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In today’s newsletter: With violent crime declining but hate crime increasing, a look at what we can all do to make our shared spaces safer

Good morning. Who is safe on Britain’s streets? Two acts of gross violence – the murder of Henry Nowak in Southampton and the stabbing of Stephen Ogilvie in Belfast – have been ruthlessly exploited by the far-right and now the spaces we all share are contested.

It is an entirely human response to feel unsafe when we watch a clip of an assailant wielding a knife over his victim, or police officers handcuffing a distressed, dying young man. Much as it is when we see ethnic minority families fleeing burning homes in Belfast, or a menacing crowd in Glasgow setting about black people as they pass.

Middle East | The US launched new strikes against targets in Iran for the second consecutive day after Donald Trump promised to “hit them hard again” as a two-month-old ceasefire appears close to collapse.

UK politics | Keir Starmer’s closest aides are “war-gaming” how to win a leadership contest ahead of Andy Burnham’s much-anticipated return to Westminster if he wins the Makerfield byelection, the Guardian understands.

Belfast | Elon Musk’s X will face no action to remove a mass of posts inciting violence in Northern Ireland for at least two months, despite widespread condemnation of the platform and its billionaire owner.

Environment | Temperatures in the Antarctic climbed above 15C this month, shattering the previous winter heat record for the usually frozen region and raising concerns about the speed of climate breakdown.

UK news | One of the government’s key contractors has launched an investigation into allegations of racism, antisemitism, Islamophobia and hate speech among staff working in immigration removal centres, the Guardian has learned.

James Bidgood’s experimental DIY movie, first released in 1971, starred Bobby Kendall and was shot mostly in Bidgood’s own apartment

James Bidgood’s experimental homoerotic reverie is now reissued in restored form. The film was shot mostly in Bidgood’s own New York apartment throughout the 1960s; it was finally released in 1971 with Bidgood’s name removed from the credits after an opaque dispute with his backers and his authorship only revealed 20 years later.

Pink Narcissus is a movie of garish colour, mute melodrama and dreamlike imagery which mimics early cinema, perhaps simply because the resources for recording lip-sync dialogue were not available. (The director says that Powell and Pressburger’s Red Shoes was an inspiration although the title alludes more to their nun melodrama Black Narcissus.) It interestingly merges its rather pastoral fantasies with the urban circumstances where these would be consumed – the city’s movie theatres, outside which poverty and alienation were commonplace. Some of the most interesting and successful parts of the piece are the radio soundscapes and the modelled neon skylines.

Hot tubs and high camp as a TV star dripping in rhinestones tries to solve a real-life crime in this fabulously flawed murder mystery. Who cares who did it

Here is a camply craptastic murder mystery that aims to offer queer-minded fans of trashy detection stories a treat for Pride month with a manifestly cheap and cheerful, amusingly badly performed, diva-centric exercise. Let us be clear: this is not well-made in the slightest, with a script as shonky as a flatpack gateleg table, with similarly slapdash direction by collaborators Trent Garrett and Jacob Young. (Clearly it takes two people to make something this inept.) But its flaws somehow make it endearing, mostly because it stars Joan Collins, looking insanely fabulous at whatever free bus-pass-qualifying age she is.

Collins plays Francesca Carlyle, a famous TV detective lady, lacquered in rhinestones, and always in faintly softer focus than everyone else. She rents her mansion to a gang of old friends getting together for a European holiday in an indeterminate country; this early-middle-aged gaggle, who supposedly have known each other since university, is comprised of a mix of Americans such as bullish Josh (Young), his vampy, fake-eyelash-wearing wife Kat (Nadia Bjorlin), and slightly more modestly attired Sonia (India Thain). There are Brits like Sonia’s husband Devin (Simon Cotton), and newcomer Sydney (Toby-Alexander Smith) who just married the core group’s friend, ambiguously accented Louisa (Hana Vagnerová). One of the cohort is killed on the first night after some carousing, during which two of the above blokes grope each other on a stairway, overseen by a third, and hot tubs are deployed.

