Lowles has spent his entire adult life organising against fascism, facing countless threats as a result. He discusses the street confrontations of the 80s, foiling a murder plot, Nazi satanists – and the urgent need for optimism and action

In 1979, a 10-year-old Nick Lowles saw a hard-right party political broadcast. Born in Hounslow in London, he had moved to Shrewsbury when he was seven: “A very white town. There was a British Movement march soon after we moved up there.” Theirs was a “small-P political household”. His dad was a social worker, his mum worked for various charities. “She was from Mauritius, and now on the telly, the National Front were saying they were going to send people who weren’t born in Britain home in six months. I was petrified that my mum was going to get sent home.” The ambient racism of 70s and 80s Britain permeated everything. “I just remember being scared,” Lowles says. “We used to go on holiday and I tan really easily. I was frightened of coming back to school too brown.”

You can’t meet terrifying politics except with politics of your own, he realised in his teens. How to Defeat the Far Right is Lowles’s memoir-cum-manual, telling the story of how Hope Not Hate, the anti-fascist campaign group, came into existence in 2004. There is no other organisation like it, in its range of actions and independence of spirit. It does a lot of data (polling and analysis) but also a lot of community organising; it infiltrates fascist spaces, online and off, to subvert their plans, and it organises counterprotests. It is connected to institutional politics, though its influence waxes and wanes – Lowles is a good friend of Gordon Brown’s, but doesn’t feel especially heeded by the current government.

People in the Shropshire town have been left cut off and frustrated by the collapse of public transport

• UK public has paid £200bn to shareholders of key industries since privatisation – study

The city of Birmingham lies just over 40 miles north-east of Ludlow, but to the 10,000 residents of the quiet Shropshire town, it may as well be on the moon.

“You can’t get a bus to Birmingham today, it’s impossible. It is really just up the road, our big regional centre but there are no buses. How ridiculous is that?” said Philip Adams.

It was the place to be through the 1980s, a nightclub where Johnny Rotten and Kim Wilde rubbed shoulders with the Beastie Boys and, er, Mel Smith. David Koppel’s new book captures it all

Knowsley is a Labour stronghold. But judging by the polls and the people I spoke to, the messages of the right are truly cutting through

At the weekend, I took the well-worn journey from London to Knowsley in Merseyside. I’ve made this trip so many times that I can execute it with military precision, arriving just in time before the train doors close, even with a toddler in tow this time around. My uncle picked us up from the station and as we turned on to the motorway, I saw St George’s flags hanging over us from the sides of bridges. Union jacks circled the roundabout just before we turned off to go to my auntie’s house. Knowsley is Labour’s fourth-safest seat in the UK, but it felt like a newly minted Reform constituency.

It was a Friday evening, so we opened a bottle of wine and put pizzas in the oven. I was updated on various family milestones – a house sale had gone through, a baby bump was starting to show, the poor dog was on its last legs. My daughter entertained everyone with an energetic rendition of Sleeping Bunnies. Behind her, the BBC News at Six played images of migrants huddled on inflatable boats sailing across the Channel.

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Tel Aviv is known as Israel’s liberal capital; home to nearly half a million residents it’s also a holiday destination, with beaches, bars and nightclubs. But almost exactly 60km south is Gaza. Reporter Matthew Cassel speaks to Israelis in the city, to see what they think of the war, famine and genocide happening next door, and the growing international condemnation against it

The cuddly chatbot Grem is designed to ‘learn’ your child’s personality, while every conversation they have is recorded, then transcribed by a third party. It wasn’t long before I wanted this experiment to be over ...

‘I’m going to throw that thing into a river!” my wife says as she comes down the stairs looking frazzled after putting our four-year-old daughter to bed.

To be clear, “that thing” is not our daughter, Emma*. It’s Grem, an AI-powered stuffed alien toy that the musician Claire Boucher, better known as Grimes, helped develop with toy company Curio. Designed for kids aged three and over and built with OpenAI’s technology, the toy is supposed to “learn” your child’s personality and have fun, educational conversations with them. It’s advertised as a healthier alternative to screen time and is part of a growing market of AI-powered toys.

Overnight advance aimed at ‘dismantling Hamas’s grip’ as Israel accused of genocide in UN human rights report

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Israel has launched its long-threatened ground offensive into the densely packed streets of Gaza City, military officials have confirmed.

One Israel Defense Forces (IDF) official said that troops had begun what he called the “main phase” of the offensive, with an overnight advance from the outskirts towards the city centre.

Former Tory cabinet minister David Davis leads debate, saying Mandleson was ‘easily dazzled by wealth and fame’

Vikram Dodd is the Guardian’s crime correspondent.

Police expect to arrest 50 more people following Saturday’s large far-right-led march through London, the commissioner of the Metropolitan police said this morning.

If you are Conservative right-minded, then the future is Reform. The country is going to change a lot. The same people who thought that Brexit would not happen think that Reform will not happen. They are in for a shock.

High court judge issues arrest warrant, saying a suspect has been charged in relation to 2012 death of 21-year-old

A warrant has been issued for the arrest of a British national on suspicion of the murder of the Kenyan woman Agnes Wanjiru, who was found dead in the grounds of a hotel near an army base in 2012.

The high court judge Alexander Muteti issued the arrest warrant earlier on Tuesday in Kenya, with the prosecution telling the court a suspect had been charged with murder, and seeking the application for a warrant of arrest to facilitate his extradition to Kenya.

Analysis reveals ‘privatisation premium’ of £250 per household per year paid to owners of water, rail, bus, energy and mail services since 2010

• ‘Birmingham is up the road but there are no buses’

The public has paid almost £200bn to the shareholders who own key British industries since they were privatised, research reveals.

The transfer of tens of billions of pounds to the owners of the privatised water, rail, bus, energy and mail services comes as families face soaring bills, polluted rivers and seas, and expensive and unreliable trains and buses.