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Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, speaking in the garden of 10 Downing Street, warned that the Budget in October is ‘going to be painful’, and that ‘things will get worse before they get better’. ‘I didn’t want to means-test the winter fuel payment, but it was a choice we had to make,’ he said. ‘A garden and a building that were once used for lockdown parties are now back in your service.’ Meanwhile, it was discovered, a pass to Downing Street had been given to Lord Alli, the Labour peer and party fundraiser, who gave £10,000 to the Beckenham and Penge constituency party; the seat was won by Liam Conlon, the son of Sue Gray, Sir Keir’s chief of staff. Lord Alli also donated £18,700 worth of ‘work clothing’ (suits) and spectacles for Sir Keir and held a party in the garden of No. 10 for donors and party workers.
Sir Keir flew off to Berlin intending to ‘turn a corner on Brexit’. New border checks from November to enter the EU would be prepared with £3.5 million each for Dover, Folkestone and St Pancras. People in Blaenau Gwent were found to have up to ten dustbins, for paper, plastics, cans, glass, cardboard and food, with options for textiles, batteries, small electrical items, garden waste and nappies. Sven-Goran Eriksson, the former England football manager, died aged 76.
In 2023-24, 204,526 people aged 17 or under were referred to NHS mental health services for anxiety; in 2019-20 the total had been 98,953 and in 2016-17, only 3,879. Fire engulfed a block of flats with ‘known fire safety issues’ in Freshwater Road, Dagenham. No migrants in small boats arrived in England in the seven days to 26 August. The number of cells available for male detainees in England and Wales fell below 100. Eight people were stabbed at the Notting Hill Carnival.
Abroad
Russia launched its biggest air attack on Ukraine with more than 200 missiles and drones, hitting energy infrastructure and killing civilians. Another wave came the following day. Russia and Ukraine exchanged 230 prisoners of war. Ukraine said that it had gained control of 500 square miles of Russian territory since its incursion into the Kursk region on 6 August, and had taken about 594 Russian soldiers prisoner. Ukrainian drones set fire to an oil depot at Proletarsk and then another in the Kamensky district of the Rostov region of Russia. A 2,492-carat diamond was found in Botswana, second in size to the 3,106-carat Cullinan diamond found in South Africa in 1905.
Israeli aircraft hit sites in southern Lebanon in what were declared pre-emptive strikes to limit attacks by Hezbollah with hundreds of rockets and drones. In Gaza, a ten-month-old baby was partially paralysed by polio – the first registered case in the territory for 25 years. The UN urged inoculation; Israel said it had delivered enough polio vaccine to Gaza this week to inoculate 1.2 million people. An Israeli military evacuation order was placed on the Gazan town of Deir al-Balah. The Israeli military said it had rescued Kaid Farhan Elkadi, 52, a Bedouin Arab hostage taken by Hamas during the 7 October attack on Israel. The Greek-flagged tanker Sounion, loaded with 150,000 tons of crude oil, burnt for days in the Red Sea after an attack by Houthis. At a Festival of Diversity at Solingen, Germany, three were killed in a stabbing attack and eight wounded; a Syrian man who sought asylum in Germany in 2022 (but was not deported when his application was rejected) was charged; prosecutors said that he shared the ideology of the Islamic State group.
The chief executive of the messaging app Telegram, Pavel Durov, was arrested when his jet landed in Paris. French prosecutors said it was part of an investigation into child pornography, drug trafficking and fraud on the platform. Mr Durov, 39, had left his native Russia in 2014, after refusing to shut down opposition groups on one of his platforms. In a letter to a US House committee, Mark Zuckerberg, the head of Meta, said he regretted giving in to pressure from the Biden administration to ‘censor’ content on Facebook during the coronavirus pandemic. President Emmanuel Macron refused to let a left-wing coalition try to form a government for France. Robert F. Kennedy Jr, who recently revealed how he had dumped a dead bear cub in Central Park, New York, ended his campaign to become President of the United States of America and then endorsed Donald Trump. An American tourist died when a cave of ice collapsed in the Breidamerkurjokull glacier in Iceland. CSH
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