigration enforcement.

ICIRR, which organizes teams to observe raids and help the families of those affected access legal aid and other resources, has always “been operating within the boundaries of the law”, Lee said.

“In our rapid-response teams, our role is not to intervene in Ice operations. Our team members are aware of their rights to film in public spaces, to share information,” he said. The organization tends to send out volunteers in pairs or groups, and advises them to maintain a distance from officers.

Lee said the latest rhetoric from the Trump administration felt “heightened”, but added groups like his have been dealing with these threats for months. “It’s not as if these tactics are different from what they’ve been threatening throughout the year so far,” said Lee. “It’s not the first time they’ve threatened to go after nonprofits. It’s not the first time that they’ve threatened to go after charitable foundations.”

Federal agents have already, increasingly, been arresting elected officials, protestors and bystanders at immigration raids and detention centers. In New York on Thursday, Ice arrested at least 71 people – including Democratic lawmakers and activists – who were protesting at a federal building where Ice has been detaining immigrants. Lawmakers had requested access to Ice detention cells, while another group had attempted to block the garage doors typically used by Ice to move vans carrying detained immigrants.

The arrests were part of a pattern of aggressive tactics used against protesters and lawmakers seeking to shed light on conditions inside Ice facilities and demonstrate against the agency’s raids.

In May, New Jersey congresswoman LaMonica McIver was charged with assaulting or impeding federal agents as they arrested the Newark mayor Ras Baraka, who was there with a group of lawmakers trying to observe a detention center. In legal filings, McIver has said the indictment overstates the moments of physical contact between McIver and agents arresting the mayor, and notes that McIver’s actions were part of her authorized oversight duties as a congresswoman.

Several charges against protestors have ultimately been dropped or proven to have been exaggerated. A Guardian review of cases brought against anti-Ice protesters in Los Angeles this summer found that several charges were based on false or misleading statements from law enforcement.

This week, a jury found Brayan Ramos-Brito, a protester in Los Angeles, not guilty of assaulting a border agent, after footage from a witness – and published by the Guardian – showed an agent forcefully shoving Ramos-Brito, whereas there was no footage of Ramos-Brito assaulting the officer.

“We’re in an environment and you see a level of aggressiveness [from Ice and other federal agencies] that perhaps you haven’t seen before,” said Armando Gudino, executive director of the Los Angeles Worker Center Network, a group that advocates for immigrant workers in the city.

And, Gudino said, he expects Ice and the DHS could ramp up arrests of advocates and activists. “The unfortunate assassination of this individual, we feel, is only going to compound the challenges that we’ve been experiencing,” he said. “We’re seeing officials, however opportunistically, are blaming immigrants and advocates for the murder of Charlie Kirk.”

But many immigrant rights and civil rights groups said that at least for now, they are planning to continue their work as normal.

“We’ll continue to serve. We’ll continue to follow. And we’ll continue to do the best that we can under the circumstances. And, you know, we can only hope that, you know, justice and fairness will prevail,” said Melissa L Marantes, executive director of the Orlando Center for Justice, which provides legal aid for immigrants and their families.

“What gives me a little bit of hope is that – at least in the nonprofit social justice and immigrant justice movement here in Texas – I think we’re tougher than big corporate media and big law,” said Dustin Rynders, legal director, Texas Civil Rights Project, a nonprofit that advocates for a legal advocacy organization. “We’re all fighters.”

And for some groups, particularly those who organized during Trump’s first time in office, the crackdown feels all too familiar.

Project South, an advocacy group based in Atlanta, has for decades helped mobilize communities in the south to push for policy changes, organize protests and provide legal support. In 2020, the group represented an Ice nurse whistleblower who said immigrant women detained at an immigration jail in Georgia were being subjected to non-consensual gynecological procedures, including hysterectomies.

