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Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, joined President Volodymyr Zelensky and the leaders of France, Germany, Italy, Finland, the EU and Nato in a visit to Washington three days after the Trump-Putin summit in Alaska. On his return he chaired a virtual meeting of a ‘coalition of the willing’ to discuss security guarantees for Ukraine. Asylum seekers were to be removed from the Bell Hotel, Epping, Essex, after the High Court granted an injunction sought by Epping Forest district council against their being housed there. The ten councils controlled by Reform would try to emulate Epping. The number of migrants arriving in England in small boats in the seven days to 18 August was 968. Ricky Jones, 58, a councillor suspended by the Labour party, who, speaking to a crowd in Walthamstow last year, said of ‘disgusting Nazi fascists’ that ‘We need to cut all their throats and get rid of them all’, was found not guilty of encouraging violent disorder by a jury.

Hashem Abedi, who was jailed for a minimum of 55 years in 2020 for helping to plan the Manchester Arena bombing in 2017, was charged with attempting to murder three prison officers at Frankland prison. The pressure group For Women Scotland lodged an action at the Court of Session, claiming rules on transgender pupils in schools and transgender people in custody are ‘in clear breach’ of a Supreme Court judgment in April. A Labour MP, Afzal Khan, resigned as Britain’s trade envoy to Turkey after a visit to the self-declared Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. Terence Stamp, the glamorous 1960s film star, died aged 87.

Inflation rose from 3.6 to 3.8 per cent. Gilt yields, reflecting the cost of government borrowing, rose above the peak reached during Liz Truss’s financial difficulties. GDP rose by 0.3 per cent in the second quarter, compared with 0.7 per cent in the first. The average two-year mortgage rate fell below 5 per cent for the first time since September 2022. Britain’s largest bioethanol plant, in Hull, began closing down, following the removal in May of a 19 per cent tariff on ethanol imported from America. Britain’s biggest power generator, German company RWE, blamed weak winds for a £1.8 billion fall in profits. The chain of 46 Soho House clubs was bought for £2 billion. The Met Police will axe 40 of its 93 horses to save money. No horses will run at race meetings on 10 September in protest at a proposed rise in betting tax. A-level grades were again the highest ever, with 28.3 per cent being A* or A. The Prince and Princess of Wales will move from Adelaide Cottage into the eight-bedroom Forest Lodge in Windsor Great Park.

Abroad

President Donald Trump of the United States and President Vladimir Putin of Russia met for three hours in Alaska without reaching an agreement on the war in Ukraine. Mr Putin had been greeted with a red carpet and a lift in the American presidential car. At the end of their meeting, Mr Putin said in English: ‘Next time in Moscow.’ Mr Trump had promised ‘severe consequences’ if Russia did not move towards a ceasefire, but after the meeting he said that the ‘best way’ was to go ‘directly to a peace agreement’. He said that Ukraine could not reclaim Crimea or join Nato. But he added that Mr Putin had agreed that Russia would accept security guarantees for Ukraine; no American troops would set foot in Ukraine. At the Washington follow-up meeting, Mr Zelensky said that he and Mr Trump had had a ‘very good conversation’. The plan was for a trilateral meeting, then for a bilateral one between Mr Putin and Mr Zelensky. Territory remained an unsolved problem. Four people in New York City died from Legionnaires’ disease, which was traced to 12 cooling towers where bacteria were growing.

Hundreds of thousands of people gathered in Israel to call for an end to the Gaza war and an agreement to secure the release of the hostages held by Hamas. Tulsi Gabbard, the director of US national intelligence, said Britain had withdrawn its demand for access to global Apple users’ data. Two boats carrying 90 migrants capsized off Lampedusa; 60 were rescued.

Hundreds were killed by floods in northern Pakistan. Aid agencies warned of starvation in Burma’s Rakhine State, which is under a military blockade. The communist mayor of Noisy-le-Sec in France said he had cancelled a screening of Barbie to protect town hall officials from ‘insistent threats’ from young Muslim men who accused the film of ‘promoting homosexuality’.    CSH