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Jeremy Hunt, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, encouraged banks to enter a voluntary agreement for stretched mortgagors to pay only the interest on their loans for six months, after the Bank of England raised interest rates to a 15-year high of 5 per cent. HSBC, with employees continuing to work from home, is to move its world headquarters from its 45-storey tower in Canary Wharf by 2027. Boots is to close 300 of its 2,200 chemists’ shops in the coming year. To cut its debts, Cineworld, the world’s second-largest cinema chain (also owning Picturehouse cinemas in Britain), is to apply for administration.
The government said it would cost £169,000 to send a migrant to Rwanda, compared with £106,000 to keep one in Britain. The 999 emergency line broke down for a morning; Viscount Camrose told the House of Lords that BT took two hours 50 minutes to inform the government. Junior doctors (those below the rank of consultant) would go on strike again from 13 to 18 July. NHS consultants would strike on 20 and 21 July. The Royal College of Nursing failed to secure votes from the majority of its membership to authorise further strikes. Sarah, Duchess of York, had surgery for breast cancer. The Prince of Wales announced his life’s work to be helping to end homelessness. Winifred Ewing, the Scottish National party politician, died aged 93. Craig Brown, the former football manager of Scotland, died aged 82. Dame Ann Leslie, the journalist, died aged 82. About 7.3 million people watched live on television as Sir Elton John, aged 76, played at Glastonbury on his farewell tour.
Racism, class-based discrimination, elitism and sexism are ‘widespread’ in English and Welsh cricket, according to a report by the Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket, which recommended the removal of the annual match between Eton and Harrow at Lord’s. A BBC correspondent said that Matthew White, who died two years ago, was the sixth suspect in the murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993. Nadine Dorries congratulated Festus Akinbusoye on his selection as prospective Conservative candidate for Mid Bedfordshire, which she still represents despite announcing on 9 June that she was leaving parliament ‘with immediate effect’.
Abroad
Forces from the Wagner Group of mercenaries advanced from Rostov-on-Don, of which they had taken control, northwards up the M4 towards Moscow. President Vladimir Putin of Russia said on television that the ‘armed mutiny’ by Wagner was treason, and anyone who had taken up arms against the Russian military would be punished. Then the mutineers stopped. President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus had spoken to both Mr Putin and to Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of Wagner. A video released by Mr Prigozhin on 26 June denounced the decision ‘to close Wagner on 1 July 2023 and to incorporate it into the defence ministry’. He flew in his private jet to Belarus. An Ilyushin 22M (airborne command post) and six helicopters were reported shot down by the mutineers. President Putin made a broadcast from the Kremlin acknowledging that Russian military pilots had died but assuring Wagner troops they could sign a contract with the armed forces, go home or go to Belarus. He also said that ‘the whole of the Wagner Group was funded by the state’. Many questions remained unanswered. Russian missiles killed at least ten at a crowded pizza restaurant at Kramatorsk in Ukraine.
The tourist submersible Titan was found to have broken up after it lost contact an hour and 45 minutes into its dive to inspect the wreck of the Titanic on 18 June. All five aboard died, including the founder of the company that operates the vessel. It had not been certified or classed. Spanish coastguards rescued 227 migrants off Lanzarote and Gran Canaria, a day after the deaths of more than 30 off Gran Canaria. Greek authorities denied that they did not act quickly enough to prevent the loss of more than 500 lives when a migrant boat sank on 14 June. Kyriakos Mitsotakis’s conservative New Democracy party won the second Greek election in a month, trouncing the left-wing Syriza party; 12 of the 300 seats in parliament went to the far-right Spartans party, backed by the jailed founder of the neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn.
Fire engulfed one of the residential Ajman One Towers, in Ajman in the United Arab Emirates; two other towers in the complex caught fire in 2016. The WHO certified Belize, which had 10,000 cases in 1994, free of malaria. New Zealand set about trying to kill every rat in the land. CSH
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