RACIST hate crimes have reached record highs amid an “unprecedented” rise in attacks on mosques that are increasingly “targeting the Muslims inside.”
Home Office figures today revealed a 7 per cent annual rise in racially and religiously motivated offences.
Police recorded 146,825 offences in the year ending March 2026, with those targeting Muslims increasing the most — up 15 per cent. Antisemitic hate crimes also rose steeply, by 10 per cent.
Sharp increases in anti-Muslim offences in September 2025 when anti-racist protesters challenged the “Unite the Kingdom” march and rally organised by the far-right agitator Stephen Yaxley Lennon, although there is no suggestion that Yaxley Lennon committed any crime by doing so.
There was another uptick in March following the unprovoked US-Israeli attack on Iran.
The British Muslim Trust (BMT), appointed by the government in July 2025 to monitor anti-Muslim hostility, warned today: “There has been an unprecedented level of anti-Muslim hate during the last year.
“The momentum of growing anti-Muslim hostility is driving the attacks against mosques.
“The defining shift across this reporting period is a movement from hate aimed at the mosque itself to hate targeting Muslims inside it.”
Yemeni government-allied fighters exchanging fire with Houthi rebels in Dhobab district, Taiz, Yemen, October 5, 2026
YEMEN’S government said today its army has carried out at least 2,103 targeted operations against the Houthis, killing 1,860 fighters, since the start of its “Dawn of Yemen” counteroffensive this week.
Fighting raged in al-Shamayatayn, al-Maafer and the southern and western countryside of Taiz governorate today as the Houthis continued pushing into rural areas that have not seen conflict for years.
The group aims to open a supply route because their lines towards al-Kadaha and al-Waziiya are nearly cut off by advancing government forces.
Government forces said they are expecting a dangerous escalation over the next 48 hours after the defence minister said Houthi-held areas will be recaptured soon.
The fighting has displaced many people from rural areas, and shelling continues.
Meanwhile, the Houthis said they attacked King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh with a ballistic missile this morning.
It came after Saudi civil aviation authorities said Houthi attacks on Abha and King Khalid International Airport killed three civilians and injured 36 on Tuesday and Wednesday.
A look at a Compliant Technologies Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter (GLOVE) at Omaha Police Headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska, on August 14, 2026. (Nikos Frazier/Omaha World-Herald via Getty Images)
“Everyone should be alarmed that ICE is preparing to deploy a tool designed to inflict, at best, intense pain,” said one watchdog.
When US Immigration and Customs Enforcement ordered 6,000 pairs of shock gloves this summer, the agency knew that they could cause such “intense pain” that victims stopped fighting immediately and became fearful of more shocks.
That’s according to The Associated Press, which on Tuesday revealed the existence of a US Army study on the gloves. ICE put in a $17 million order for the product, known as the Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter (GLOVE), in August.
In October 2024, the GLOVE was tested on Army employees at the military prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, to see if it could be incorporated into their practices to move noncompliant prisoners between cells.
According to the AP:
The shocks had a profound impact on Army employees who played the role of combative prisoners during the exercise… The participants, several of whom were large-statured men, stopped resisting seconds after officers applied shocks by touching gloves to their skin, and were left with “fatigue, soreness and excessive apprehensiveness to being shocked again,” the study found.
After experiencing the effects of the GLOVE, … [“]participants stated just seeing the GLOVE was enough to make them want to comply,” the authors wrote.
The report later noted that unlike a taser, which is designed to cause the body of a noncompliant person to freeze, the GLOVE is meant to elicit pain. It “works by overloading the peripheral nerve endings,” the study said. It also noted that participants with water or oil on their skin experienced more severe shocks and that one was left in pain for 30 minutes afterward.
The full report has not yet been released to the public; however, a four-page memo from the Department of the Army’s Office of the Project Manager for Close Combat Systems summarizing its findings can be found on the website of the GLOVE’s manufacturer, Compliant Technologies.
This isn't going to become some anomalous method of arresting people. They will be shocking people like this as a matter of course. pic.twitter.com/U9SuvaMTvu
ICE has described the shock gloves as a tool to “de-escalate” conflicts in the street with targets of the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign, as well as protesters against the policy—it has said the gloves would be used to subdue those “actively or passively resisting” agents’ commands.
In the wake of several fatal shootings by agents that lacked clear justification, the agency has described the gloves as a “low-impact tool” that will allow agents to avoid escalating to more extreme uses of force.
When politicians have called to restrict access to the gloves, ICE’s parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), accused them of trying to deprive federal officers of “safety equipment.”
The user manual of the GLOVE notes that the “pain stimulus” it delivers can produce psychological changes associated with sudden death, including increased blood pressure, heart rate, and adrenaline, as well as changes in blood chemistry and heart rhythm. It also notes that those shocked with the gloves could face serious injuries from falling after suddenly losing control of their extremities.
The manual recommends that the gloves not be used against older people, small children, people who are pregnant, and people with certain disabilities.
As Reagan Williams, a researcher at Human Rights Watch’s Crisis, Conflict and Arms Division, noted in August, agency operations have regularly targeted these groups.
“Electric shock devices have long been abusively deployed around the globe, including as a method of torture and other ill-treatment. Given these risks, the European Union has implementedtrade restrictions on these devices,” Williams said. “The scale of this technology’s potential harm in the hands of ICE, an abusive agency whose recruits are deployed with minimal training, could be considerable.”
Chioma Chukwu, executive director of American Oversight, which provided the report to the AP, noted that while the Army report concluded the gloves were effective, it said little about their safety.
