Activists hurled rocks and bottles during a rally in the American city of Portland, Oregon organised by two far-Right groups that drew counter protests, said police, who ordered demonstrators to leave not long after the marches got under way.

Officers in the western state of Oregon’s largest city maintained a heavy presence during the duelling demonstrations, which raised fears of a replay of last year’s "Unite the Right" protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, that ended in bloodshed.

The projectiles were thrown at officers, said police, who ordered those in the area to "immediately disperse" – warning "failure to comply with this order may subject you to arrest or citation, and may subject you to the use of riot control agents or impact weapons."

Footage of the rallies that drew hundreds showed plumes of smoke rising in the city of about 640,000 people. Portland police later said "protest officers seized firework mortars," while some activists on the left accused police of shooting "stun grenades."

Patriot Prayer and the Proud Boys, Right-wing groups linked to violence at a previous Portland rally, were marching in the city’s Tom McCall Waterfront Park in support of Patriot Prayer founder Joey Gibson, who is running as a Republican for the US Senate.

Meanwhile, a group called Popular Mobilisation had organised a counter-demonstration at the park, accompanied by a marching band and protesters in clown costumes.

On the event’s Facebook page, organisers said they "make no apologies for the use of force in keeping our communities safe from the scourge of right-wing violence."

Following the police order on Saturday to disperse, Portland’s branch of the Democratic Socialists of America pinned blame on officers, saying on Twitter that "a little bit before 2 PM all seemed normal in the crowd."

"Then without warning, the cops shot stun grenades into the anti-fascist crowd and started forcing people to disperse," the organization said, pointing to Portland’s police as "the ones who escalated and created a dangerous situation."

On Friday, the city’s mayor Ted Wheeler had voiced concern "that individuals are posting publicly their intent to act out violently," saying "we don’t want this here."

Police had warned protesters to leave their guns at home even though holders of valid Oregon concealed-handgun licences are permitted to carry their weapons at the park.

They had said officers would screen people for weapons at entrances to the park, and explosive-sniffing dogs were also to be brought in.

"The potent combination of bigotry and violence on the streets of Portland poses a serious threat to community safety, and particularly to residents who are people of color, women and LGBTQ," said a statement from the Western States Centre, signed by around 40 activist groups.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Centre, a non-profit group that monitors extremism, Patriot Prayer and the Proud Boys have appeared together at several rallies in the Pacific Northwest since 2017.

A rally on June 30 was declared a riot and shut down by police after marchers and counter-protesters clashed, leaving several people injured.

Matteo Salvini, Italy’s hard-line interior minister, has come under fire for using a phrase that was made popular by Benito Mussolini during the Fascist era.

Responding to criticism that he was fomenting xenophobia and racism with his anti-immigrant rhetoric, Mr Salvini wrote on Twitter: “Many enemies, much honour”.

The words he used in Italian – “Tanti nemici, tanto onore” – were almost identical to one of Mussolini’s well-known sayings – “Molti nemici, molto onore”.

Mussolini’s motto can still be seen in a Fascist-era sports complex in Rome, the Foro Italico, where they appear in a marble mosaic.

The fact that the minister cited the phrase on Sunday, the anniversary of Mussolini’s birth, only made it more inflammatory.

Critics accused Mr Salvini, who is the leader of the hard-Right League party and has emerged as the most prominent member of Italy’s populist party, of flirting with the ghosts of Fascism.

“Mussolini destroyed and humiliated Italy, with a dramatic price paid in blood. If this is his aim, then the real enemies of Salvini are the Italians,” said Nicola Zingaretti, a prominent member of the centre-Left Democratic Party.

Matteo Orfini, another opposition MP, said: “A person who has sworn on the constitution, which was born from the struggle against Fascism, should not allow themselves to pay homage to Mussolini. Salvini should apologise or resign and play the little fascist far from government.”

Mr Salvini made the remark during a visit to the beach in the northern region of Emilia-Romagna, where he mingled with sunbathers and posed on a blue and white jet ski used by the police.

His penchant for appearing bare-chested – earlier this month he plunged into a swimming pool that had been confiscated by a mafia boss, in a stunt to highlight a drive against organised crime – has also been likened to Mussolini.

“Il Duce” liked to have himself filmed and photographed while swimming in the sea, in efforts to promote his strong-man image.

Mr Salvini’s campaign against the NGO vessels which rescue migrants in the Mediterranean has proved popular with many Italians, almost doubling The League’s support from the 17% of votes it won in the March general election to more than 30 per cent, according to polls.

But it has attracted hostility from opposition parties, civil rights groups and the Catholic Church.

Last week a leading Catholic magazine, Famiglia Cristiana, featured the interior minister on its front cover with the headline “Get thee behind me, Salvini”, evoking the words of an exorcism rite normally reserved for the Devil.

Critics say his hostile stance towards Roma gypsies and migrants is fostering a climate of intolerance in Italy, pointing to a number of case in which foreigners have been attacked for no reason.

