United Kingdom

"High street chains forced to shutter their doors, medicine shortages, no phone network, international shipping routes blocked, and the UK’s critical national infrastructure under constant threat. This is not the plot of a disaster movie, but rather the very real potential consequences if China invaded Taiwan.

Tension in the Taiwan Strait is increasing, and experts are now in general agreement that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will attempt to take Taiwan using force. 67 per cent of US experts polled in January by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) said they expected a crisis in the Taiwan Strait in the next six months..."

Anti-racism campaigners are planning to organise unity gigs in the towns and cities blighted by anti-immigrant riots to combat the growing influence of the far right in some parts of Britain.

Love Music Hate Racism (LMHR) – the successor organisation to the Rock Against Racism (RAR) movement which helped turn the tide against the National Front in the 1970s – is planning to follow a concert in London in September, featuring singer-songwriter Paloma Faith, with a series of local gigs across the country over the next 12 months.

“We are doing the launch in London, which is home ground for us,” says Samira Ali, an organiser for LMHR and its sister organisation Stand up to Racism. “But we want to organise these gigs in the places the far right see as their territory because we want to show they are in a tiny, hateful minority.”

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Artists including Idles, Nadine Shah and Fontaines DC have backed an LMHR open letter calling for a “united cultural movement which will ward off the threat of the far right and strengthen communities damaged by the corrosive effects of racism”.

LMHR is hoping to replicate the DIY ethos of Rock Against Racism, which inspired local activists to put on gigs featuring black and white musicians. RAR organised 300 local concerts and five anti-Nazi carnivals in the 1970s, with more than 80,000 gathering to hear the Clash and Steel Pulse in Victoria Park, east London, in 1978.

“We’re going to be supporting people throwing gigs in their home towns,” said Alex LoSardo, another LMHR organiser. “We can help them with resources such as T-shirts, posters and stickers, and co-promoting their shows and linking them up with artists.

“The aim is to turn LMHR into a mass grassroots movement like it was in the Rock Against Racism days.”

"A UK satellite to support military operations successfully launched into space last night.

Named Tyche, the satellite is UK Space Command’s first satellite which can capture daytime images and videos of the Earth’s surface. 

The satellite will strengthen the UK’s Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities.  

As the conflict in Ukraine has shown, the use of space is crucial to military operations. Tyche is the first satellite to be launched under the Ministry of Defence’s space-based ISR programme, which will deliver a constellation of satellites and supporting ground systems by 2031.  

These satellites will not only support military operations, but also contribute to other government tasks, including natural disaster monitoring, the development of mapping information, environmental monitoring and tracking the impact of climate change around the world..."

Someone looted Lush.

"Don't worry darling, I got something for you"

A 15-year-old boy has become the first person to be charged with riot over the recent disorder that swept towns and cities across England.

Almost all those involved have so far been charged with violent disorder, which carries a shorter maximum sentence than the offence of rioting. On Wednesday a judge, the recorder of Hull, suggested that prosecutors should consider the riot charge for people alleged to have played a central role in the disorder.

On Thursday the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said that a 15-year-old boy had been charged with riot after disorder in Sunderland. It said more riot charges would follow.

The riot charge carries a maximum sentence of 10 years, whereas for violent disorder the maximum is five years. The boy’s defence lawyer, Chris Wilson, told a hearing that the new charge may have “far wider repercussions”.

The district judge Zoe Passfield adjourned his case for two weeks as she said the new charge must have come as a “surprise” to him. She told the teenager: “The prosecution now want to bring a further charge of riot.

“It is an unusual situation when a new charge is brought after the person has pleaded guilty and it opens up complications that I and the lawyers need to consider carefully.”

Pupils achieved their best A-level results in a generation on Thursday with marks that highlighted the growing gap between the strongest and weakest-performing parts of the country.

While the national exam grades were among the highest for decades, regional differences showed areas in the north lagging far behind the south-east. Private schools also continued to outperform state schools.

Students in London and the south-east of England recorded some of the most startling results – more than 30% of their A-level entries were awarded A* or A grades. But those in the East Midlands saw top grades creep up by just 0.2 percentage points to 22.5%.

The West Midlands, which had previously been among the worst-performing regions, enjoyed an above-average increase in top grades, but still remained far behind London and the south-east with 24.8% of entries gaining A* or A.

The gap between university application rates from London and the north-east of England, which had the lowest application rate, has also widened further. As a result, while more than half of school leavers in London go on to higher education, only one in three do so from the north-east.

The UK's economy grew by 0.6% between April and June as it continued its recovery from the recession at the end of last year.

The latest figure was in line with forecasts and follows a 0.7% increase in the first three months of this year.

Growth was led by the services sector, in particular the IT industry, legal services and scientific research. Services are the biggest contributor to the UK's economy, far outstripping manufacturing and construction, both of which saw output fall between April and June.

Archived version

Although the planning application will initially be handled by Tower Hamlets council, the national government could get involved if the proposal is rejected again and China appeals.

China has accused Britain of exaggerating allegations about Chinese spies and cyberattacks.

The embassy would be China’s biggest diplomatic legation in Europe and almost twice the size of its one in Washington.

This led some British politicians and security officials to warn that a bigger embassy and more Chinese diplomats could make it easier to increase the number of spies in the country.

