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Department’s rapid response team is weaponizing the social platform to champion defense secretary and attack rivals

While it’s trueno president or political leaderhas ever used social media quite as prolifically as Donald Trump, no recent secretary of defense has ever weaponized X or any other platform, quite like former Fox & Friends weekend host, Pete Hegseth.

Hegseth is activelyreshaping the Pentagonin his own image since taking over, prompting a social media policy that has taken a dramatic turn towards supporting Hegseth’s every move and public appearance.

Part of that has been theresurrectionof the Pentagon’s so-called “rapid response team”. Originally the name of apublic relations brainchildof former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld to combat what he saw asIraq war disinformation, thenew teamseems to have a similar mandate according to its X account: “Fighting Fake News!”

So far, it has already garneredcriticismfor its excessive and partisan attacks on reporters and cheerleading of Hegseth, in what appears to be a media strategy bent on going on the offensive. The result is an apparent information warfare tool that flirts with fascistic takes and merges religion with a cult of personality surrounding Hegseth.

In response to a blog post on the website of MSNBC figurehead, Rachel Maddow, criticizing Hegseth for carrying outwhat he calleda “Christian Prayer & Worship Service” inside the halls of the Pentagon, the rapid response team went into action.

“Only the mainstream media would be upset that@SecDefloves THE LORD!” the rapid response team accountposted on X, with a screenshot of the article.

As protests in Los Angeles escalated after continued Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) raids on migrants in the city this past week, rapid response came out with a full-throated backing of deploying American troops on American citizens, inside the US homeland – a move that is rarely taken lightly for any presidential administration.

“Let’s be clear: Los Angeles is burning, and local leaders are refusing to respond,” posted its X account on Monday morning, assuring the national guard would be responding. “There is a ZERO tolerance for attacking federal agents who are doing their job.”

The account followed upwith anotherpost, this time insulting the California governor, Gavin Newsom, showing an image of a protester waving a Mexican flag and burning in the foreground, with the caption: “Gavin Newscum’s California…”

Other posts since the team’s creation, promote Hegseth’s interest in physical fitness or present him as the “warfighter” defense secretary, reminiscent of Italian fascist leader,Benito Mussolini, and current Russian presidentVladimir Putin, who has used his athletics to promote himself as a strongman.

“Early morning PT with the@SecDef,”one X post readsfrom May showing Hegseth working out on a US ship with troops. “WE WILL BE FIT, NOT FAT!”

The Pentagon downplayed to the Guardian that it was engaging in attacks on news media or political rivals.

“Americans are turning to independent and digital media for their news because they no longer trust traditional and mainstream media to tell them the truth,” said Kingsley Wilson, Pentagon press secretary, in an emailed statement.

“[Office of the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs] is embracing digital media and independent outlets, taking our message of Peace through Strength directly to the American people.”

Graham Allen, a former conservative podcaster andknown conspiracy theoristhas been leading the Pentagon’s overall digital media strategy. He was appointedshortly beforetheSignalgate leak, which embarrassed Hegseth and showed US officials sharing top secret information over an unsecured texting app.

But in a Maypostannouncing he was stepping away from the role and remaining a consultant, Allen said he had accomplished his goal of making the “fake news” hate the “rapid response operation and basically everything else that’s led to the largest reaching digital accounts ever within the department, which means I did my job.”

Hegseth overtly directing the Pentagon to promote his personal agenda has caught the eye of extremism watch dogs.

Heidi Beirich, co-founder of theGlobal Project Against Hate and Extremismand an expert who has studied the confluence of the far right and the military for decades, has watched the secretary’s actions closely.

“The rapid response team sure looks like Hegseth is missing Fox News and creating a pure propaganda arm for his policies,” she told the Guardian.

“The constant attacks on legitimate news organizations and facts with screaming [X] posts about ‘fake news’ are proof that this is nothing more than Maga disinformation.”

Beirich pointed out that Hegseth’s invocation of religion has become a particularly troubling development.

“Hegseth is a committed Christian nationalist with a long track record of bigotry,” she said. “He is also a member of a church network run by Doug Wilson, a hard-right pastor who once wrote a biblical defense of slavery.”

Hegseth’s predecessor, Lloyd Austin III, the silent type and an accomplished general in his own right, cuta quieter public personaand promoted diversity in the service. But Hegseth has done the opposite, instead announcing during Pride month the renaming of a vessel already bearing the name of a US naval veteran and gay rights pioneer.

“Hegseth’s recent decision to change the name of a navy boat that had been christened for theLGBTQ+ rights pioneer Harvey Milk, shows you where he’s coming from,” Beirich said. “He and his Christian nationalist allies are anti-LGBTQ and specifically anti-trans and they are pushing their religious agenda on the services.”

The corporate, political and tech bigwigs meeting in Sweden are worried about an ‘authoritarian axis’ – maybe AI drones will fix things?

Deep within the glittering bowels of Stockholm’s fanciest hotel, grave ruminations on the future of the world are taking place.

A heady throng of tech billionaires, ministers, corporate titans and the king of the Netherlands have convened in Sweden for the 71stBilderbergmeeting – the publicity-shy annual policy conference that has long sustained conspiracy theorists – hosted this year by the fabulously wealthy Wallenberg family.

The four days of transatlantic talks are taking place at the swanky Grand hotel, which is owned, like so much else inSweden, by the Wallenbergs. The Swedish PM, Ulf Kristersson, turned up for welcome dinner on Thursday evening, and would have been about halfway through his second plate of meatballs when the first of Israel’s rockets dropped on Tehran.

What better time for the prospects of world war three to go up a gear than in the middle of a Bilderberg conflab, with nuclear proliferation slated for discussion, and the heads of Nato and MI6, and two of America’s most senior military officers in the room. They’re joined in Stockholm by the CEOs of several major defence suppliers such as Palantir, Thales and Anduril. Even the quietly spoken host of the conference, Marcus Wallenberg, happens to run an arms company. He’s chair of Sweden’s largest defence contractor, Saab.

