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The Financial Conduct Authority questioned banks about savings rates lagging behind the rising cost of mortgages. Andrew Griffith, the City Minister, was also asked by the Chancellor of the Exchequer to look into cases of bank customers who reported their accounts being closed because of their opinions on such things as LGBTQ+ policies. Petrol retailers were blamed by Harriett Baldwin, the chair of the Treasury Select Committee, for not passing on the benefit of a 5p cut in fuel duty. A group of 25 MPs, calling themselves the New Conservatives, published a plan to cut net migration from 606,000, last year’s figure, to 226,000, the figure for 2019. In June, 3,824 people crossed the Channel in small boats, the highest figure so far for the month. Orkney considered becoming an overseas territory, like the Falkland Islands, or a self-governing territory of Norway, like the Faroe Islands are of Denmark.
Australia won the second Ashes Test at Lord’s by 43 runs after Jonny Bairstow, wandering out of his crease when he thought the over had finished, had been stumped by the Australia wicketkeeper. The England captain Ben Stokes said: ‘Would I want to win a game in that manner? The answer for me is no.’ Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, said he agreed with Stokes. Three members of the MCC were suspended after angry exchanges in the Long Room with Australia players. Teachers went on strike. The government contemplated having to take over Thames Water, with £14 billion of debts; the company was fined £3.3 million for discharging sewage into the Gatwick stream and the river Mole in Surrey in 2017. June was the hottest on record.
Rishi Sunak promised to ‘train, retain and reform’ the NHS workforce under a long-term plan. Railway companies planned a mass closure of ticket offices in England. A Cabinet Office inquiry found that Sue Gray, who is to be chief of staff to Sir Keir Starmer, broke the civil service code by ‘undeclared contact’ with the Labour party last year; she has been cleared to start in September by Acoba, the appointments watchdog. Lord Kerslake, head of the civil service 2012-14, died aged 68. Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton, the new head of the RAF, said he ‘apologised unreservedly’ for a recruitment drive under his predecessor that discriminated against white men. Matthew Scott, the police and crime commissioner for Kent, gave his verdict on e-scooters: ‘Seize them and crush them, because they are not legal on any public land in Kent.’
Abroad
Israel carried out a two-day military operation in the Jenin refugee camp, established in 1953; 12 Palestinians and an Israeli were reported to have been killed. Aspartame, one of the world’s most common artificial sweeteners, used in Diet Coke, was declared a possible carcinogen by the World Health Organisation’s cancer research arm. The International Atomic Energy Agency approved a plan for Japan to empty waste water containing tritium and carbon 14 from the ruined Fukushima nuclear power station into the Pacific. A US court ordered two companies owned by Robert Higgins to make restitution of $112.7 million and pay a penalty of $33 million because 500,000 American Silver Eagle coins looked after for customers were nowhere to be found. Meta, the owners of Facebook, launched a rival to Twitter called Thread, linked to Instagram.
After five nights, riots subsided in France, with only 297 cars set on fire on Sunday, compared with 1,900 three days earlier. About 45,000 police were deployed each night when protests turned violent in response to the shooting dead by police of 17-year-old Nahel Merzouk in Nanterre. At L’Haÿ-les-Roses in the southern suburbs of Paris, a mob tried to set the house of the mayor on fire by ramming it with a car while his wife and two children, aged five and seven, were sleeping there; as they fled, firework rockets were fired at them and the wife broke a leg. A fireman died trying to douse a fire in an underground car park in Seine-Saint-Denis. China offered a bounty of £100,000 for the capture of eight exiles from Hong Kong living in Britain, America and Australia. Russia said it had intercepted five Ukrainian drones near Moscow. The US Supreme Court ruled that race could no longer be a factor in university admissions; President Joe Biden said he ‘strongly’ disagreed. Omdurman, on the opposite side of the Nile from Khartoum, saw increased violence in Sudan’s factional war. King Misuzulu kaZwelithini of the Zukus said that he had not been poisoned, as suggested by Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi.
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