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Rioters as young as 14 years old appeared in court in the UK on Monday, as the government promised that those involved in recent violent unrest will face “swift justice”.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer called for perpetrators to be named and shamed as soon as possible, as he vowed to “ramp up criminal justice” and said a “standing army” of specialist police officers was being assembled to curb disorder.

The Cobra emergency response group of senior ministers and police and prison leaders met earlier in a bid to halt violence that has spread to more than a dozen towns and cities across England and Northern Ireland and led to hundreds of arrests.

Authorities were braced for more violence on Monday evening, while further protests are expected later in the week.

On Monday, Lord Alex Carlile, a former independent reviewer of the UK’s terrorism legislation, said prosecutors should consider charging riot ringleaders with terrorism offences.

“Fundamentally what they’re doing is being done for a political reason — trying to undermine the polity of the nation,” Carlile told the Financial Times, adding that any organisations involved in orchestrating violent demonstrations could also be proscribed by the state as terrorist groups.

The police have not requested that the army be called in, while Downing Street insisted the police have the powers and resources they need.

No 10 is also resisting demands from opposition MPs for parliament to be recalled over the crisis.

Several countries — including the UAE, Nigeria and Indonesia — have nonetheless issued alerts urging their citizens to avoid travel to the UK or attend gatherings while in the country due to the anti-immigration demonstrations and disorder.

Communities across northern England in particular started the week with efforts to clear up the aftermath of the weekend’s disorder, while the first people appeared in court charged in connection with it.

They included a 14-year-old accused of setting off fireworks in the direction of a police van in Liverpool, who pleaded guilty. The first sentencing hearings have been scheduled for later this month.

Suspects also appeared before magistrates in Sheffield, South Tyneside and Belfast. The ages of those appearing in court ranged from teenagers to pensioners, with a 69-year-old in the dock.

Since violence broke out in the wake of the Southport mass stabbing last week there have been 378 arrests, with the tally expected to rise.

Starmer drew attention to the suspected participants appearing in court on Monday, adding: “I have asked for early consideration of the earliest naming and identification of those involved in the process who will feel the full force of the law.”

Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, also told the BBC: “We do expect swift justice to take place. We do expect those cases to be reaching court this week.”

However, some suspects will not appear in front of a judge for weeks as the stretched legal system deals with a backlog. Avon and Somerset police said people accused of taking part in criminal unrest in Bristol are likely to attend court in September.

Meanwhile, Downing Street warned that foreign state actors could be involved in amplifying online misinformation fuelling disorder on UK streets.

In some parts of the country police stressed that people from a range of backgrounds had taken part in disorder.

Greater Manchester Police chief constable Stephen Watson said that “it was clear that across all events, there were people of all political and cultural backgrounds who attended with the intent of causing trouble and breaking the law”.

He added: “Justice will be forthwith.” The force tackled violent disorder in both Manchester city centre and Bolton last weekend and said it had made 23 arrests.

Following the Cobra meeting in London, Sir Mark Rowley, the most senior police officer in the country, appeared to grab a reporter’s microphone and cast it to the ground when he was asked about “two-tier policing” — the slogan accusing forces of dealing with some protests and activists more harshly than others.

The Met commissioner had been “in a hurry” when the incident occurred, the force said later.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage claimed over the weekend that the “impression of two-tier policing” had “become widespread” in the UK.

The government also faced criticism from the left over its handling of the disorder.

Jeremy Corbyn, the former Labour leader, and four other independent MPs who campaigned heavily on a pro-Palestinian platform in the election, accused ministers of “pandering to those who have helped foment the ugly racism behind these protests”, as they hit out at “racist terror”.

In a joint letter to Cooper published on Monday — the latest sign of co-ordination between Corbyn, Ayoub Khan, Adnan Hussain, Iqbal Mohamed and Shockat Adam — the quintet welcomed the home secretary’s condemnation of “far-right thuggery”, but said she had not gone “nearly far enough” in identifying hatred against migrants and Muslims that was “driving this violence”.

“When people are under attack for the colour of their skin and their faith, government references to ‘understandable fears’ send mixed messages and only give succour to those seeking to sow hatred and division,” the five MPs said.

Washington — Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas did not disclose travel aboard a private jet provided by Republican megadonor Harlan Crow in 2010, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Finance Committee revealed in a letter Monday.

Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon said international flight records from U.S. Customs and Border Protection show that Thomas and his wife, Ginni, flew from Hawaii to New Zealand on Crow’s private jet in November 2010 and returned on the plane a week later. The flight manifest shows Crow was also a passenger on the flights, Wyden told Michael Bopp, Crow’s lawyer.

Thomas did not disclose the travel aboard the jet on his annual financial disclosure forms.

Wyden is demanding information from Crow not only about the November 2010 travel, but also about trips Thomas took on the Michaela Rose, Crow’s yacht, and other financial records.

Michael Zona, a spokesman for Crow, said his lawyers have already addressed Wyden’s inquiries, “which have no legal basis and are only intended to harass a private citizen.” He accused the Democratic senator of abusing the Senate Finance Committee’s powers to advance a “politically motivated campaign” targeting the Supreme Court.

“Mr. Crow and his businesses are in good standing with the IRS,” he said. “He has always followed applicable tax law as advised by national accounting firms who serve as his tax advisors.”

The statement referred Wyden to previous correspondence from Crow’s lawyers. A request for comment from Thomas was not immediately returned.

Wyden’s demand for more information from Crow is part of an investigation he launched into his relationship with Thomas and travel the justice has accepted from the wealthy benefactor. Thomas said last year that he and Crow have been friends for more than two decades, and the justice maintained that he had been advised he did not have to report the travel under disclosure guidelines. 

