News – World and UK

The UK is enjoying “summer’s last hurrah” before heavy rainfall is expected to drench the country over the weekend, the Met Office has said. On Wednesday, temperatures hit 25.5C in Inverness, which is 14C above average for this time of year, according to the forecaster. Warm and bright conditions are expected to continue into Thursday after a cloudy morning – with highs of 26C in London, the weather service added. […]

The public vastly overestimates how much asylum seekers account for in UK immigration, leading to “skewed perceptions” that make the debate on migration “unbalanced”, according to new research. A survey found that, on average, respondents thought those seeking asylum represent 37% of total immigration when actually they accounted for only around 7% in the year ending in June 2024. More than one in five (22%) thought asylum makes up more […]

Lawyers for some of the men accused of raping an unconscious French woman who had been drugged by her husband asked her on Wednesday about her habits, personality and sex life, even questioning whether she was truly unconscious during the encounters. Gisele Pelicot’s testimony came a day after her ex-husband, Dominique Pelicot, testified that for nearly 10 years, he drugged her and invited dozens of men to rape her as […]

Harvey Weinstein pleaded not guilty on Wednesday to a new sex crime charge in New York, as he awaits retrial in his landmark #MeToo case. A new indictment charged the jailed ex-movie mogul with committing a criminal sex act, accusing him of forcing oral sex on a woman at some point between April 29 2006 and May 6 of that year. No details about the accuser involved in the new […]

Emma Raducanu wants to play as many matches as she can over the closing weeks of the season after admitting making mistakes in her scheduling over the summer. The 21-year-old is playing in just her third tournament since a fourth-round loss at Wimbledon in Korea this week, where she battled to victory over American Peyton Stearns in the first round on Tuesday. Raducanu chose to miss the Olympics to focus […]

Secondary school pupils and students who started university during the Covid-19 pandemic have been “consigned to the scrapheap”, the employment minister has warned. Alison McGovern vowed to set up a youth guarantee, a Labour general election manifesto pledge which she claimed would “transform the lives of young people”, speaking at the launch of a think tank report on employment support. According to the Department for Work and Pensions, the number […]

Train drivers have voted overwhelmingly to accept a multiyear pay offer, ending a two-year dispute at 16 rail companies. Aslef said its members voted by 96% in favour of a deal the union said was worth 15% over three years. The turnout was 84%. The offer was made by the new Labour Government within weeks of the party winning the general election. The ballot result ends what Aslef called the […]

Annual house price growth has slowed, but private rents continue to climb at a “near-record rate”, according to an Office for National Statistics (ONS) report. Across the UK, property values increased by an estimated 2.2% in the 12 months to July to reach £290,000 on average, slowing from a 2.7% increase in the 12 months to June. Average house prices increased in England to £306,000 (1.6% annual growth), in Wales […]

Post Office boss Nick Read is set to step down from the role next year, the company has said. Post Office boss Nick Read is set to step down from the role next year, the company has said. Mr Read described it as a “great privilege” to have worked as chief executive in an “extraordinarily challenging time for the business and for postmasters”. He had previously announced his intention to […]