Rich already being taxed properly, says minister, as Streeting calls for ‘wealth tax that works’– UK politics live

• UN partners in Gaza reported a significant decline in food aid as of May 31, with 80 kitchens delivering 678,000 meals daily, down from 1.5 million meals provided by 170 kitchens in mid-March. • UN official DiCarlo urged parties to return to diplomacy and good-faith negotiations, reiterating the Secretary-General’s demand for an immediate, full, and unconditional ceasefire.

• U.S. Central Command has launched strikes against Iran in response to the downing of an American military helicopter. • Iranian officials report that the strikes hit two water storage tanks in Sirik County, Hormozgan province, cutting off drinking water for local residents.

• Global conflicts have surged to their highest levels since World War II, according to data from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program. • Conflict-related fatalities reached a record high in 2025, with approximately 244,600 people killed.

• Portugal's Minister for Diplomacy, Mr. Rangel, announced that the agreement allowing the United States to use Lajes Air Base will be reviewed. • The review is deferred until after the current crisis in the Middle East is resolved to ensure regional stability.

• The 2026 Global Peace Index reports that global peace has reached a historic low due to a record-high number of interconnected conflicts. • This decline is attributed to the "Great Fragmentation," a geopolitical shift where traditional European powers are losing influence to rising middle powers.

• Two decades of Global Peace Index (GPI) data reveal a global trend of deteriorating peace and an increasing inventory of unresolved conflicts. • The report highlights a significant success in Ethiopia, where the November 2022 Pretoria Peace Agreement reduced annual conflict deaths in Tigray from over 100,000 to roughly 2,300 in 2023.

• New Zealand has been ranked as the second-safest country in the world according to the latest Global Peace Index, which evaluates 163 independent states and territories. • This improvement in New Zealand's standing comes despite a broader global trend where world conflict has reached a historic high.

• An Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has resulted in 100 deaths out of 550 reported cases. • Ongoing regional conflict is significantly hindering medical response efforts and slowing the containment of the virus.

The vital medicine, made by AstraZeneca, will not be available from November, possibly leaving thousands of women without treatmentGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastThousands of women could be left without vital breast cancer and endometriosis medicine when AstraZeneca removes its treatment from the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) and the private market, experts warn.Zoladex will no longer be available in Australia from November, as the ABC first reported, but some existing patients will still be able to access it for an additional six months. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Financial returns, obtained by the Guardian, are ‘very poor and unprofessional’ and call into question party’s fitness to govern, expert says• Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastPauline Hanson’s One Nation party reported more than $1m in missing and worthless assets in more than six years of filed financial reports, Guardian Australia can reveal.The financial returns lodged by One Nation with the Office of Fair Trading in Queensland from 2016 to 2022 have been criticised by a leading expert in financial accounting as “sloppy and unprofessional”. Continue reading...

But Australian government will expand offences covered by rules to include promotion of communal violence and attacks on defence systemGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastLabor has quietly backed down on moves to make spy agency Asio’s powers for compulsory questioning permanent, but will expand offences covered by the rules to include promotion of communal violence and attacks on Australia’s defence system.The laws were introduced in the wake of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks in the US and give intelligence operatives powers to issue a questioning warrant requiring a person as young as 14 to give information or produce items that may assist in a serious investigation. Continue reading...

People have absorbed violence and terror into their lives. Somehow, they keep going – quietly rescuing, evacuating, replacing, mending, adapting … and sometimes saving tiny animalsIt was a glorious balmy night, and I was walking home from dinner. I’d just eaten fried red mullet from the Black Sea on a pavement terrace, listening to the cries of the last swifts as darkness crept over the city. A couple of blocks from where I was staying, there was a curious sight: a couple and their dog were standing over a hedgehog, which was standing seemingly irresolute in the road. I wasn’t sure the couple were doing the right thing by shining their phone torches at the poor creature, but their intentions were clear enough: they were trying to protect it and chivvy it out of the way of the traffic. As a car bore down, I flung myself into the street, like a latter-day Roberta from The Railway Children, and waved my arms to get the driver to stop. At the same time, the couple’s dog gave an encouraging bark to the tiny animal, which scuttled across to the opposite pavement, and into the safety of a yard.Everything always feels heightened in Kyiv, and I was apt to overthink into this moment many metaphors of escape, protection and destruction. Hedgehogs, by the way, are a surprisingly common sight in Kyiv. So too are the “hedgehogs” made from metal beams welded together in a three-dimensional star-shape, a highly effective obstruction for tanks. (The other favoured tank obstructors are known as “dragon’s teeth”, because of their resemblance to monstrous molars rising from the ground.) Continue reading...