The Tehran attacks slot happily into the conference agenda, which includes the topics “Middle East” and the rise of an “authoritarian axis” – what Bilderberg insider Nadia Schadlow, a former deputy US national security adviser, describes as “the growing collusion among revisionist powers”.

According to Schadlow: “An authoritarian axis is rapidly coalescing around China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, disrupting the belief that an international community has taken shape in the aftermath of the cold war.”

Earlier this year, the Economist magazine, whose editor sits alongside Schadlow on Bilderberg’s steering committee, struck a similar note, declaring: “The rupture of the post-1945 order is gaining pace.” But the Economist handed Donald Trump a fair chunk of the blame for “junking the transatlantic alliance”.

What this means for Bilderberg is that seven decades of hard work nurturing the postwar international order are in danger of going up in – literal – smoke.

Trump’s vice-president, JD Vance, has taken every opportunity to lever the US andEuropeapart. “Europe being more independent”, he said recently, “is good for the United States.” Back last summer, before the election, he said: “The United States has to focus more on east Asia. That is going to be the future of US foreign policy for the next 40 years, and Europe has to wake up to that fact.” The presence in Stockholm of Samuel Paparo, the head of the US Indo-Pacific Command, is a sign that Bilderberg has taken this to heart. Also, there’s another member of the “authoritarian axis” which looms far larger than Iran over this conference: China.

Though the name “China” doesn’t actually appear on this year’s agenda, the heightening struggle between America and China is a spectre which haunts at least half of the topics being discussed – from the “geopolitics of energy and critical minerals” to “defence innovation and resilience”.

Just a couple of months ago, Eric Schmidt, the former Google boss and longtime Bilderberg board member, warned that “China is at parity or pulling ahead of the United States in a variety of technologies, notably at the AI frontier”. Schmidt suspects that it will be only a matter of “three to five years” before some form of super-intelligent AI is achieved.

“The geopolitical stakes, especially in the race with China, are enormous,” he says, because attaining super-intelligent AI would mean total and unassailable military domination. In short, it would give the winner “the keys to control the entire world”.

But here’s the problem – “due to the immense power requirements of large-scale AI”, beating China to the super-intelligent punch would require “potentially 100 times more energy” than is currently available.

The head of the International Energy Agency, Fatih Birol, who is conferencing this year at Bilderberg, recently posted on X that “global electricity demand from data centres powering AI is set to soar in the next decade”.

In this desperate winner-takes-all race for the keys to the world, in which the “geopolitics of energy” becomes ever more important, power stations – along with the data centers they feed – are going to become the No 1 military targets.

For the time being, before AI invents completely new and unimagined ways for us all to kill each other, drones are perhaps the biggest practical application of AI in warfare. There’s a healthy swarm of drone manufacturers at this year’s Stockholm summit, sharing their hopes and fears about “defence innovation”.

Hovering alongside Eric Schmidt there’s the chairman of Thales – “a leader in the fast growing market of unmanned aircraft systems”. Buzzing nearby is Gundbert Scherf, co-founder of German drone and AI company Helsing. One of the early investors in Helsing is also present: the CEO of Spotify, Daniel Ek, which presumably means that the Helsing drones will have the best playlists, booming out suggested songs as they swoop down to attack.

The investment interlinking of Bilderberg participants is particularly intense around autonomous drone tech. Saab is an investor in Helsing. Helsing is collaborating with leading AI company Mistral, whose CEO is attending the conference. Mistral was funded by Schmidt, who’s a huge fan of military UAVs.

Thiel’s fingers can be found wriggling around in an awful lot of pies, not least the juiciest pie of all: the White House. The two senior White House officials at the Stockholm conference, Kevin Harrington and Michael Kratsios, both used to work for Thiel Capital. And Thiel’s famously long list of influential acolytes includes none other than Vance.

Only a few days ago, Vance was on a podcast defending Trump’s proposed Palantir-powered database on every citizen, which was described by MSNBC as “an unprecedented spy machine that could track Americans”. Vance waved away any such concerns: “I don’t believe that Palantir is collecting any information.”

Thank heavens for everyone’s freedoms, Palantir is run by self-confessed “classic liberal” Alex Karp. In a recent earnings call, the idiosyncratic CEO said his company was busy “building really great things”, in order “to power the west to its obvious innate superiority”.

Karp throbs with what he calls “productive narcissism” – at Palantir, he insists: “We’re proud of our moral stance”. His philosophy, as he sums it up, is this: “If you’ve done something big and important, you’re probably a good person.” Palantir is successful, ipso facto, it’s doing good.

As the Economist put it: “Fast approaching is a might-is-right world.” It’s a kind of Gordon Gekko morality that would be heartily approved of by Wall Street legend and Bilderberg faithful Henry Kravis of KKR, on whom Gekko was actually based.

Of course, not all the tech luminaries at this year’s Bilderberg are thinking in terms of world domination.

Demis Hassabis, the co-founder of DeepMind, turned up in Stockholm with the 2024 Nobel prize for Chemistry in his back pocket and some rather more optimistic rhetoric about AI, which he thinks will usher in an era of “radical abundance”. He thinks of AI as “the cavalry” arriving to save us from ourselves.

He says: “I’d be very worried about society today if I didn’t know that something as transformative as AI was coming down the line.”

And Jack Clark, the co-founder of Anthropic, likes to think AI replacing us in every last occupation will help us find new ways of living fulfilling lives. His vision is of a world in which, freed up from our jobs, we’ll engage in “creative, fun exercises in getting AIs to build things, or make things, or carry out competitions and games where people can play them with one another”.

Pulling back for a moment from the AI endgame to the world in 2025, there’s one rather less jazzy item on the conference agenda worth mentioning – “US economy”.

