Blaming migrants for the rise in anti-Jewish crimes shows a breathtaking lack of self-awareness

It could have been a Mitchell and Webb sketch – a man with a very German accent and a distinguished Nazi grandfather complaining: “These foreigners, coming over here, importing their antisemitism.” Only this was not a comedy. The man was Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, and he was making his complaint last month in an interview with Fox news in the US, attributing rising antisemitism in Germany to “the big numbers of migrants we have within the last 10 years”. How did Merz manage to miss the joke – apart from by being German of course?

The chancellor is not the only German politician to have made the dubious connection between foreigners and antisemitism. Hubert Aiwanger, the deputy premier of Bavaria, made headlines in 2023 when an antisemitic leaflet he was alleged to have written at school – better known as the Auschwitz pamphlet – came to light. Aiwanger denied writing the leaflet. Then his brother joined the fray, claiming authorship, and hardly anybody mentioned it again. However, it didn’t stop Aiwanger from declaring later that year: “We have imported antisemitism to Germany.”

Mithu Sanyal is a novelist, academic, literary critic, columnist and broadcaster.

The shifting timeline of Trump’s tariffs, the most significant US tariff increase in nearly a century, has roiled global markets and caused widespread confusion

• Trump delays tariff hikes again but announces new rates for some countries

US President Donald Trump has ramped up threats to impose punishing tariffs on more than a dozen nations unless they can broker a deal before 1 August, marking the latest phase in his trade war.

The tax duties stem from Trump’s so-called “reciprocal” tariff package that was first announced in April, but then delayed for 90 days to allow for negotiations. That deadline, initially scheduled to end this week, has now been pushed back to August.

Two crew members are missing after drone attack on Greek-operated Eternity C; Yemen’s Houthi rebels say MV Magic Seas sank after Sunday raid

Two crew members of a Greek-managed vessel have been wounded and two are missing after a drone attack off Yemen on Monday, hours after Iran-aligned Houthi militants claimed an assault on another bulk carrier in the Red Sea, saying the ship had sunk.

Monday’s attack 50 nautical miles southwest of the port of Hodeidah was the second assault by the Houthis against merchant vessels in the vital shipping corridor since November 2024, said an official at the European Union’s Operation Aspides, assigned to help protect Red Sea shipping.

Deaths as Kharkiv, Odesa and Zaporizhzhia come under attack; Ukraine hits warhead plant and oil refinery in Russia. What we know on day 1,231

Britain on Monday placed sanctions on two Russian individuals and one Russian entity for the transfer and use of chemical weapons in Ukraine. It imposed asset freezes and travel bans on Aleksey Viktorovich Rtishchev and Andrei Marchenko, the head and deputy head of Russia’s radiological chemical and biological defence troops. The Joint Stock Company Federal Scientific and Production Centre Scientific Research Institute of Applied Chemistry was sanctioned for supplying the Russian military with RG-Vo riot control grenades whose use in warfare contravenes the international chemical weapons convention.

In brief comments on Monday, Donald Trump suggested the US would resume shipments of primarily defensive weapons to Ukraine. Speaking to reporters at the White House, the US president said: “We’re going to send some more weapons. We have to. They have to be able to defend themselves. They’re getting hit very hard now.” The Pentagon under Pete Hegseth last week halted previously funded and promised arms shipments to Ukraine, with the defence secretary and Trump administration officials giving varying reasons – ranging from a seriously questioned claim by Hegseth of low weapons stocks, to the pause being part of a standard review of defence capabilities.

At least one person was killed and 71 were wounded in Russian drone strikes on Ukraine’s second biggest city, Kharkiv, officials said on Monday. Apartment buildings, a kindergarten and the regional draft office were damaged in two waves of strikes, local and military officials said. During the second wave, six Shahed drones struck within 10 minutes, aimed “at residential streets, at cars, at people”, said the Kharkiv mayor, Ihor Terekhov.

In south-eastern Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia city at least 20 people were wounded and dozens of residential buildings and a university building damaged in a morning drone strike, governor Ivan Fedorov said on Monday. One person was killed in Odesa, regional officials said.

Russia struck two military recruitment centres in drone attacks on Monday, Ukraine’s military said. The attacks hit densely populated areas, in Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia, damaging draft offices as well as wounding dozens of civilians, and came a day after a Russian drone struck a recruitment centre in Kremenchuk. Last week, Russian attacks targeted draft offices in Poltava, another regional capital, as well as Kryvyi Rih.

Ukraine’s national security and defence council said Russia was waging an “information campaign” on social media about draft office locations “to destabilise the mobilisation process and sow panic among the population”; however a ground forces spokesperson said recruitment remained on track.

Ukraine’s military said it struck a chemical plant in Russia’s Moscow region that manufactures explosives, ammunition and thermobaric warheads for Shahed attack drones. “A series of explosions were recorded in the area of the city of Krasnozavodsk and the movement of fire trucks in neighbouring settlements,” the military general staff announced on Monday.

Ukraine’s drones also hit workshops at the Ilsky oil refinery in Russia’s Krasnodar region, causing a fire and disrupting production, according to a Ukrainian security service source cited in national media. The BBC said it confirmed the information with its own security source, and Russian local officials confirmed the Krasnodar attack.

The former deputy chief of the Russian army’s general staff was sentenced to 17 years in prison on Monday over a scheme involving theft of money from defence ministry contracts, the Tass news agency of Russia reported. Khalil Arslanov, a colonel general, and others were found guilty of stealing 1.6bn roubles (£14.9m/US$20.3m) from state contracts with Voentelecom, which provides telecommunications services and equipment to the Russian military.

Research in Chile suggests climate crisis makes eruptions more likely and explosive, and warns of Antarctica risk

The melting of glaciers and ice caps by the climate crisis could unleash a barrage of explosive volcanic eruptions, a study suggests.

The loss of ice releases the pressure on underground magma chambers and makes eruptions more likely. This process has been seen in Iceland, an unusual island that sits on a mid-ocean tectonic plate boundary. But the research in Chile is one of the first studies to show a surge in volcanism on a continent in the past, after the last ice age ended.

Chief inspector says jails in England and Wales are overwhelmed by contraband, overcrowding and lack of staff

The volume of drugs being delivered by drones into prisons is severely undermining hopes of rehabilitation among inmates, a watchdog has warned.

Criminal gangs are smuggling contraband to bored and vulnerable inmates who are locked up for most of the day in filthy cells with little activity, the chief inspector of prisons’ annual report said.