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Dame Alison Rose resigned as the chief executive of the NatWest group, which owns Coutts bank. She had been the source of a BBC report that Nigel Farage’s account at Coutts had been closed because it no longer met the bank’s financial requirements. Dame Alison also apologised to Mr Farage for ‘deeply inappropriate’ comments in a Coutts dossier on him which showed his account had been closed because of his political views. Her resignation came only after No. 10 had expressed ‘significant concerns’ about her remaining as the board wanted. The volume of goods sold by Unilever fell by 2.5 per cent in the first half of the year, but sales measured by price grew by 9.4 per cent. A fire destroyed more than 40 businesses on an industrial estate at Baldock, Herts. Railway workers belonging to the RMT union called another day’s strike. Gatwick cancelled one in ten flights. Trevor Francis, the footballer, died aged 69. George Alagiah, the newsreader, died aged 67.
City centres should be made denser and betting shops turned into housing, Michael Gove, the Levelling Up Secretary, said. In response, Anthony Browne, the Conservative MP for South Cambridgeshire, said: ‘I will do everything I can to stop the government’s nonsense plans to impose mass housebuilding on Cambridge, where all major developments are now blocked by the Environment Agency because we have quite literally run out of water.’ Anjem Choudary, the Islamic radical, was charged with three terror-related offences including encouraging support for the Islamic Thinkers Society, which prosecutors say is Al-Muhajiroun, a proscribed organisation. Labour dropped its policy of making self-identification the criterion for changing gender. Police Scotland postponed a ban on its officers wearing beards.
Conservatives wondered if Rishi Sunak, the party leader, might soften the pursuit of net zero in the light of the part that Ultra Low Emission Zones played in thwarting Labour’s attempt to take Boris Johnson’s old seat at Uxbridge in a by-election. The Tories hung on with 13,965 votes to Labour’s 13,470. Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, said: ‘We are doing something very wrong if policies put forward by the Labour party end up on each and every Tory leaflet.’ Labour doubled its stock of MPs called Keir with the victory of Keir Mather, aged 25, at Selby, turning a Conservative majority of 20,137 into a Labour majority of 4,161. At Somerton, a Conservative majority of 19,213 became a Lib Dem majority of 11,008. A quango called Active Travel England considered giving pedestrians at traffic-lights seven seconds instead of six to cross the road.
Abroad
Russian drones destroyed Ukrainian grain stores on the Danube border with Romania and in Odessa; 60,000 tons of grain were reported destroyed. A Russian missile attack badly damaged the Cathedral of the Transfiguration in Odessa, belonging to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate). Ukraine said it had attacked an oil depot and a Russian army warehouse in Crimea; two other attacks on Crimea were reported in three days. A group called Danish Patriots burnt a Quran outside the Iraqi embassy in Copenhagen a week after the Swedish embassy in Baghdad was set on fire and the Swedish ambassador expelled when police in Sweden permitted a man there to burn a Quran.
Conservatives in Spain failed to gain a majority when the Popular party won 136 seats of 350 total, and the right-wing Vox only 33; the Socialists won 122 and the left-wing successors to Podemos, 31. Hun Sen, aged 70, once part of the Khmer Rouge regime and the ruler of Cambodia since 1985, was re-elected. Henry Kissinger, aged 100, the former US Secretary of State, had talks in Beijing with Xi Jinping, the ruler of China. China removed Qin Gang as foreign minister after seven months. Tony Bennett, the singer, died aged 96.
Israeli MPs passed a Bill removing the power of the Supreme Court to overrule government actions it considered unreasonable; large demonstrations had opposed the change of law. The last remaining refugee left the Nauru detention centre operated by Australia, where 4,183 cases had been considered since 2012; the centre will be kept at the ready. Wildfires on the Greek island of Rhodes made 20,000 residents and tourists flee from their path. A plane fighting wildfires crashed on the island of Evia, killing both crew. Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter, replaced its name and bird emblem with an X. CSH
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