But even this has everything to do with China. Taking part in the Stockholm summit is Republican congressman Jason Smith, a vocal fan of Trump’s “America first” trade policy. Smith has pledged to “continue fighting to combat the economic and national security threat China poses to our great nation”. He’s fully aligned with fellow conference goer Robert Lighthizer, an influential economic adviser close to Trump, who told CBS News earlier this year that “China to me is an existential threat to the United States”.

Lighthizer is urging a “strategic decoupling” from Chinese trade, and most importantly, he says: “We should disentangle our technology.”

Here’s where Trump’s trade vision intersects with not just the long view of Silicon Valley’s bullish billionaires, but with the longstanding transatlantic vision of Bilderberg. Thiel recently called for “a very drastic reset with China” and urged other nations to do likewise.And this reset, he thinks, can become “the basis of how we build a stronger western alliance of the free world”.

In other words, look at our success, and join us. Of course, the only thing wrong with this self-fulfilling meritocratic version of western civilization is that if the Chinese succeed in beating the west to the keys of the world, it will mean that they were the good guys after all.

Relatives of Pooja and Harshit Patel, who were visiting from Leicester, want to cremate them together but have faced painful wait for identification

In the ramshackle, cramped lanes of Ambika Nagar in the Indian city of Gujarat, everyone spoke of Pooja and Harshit Patel with pride. The couple had done what none of their relatives or neighbours had managed to achieve before; they had moved abroad, settling among the thriving Gujarati diaspora community in the British city of Leicester.

Their lives in Leicester, where the couple had moved so Pooja could complete her business masters degree – later getting a job at Amazon alongside Harshit – seemed unimaginably glamorous to their relatives and close-knit community back in India. Pooja would call her mother, 58-year-old Chandra Mate, at least three times a day with tales of British life and to show off her latest outfits, spinning in front of the mirror.

Mate, who had never left India and had spent most of her life in this small two-bedroom house in Ahmedabad, lived for these calls. Collectively Pooja and Harshit’s families, who came from humble backgrounds, had spent every penny, sold every piece of ancestral land and jewellery and pooled every resource to get their children to the UK and to pay for Pooja’s degree.

When the couple arrived back in India, surprising their families with the first visit in two years, they were greeted like celebrities. “When I saw her after two years, it was a kind of joy I had never known,” said Mate, wiping away her tears. “The entire neighbourhood came out to greet her and Harshit. Her glow, her presence – everything about her had changed.” By the time they started their journey home, it took almost an hour for them to say goodbye to everyone in the lane.

Yet they never made it back to Leicester. Less than a minute after their Air India 171 flight from Ahmedabad to London lifted off from the tarmac, air traffic control received a panicked message over the radio from the plane’s flight deck. “Thrust not achieved. Falling. Falling. Mayday. Mayday.” Then the radio went dead.

Within seconds, the 227-tonne Boeing dreamliner plane, which had reached 650ft, fell to the ground, exploding into a fireball. The cause of the crash remains a mystery to the authorities and aviation experts, and an investigation is under way.

Now Pooja and Harshit’s bodies lie in the morgue of Civil hospital Ahmedabad, alongside at least 270 others who lost their lives in the crash, including passengers on the flight and victims on the ground. For their parents, the grief of the disaster has been compounded by an ongoing, excruciating delay in getting the remains of their children back.

Authorities and forensic experts have been at pains to emphasise what a complex and gargantuan task it is to correctly identify those who died in the crash, with bodies and limbs still being uncovered from the site over the weekend. Many were charred and dismembered far beyond recognition and a lengthy exercise to match relatives DNA samples to remains has had authorities working overnight for three days, with only about 47 matches made so far.

By Sunday morning, Harshit and Pooja’s families had a small glimmer of hope, believing that both bodies had been identified. They planned to bring them home and made reservations at the local crematorium, to burn them as per Hindu traditions. But by the afternoon, devastating news was delivered; only Harshit’s remains had been confirmed by the hospital.

Harshit, 33, and Pooja, 28, had been devoted to each other since they got married eight years ago. Theirs was what is known in India as a love marriage, rather than one arranged by their families, which is still seen as relatively unique.

Through sobs, Harshit’s father, Anil Patel, said he would not pick up one body without the other. “In life they were inseparable,” he said. “I cannot separate them in death. We will only cremate them together.”

At a press conference with government and hospital officials on Sunday evening, Pooja’s uncle stood up and demanded angrily to know where she was. Officials admitted it could take another three, even four more days for some bodies to be identified.

Gathered together in Ambika Nagar, the couple’s families were broken with exhaustion and grief. Before they moved to the UK, Pooja had been so worried about Anil being alone – his wife had died of cancer six years ago – that she had insisted that he move in with her family. Their two families now share a single home. Dozens of relatives sat in its two small rooms in collective mourning.

As they sat, they shared their final memories of the pair. Pooja had recently suffered a miscarriage, which had left her devastated, but her older sister Aarti Atul Mukture recalled how her sister had arrived in May full of joy and bearing armfuls of gifts for everyone. As Pooja had left for Leicester, she promised her mother to finally buy her a washing machine to ease her domestic burdens.

Mate was filled with regret that she did not take her daughter to the airport due to the suffocating summer heat. “If only I had gone to drop her off, I would’ve had a few more hours with her,” she said, breaking down again.

Yet even as they waited anxiously for the bodies, Anil knew that another episode of pain likely awaited when they finally received them. Officials told the families that they would most likely receive the bodies in “kits”, rather than coffins, as they were so badly burned, dismembered and decomposed. They have been banned from opening them, and will have to cremate them under police supervision.

“We won’t even be able to see their faces. Not one last time,” he said with a sob.

Former curator’s comments, later withdrawn, reignite debate over attribution of Samson and Delilah painting

It is an unwelcome question, but an important one: did theNational Gallerybuy a £2.5m dud?

This has remained the suspicion of many experts since one of Britain’s premier cultural institutions acquired Samson and Delilah, a long-lost masterpiece by the Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens, in 1980.

