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Tim Davie, the director-general of the BBC, resigned, as did Deborah Turness, the CEO of BBC News. Samir Shah, the chairman of the BBC, apologised for an ‘error of judgment’ in the editing by Panorama of a speech by President Donald Trump that made it look as though he was urging people to attack the Capitol in January 2021. This had been criticised in a 19-page memorandum to the BBC board by Michael Prescott, a former standards adviser, who also set out failings over Gaza and transgender matters. The leaked memo was published by the Telegraph. Trump wrote to the BBC threatening to sue it ‘for $1 billion’; he later told Fox News it was his ‘obligation’ to take action. The BBC upheld complaints against the presenter Martine Croxall for adding the corrective word ‘women’ after the phrase ‘pregnant people’ in her script.
More than 700 police were deployed at the Aston Villa match against Maccabi Tel Aviv, whose fans were absent while protestors outside chanted ‘Death to the IDF’. Two more prisoners were released by mistake by Wandsworth prison. Both were found, but of 262 prisoners in England and Wales mistakenly released in the year to March (up from 115 the previous year), at least two were still at large, and one other from this June. After a spell of poor weather, 2,121 migrants crossed the Channel in small boats in four days. A second migrant who had been deported to France returned to England on a small boat. The High Court ruled that asylum seekers could continue to be housed at the Bell Hotel, Epping. Qian Zhimin, a fugitive from China, was sentenced at Southwark Crown Court to 11 years and eight months for money laundering. Modelling by the polling company Find Out Now suggested that Reform would win 386 seats at an election; the Lib Dems 73; the Greens 55; the SNP 46; Labour 25; and the Conservatives 17.
Allies of Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, insisted he would fight any challenge to his leadership from Labour MPs. The Treasury allowed the NHS an extra £1 billion this year to pay for 18,000 redundancies and the costs of a strike by resident doctors. Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, prepared the world for the raising of income tax and the abolition of the two-child benefit cap at the Budget. Unemployment rose to 5 per cent. The Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee voted 5-4 to keep interest rates at 4 per cent. Jeremy Corbyn’s new party had still not received £800,000 of donations held by Zarah Sultana. Fired Earth, the tile-sellers, and Eastern Airways, based at Humberside Airport, went into administration. North Sea oil workers were given a year to make sure their weight was below 19st 7lb in case they needed to be winched off in an emergency.
Abroad
Belgium resolved to improve its drone defences after a sighting closed its main airport near Brussels; Britain agreed to help. Donald Trump exempted Hungary from sanctions over its continued purchases of Russian oil and gas for a year. Hours later, Russia launched hundreds of missile and drone attacks on energy and residential targets in Ukraine. President Ahmed al-Sharaa of Syria visited the White House.
The US Senate passed a funding bill to resolve the government shutdown. Nancy Pelosi, 85, said she would not seek re-election to the US Congress in 2027. The US scientist James Watson (with Francis Crick the discoverer of the structure of DNA) died aged 97. At the Cop30 jamboree, indigenous protestors scuffled with UN security staff. In British Columbia, 300 ostriches were shot after an outbreak of avian influenza. Tehran experienced drought. The International Olympic Committee was expected to ban transgender women from women’s events next year.
A palliative care nurse in Würselen, western Germany, was jailed for life for killing ten patients to reduce his night-shift workload. Shein, the clothes supplier founded in China, opened its first physical store, in Paris. Nicolas Sarkozy, the former French president, was let out of jail three weeks into a five-year term. The prosecutor in the corruption trial of Ekrem Imamoglu, the mayor of Istanbul, said he deserved a jail term of 2,352 years. In India’s capital, Delhi, an explosion killed eight; in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, the next day an explosion killed 12. China’s third aircraft carrier, the Fujian, entered service. According to the UN, opium poppy cultivation has fallen from 500,000 acres in 2022, before a Taliban prohibition, to about 25,000 acres. CSH
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