What happened
The man behind last week’s deadly attack on a Manchester synagogue called emergency services to declare his loyalty to Islamic State after driving his car into worshippers and then stabbing others outside the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation, police have confirmed. Jihad Al-Shamie (pictured above) pledged allegiance to the group during the assault on 2 October that saw two men killed and three others injured. He was later shot dead by armed officers.

Who said what
The tactics used in the attack “closely mirrored advice issued by Islamic State to its international followers in English-language propaganda publications”, said Lizzie Dearden in The New York Times. The group offered “detailed guidance on the use of vehicles and knives”, and urged supporters to announce their “motive and allegiance” before death.

Al-Shamie is “also known to have had an abusive affair with an 18-year-old sixth-form student” whom he made watch “extreme” Islamic State videos, said Tim Sigsworth in The Telegraph.

What next?
Four of the six people arrested on suspicion of assisting the attack are expected to be released without charge. Investigators are still examining Al-Shamie’s motives, background and potential links to extremist networks while the police watchdog reviews the officers’ use of lethal force.

What happened
The UK’s biggest ever environmental lawsuit has been filed at the High Court. The claim contains more than 4,000 signatures against two poultry producers and a water company over pollution in the Wye, Lugg and Usk rivers in Wales and Herefordshire.

Who said what
Justine Evans, acting as the lead claimant, said “it’s horrible to think what has happened to the wildlife it is home to”, noticing a “stark decline” in recent years. Celine Donovan of Leigh Day solicitors, which represents the claimants, confirmed that the case was the largest on record in terms of the total damages claimed, the number of claimants and the geographical scale of the damage.

Attributing the pollution to the practices of individual farmers, defendant Avara Foods said “the focus instead needs to be on solutions that will improve the health of the river”.

What next?
Welsh Water, another defendant, said it would argue its case “robustly” and was investing £33 million in the local area to improve the Usk River. Government ministers have set up a joint “£1 million fund” to investigate the sources of the river’s pollution, said the BBC.

A far-right party in Japan is courting allies of Donald Trump as it builds on its recent electoral gains.

Sanseito uprooted Japan’s political foundations when it gained 14 new seats in the House of Councillors election in July, “shattering the long-standing belief that modern Japan is immune to populism”, said news agency Anadolu.

Now hardline nationalist leader Sanae Takaichi has won the leadership election for Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party, paving the way for a possible pact between it and Sanseito. But the Maga-inspired party “faces a distinctly Japanese quandary of how to upend the status quo in a society that prizes politeness and consensus”, said Reuters.

Japan has “long prided itself on social harmony and relative political moderation, avoiding the deep partisan trenches of US politics”, said the East Asia Forum, but the recent election “exposed a truth that can no longer be ignored”: the nation’s “divisions are real, complex and growing, and Sanseito has skilfully turned these fractures into political capital”.

The topic that “excites” today’s populists most is the “increasing number of foreigners in Japan – immigrants, workers and tourists”. “Like Trump, Sanseito leader Sohei Kamiya has stirred controversy with his remarks” on ethnic minorities, said Reuters. An outspoken critic of immigration, on one occasion he “used a slur against Japan’s ethnic Korean population – a comment for which he later apologised”.

But Sanseito members “are not Trump worshippers” and won’t push “wacky” policies like those embraced by the US president, Kamiya told the news agency. The Japanese “value harmony and place an importance on getting broad, gradual consensus”, he said, before adding: “I do, too.”