Forty-five years on, the debate has been stirred once again, with apetition launchedcalling for the National Gallery to honour its 1997 promise to stage a public debate on its authenticity.

This time, it’s not the front of the painting that’s under scrutiny – it’s the back of it.

The debate began soon after theNational Gallerybought the biblical depiction, known to have been painted by the master around 1609 before being lost for centuries. For the gallery, it was a 17th-century jewel in its collection, the sort of work to which tourists would flock.

But some immediately began to question the brushwork (too clumsy), describing it as a brash 20th-century copy of the original – and these doubts have only intensified. Katarzyna Krzyżagórska-Pisarek, a Rubens scholar, described the Samson and Delilah as “highly problematic” and “oddly modern”.

And Christopher Wright, a leading specialist in 17th-century paintings, said the picture itself was simply “wrong”. He added: “It lacks Rubens’s subtlety. It has a beguiling, slush-and-splosh grandeur … All my instincts of knowing about old masters bring me to that observation. It’s not a 17th-century picture.”

Feelings run deep in the art world over the question of the painting’s origins. Michael Daley, the director ofArtWatch UK, has researched the painting extensively and claims to have uncovered a mountain of evidence against the Rubens attribution. He calls it “the biggest of all museum scandals” and “a top-down conspiracy to conceal a massive purchasing blunder that debases Rubens’s oeuvre”.

The latest twist in this enduring saga comes courtesy of remarks made – and then withdrawn – by Christopher Brown, a former curator of the National Gallery, who headed the Dutch and Flemish collections.

Speaking to the Guardian, Brown insisted the painting was authentic, but intriguingly, he also said it was the National Gallery that had attached a modern blockboard to the painting’s back.

This apparent admission has electrified the Rubens doubters once more.

The backs of pictures often carry as much history as the front. With Samson, the panel on which the painting was originally painted has been planed down and attached to a modern blockboard, covering up whatever was underneath.

Critics suspect that the original panel may have held crucial evidence relating to the date of the painting.

The doubters also think the picture’s traditional cradled support was removed at the time.

This would mean any clues to the Samson and Delilah’s origins and age – and therefore its authenticity – have disappeared. One piece of evidence on the panel might have been the makers’ monogram, the application of which was the done thing in 17th-century Antwerp. If a panel-maker’s mark had showed the panel to have been made later than around 1609, that would have shown that the painting was almost certainly a copy.

When the gallery acquired the painting in 1980, there was no talk of a blockboard – it was bought as a panel.

The gallery’s first public mention of the blockboard was in its 1983 technical bulletin report, with an earlier reference in its 1982 board minutes, when Brown was seeking permission to clean the painting.

That was after the gallery had owned it for two years and its timber expert, Anthony Reeve, had described it as one of three unproblematic panels.

The National Gallery said the painting’s back had been glued to a blockboard sheet “probably during the [20th] century”, adding in a 1990s exhibition catalogue: “The Samson and Delilah was planed down to a thickness of about 3mm and set into a new blockboard panel before it was acquired by the National Gallery in 1980 and so no trace of a panel maker’s mark can be found.”

However, an eminent art historian’s condition report before the 1980 auction stated that the panel was “excellently preserved” and measured between 25mm and 40mm in thickness.

And herein lies the mystery: who planed down the panel and glued it to modern blockboard, when did they do it and why? Several renowned experts have questioned the logic behind the decision, considering it had been described as being in good shape.

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Wright said: “The matter is of very great importance because the blockboard conceals the possible original evidence on the panel. When the picture appeared at Christie’s, it looked immaculate. If the panel had been insecure, it would have been obvious.”

When approached by the Guardian, Brown said itwasthe gallery that put on the blockboard – a brand-new admission from a former curator held in the utmost regard.

Brown said: “The present backing was put on by the National Gallery … It’s rather a thin panel. It’s undoubtedly been thinned down at a certain stage and it was really to strengthen the panel.”

However, after the Guardian approached the gallery for comment, Brown later changed his tune. He said: “The National Gallery says that the backboard was applied before its acquisition. I have no reason to disbelieve them, and am certainly not in a position to contradict them.”

In his original interview, he had argued that “the idea that the National Gallery is in some way concealing something is nonsense” and that “the great scholars of Rubens have, since 1980, congratulated me”.

Daley described Brown’s initial comments as “startling”, adding that he himself has “a 2002 correspondence with the gallery denying that this had been done by their restorers”.

The painting had been previously attributed to lesser hands, and has no history as a Rubens before 1929, when it was found by Ludwig Burchard, a German historian who, after his death in 1960, was found to have misattributed paintings for commercial gain.

Krzyżagórska-Pisarek has subsequently discovered that at least 75 works that Burchard attributed to Rubens have been officially demoted.

She described the Samson and Delilah as “just the tip of the iceberg”, noting “the harsh, uniform red of Delilah’s dress” and Samson’s muscled back, which she said was “anatomically incorrect”, as well as a “curious lack of craquelure” – fine cracks that would be expected on a 400-year-old painting.

She expressed frustration over the lack of debate, adding: “They don’t want a discussion because we’ve got arguments that are really impossible to answer. This cannot be the original Rubens.”

Amid all the uncertainty, two things are for sure: the provenance of the painting will continue to send the art world into a spin, with scholars and aesthetes across the world continuing to call for that public debate.

The National Gallery said: “Samson and Delilah has long been accepted as a masterpiece by Peter Paul Rubens. Not one single Rubens specialist has doubted that the picture is by Rubens. Painted on wood panel in oil shortly after his return to Antwerp in 1608 and demonstrating all that the artist had learned in Italy, it is a work of the highest aesthetic quality.

“A full discussion of the panel was published by Joyce Plesters and David Bomford in the Gallery’s Technical Bulletin in 1983, when Christopher Brown was the Gallery’s curator responsible for the picture. Their findings remain valid, including their unequivocal statement that the panel was attached to a support before the picture was acquired by the National Gallery.”