Project South has learned from its experiences from that period, said Azadeh Shahshahani, the legal and advocacy director for the group. Back in 2017, Project South and other groups were surveilled by Ice after they sought to raise awareness about a suicide at a Georgia detention center.

“Instead of cowering in fear, we will continue to organize our communities and protect and defend each other,” Shahshahani added.

José Olivares and Alexandra Villarreal contributed reporting

The chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has been urged to cancel plans to be the guest of honour at an event hosted by the chief lobbyist of the gambling industry while the Treasury is in the midst of a review of taxes on the £12bn sector.

Reeves is slated to appear at a “private reception” for business leaders, organised by the corporate communications company Brunswick, at the forthcoming Labour party conference in Liverpool.

According to an invitation seen by the Guardian, the event will be hosted by Michael Dugher, the chair of the Betting & Gaming Council (BGC), who joined Brunswick as a part-time “senior adviser” last year.

Dugher, a former Labour MP who stepped down during Jeremy Corbyn’s stint as party leader, has since built a career as a pugnacious and sometimes controversial champion of Britain’s gambling industry.

He recently told the BGC’s members, including online casinos and bookmakers, of his efforts to talk the Treasury out of plans to increase taxes on the sector to help fund the public finances.

Gambling companies could save billions of pounds if Reeves ignores calls to raise duties on online gambling, including from the former prime minister Gordon Brown.

Reeves and Dugher have a longstanding political and personal friendship stretching back to their teenage years.

But MPs and a parliamentary standards campaigner said the chancellor should refuse his invitation, questioning the “very strange timing”.

The former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith said the decision “raises real questions about the chancellor’s judgment and impartiality on this matter particularly when it is already widely known that she has taken both recent hospitality and donations from the sector”.

Reeves accepted three tickets to a musical worth £330, courtesy of the BGC in 2023 as well as £20,000 in donations from gambling executives while Labour was in opposition.

“The chancellor should think long and hard about whether she should appear at this event,” said Daisy Cooper MP, the Liberal Democrats’ Treasury spokesperson.

“Online gambling is one of the places where she should be looking to raise revenue for our public services. If she fails to do so at the budget she will have serious questions to answer over whether events like this one influenced her at all.

“To show she cares about taxpayers more than big gambling firms the chancellor should commit to raising taxes on online gambling giants ahead of the budget.”

Brunswick said Dugher’s role in the gambling industry was “completely separate” from his work for the public relations firm.

The debate over whether to raise taxes on gambling puts Dugher at the centre of a tug of war between leading Labour figures with whom he has longstanding ties.

Dugher was formerly a special adviser to Brown, who has called for taxes on online gambling to rise by as much as £3bn to help fund an end to the two-child benefit cap.

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But Dugher also has a longstanding relationship with Reeves, with whom he claimed to have been “in touch” earlier this year during the BGC’s tax campaign, which included hosting a darts-themed event with the Paddy Power owner, Flutter.

Reeves said at the time that she had no formal meeting with the BGC and would not ever have discussed the tax changes.

The pair’s friendship stretches back to their teenage years, while they also once shared a parliamentary office in Westminster.

They will reunite for the Brunswick event on 28 September, weeks before Reeves announces her second budget as chancellor, at which any new taxes on online casinos could be revealed.

“Very strange timing for such an event,” said Tom Brake, a former Liberal Democrat MP and director of Unlock Democracy, a campaign group that advocates for improved parliamentary standards.

He said Reeves “should have politely declined” the invitation, adding that her acceptance was the sort of thing that could be considered by a new standards body, the ethics and integrity commission, due to be established next month.

A spokesperson for Brunswick said: “For many years Brunswick has hosted a reception at the Labour party conference which enables senior business leaders to engage with a number of ministers and MPs.

“Michael is a part-time senior adviser to Brunswick, and his work with us is completely separate from his other roles. He will be hosting the event jointly alongside partners from Brunswick’s public affairs team.”

The Guardian approached the chancellor for comment.