Mama G wants to dedicate her book, The Proudest Bird in the World, to pair after chance Blackpool Pride encounter

A search is under way for two lesbian grandmothers who inspired a new children’s book after a chance encounter with a pantomime dame at Blackpool Pride.

The women, whose names are not known, attended a reading by the popular performer Mama G in 2021, complaining to her about the lack of diversity in young literature.

CNN anchor Jake Tapper joined a chorus of voices accusing the former first lady of rewriting history and dodging accountability for the 2024 loss

Forget the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) fight being held on the White House lawn, if you want to tune in to a far more amusing brawl, may I suggest Hunter Biden v Jake Tapper? The CNN anchor is categorically unimpressed with Jill Biden’s new memoir, View from the East Wing, and has joined a chorus of voices accusing the former first lady of rewriting history and dodging accountability for the 2024 loss. In response, Hunter has accused Tapper of having the wrong priorities.

“So let me get this straight,” Hunter wrote on Twitter/X on Wednesday. “Jake Tapper is focused on attacking my Mom. Jared and Ivanka are building a private island paradise on Albanian protected land. Don Jr married the daughter of Epstein’s banker, and a startup his fund backs just got a record $620M Pentagon loan. Eric is taking an Israeli drone company public for $1.5B in the middle of a war with Iran that nobody wanted. And I know: ‘But what about your paintings, Hunter?’ Please.”

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist

Republican states rebrand June as ‘nuclear family month’ or ‘fidelity month’ in latest attack on LGBTQ+ communities

June is widely marked as gay Pride month – when LGBTQ+ communities march to protest discrimination and celebrate their identities in the month that the modern US gay liberation movement was born out of the 1969 uprising at New York’s Stonewall Inn – although not so much in certain Republican-led states this year.

Some Republican governors have suddenly come up with alternative labels for the month, which both supporters and opponents view as counterprogramming.

Plus, Anne Hathaway shoots from the hip for Arsenal and Rosamund Pike calls out theatregoer for texting during show

The first day of Pride month and friends in New York report a textbook encounter between one of the straightest forces in this world – hen night energy – and one of the gayest, the Rocky Horror Show, currently in revival on Broadway, where for the past three months, Tony-nominated Luke Evans has been knocking it out of the park as Frank-N-Furter.

Draft treaty claims sexual and reproductive health and rights are an existential threat to the African family

An African treaty that rejects longstanding international human rights obligations moved a step closer to becoming policy this week as governments across the continent met in Ghana.

The draft African charter on family, sovereignty and values, seen by the Guardian, asserts that African values and culture are under attack from “foreign ideologies” and urges states to withdraw from any agreements that do not align with the principles of the charter, including the 2003 Maputo protocol, which promotes gender equality and protects the reproductive and health rights of women and girls.

• Lions seek to help extend the reach of inclusive clubs

• 78-page document is the first of its kind in football

Millwall have published a first-of-its-kind “Pride playbook” to help football clubs form stronger partnerships with LGBTQ+ teams across the country.

The move comes during Pride month as the Lions seek to build on the success of their teams, Millwall Romans and Millwall Pride, and help extend the reach of LGBTQ+ inclusive football amid growing demand.

Poet, playwright and novelist who fought hard for gay rights and the welfare of her fellow authors

Asked last year what it felt like to be hailed as a pioneer, the writer and activist Maureen Duffy, who has died aged 92, replied: “It’s a funny old thing. I suppose I’ll get used to it.” Yet there could not have been a more deserving winner for the inaugural RSL Pioneer prize, set up by Bernardine Evaristo and the Royal Society of Literature to honour the achievements of British writers aged over 60.

The author of more than 60 works – spanning novels, non-fiction and poetry as well as dramas for theatre and TV – Duffy was also a campaigner for the rights of animals and of her fellow authors, to whom she was famously encouraging. Her presence at literary events, her blue eyes surveying the scene over a smart three-piece suit, attested to an equally dogged activism.