Surging demand for looser styles with high necklines comes amid politicians’ criticism of burqa and the hijab

Fashion influenced byIslamand other religions is expected to become “mainstream” globally, in spite of politicians singling out the burqa and the hijab, as the rise of “modest fashion” is powered by influencers, luxury brands and big tech.

The Conservative leader,Kemi Badenoch, has said employers should be able to ban staff from wearing face coverings, before adding that she was not in favour of a government ban.

Her remarks came days after the Reform MP Sarah Pochin asked the prime minister, Keir Starmer, if he would ban the burqa, a veil which covers the face and body, following France’s lead.

Clothing worn by some Muslim women has become a lightning rod for arguments about integration, personal liberty, women’s rights and Islamophobia on both sides of the Channel.A French ban on children under 15 wearing the hijab was proposed last month, and in 2023,France banned girls in state schools from wearing the abaya, the loose-fitting robe worn by some Muslim women.

Nonetheless,recent research by Bath Spa Universityfound that “persistent and growing demand” for modest fashion internationally – typified by looser styles which cover the limbs with a high neckline – was driven by Muslim consumers and Instagram users, with Amazon and Farfetch emerging as market leaders at the affordable and luxury ends of the market respectively.

Bournemouth University’s Dr Samreen Ashraf, who has pioneered UK research into modest fashion, said its growth was also driven by women’s desire to avoid objectification. She said the market remained underserved, with issues around clear labelling from big brands and affordability with smaller suppliers.

“It’s not just women with strong religious beliefs,” she added.Womenwho have faced body shaming or body dysmorphia, who don’t have any belief, turn towards modest fashion’s more flowing designs.

“Reports have suggested growth of the European modest clothing market from €56.8bn to €72.5bn between 2021 and 2025 – 17.2% of that is UK, of which 6.5% identify themselves as Muslim. That has been one of the reasons why there’s been an upward turn.

“Also, with social media, people are feeling: ‘I can fully express my religious or cultural identity.’. Especially when the likes of M&S and Asos and Uniqlo and H&M are also offering modest clothing.

“It’s not just one religion however, but all faiths, and also empowerment: that if I don’t want to reveal my body to others, why should I? Blunt statements from people in power don’t serve any good purpose to women. Individual liberty, respect and tolerance are British values.”

Bath Spa University’s 2025 research found that leading brands’ production of hijab and Ramadan lines showed “the evolution of modest fashion into a mainstream fashion subculture”. Significantly, Muslim influencers on TikTok, many of whom focus on modest fashion, exceeded 125m views in 2023, says the growth strategy research firmDinarStandard, which projects that 30% of the world’s 15- to 29-year-olds will be Muslim by 2030.

The purchasing power of Muslim shoppers – including from wealthy Gulf states – is credited with leading luxury brands to enter the space, joining independent Muslim retailers and female entrepreneurs worldwide. The aesthetic overlaps with “quiet luxury” and “old money” styles, with “longer hemlines” in common,according to Vogue Arabia.

A 2023,Bournemouth Universitystudy, led by Ashraf, found “increasing stigma … associated with Islam post 9/11” had led Muslims to adopt a stronger sense of identity including through “choosing modest clothing items”.

After Pochin’s comments, Muslim Women’s Network said women who wore the burqa, or other religious dress, were “simply exercising their fundamental rights to freedom of expression and belief”, while the Muslim Council of Britain said “lazy tropes” were being used to malign a “proudly British” community.

Alistair Kitchen says he was detained and questioned about views on Israel and Palestine before being deported from LA to Melbourne

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An Australian man who was detained upon arrival at Los Angeles airport and deported back to Melbourne says United States border officials told him it was due to his writing on pro-Palestine protests by university students.

Alistair Kitchen said he left Melbourne on Thursday bound for New York and was detained for 12 hours and interrogated by US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials during the stopover in Los Angeles.

The 33-year-old said he was “clearly targeted for politically motivated reasons” and said officials spent more than 30 minutes questioning him about his views on Israel and Palestine including his “thoughts on Hamas”.

Kitchen said officials asked him for his “thoughts about the conflict in a very broad sense”, including about student protesters, what Israel “should have done differently” and “how I would resolve the conflict”.

“It was quite an in-depth probing of my views on the war,” he said.

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Kitchen said he was deported and landed back in Melbourne on Saturday morning.

“The CBP explicitly said to me, the reason you have been detained is because of your writing on theColumbia student protests,” he told Guardian Australia on Sunday. The US Department of Homeland Security has been contacted for comment.

Kitchen said he lived in New York for six years and wrote about the protests staged in support of Gaza at Columbia University while he was a master’s student at the college, before he moved back to Australia in 2024.

“Because I was a creative writing student, I took the opportunity to witness the protests and wrote about them in depth on my personal blog,” he said.

This year, Kitchen published a piece on his blog, Kitchen Counter, on theDepartment of Homeland Security’s detention of Mahmoud Khalil, the lead negotiator of the Columbia Gaza Solidarity Encampment.

In the article, Kitchen said Khalil had been arrested “on utterly specious grounds by a neo-fascist state” with the goal of “the deportation of dissent”.

He referred to the Trump administration’sexecutive orderof 30 January in which the government promised to go on the “offense to enforce law and order” and “cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses”.

Kitchen, who was planning to return to New York for two weeks to visit friends, said he deleted “sensitive political posts” from his blog as well as “some social media” because he was aware of the increased risk of crossing the US border.

However, he believed US border officials had used technology to link his posts to his application for a Electronic System for Travel Authorization (Esta), which allows eligible visitors to make a short trip to the US without a visa.

He said he was called for over the intercom shortly after exiting the plane at Los Angeles international airpot and “taken into a back room” for secondary processing

“Clearly, they had technology in their system which linked those posts to my Esta … a long time before I took them down,” he said. “Because they knew all about the posts, and then interrogated me about the posts once I was there.”

