Andy Burnham to become new prime minister and lay out ‘10-year plan’ for the UK in No 10 speech - UK politics live

• Ethiopia is currently navigating a turbulent environment shaped by overlapping conflicts, geopolitical rivalries, and significant economic risks. • The situation highlights the limitations of diplomacy, as weak trust between major international actors hinders the resolution of regional crises.

• A shipment of dialysis equipment intended for 44,000 patients has finally arrived in Iran after being detained by the United States for 95 days. • The eight-container shipment was held starting on April 20 before its eventual release.

• Israel has officially rejected a Gaza peace plan proposed by Donald Trump, signaling continued diplomatic friction over the region's future. • New details have emerged regarding tensions in the Strait of Hormuz, highlighting increased military volatility in a critical global shipping lane.

Mike Ashley’s Frasers Group is frontrunner to buy Knightsbridge-headquartered department store chainCan Harvey Nichols find its way back to being Ab Fab again?Business live – latest updatesHarvey Nichols has warned that it will not be able to survive another year without new investment, as bidders for the Knightsbridge-headquartered department store chain circle.The retailer’s Hong Kong-based owner, Dickson Poon, put it up for sale in June, with Mike Ashley’s Frasers Group aiming to buy it for about £40m. Continue reading...

Prosecutors to argue that Duane ‘Keffe D’ Davis ordered killing and provided gun in Las Vegas drive-by shooting of rapperThe trial is to begin of a former gang leader over the decades-old killing of the rapper Tupac Shakur, one of the most high-profile unresolved murders in the US.The proceedings, which begin in Las Vegas on Monday and are expected to last a month, are unlikely to make clear who fired the shots that killed the hip-hop legend on 7 September 1996 while he was in the city to see a Mike Tyson boxing match. Continue reading...

Drought and wildfires intensify across continent, while tropical storms bring heavy rain and disruption to east AsiaEurope live – latest updatesHigh pressure has dominated central and eastern Europe in early August, breaking temperature records across the region. Austria recorded a high of 41.2C (106.2F), while Slovakia reached 42.2C. Hungary hit a peak of 41.8C, surpassing a record set in 1905, while overnight temperatures remained above 28C in some areas, marking it as a tropical night.The extreme temperatures have been driven by a heat dome beneath the high-pressure system, which traps warm air close to the surface. Continue reading...

The heat and continuing dry conditions are being supercharged by the escalating climate crisisThe National Drought Group (NDG) is expected to meet this afternoon and declare that more parts of England are officially in drought, as parts of the UK head into a potential fifth heatwave of the year this week.All of Wales and more than half of England are already in drought after an unprecedented period of dry, hot weather over the summer. Continue reading...

Authorities say application to stay was made too late, as UK officials say Sweden takes ‘stricter approach’ than other EU countriesA 78-year-old British widow who has lived in Sweden for 21 years is fighting deportation from the country after authorities told her a post-Brexit application to stay had been submitted too late.Her case is the latest of 2,500 British people ordered to leave the country after Brexit in what campaigners and the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) have said is an inexplicably hardline approach taken by the Swedish authorities. It comes two years after Sweden threatened to deport a British woman with dementia in a care home shortly before she died. Continue reading...

Woman had gone to London hotel for ‘night away from the fear’ in latest incident of chain giving keys to men without checkingTravelodge staff gave a room key to the domestic abuser of a woman, who then physically attacked her.The woman, who is remaining anonymous, told the BBC that she was staying in a branch of the hotel in London to escape the man, but he followed her and was given a key by the reception staff. Continue reading...

Campaign group says firm is ‘taking the mickey’ by paying fee and Andy Burnham should nationalise itBusiness live – latest updatesThames Water has paid its chief financial officer, Steve Buck, a £1m signing fee despite intense scrutiny of Britain’s biggest water company’s finances as it tries to avoid being taken into public control.The utility revealed that it made the payment last month, in a letter sent last week by Sir Adrian Montague, its chair, to MPs on the environment, food and rural affairs select committee, Sky News first reported. Continue reading...

Reform says it will free up space in jails in England and Wales by rapidly deporting all foreign offendersGood morning. Andy Burnham has said Middlemarch is his favourite novel, but he may not remember George Eliot’s line about the genial businessman Mr Vincy who “blustering as he was, had as little of his own way as if he had been a prime minister”. Burnham only took over in No 10 three weeks ago today. But already he is learning that Eliot had a point about the constraints of office.As PM, Burnham became responsible for the prisoner early release scheme due to come into force in September, which is hugely controversial because it will lead to killers, rapists and sex offenders being released early. Burnham immediately said he was “pausing” the scheme pending a rethink, and early last week he announced he was changing the rules to make the scheme more restrictive. Explaining the move in an article for the Daily Telegraph, Burnham said that he “wanted to go even further” but that the plan he was announcing “pushed to the very limits of what is possible to do.” He added: “I know I can look people in the eye and say to them there is nothing more I could have asked for without risking the prison system reaching capacity and collapsing within months.”Yusuf [says] Reform will deport “all 10,000 foreign nationals from our prisons.” Of the 10,134 foreign nationals in custody in England and Wales, nearly a third are on remand, i.e. they haven’t been convicted of a crime yet. A Reform official confirmed foreign nationals will only come in scope of the party’s scheme if and when they’re convicted. Then there are questions about what’d happen after inmates in Kosovo finish their sentence (Reform would put a lifetime ban on returning to the U.K.). Or matters like El Salvador’s human rights record — though Playbook can imagine how Farage will respond to that one.Keeping the public safe is and always will be Labour’s first priority. The government has already made clear we are working at pace to deport foreign criminals and we’re building more prison places to deliver justice for victims and keep criminals behind bars.Reform have no serious answers to the Tory prisons crisis and would lead the system to collapse. This would result in a free for all for dangerous and violent offenders, including murderers and rapists. Nigel Farage and Reform simply can’t be trusted to keep Britain safe. Continue reading...

Volodymyr Zelenskyy says that strikes on such facilities were directly linked with putting more pressure on MoscowMeanwhile, at least five people died in a Russian strike on Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, regional prosecutor’s office said.“On 10 August, Russian forces carried out a massive artillery strike on the residential area of the village of Bugaivka in the Chuguiv district. Various houses were destroyed as a result of the enemy attack. Five people were killed,” the prosecutor’s office said in a statement on Telegram, quoted by AFP. Continue reading...