Portrait of the week | 18 June 2015

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Talha Asmal, aged 17, from Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, died in a suicide bomb attack on forces near an oil refinery near Baiji in Iraq, having assumed the name Abu Yusuf al-Britani. A man from High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, Thomas Evans, 25, who had changed his name to Abdul Hakim, was killed in Kenya while fighting for al-Shabab. Three sisters from Bradford were thought to have travelled to Syria with their nine children after going on a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia. Britain had had to move intelligence agents, the Sunday Times reported, because Russia and China had deciphered documents made public by Edward Snowden, the CIA employee who has taken refuge in Russia. Payments expected by customers of the RBS group of banks failed to enter accounts overnight. A lottery prize of £93,388,943 was claimed. Camelot, the lottery operator, increased the number of balls in the draw from 49 to 59.

David Cameron, the Prime Minister, headed off rebellion over the EU referendum by agreeing not to hold it on the same day as other elections on 5 May 2016 and by getting David Lidington, the Europe minister, to announce that, in the four weeks before the vote, the government ‘will not undertake a range of activity that most will regard as the province of the campaign’. Four nominations for the leadership of the Labour party — Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper, Liz Kendall and Jeremy Corbyn — will face a postal ballot, with the winner announced in September. The annual rate of inflation, according to the Consumer Prices Index, rose to 0.1 per cent in May after deflation at the rate of 0.1 per cent in the previous month; according to the Retail Prices Index, inflation rose from 0.9 per cent to 1 per cent.