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Inflation would reach 18.6 per cent by January and the energy price cap £5,816 in April, according to a forecast by Citi, the investment bank. An annual National Grid exercise simulating a gas supply emergency has been extended from two days to four in September. Workers at Felixstowe, Suffolk, Britain’s biggest container port, handling 48 per cent of traffic, went on strike for eight days. Strikes by Scottish dustmen spread from Edinburgh. Barristers belonging to the Criminal Bar Association voted to go on an indefinite strike in England and Wales after their demand for a 25 per cent increase in pay for legal aid work was denied. A man was charged with the murder of Rico Burton (a cousin of the boxer Tyson Fury), who was stabbed to death in Altrincham at 3 a.m. on Sunday. A man was charged with the murder of Thomas O’Halloran, 87, who was stabbed as he rode his mobility scooter at Greenford, Middlesex.

On a single day, 1,295 migrants crossed the Channel in small craft, the highest number yet seen. It brought the total for August to 6,168 and for the year to 22,560. Lord Harrington of Watford, the minister for refugees, called for the monthly government payment to families hosting Ukrainian refugees to double to £700, lest the pressure of inflation make them give up. British Airways was to cut 10,000 short-haul flights to and from Heathrow between late October and March; the airport had already extended its limit of 100,000 passengers a day until the end of October.

Rishi Sunak, the lagging contender for the leadership of the Conservative party and hence prime-ministership, said that he would not want to serve in the cabinet of Liz Truss, even though earlier in the process both had assented to the prospect of giving the other a position in government. In England, the number of people testing positive for Covid was one in 40 and in Scotland one in 30 for the first week of August (from one in 25 and one in 20 a fortnight earlier), according to a regular survey by the Office for National Statistics. The number of people in the United Kingdom in hospital with Covid fell to about 10,000, from a recent peak of about 17,000 a month earlier.

Abroad

Russia accused Ukrainian special services of killing Darya Dugina, aged 29, the daughter of Alexander Dugin, one of Vladimir Putin’s allies, in a car bombing near Moscow; Ukrainian officials denied any involvement in the explosion. Smoke was seen rising on 20 August from the area in Sevastopol where Russia’s Black Sea Fleet is based, the third day running on which a Ukrainian drone attack on the Crimea had been reported. Russia continued its overnight shelling of cities including Kharkiv, Dnipro and Mykolaiv. President Vladimir Putin of Russia said that UN officials would be allowed to inspect the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, which is under Russian occupation. The United States granted a new $775 million military aid package to Ukraine, including ScanEagle drones for targeting artillery. The European Commission’s drought observatory said that the drought in Europe is the worst in 500 years.

Another section of the grain silos damaged in the huge blast of 2020 in Beirut collapsed; grain had been smouldering there for weeks. In response to a surge in gas prices, the euro fell below the value of the US dollar, its lowest since 2002. Amid a property crisis, China’s central bank, the People’s Bank of China, cut its mortgage rate by 1.5 percentage points to 4.2 per cent. Shipping organisations said that from the start of next year the Indian Ocean would no longer be considered at high risk from Somali pirates. The embalmed heart of Brazil’s first emperor, Pedro I, arrived in Brasilia for the 200th anniversary of the country’s independence from Portugal.

Pakistan’s police charged Imran Khan, the former prime minister, under anti-terror laws after he accused the police and judiciary of detaining and torturing a close aide. Najib Razak, the former prime minister of Malaysia, began a 12-year jail sentence over money that he said he thought had been a gift from Saudi Arabia. Sanna Marin, the Prime Minister of Finland, aged 36, passed a drug test she had taken after a video had circulated of her enjoying a party. Anthony Fauci, aged 81, will step down in December as head of America’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases after 38 years.