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With war engulfing Iraq, Britain set about reopening its embassy in Tehran, closed in 2011. William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, ruled out British military action. The government made it a crime to associate with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (or al-Sham), the salafist armed movement known as ISIS. About 400 Britons were thought to be fighting on their side. The government can intercept Facebook, Twitter and Google without individual warrants, because they are based externally, the Office of Security and Counter-Terrorism admitted in a law case. David Cameron, the Prime Minister, ran into heavy weather trying to prevent Jean-Claude Juncker being appointed president of the European Commission. Dominic Cummings called the government approach to the European Union ‘whining, rude, dishonest, unpleasant, childishly belligerent in public while pathetically craven in private, and overall hollow’. Food inspectors complained that infected meat could find its way into pies because new European regulations prevented their finding tuberculous lesions. The government exempted paper bags in small shops from a new 5p bag tax.

The Court of Appeal in England ruled that doctors at Addenbrooke’s, in Cambridge, had acted unlawfully by not consulting the family before placing a ‘do not resuscitate’ order on the medical notes of a woman dying of cancer. The president of the Royal College of Physicians called upon the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence to withdraw advice for statins to be prescribed to five million extra people. A backlog of 712,000 people awaited assessments for employment and support allowance; 30,000 people awaited passports. Numbers of prisoners rose to 85,468, against 86,431 places. Taxi drivers blocked streets in London in protest against minicabs using a telephone metering service from the American company Uber. Blackpool sold its 6,000 deckchairs, saying that holidaymakers preferred to sit on benches on the front.

Li Keqiang, the Chinese premier, visited to Britain; easier visa arrangements and an £11.8 billion deal with BP were announced. Annual inflation, measured by the CPI, fell to 1.5 per cent in May from 1.8 per cent in April, or, by the RPI, to 2.4 per cent from 2.5 per cent. House prices were 9.9 per cent higher in April than a year earlier, and 18.7 per cent higher in London, according to the Office for National Statistics. Among 1,149 honours in the Queen’s birthday list were knighthoods for Andras Schiff, Nicholas Soames, Bill Cash, Robert Francis, Colin Blakemore, Anthony Seldon and Daniel Day-Lewis. Hilary Mantel and Zandra Rhodes were among the dames, and Dame Maggie Smith was appointed a Companion of Honour. A radiator salesman called Phil Neville received hundreds of abusive tweets intended for the commentator deemed to have dully described England’s first match in the World Cup.

Abroad

Isis took more cities in predominantly Sunni north-western Iraq, and there was heavy fighting at Baquba, 40 miles from Baghdad. Videos showed hundreds of prisoners being shot in cold blood by ISIS. ISIS had taken $425 million from a Bank of Iraq branch in Mosul. The Kurds, in the north-east, took Kirkuk. The United States sent an aircraft carrier to the Gulf and 275 troops to protect the US embassy. Iran offered to come to the aid of the Shia-dominated government of Nouri al-Maliki, and the United States talked to President Hassan Rouhani of Iran. Mr Rouhani posted a picture on Twitter of himself watching ‘The Cheetahs’ (Iran) playing in the World Cup.

In Kenya, the salafist Muslim army called al-Shabab killed at least 48 people one day at the coastal town of Mpeketoni, and 15 people the next day, with 12 women abducted. Ahmed Abu Khattala, the suspected leader of a raid on an American diplomatic post in Benghazi in 2012, was captured in a secret American raid in Libya. In Sri Lanka, at least three Muslims were killed and 80 wounded in clashes with Buddhist extremists. Rahm Emanuel, the mayor of Chicago, complained about the word Trump in 20ft capitals fixed to the side of Donald Trump’s city-centre  skyscraper.

Russia cut off gas supplies to Ukraine, which, it said, owed it $4.5 billion. In Ukraine, pro-Russian militiamen shot down a government aeroplane, killing all 49 on board. Three T-64 tanks were observed by satellite crossing from Russia. Ukraine won back the port city of Mariupol. South African police arrested a man found eating the heart of his ex-girlfriend’s new lover with a knife and fork.       CSH