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Kitchen said he wanted other Australians to be aware that “cleaning” their phones wouldn’t necessarily mean they would be able to get their Esta approved upon arrival in the US.

“They had already prepared a file on me and already knew everything about me,” he said.

Kitchen said he agreed to give officials the passcode for his phone, which he now regretted.

“I had at that time, the wrong and false hope that once they realised I was, you know, just a Australian writer and not a threat to the US that they would let me in,” he said. “But then they took my phone away and began downloading it and searching it.”

Kitchen said he was “terrified of retribution and reprisal from the US government” for speaking out about his experience but he wanted people to know what had happened.

He urged other Australians who were detained upon arrival into the US to accept “immediate deportation” instead of handing their phones over the border officials.

He said he had put the “offending posts” back online on his blog.

Kitchen said his phone and passport were handed to a Qantas flight attendant at the start of his deportation flight and he was unable to get them back until they landed in Melbourne.

Qantas confirmed that its staff received a sealed envelope from US customs officials containing the passenger’s personal items which was returned upon arrival in Australia.

The airline declined to comment further.

Protesters take to streets in a dozen cities to march against an industry they say is wrecking communities

Campaigners in at least a dozen tourist hotspots across southernEuropehave taken to the streets to protest against “touristification”.

It is the most widespread joint action to date against what they see as the steady reshaping of their cities to meet the needs of tourists rather than people who live and work there.

Thousands turned out at marches in cities including Barcelona and Palma de Mallorca on Sunday, while others staged more symbolic actions. In the Italian port of Genoa, campaigners dragged a cardboard cruise ship through the old town’s narrow alleyways to show that tourism does not fit in the city.

A procession later on Sunday in Lisbon was due to involve a replica of St Anthony being “evicted” from his church and carried to the site of a prospective luxury hotel, to stress that even saints suffer from touristification.

In Barcelona, an estimated 600-800 demonstrators marched through the city centre chanting “Your holidays, my misery” and waving banners with slogans such as “Mass tourism kills the city” and “Their greed brings us ruin.”

Some fired water pistols, set off coloured flares and put “Neighbourhood self-defence, tourist go home” stickers on shop windows and hotels. Barcelona, a city of 1.6 million, drew 26 million tourists last year.

Threading through all the actions was a rallying cry for arethink of a tourism modelthat campaigners say has increasingly funnelled profits into the hands of a few, while leaving locals to pay the price through soaring house prices and rents, environmental degradation and the proliferation of precarious, low-paying jobs.

The tensions around tourism burst into public view last year aftertens of thousands of people protestedin Spain’s most popular destinations. The bulk of Sunday’s protests took place in Spain, where tourist arrivals surged last year torecord levels. Cities in Italy and Portugal also took part.

Despite the spate of fear-inducing headlines in some media, the aim was not to attack tourists, said Asier Basurto, a member of the “tourism degrowth” platform that organised a march in the Basque city of San Sebastián.

“People who go on vacation to one place or another are not our enemies, nor are they the target of our actions,” he said. “Let me be clear: our enemies are those who speculate on housing, who exploit workers and those who are profiting handsomely from the touristification of our cities.”

The seeds for the joint day of action were sown in April after groups from Spain, Italy,Portugaland France gathered in Barcelona for a days-long conference under the umbrella of the Southern European Network Against Touristification.

“When we started speaking to each other, it was amazing,” said María Cardona, of Canviem el Rumb, or Let’s Change Course, one of the groups behind Sunday’s march in Ibiza. “Despite the distance between us, we’re all grappling with a similar problem.”

In Ibiza, the march’s slogan was “the right to a dignified life”, said Cardona. “What does that mean when it comes to life on the island? There’s the right to water – we’reunder restrictions, there’s a drought, they’ve cut off all the public fountains,” she added. “But villas, hotels and luxury homes continue to fill their pools as if there were no water restrictions.”

There was also the soaring cost of living that hadleft many workersliving in vans, caravans or tents. “And another thing we’re seeing is that the traditional, historical names of places are being changed to English names that locals don’t know,” said Cardona. “It’s like the island’s DNA is being transformed.”

In Venice, locals protested against the lack of regulations that has allowed the number of short-term rentals to surge and hotels to tighten their grip on the housing market. “We’ve been emphasising for a couple of years now that there are more tourist beds than registered residents,” said Remi Wacogne of Ocio, acivic observatory on housing.“Tourism is physically and practically taking over homes.”

The steady shift had unleashed a wave of change in the city. “One of the main businesses that keeps opening up in Venice, in addition to bars and restaurants, is ATMs,” said Wacogne. “Which is also in a sense a metaphor of what is going on. So Venice is basically an ATM for a very restricted group of people, firms and investors who are allowed to make money just out of renting the place out to people.”

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The sentiment was echoed in Genoa, where residents organised a “noisy stroll” with their cardboard cruise ship to highlight the incongruence of tourism and local life. “We see tourism as a means to extract value from our cities and regions,” said one organiser, who asked not to be named. “We are not some sort of mine. This is a place where people live.”

Underpinning the joint action was a semantic shift. Rather than overtourism, which suggests that the solution lies in rolling back the number of tourists, the focus was on touristification, highlighting how hotspots are increasingly becoming commodified to be consumed by visitors, said Manuel Martin, of theMovement for a Housing Referendum,one of the groups organising the Lisbon action.

“So it’s a shift away from being a place that exists by and for the people that live and work there,” he added.

This has chipped away at the culture and social fabric of cities, added Martin, pointing to the shops and bookshops in Lisbon, some of them more than a century old, that have closed their doors after being priced out by rising rents. “It sort of excavates meaning from a place and turns it into a Disneyfied version of what it really is.”

After a handful of protesters bearing water gunssquirted waterat tourists last year in Barcelona, making headlines around the world, organisers in the city said they were encouraging people to bring water guns to Sunday’s march.