He pledged to comply with new guidelines from the Judicial Conference, changed in March 2023, about personal hospitality.

Thomas included in his 2023 financial disclosure report trips aboard Crow’s private jet and a stay at his property in the Adirondacks. He also included details about a 2014 real estate transaction with Crow, which had been uncovered by the investigative news outlet ProPublica last year.

In his latest disclosure report, made public in June, Thomas included an amendment to list two trips he took with Crow in 2019 to Bali and Monte Rio, California.

But Senate Democrats have said they still do not have a complete picture of the travel Thomas received from Crow. The Senate Judiciary Committee revealed in June that Thomas took three undisclosed trips aboard Crow’s private jet, including to Kalispell, Montana, near Glacier National Park, in 2017; and roundtrip flights to Savannah, Georgia, in 2019 and San Jose, California, in 2021. Wyden told Crow’s lawyer in his latest letter that he is still seeking to understand the “means and scale” of his client’s “undisclosed largesse” to Thomas.

“I am deeply concerned that Mr. Crow may have been showering a public official with extravagant gifts, then writing off those gifts to lower his tax bill,” he wrote. “This concern is only heightened by the committee’s recent discovery of additional undisclosed international travel on Mr. Crow’s private jet by Justice Thomas.”

In addition to the private jet travel in 2010, Wyden said Thomas has not disclosed other trips, including aboard the Michaela Rose in Greece and New Zealand, which was reported by ProPublica last year. The senator said a relative of Thomas’ witnessed the justice travel on the yacht in the Caribbean, Russia and the Baltics, trips that were not listed on his financial disclosure forms.

The Oregon Democrat said additional information is necessary to inform several bills his committee is working on, including reforms to the tax code, audit requirements for Supreme Court justices and ethics reform that would bolster disclosure rules for Supreme Court justices.

“This is not a particularly complicated matter,” Wyden said. “Mr. Crow could easily clarify for the committee whether tax deductions were claimed on superyacht and private jet use by Justice Thomas, but he refuses to do so.”

In the wake of revelations about Thomas’ ties to Crow, congressional Democrats have called for reforms at the Supreme Court. President Biden last week offered three proposals, two of which would require legislation approved by Congress: 18-year term limits for justices and an enforceable, binding code of conduct. 

In response to pressure from Democrats on Capitol Hill, the Supreme Court implemented its own ethics rules in November, but it does not include an enforcement mechanism.

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Iran has the “right” to punish Israel for assassinating Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on its soil, its foreign ministry said on Monday, as the US sent reinforcements to the Mediterranean Sea to help defend its ally and lower the risk of a wider confrontation.

Israel and the region are waiting on Iran’s already pledged retaliation for the killing of Haniyeh, Hamas’s political chief, in Tehran last week, hours after he attended the inauguration of the country’s new president.

The region has been on edge since the killing, with US secretary of state Antony Blinken telling his G7 counterparts that Iran’s response would be imminent. Some Israeli supermarkets ran out of bottled water over the weekend, and residents of Beirut on Monday felt their homes shake from warplanes breaking the sound barrier — a common show of force from the Israeli air force.

The general in charge of US forces in the Middle East, Michael Kurilla, was in the region over the weekend, Axios reported, to help rally a similar coalition of its allies that helped defend Israel in April, when Iran fired hundreds of missiles and drones to punish Israel for the assassination of several military officials in an Iranian diplomatic compound in Syria.

This time around, Israel is again counting on “US leadership in forming a coalition of allies and partners to defend Israel and the region from a range of aerial attacks”, the country’s defence minister Yoav Gallant told US defence secretary Lloyd Austin, according to a statement.

Iran was severely embarrassed at the killing of Haniyeh in state-provided accommodation while a guest of the president. The Islamic republic claimed over the weekend that he was killed in an attack involving a short-range projectile carrying a warhead with approximately 7kg of explosives, without specifying the origin or method of the attack.

Speaking at a press conference in Tehran, foreign ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani said “all evidence and signs indicate that the Zionist regime is behind the terrorist crime”, although Israel has neither confirmed nor denied its involvement.

Kanaani said that as Israel had “first and last responsibility” for the killing, it was “Iran’s right to act in the path of punishing the aggressor”.

Iran has made it clear it will respond to the assassination, which came a day after Hizbollah military commander Fuad Shukr was killed in a targeted attack in Beirut that has been claimed by Israel. Israel blames Hizbollah, the Lebanon-based militant group, for the attack on a football field in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights last month that killed 12 young people.

Hizbollah and Hamas, the militant group that carried out the October 7 assault on Israel, are both part of an alliance backed by Iran known as the axis of resistance.

Analysts believe that Iran’s response to Haniyeh’s killing could involve the different parts of its axis launching attacks simultaneously. The alliance also includes the Houthi rebels in Yemen and militia groups in Iraq and Syria.

Major General Hossein Salami, commander of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard, suggested on Monday that Israel had misjudged how Iran would retaliate to Haniyeh’s assassination. “When they receive a strong response, they’ll realise they’ve miscalculated,” he said in a public speech, without detailing potential Iranian actions.

Jordan’s foreign minister Ayman Safadi used a weekend visit to Tehran to issue an appeal for calm, although his host has shown no signs of backing down from its vow for revenge.

Ali Bagheri Kani, Iran’s acting foreign minister, reiterated the country’s “serious determination to hold Israel accountable” and urged regional countries to unite against Israel, who he accused of “genocide” in Gaza.

Kanaani also accused the US of being complicit in the Haniyeh killing that has shaken Iran’s theocratic leadership, and called on Washington to stop supporting Israel. The US has denied any prior knowledge of the assassination.

“It’s the duty of the US to put pressure on the Zionist regime to stop its killings and crimes and to halt the shipment of weapons to this regime,” he said.