🇮🇶❌🇺🇸 - Reuters citing U.S officials: at least 5 casualties among American soldiers.

🇬🇧 🤝 🇮🇪 Belfast, Northern Ireland

👮‍♂️ Police Tannoy speaker- “ATTENTION ATTENTION THE CROWD SHOULD DISPERSE IMMEDIATELY”

📎 Concerned Citizen

🇬🇧 British government is worried that foreign states are "amplifying disinformation" in regards to the riots.

🔗 Sky News

🇬🇧❌❌ Race riots put Britain on collision course with Elon Musk

Britain’s government has social platforms in its sights as incitement spreads — and the X owner is squaring up for a fight.

The billionaire X owner sparked fury in the British government this weekend after he responded to incendiary footage of the far-right disorder that's sweeping the country by saying "civil war is inevitable."

The post on X was roundly condemned by U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer's office, which said there was “no justification” for Musk’s comments.

But Musk doubled, then tripled down on Monday night. Responding to a statement from Starmer vowing his government would “not tolerate attacks on mosques or on Muslim communities,” the X boss effectively accused the British prime minister of wearing blinkers. “Shouldn’t you be concerned about attacks on all communities?” Policing of the unrest "does seem one-sided," he offered in a third post.

Starmer's top interior minister, Yvette Cooper, meanwhile has a litany of complaints over the way social media giants like X are policing incitement and disinformation on their platforms.

“There are some things which are clearly already criminal, where we'll need police intervention and action to pursue those," Cooper told the BBC Monday. "There are other areas where the social media companies do have clear requirements at the moment to remove criminal material, and should be doing so, but sometimes take too long to do so.

"There are other areas where they have made commitments around their terms and conditions that are supposed to be enforced but are not being done so."

Cooper's vowed to take up the issue with tech giants this week.

Yet, despite plenty of hand-wringing over the proliferation of far-right messaging, Britain's toolbox for forcing the hands of social media companies seems limited.

🔗 https://www.politico.eu/article/united-kingdom-riots-elon-musk-x-twitter-fake-news-disinformation/

🇺🇸 Kamala Harris picks Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as running mate

🔗 https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c9r3rdkr92pt

🇺🇸 🇳🇪 🏴 Terror groups poised to fill void with US forces gone from Niger

🔶️ The U.S. abandonment this week of its $110 million drone base in Niger, once seen as a key hub for counterterrorism efforts, adds to a growing list of Western withdrawals, all steadily ceding ground to terror groups affiliated with Islamic State and al-Qaida.

🔶️ The U.S. withdrawal follows the pullout of French forces from Niger late last year and from neighboring Mali in 2022. A five-country alliance to fight terror groups across the Sahel, likewise, collapsed in recent years.

🔶️ And intelligence gathered by United Nations member states suggests the terror groups those Western forces were hoping to curtail have made the most of their growing absence.

🔶️ “What we're witnessing right now is the direct consequence of all the coups in the region and the fact that all these troops have been driven out — the French, Belgians, MINUSMA [United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali], African Union, the Americans,” said Pieter Van Ostaeyen, a Belgian Arabist who studies Islamic extremism.

🔶️ “It's like a carousel won't stop,” he told VOA. “It's like a downward spiral.”

https://www.voanews.com/a/terror-groups-poised-to-fill-void-with-us-forces-gone-from-niger/7731397.html

🇬🇧 Migrants in the UK say they reject prime-minister, Keir Starmer's funding and support adding that they can do a better job at protecting themselves and their mosques.

@CIG_telegram