“But this needs to be contextualised,” said Daniel Pardo Rivacoba, of the Neighbourhood Assembly for Tourism Degrowth. Last year’s incident was covered by tabloids and other media as though it was threatening or intimidating. “The most extreme ones spoke about violence and things like that,” he said. “But a water gun is not a gun. It’s a toy. It doesn’t hurt anyone.”

Campaigners in the city have adopted the water pistol as a symbol of local resistance. “To us, it is clear that it doesn’t harm anyone,” Pardo Rivacoba said. “But if we’re talking about violence, let’s talk about the violence of touristification. Let’s talk about the violence that tourism is inflicting on the city in terms of evictions, of pushing out the population, of labour exploitation, in the overload and abuse of public services.

“When it comes to tourism, there is violence taking place. But it’s not because of water guns.”

Additional reporting by Jon Henley

Former French president loses country’s highest state award despite Emmanuel Macron’s opposition to move

The former French presidentNicolas Sarkozyhas been stripped of his Legion of Honour, the country’s highest distinction, after his conviction for corruption was confirmed last year, according to an official decree published on Sunday.

The conservative one-term president has been beset by legal problems since leaving office in 2012. In December France’s highest courtupheld his convictionfor influence peddling and corruption, ordering him to wear an electronic ankle tag for 12 months.

Sarkozy, who remains an important figure in French politics,had been found guilty by a lower court in 2021of trying to bribe a judge and peddling influence in exchange for confidential information about an investigation into his 2007 campaign finances.

Sarkozy, whose electronic tag was removed this month, has taken the case to the European court of human rights for appeal. His lawyer, Patrice Spinosi, said he had taken note of the award’s revocation but stressed that the appeal was still pending.

An eventual ECHR ruling againstFrancewould “imply reviewing the criminal conviction against [Sarkozy], as well as his exclusion from the order of the Legion of Honour”, Spinosi said on Sunday.

Emmanuel Macron argued against the decision, but the rules of France’s top state award stipulate that any recipient definitively sentenced to a term in prison equal to or greater than a year will be excluded from the order.

The French president, who is known to meet Sarkozy regularly, had argued that his predecessor had been elected to the country’s highest office and it was “very important that former presidents are respected”.

The only previous former president to have had his Legion of Honour revoked was the Nazi collaborator Philippe Pétain, the head of France’s wartime Vichy regime, who was convicted in August 1945 of high treason and conspiring with the enemy.

Others to have been stripped of the honour include the former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, the seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong, who was found to have used performance-enhancing drugs, and the film producer Harvey Weinstein, convicted of sexual abuse against women.

The most pressing stories and debates for Europeans – from identity to economics to the environment

Sarkozy’s legal woes are not yet over. He has been convicted of illegal campaign financing in his failed 2012 re-election bid, and iscurrently on trialon charges of accepting illegal campaign financing from the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

The court is expected to deliver its verdict in the latter case in September, and prosecutors have asked for a seven-year prison term. Sarkozy denies the charges.

Guardian investigation finds almost 7,000 proven cases of cheating – and experts says these are tip of the iceberg

Thousands of university students in the UK have been caught misusingChatGPTand other artificial intelligence tools in recent years, while traditional forms of plagiarism show a marked decline, a Guardian investigation can reveal.

A survey of academic integrity violations found almost 7,000 proven cases of cheating using AI tools in 2023-24, equivalent to 5.1 for every 1,000 students. That was up from 1.6 cases per 1,000 in 2022-23.

Figures up to May suggest that number will increase again this year to about 7.5 proven cases per 1,000 students – but recorded cases represent only the tip of the iceberg, according to experts.

The data highlights a rapidly evolving challenge for universities: trying to adapt assessment methods to the advent of technologies such as ChatGPT and other AI-powered writing tools.

In 2019-20, before the widespread availability of generative AI, plagiarism accounted for nearly two-thirds of all academic misconduct. During the pandemic, plagiarism intensified as many assessments moved online. But as AI tools have become more sophisticated and accessible, the nature of cheating has changed.

The survey found that confirmed cases of traditional plagiarism fell from 19 per 1,000 students to 15.2 in 2023-24 and is expected to fall again to about 8.5 per 1,000, according to early figures from this academic year.

The Guardian contacted 155 universities under the Freedom of Information Act requesting figures for proven cases of academic misconduct, plagiarism and AI misconduct in the last five years. Of these, 131provided some data – though not every university had records for each year or category of misconduct.

More than 27% of responding universities did not yet record AI misuse as a separate category of misconduct in 2023-24, suggesting the sector is still getting to grips with the issue.

Many more cases of AI cheating may be going undetected. A survey by the Higher Education Policy Institute in February found88% of studentsused AI for assessments. Last year, researchers at the University of Readingtested their own assessment systemsand were able to submit AI-generated work without being detected 94% of the time.

Dr Peter Scarfe, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Reading and co-author of that study, said there had always been ways to cheat but that the education sector would have to adapt to AI, which posed a fundamentally different problem.

He said: “I would imagine those caught represent the tip of the iceberg. AI detection is very unlike plagiarism, where you can confirm the copied text. As a result, in a situation where you suspect the use of AI, it is near impossible to prove, regardless of the percentage AI that your AI detector says (if you use one). This is coupled with not wanting to falsely accuse students.

“It is unfeasible to simply move every single assessment a student takes to in-person. Yet at the same time the sector has to acknowledge that students will be using AI even if asked not to and go undetected.”

Students who wish to cheat undetected using generative AI have plenty of online material to draw from: the Guardian founddozens of videoson TikTok advertising AI paraphrasing and essay writing tools to students. These tools help students bypass common university AI detectors by “humanising” text generated by ChatGPT.

Dr Thomas Lancaster, an academic integrity researcher at Imperial College London, said: “When used well and by a student who knows how to edit the output, AI misuse is very hard to prove. My hope is that students are still learning through this process.”

Harvey* has just finished his final year of a business management degree at a northern English university. He told the Guardian he had used AI to generate ideas and structure for assignments and to suggest references, and that most people he knows used the tool to some extent.

