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The government cancelled 30 out of 350 export licences for arms to Israel on items that it said could be used by Israel for ‘offensive purposes’ in Gaza. Israel Katz, the Israeli foreign minister, said: ‘A step like the one taken by the UK now sends a very problematic message to the Hamas terrorist organisation and its backers in Iran.’ Nine offshore wind farm contracts were awarded by the government; last year there were no bidders. The previous government had increased the maximum guaranteed price from £44 to £73 per MWh. The headquarters of GB Energy, a new UK government-backed energy company, will be in Aberdeen. Shona Robison, Scotland’s finance secretary, announced spending cuts of £500 million, partly offset by leasing bits of Scottish seabed to companies building offshore wind farms. The Duke of Sussex, in Britain for the funeral of his uncle Lord Fellowes (who was married to his late mother’s sister), stayed with Earl Spencer (his late mother’s brother).
A boat carrying dozens of migrants capsized off Cap Gris-Nez in the English Channel with the loss of at least 12 lives, including a pregnant woman. In the six days to 2 September, 2,109 migrants had crossed to England in small boats. The BBC exposed the Labour MP Jas Athwal for having black mould and ant infestations in some of the 15 properties in London that he rents out; he blamed the agency which managed them. Two of the people attacked at the Notting Hill Carnival died of their wounds. A woman will go to trial in February charged with violent disorder after being accused of buying eggs that were then thrown by protestors outside a hotel housing asylum seekers in Manchester on 31 July. The sentencing of a 12-year-old boy who admitted taking part in two incidents of disorder in Manchester was adjourned because his mother had gone on holiday to Ibiza a day earlier; the District Judge Joanne Hirst said: ‘Boys like you need their mums in their lives. I need your mum here.’
The BBC broadcast 72 seconds of silence to mark the publication of the report into the Grenfell Tower fire of 2017. The Conservative party began whittling down the six contenders for its leadership: Kemi Badenoch, Robert Jenrick, James Cleverly, Tom Tugendhat, Priti Patel and Mel Stride. A portrait of Margaret Thatcher commissioned for 10 Downing Street by Gordon Brown was taken down by Sir Keir Starmer, but it later found a space in a meeting room.
Abroad
Israel recovered the bodies of six hostages held by Hamas in Gaza; they had been found, recently shot, in an underground tunnel in the Rafah area. Tens of thousands demonstrated in Israel, calling on the government to reach an agreement to secure the release of the remaining hostages; a general strike was held. In Gaza, 161,030 children were vaccinated against polio in the first two days of planned pauses of fire. Efforts were under way to prevent a million barrels of crude oil leaking into the Red Sea from a Greek tanker that was still burning after being attacked on 21 August by Houthis.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine sacked the head of the air force after Col Oleksiy Mes, 30, an air ace, died when his F-16, donated by the West, was brought down accidentally by friendly fire. A Russian missile strike at the Military Institute of Communications in Poltava killed at least 51 people and wounded 200; another strike, in the heart of Lviv, damaged dozens of buildings and killed seven people. President Vladimir Putin of Russia visited Mongolia. The Pope visited Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. People in Malaga demonstrated against the number of tourists. People in Seville protested against mosquitoes spreading West Nile fever.
The Alternative for Germany (AfD) party won the largest slice of the vote in the Thuringia state elections: 32.8 per cent (32 of the 88 seats) compared with the Christian Democrat (CDU) share of 23.6 per cent (23 seats). In Saxony, the CDU won 42 of the 120 seats and the AfD 41. The Ugandan opposition leader Bobi Wine was injured in the leg – shot, his Twitter account said – in a confrontation with a policeman. An attempted prison break in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, led to the deaths of 129 people who were shot or trampled, the authorities said. Princess Martha Louise of Norway, 52, who says she is a clairvoyant, married Durek Verrett, a black man from California, 49, who says he is a shaman. CSH.
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