Home
More than 100 schools were told to close buildings before the new term because they contained the wrong kind of concrete. The Health and Safety Executive said that reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (Raac) ‘is liable to collapse with little or no notice’. In total, 156 schools are affected, of which 104 require urgent attention and 52 have already received repair works. But in Scotland, where 35 council-run schools had been found to contain Raac, none had to close. In July, NHS Scotland had also identified 254 buildings that ‘have two or more characteristics which are consistent with the presence of Raac’, vulnerable to ‘catastrophic failure without warning’, but a Scottish government spokesperson said there was ‘no evidence to suggest that these buildings are not safe’. Laughing gas is to be categorised as a Class C drug by the end of the year, the government said, its possession punishable by two years’ jail.
Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, appointed Grant Shapps as Defence Secretary in place of Ben Wallace; Claire Coutinho succeeded him as Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero. General Lord Dannatt said: ‘We have a new Defence Secretary who knows very little about defence, and it’s a complex portfolio. It will take him quite some time to get up to speed.’ Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, appointed the party’s deputy leader Angela Rayner as shadow levelling up secretary in place of Lisa Nandy, demoted to international development. Hilary Benn took on Northern Ireland and Pat McFadden became national campaign co-ordinator. Mohamed al-Fayed, who spent some years as the proprietor of Harrods and saw his son Dodi killed in the same car crash as Diana, Princess of Wales, died aged 94.
Birmingham city council, which is run by Labour, declared that it could not meet its expenditure commitments after spending £100 million on a botched computer system and £760 million on equal-pay claims. The government said it was relaxing the effective ban on new onshore wind farms. On Saturday 2 September, 15 boats brought 872 migrants across the Channel, the highest figure for any day this year, bringing the total for 2023 to 20,973. Simon Byrne resigned as chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland. Wagner, the Russian mercenary group, is set to be proscribed as a terrorist organisation. At the Braemar Gathering, the King wore a kilt of a new tartan, registered with the Scottish Register of Tartans.
Abroad
Ukrainian generals said they had breached the first line of Russia’s defences in the south, near the village of Robotyne, 35 miles south-east of Zaporizhzhia. Russia attacked ports on the Danube. President Volodymyr Zelensky sacked Oleksii Reznikov as defence minister and replaced him with Rustem Umerov, a Muslim Crimean Tatar. Kim Jong-un, the ruler of North Korea, was expected to travel to Russia by armoured train to discuss provision of weapons with President Vladimir Putin of Russia. The Nobel Foundation invited the ambassadors of Russia, Belarus and Iran to attend the peace prize awards in Stockholm, then withdrew the invitations. Demonstrators threw electric scooters at police and several police cars were set on fire in Malmo after Salwan Momika, an Iraqi anti-Islam campaigner, set fire to a copy of the Quran.
The Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk, which makes the weight-loss drug Wegovy, became Europe’s most valuable company with a stock market value of £339 billion. Jorge Vilda, Spain’s women’s World Cup-winning head coach, was sacked as the row rumbled on about Luis Rubiales, the president of the Royal Spanish Football Federation, having kissed a player; the new head coach is Montse Tome, a woman. French schools sent home 67 girls who had been wearing the abaya, a garment now banned.
A military coup in Gabon wrested power from President Ali Bongo. Enrique Tarrio, the former leader of the right-wing Proud Boys, was sentenced to 22 years in jail for his part in the riot at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021. Rival groups of Eritreans fought each other and police in Tel Aviv. United Airlines briefly stopped all take-offs in America because of a ‘systemwide technology issue’. India’s lunar lander, which touched down at the south pole of the moon on 23 August, went to sleep at the end of the lunar day and was expected to reawaken around 22 September when the sun there rises again. The Pope spent five days visiting Mongolia. CSH
Comments