“The military assessment in ICE’s own files shows that these gloves can cause ‘intense pain’ and force compliance. It does not establish that they are safe,” Chukwu said. “Everyone should be alarmed that ICE is preparing to deploy a tool designed to inflict, at best, intense pain, without showing that it is safe for the people who will be subjected to it.”
While tasers can leave severe burns and welts on subjects, the shock gloves being adopted by ICE can deliver a painful shock without leaving a mark, making it much harder to prove their use. For law enforcement agencies, this is one of their most alluring features.
“I highly recommend these gloves to anybody that’s looking for a utility they can use that is conducive to not leading to lawsuits,” said Bob Couey, chief deputy of the Floyd County Sheriff’s Office in Georgia, in a promotional video posted by Compliant Technologies in 2024 and resurfaced in August by Mother Jones.
ICE just spent $16.7 million arming agents with shock gloves—wearable devices that deliver a painful electric shock. Human rights organizations like Amnesty International say the gloves “could be readily misused for torture.”
Even a former ICE acting director, John Sandweg, has warned that because the gloves are so easy to use, agents might feel compelled to deploy them haphazardly.
“It’s too easy for this to get misused, against a population that doesn’t pose a threat,” Sandweg, who led the agency for about six months during the Obama administration, told MS NOW in August.
The gloves have drawn substantial criticism from Democratic members of Congress. In late August, Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.) led a group of 49 members of the US House of Representatives to demand the contract be canceled.
“Introducing low-visibility electric shock weapons into our immigration enforcement system is an unacceptable escalation that prioritizes physical intimidation and unaccountable force over human safety and administrative accountability,” they said in a letter to DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin.
ICE, meanwhile, has been less than forthcoming about what guardrails will govern the use of the shock gloves. In late August, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) and 15 other Democratic senators asked the agency to answer questions about how the gloves will be used, who they’ll be used against, and whether it has conducted safety evaluations.
Cortez Masto told the AP that over a month later, the agency has not answered her and her colleagues’ questions.
Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.Donald Trump sings and dances, says that it’s fun to kill everyone … unless he gets distracted or falls asleep.
US President Donald Trump gestures as he walks on stage to speak during a campaign rally at Pinnacle Bank Expo Center in Grand Island, Nebraska, on October 5, 2026. (Photo by Kent Nishimura/AFP via Getty Images)
“The role of a president is to protect the country, not to actively threaten it and encourage attacks on American lives,” said the mayor of Los Angeles.
“Keep our city out of your reckless war talk,” said San Diego’s mayor, Todd Gloria, Monday night after President Donald Trump’s rambling speech at a rally in Nebraska included a particularly violent mention of the California city.
Gloria was among several Democratic political leaders who were incensed after Trump—moments after predicted the Republican Party would see a “tremendous victory” in the November 3 midterm elections—suggested that he would not object to an Iranian military or nuclear attack on San Diego and Los Angeles.
The president said that soaring prices for gas, groceries, and other essentials are a “small price to pay for keeping the world safe—keeping our country safe.”
Trump on Iran: Let 'em take out Los Angeles and San Diego, it's a small price to pay pic.twitter.com/Fc4BcjVDKj
He warned that Iran could “take out a city,” before adding that he would “let them” attack the two deep-blue cities—home to a collective 5.2 million people, with more than 20 million residents in the surrounding areas
“Let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego,” Trump said at the rally in Grand Island. “This is a very small price to pay… It’s gonna be over very soon.”
The crowd responded to Trump’s comments with laughter and cheers. The president has frequently made Democratic strongholds like Los Angeles, Chicago, and his own hometown of New York City the targets of rhetorical attacks. He has also targeted those cities with the deployment of armed federal agents as part of his mass deportation agenda.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat whose name has been floated as a potential 2028 presidential candidate, condemned Trump’s remarks as “deranged and dangerous.”
“After sending the National Guard and Marines to occupy California, Donald Trump is now saying our foreign enemies should ‘take out’ Los Angeles and San Diego,” said Newsom, who later criticized Trump’s vice president and secretary of state for not speaking out against the comments.
Gloria added that San Diego, which is home to major military installations, “is not collateral damage. We are not expendable. And we are never a ‘small price to pay.’”
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass accused Trump of compromising the safety of the nation’s second-largest city.
“The role of a president is to protect the country, not to actively threaten it and encourage attacks on American lives,” said Bass. “In the face of irresponsible threats, as Angelenos, we know how to stand together and protect our city.”
Jim Desmond, a Republican running for Congress in California’s 48th District, which lies in San Diego, was also quick to distance himself from the president’s comments.
Some observers claimed the president had simply been speaking in an “especially confusing style,” as journalist Daniel Dale suggested, and did not intend to suggest that the two cities could be acceptable collateral damage.
“Of course you can say it’s inappropriate regardless for the president to casually float the possibility of a city being wiped out,” he added.
Trump’s comments came days after it was reported that the Pentagon is prepared to send thousands more troops and a third aircraft carrier to the Middle East, as talks between the US and Iran remain stalled. Gas prices remain elevated, at $4.36 per gallon on average, and nearly two-thirds of respondents to an Associated Press poll in June said they disapproved of how Trump had handled the war, which he joined Israel in starting in February without congressional approval.
Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) had a succinct response to Trump’s remarks, referring to the constitutional amendment that allows members of a president’s Cabinet to remove him from office on the ground that they cannot fulfill the duties of the president.
Orcas discuss rotting brain, front Orca says he wishes someone would lock him up, small Orca speaks bluntly.Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.Donald Trump sings and dances, says that it’s fun to kill everyone … unless he gets distracted or falls asleep.
Trump on Iran: Let 'em take out Los Angeles and San Diego, it's a small price to pay pic.twitter.com/Fc4BcjVDKj
A general view of graffiti on a wall in Bristol