The latest episode happened to an Italian athlete of Nigerian descent, who was hit in the face by an egg thrown from a passing car while walking in the town of Moncalieri near Turin in the early hours of Monday.

Daisy Osakue, 22, a record-holding discus thrower, said she was sure the incident was race-related.

She suffered an injury to her cornea and was taken to an eye hospital.

"They didn’t want to hit me, as Daisy, they wanted to hit me as a young coloured woman. I’ve been the victim of episodes of racism before, but only verbal ones. When you go from words to action it means another wall has been breached".

Maurizio Martina, the leader of the centre-Left Democratic Party, said Italy was undergoing “a worrying spiral of racism”.

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders had a heated exchange with a CNN reporter on Thursday as she revealed the heavy toll media scrutiny has on her private life.

Jim Acosta, CNN’s White House correspondent, challenged Ms Sanders to publicly state the media was not the "enemy of the people", a refrain frequently used by President Donald Trump. 

Ms Sanders refused to do so, instead listing a litany of complaints against the press and blaming negative media coverage for inflaming tensions in the country.

The president’s spokeswoman said she was probably the first press secretary in history to require secret service protection, linking the measure to negative media coverage.

The exchange came hours after Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter, said in an interview she did not agree with her father’s view of the press.

Ms Sanders has refused to break with the president’s position and was repeatedly pressed on the question by Mr Acosta during a press briefing on Thursday.

In an emotional response, Ms Sanders said she had experienced attacks on her personal appearance – referencing the remarks made by comedian Michelle Wolf at the White House Correspondents Association dinner.

Ms Sanders’ treatment at the event was widely condemned and Margaret Talev, head of the association, issued a statement distancing the dinner’s organisers from the comedian.

The night was "meant to offer a unifying message about our common commitment to a vigorous and free press while honouring the civility, great reporting and scholarship winners, not to divide people," she said.

"Unfortunately, the entertainer’s monologue was not in the spirit of that mission".

Just last month, Ms Sanders was asked to leave the Red Hen restaurant in Virginia, by the owner who said she felt she had to take a stand for "honesty" and "compassion".

Mr Acosta said he did not approve of the press secretary’s treatment at the dinner, saying: “I’m sorry that happened to you. We all get put through the meat grinder in this town.”

He went on: “The president of the United States should not refer to us as the enemy of the people – his own daughter acknowledged that.”

“It would be a good thing if you would say right here the press … are not the enemy of the people. I think we deserve that.”

Mr Acosta later walked out of the briefing in protest.

The leader of Iran’s elite Quds Force stepped out of the shadows on Thursday to deliver a fiery speech against Donald Trump, warning the US president that if a war broke out Iran would “destroy all that you possess”.

General Qassem Soleimani, who heads the Revolutionary Guard’s expeditionary special forces, is considered of the most powerful figures in the Middle East and commands Iran’s operations in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen. 

The general has been photographed on battlefields from Mosul to Aleppo and his image is plastered on billboards across Iran but he speaks only rarely in public. 

On Thursday he delivered a blistering response to Mr Trump’s tweet on Monday, when the US president warned Iran that if it threatened America it would face “consequences the likes of which few throughout history have ever suffered”. 

“You know that this war will destroy all that you possess,” Gen Soleimani responded in a speech in the central city of Hamedan. 

“You will start this war but we will be the ones to impose its end. Therefore you have to be careful about insulting the Iranian people and the president of our Republic.”

He told Mr Trump: “You know our power in the region and our capabilities in asymmetric war. We will act and we will work…We are near you, where you can’t even imagine."

Gen Soleimani also taunted America over its military failures in Iraq and Afghanistan and said US troops had to be supplied with "adult diapers".  

Mr Trump’s tweet had been aimed at Hassan Rouhani, the Iranian president, but Gen Soleimani told the US president to address him and not Mr Rouhani.  

"As a soldier, it is my duty to respond to Trump’s threats. If he wants to use the language of threat, he should talk to me, not to the president,” he said. 

Gen Soleimani also denounced Mr Trump for using the language of “nightclubs and gambling halls”. 

US and Iranian leaders have been trading insults and threats intensively over the last week. 

Mr Rouhani said Monday that the US should understand “that peace with Iran is the mother of all peace, and war with Iran is the mother of all wars”.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia suspended oil shipping through a strategic waterway near Yemen after two of its oil tankers were attacked by Houthi rebel forces, the Saudi government said. 

Khalid al-Falih, the Saudi energy minister, said the Houthis had attacked the two tankers as they made their way through the Bab al-Mandab Strait, a narrow 12-mile passage between Yemen and Djibouti. 

The strait is a key transit route for oil and other shipping line which leads up the Red Sea to the Suez Canal. Saudi Arabia said one ship was slightly damaged in the attack but there was no oil spillage. 

The Bab al-Mandab is less important the Straits of Hormuz, another narrow passage in the Persian Gulf through which handles around 20 per cent of the world’s oil exports.

Oil markets did not react strongly to the Saudi decision. Nonetheless, a prolonged halt to Saudi oil shipments through Bab al-Mandab would mean tankers going around Africa instead of using the Suez Canal, which could lead to rising oil prices. 