A functioning society depends on equality before the law. If crimes are not treated equally and dispassionately by the justice system, we lose trust in democracy and each other. But as sentences begin to be passed on racists who rioted earlier this month, we see once again a blatantly unequal application of the law.

Let’s make a couple of obvious comparisons. One was highlighted this week by the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi). Had those sentenced for their part in the riots this week – who heeded the calls of racist organisers and rampaged through England’s cities – been Muslims inspired by Islamists, they are likely to have been prosecuted as terrorists, potentially facing much longer sentences. Assaulting people in the name of Islam appears to be treated as a far graver crime than assaulting people in the cause of Islamophobia.

How were the attacks on mosques, on a hotel housing asylum seekers and on those who have sought to defend refugees not terrorism? Instead, the riots have been prosecuted as though they were random thuggery, although they emerge from a long and organised campaign of hatred directed towards asylum seekers, immigrants and Muslims. Some of those convicted were reported as having been “caught up” in the disorder: they were portrayed as weak people gone astray. No such understanding is extended to jihadists. As Rusi explains, the UK has a genuine two-tier justice system. It treats some people – white, non-Muslim – as though they act from blind anger, and others – Brown, Muslim – as coordinated terrorists, even when they commit the same crimes.

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But there’s an even more obvious comparison with the way the racist riots have been handled, and that is with the prosecution of environmental protesters. It is true that only the first clutch of riot cases have so far gone to court, and longer sentences may yet be handed down. But what we have seen is that violent disorder and assaults on the police have so far attracted shorter prison terms than those imposed for peaceful protest. In fact, the longest sentence for a rioter to date (three years) is shorter than the sentences (four and five years) imposed last month on Just Stop Oil campaigners.

As the judge in the Just Stop Oil case pointed out, the protesters caused major disruption by blocking the M25. They inflicted an economic cost of £770,000. No one, including the defendants, expected them to escape punishment. But,whether you agree with Just Stop Oil’s tactics or not, by any standards their nonviolent protest, whose aim was to protect us all from harm, was a far less serious crime than the violence on the streets this month, whose perpetrators deliberately inflicted injury and massive, indiscriminate criminal damage. The riots did not just inconvenience people, they terrorised them. When civil disobedience is punished more severely than racist rioting, something has gone badly wrong.

Social media platform Bluesky says it has seen a surge in signups in the United Kingdom in recent days.

Since X owner Elon Musk made controversial comments about the riots in the UK, a number of influential figures said they would leave the platform or scale back their use, including home office minister Jess Philips.

Now, Bluesky says it has seen a 60% jump in general activity from accounts in the UK, with several MPs also joining the platform recently.

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"For 5 out of the last 7 days, the UK had the most Bluesky signups of any country," said Bluesky in a statement on Monday.

While attention has inevitably been on the first rise in grocery price inflation since March last year, the latest till roll data from Kantar Worldpanel also contains valuable insights into the grocery market itself.

The figures highlight in particular the continued success of the biggest two players in the market, Tesco and Sainsbury's, in terms of pulling away from the rest of the pack.

Asda, on the other hand, looks to be in a very bad way.

Its market share during the period fell to 12.6%, down from 13.7% a year ago, which is an astonishing fall from grace.

It does not seem that long ago that Asda first overtook Sainsbury's to become the market's second-biggest player - an event celebrated by Tony DeNunzio, Asda's then chief executive, by giving all 125,000 UK employees an extra day off.

In fact, though, it was as long ago as August 2003 - when Asda, then owned by the US giant Walmart, had a 17% market share and Sainsbury's was at 16.1%.

However, following a turnaround under then chief executive Justin King, Sainsbury's recaptured the number two spot in 2013.

The pair went on to be neck and neck for most of the next few years but Asda has not had the number two spot since late 2019 and, since then, Sainsbury's has been on top.

So what has gone wrong at Asda?

In short, a great deal of upheaval.

Banknotes with a face value of £78,430 have raised more than 11 times that amount for charity following a series of auctions.

New £5, £10, £20 and £50 notes featuring King Charles III entered circulation in June.

A full set of the first issues were presented to the monarch, but hundreds of other low serial numbered banknotes have gone under the hammer.

One single £10 note with the serial number HB01 000002 sold for £17,000 during bidding.

During another lot, a sheet of 40 connected £50 notes - with a face value of £2,000 - sold for £26,000. That was a record for any Bank of England auction.

The four sales run by auctioneers Spink in London raised £914,127 in total.

Collectors seek banknotes which come as close to the 00001 serial number as possible, hence the large amounts raised.

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The proceeds will be shared equally between 10 charities chosen by the Bank:

Householders are angered by the discovery they cannot remortgage or sell their homes after installing spray-foam insulation to cut energy use.

The violent unrest that has caused so much damage in the UK has not in fact happened across the UK. It has almost been exclusively confined to England.

True, violent riots also took place in Belfast, Northern Ireland, but, interestingly enough, even there they were largely perpetrated by British loyalists, along with a few far-right extremists from Dublin.

The counter-protestors were seemingly mostly drawn from Northern Ireland’s Catholic community.

At least up until now, Scotland and Wales have remained peaceful. When considering why this is the case, we might look at how the English are positioned within the United Kingdom.

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After all the mess has been cleared from the streets, it would be advisable for the government and society as a whole, to have a debate about what “England” and “Englishness” stand for in a Union profoundly divided by rising nationalism and in a world where Britannia no longer rules the waves.