“ChatGPT kind of came along when I first joined uni, and so it’s always been present for me,” he said. “I don’t think many people use AI and then would then copy it word for word, I think it’s more just generally to help brainstorm and create ideas. Anything that I would take from it, I would then rework completely in my own ways.

“I do know one person that has used it and then used other methods of AI where you can change it and humanise it so that it writes AI content in a way that sounds like it’s come from a human.”

Amelia* has just finished her first year of a music business degree at a university in the south-west. She said she had also used AI for summarising and brainstorming, but that the tools had been most useful for people with learning difficulties. “One of my friends uses it, not to write any of her essays for her or research anything, but to put in her own points and structure them. She has dyslexia – she said she really benefits from it.”

The science and technology secretary, Peter Kyle,told the Guardianrecently that AI should be deployed to “level up” opportunities for dyslexic children.

Technology companies appear to be targeting students as a key demographic for AI tools. Googleoffers university studentsa free upgrade of its Gemini tool for 15 months, and OpenAI offers discounts to college students in the US and Canada.

Lancaster said: “University-level assessment can sometimes seem pointless to students, even if we as educators have good reason for setting this. This all comes down to helping students to understand why they are required to complete certain tasks and engaging them more actively in the assessment design process.

“There’s often a suggestion that we should use more exams in place of written assessments, but the value of rote learning and retained knowledge continues to decrease every year. I think it’s important that we focus on skills that can’t easily be replaced by AI, such as communication skills, people skills, and giving students the confidence to engage with emerging technology and to succeed in the workplace.”

A government spokesperson said it was investing more than £187m in national skills programmes and had published guidance on the use of AI in schools.

They said: “Generative AI has great potential to transform education and provides exciting opportunities for growth through our plan for change. However, integrating AI into teaching, learning and assessment will require careful consideration and universities must determine how to harness the benefits and mitigate the risks to prepare students for the jobs of the future.”

Gunman believed to have left Minneapolis region after killing one legislator and wounding another

The hunt for the man suspected ofshooting two Minnesota lawmakersand their spouses while impersonating a police officer, killing one legislator and her husband, continued on Sunday more than 24 hours after the killings.

Vance Boelter, 57, now on the FBI’s most wanted list, is believed to have left the Minneapolis region after allegedly gunning down Democratic state representative Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, at their home, according to CNN. Boelter is also suspected of shooting Democratic state senator John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, at their residence, gravely injuring them; a relative posted on Facebook that they were out of surgery and recovering.

Authorities have disseminated photos of Boelter to border patrol agents in case he tries fleeing to Canada, CNNsaid.

The Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar said on Sunday that authorities believe Boelter remains in the midwest. Klobucharsaidon NBC’s Meet The Press that “he may be” in Minnesota and that law enforcement has issued an alert in South Dakota.

“We believe he’s somewhere in the vicinity and that they are going to find him,” Klobuchar said. “But right now, everyone is on edge here because we know that this man will kill at a second.”

Klobuchar urged the public to be cautious if they see Boelter, warning they “should not approach him, that they should immediately call the tip lines and report”.

Police responded to a shooting at Hoffman’s house at about 2am local time, then went to check on Hortman, who lives approximately 9 miles away. When they arrived there around 3.30am they encountered Boelter, who was dressed as a police officer.They said he exchanged shots with them before escaping on foot.

Hoffman’s nephew, Mat Ollig, toldthe Minnesota Star Tribunethat both were recovering from surgery. In a Facebook post, Ollig said that Yvette saved their daughter’s life.

“Early this morning, an absolute vile piece of shit dressed as a cop broke into my aunt and uncle’s house and shot him 6 and my aunt 5 times in a political act of terrorism. My aunt threw herself on her daughter, using her body as a shield to save her life,” Ollig wrote.

“These two are the kindest, most giving and caring people I know. He went into politics to help people with disabilities get the care they need, and she works with young school children. They have always been there for me and everyone in our family and community.”

Police said Boelter’s uniform might appear authentic to most people.

Boelter also drove a vehicle that appeared identical to an SUV police squad car, said Mark Bruley, a local police chief. “It was equipped with lights, emergency lights, that looked exactly like a police vehicle, and yes, they were wearing a vest with Taser, other equipment, a badge very similar to mine, that, no question, if they were in this room, you would assume that they are a police officer,” Bruley said.

Tim Walz, the governor ofMinnesota, said the murders appear “to be a politically motivated assassination”.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has offered a $50,000 reward for information leading to Boelter’s apprehension and conviction. He wasaddedto the FBI’s most wanted list on Saturday.

Before the attacks he reportedly contacted two friends by text message, which they read aloud tothe Star Tribune: “I made some choices, and you guys don’t know anything about this, but I’m going to be gone for a while. May be dead shortly, so I just want to let you know I love you guys both and I wish it hadn’t gone this way.”

He added: “I don’t want to say anything more and implicate you in any way because you guys don’t know anything about this. But I love you guys and I’m sorry for all the trouble this has caused.”

Authorities reportedly said that Boelter left a list ofpotential targetsat the shooting scene. Multiple outlets have reported that it included pro-choice lawmakers, as well as reproductive health clinics.

“There clearly was some through line with abortion because of the groups that were on the list, and other things that I’ve heard were in this manifesto. So that was one of his motivations,” Klobuchar said.

She alsourgedthe public not to make any assumptions and allow investigators to work. “But again, they’re also checking out, did he have interaction somehow with these without legislators? Is there more to this?”

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinelreportedthat 11 lawmakers in the state of Wisconsin were also among the targets listed in Boelter’s alleged manifesto.

Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, said on MSNBC that he expects to convene with congressional leaders to discuss ramping up security for lawmakers across the country in the wake of the deadly attacks.

“This should be another wakeup call amongst many that have happened over the last several years, including, of course, the violent attack on the Capitol that took place on January 6,” Jeffriessaid.