Kuwait said it was also considering suspending oil shipments through the straits. 

The Houthis, who are aligned with Iran, have attacked several international ships in the Red Sea. 

The US and UK have supported Saudi Arabia’s bombing campaign in Yemen partly out of fear that Iran could use the Houthis as proxies for disrupting international shipping in the event of a war. 

The European Union should have campaigned for Remain in the June 2016 vote so it could have confronted "lies" spread by Brexiteers, a senior German politician has said, as he backed calls for a second referendum.

Elmar Brok, an MEP and close ally of Chancellor Angela Merkel, told German newspaper FAZ that a second vote could avoid a chaotic Brexit. 

"If there is no exit agreement by March 29 2019 a hard Brexit will occur. So a referendum in December or January…could avert a hard Brexit," said Mr Brok, the Brexit Co-ordinator of the European People’s Party.

He added, in remarks likely to infuriate Brexiteers, that the EU should have been allowed to take part in the referendum campaign in the…

An untraceable, undetectable gun which can be produced with a 3D printer may soon be accessed by anyone on the internet.

It comes after a self-described anarchist pledged to put blueprints for the 3D-printable firearms online. The blueprints are now at the center of America’s latest gun debate.

Cody Wilson, a champion of gun-rights and self-professed anarchist from Texas, has been engaged in a legal battle with the government to share his manual with the public.

Opponents fear terrorists and criminals will exploit the loophole to produce guns, making it a threat to public safety.

But those pushing for the plans to be released argue the ban is a crackdown on freedom of speech.

The plastic gun…

French wine scientists have come up with four revolutionary supergrape varieties they say are impervious to rot and thus require almost no pesticides.

But purists have warned that the lab-grown creations, which mix grape genes from around the world, could lead to dumbed-down, low-grade “Frankenstein” wine for future generations.

At first glance, the red and white grapes growing at the National Institue of Agronomical Research (Inra) in Colmar, eastern France, look like just any other you might find in this part of the world.

Yet these are a very different, revolutionary breed of grape grown in the laboratory under a programme called “Resdur."

The aim is to be “durably resistant” to fungal attack by winemakers’ two sworn enemies: downy and powdery mildew.

In recent months, Inra scientists received state authorisation to grow four varieties of resistant grape called Araban, Floreal, Voltis and Vidoc which will lead to wine bottled by 2020.

First attempts to create rot-resistance grapes began in the 1970s when one resistant gene was singled out, but over the last 15 years, Inra has pinpointed three more by crossing European grapes with American and Asian vines.

Didier Merdinoglu, the “father” of the Inra programme insisted that the grapes enabled winemakers to reduce the use of pesticides by 80-90 per cent.

“We are talking about dropping from an average of 15 treatments (for fungal disease) per year to one or two, above all to kill off other diseases and parasites,” he said.

Given that 20 per cent of pesticides used in France are sprayed onto vines, even though they only cover three per cent of its crops, researchers insist the breakthrough could be a godsend for the environment and wine growers’ wallets.

France is under intense pressure to reduce pesticides following a string of cancer cases among vinters and a recent scandal in which pupils at a school near a vineyard were sprayed with chemicals, leading to several falling ill.

Yet some winemakers warn the lab-grown grape varieties could kill off centuries of painstaking grape growing traditions melding European grapes with local “terroir”, or soil, by replacing them with cheap, robust ones that lack the taste and quality of existing local varietals.

Thomas Dormegnies, wine maker, researcher and taster from Vendée, western France, said: “Grape varieties in Europe have been developed by monks over centuries to suit the local soil. That is a wonderful heritage.”

While the new grapes were not genetically modified, the crossover of varieties from other continents would lead to “artificial and unnatural ‘Frankenstein wine’,” he told The Telegraph.

“This is like crossing a monkey with and a man: it may be technically possible but it goes against nature,” he said.

He added: “Mildew can be very well managed in organic or biodynamic wine growing via sulphur or essential oils.”

The result of flooding the market with cheap, robust grapes risked a “race to the bottom towards industrial winemaking” seeking to rival cheap plonk from Spain. 

“But the French can’t compete with their low production costs, sunny conditions and slacker environmental rules,” he said.

As for the taste, he said he had tried one sample and was underwhelmed. Tasting notes from specialists at Vitisphère.com, were polite but hardly enthusiastic, noting the wine’s “discreet nose”, “very tannic streak” and likening it to an unrefined sauvignon blanc from the deep South.

Jacques Frélin, vice president France Vin Bio told NouvelObs magazine: “It’s obvious that a hybrid grape variety will produce a wine with less personality.”

The researchers countered that every effort was being made to produce high-quality grapes, saying: “We tested and got rid of all varieties that showed excessive acidity and undesirable aromas.”

Laurent Audeguin of the French Institute of Vine and Wine said it was far too early to judge what they would taste like.

“We’ll see in which vineyards these varieties adapt the best and give the best results. It takes decades to assess a grape variety’s true worth,” he said.