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The annual rate of inflation fell to 6.8 per cent in July, from 7.9 per cent in June. Wages in the period of April to June were 7.8 per cent higher than a year earlier, according to the Office for National Statistics. GDP grew by 0.2 per cent in the second quarter, after growth of 0.1 per cent in the first quarter. The number of people inactive because of long-term sickness rose to more than 2.5 million, 400,000 more than at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. Unemployment rose from 3.9 per cent to 4.2 per cent. Food prices were 12.7 per cent higher in the four weeks to 6 August than a year earlier, according to Kantar, a research company. Wilko, the homeware chain with 400 outlets, was for sale after going into administration. Junior doctors went on strike for another four days. The government announced £250 million in funding for an extra 900 NHS hospital beds in England by January and another 4,100 thereafter. A new 112-space car park at Manea station, Cambridgeshire, attracted only three cars in its first week.

Six people died when a boat carrying migrants sank off Calais; 59 were rescued by French and British coastguards. In three days, 1,608 migrants crossed the Channel in small boats, bringing the total in the past five years to 101,690. The 39 migrants who had been persuaded to take up lodging aboard the Bibby Stockholm barge moored off the Isle of Portland were disembarked again after traces of Legionella bacteria had been found in its water system. Albanian people-smugglers advertised passages from Santander to Portsmouth hidden in lorries for £14,000.

Three Bulgarians from Great Yarmouth and Harrow have been in custody since February, charged with possessing identity documents with ‘improper intention’, allegedly in the interests of Russia. A document was posted on a wall in West Belfast with information on members of the Police Service of Northern Ireland that had been accidentally published online; an accompanying message read: ‘Gerry we know who your mates are,’ a reference to Sinn Féin’s policing spokesperson, Gerry Kelly. Angus MacNeil, MP for the Western Isles since 2005, was expelled by the Scottish National Party after a disagreement with its whip. The Association of Police and Crime Commissioners urged TikTok to investigate what happened after a TikTok post urged an ‘Oxford Circus JD robbery’ and hundreds of teenagers gathered outside JD Sports there. Asked about the incident, Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, said: ‘This obviously happened while I was abroad. I have got to say it is appalling.’

Abroad

Donald Trump, the former president of the United States, was indicted by the state of Georgia on 13 charges, including racketeering and conspiracy to commit forgery in the first degree; 18 others were charged with him. It was his fourth indictment. Hundreds of government employees in the San Francisco Federal Building were urged to work from home because crime and drug-taking in the area had become so bad. Wildfires on the island of Maui in Hawaii killed at least 106 people and 1,300 were missing. At least five migrants drowned after setting sail from Sidi Mansour, near Sfax, Tunisia. Four Nigerian men stowed away on the rudder of an oil tanker and survived a 14-day voyage to Brazil.

More than 200 buildings were damaged in Russian missile and drone attacks on Odessa, 100 buildings were damaged in attacks on Lviv and a family including a baby aged 22 days were killed near Kherson. Russian forces boarded a Turkish cargo vessel bound for the southern port of Izmail in Ukraine. Ukraine said it had retaken a square mile of territory at Bakhmut. At least 33 people were killed in an explosion and fire at a petrol station in Makhachkala, Dagestan, on the coast of the Caspian Sea in southern Russia. The Bank of Russia raised interest rates from 8.5 per cent to 12 per cent and the price of the rouble fell to just over 100 for an American dollar. Russia launched its first moon-landing spacecraft in 47 years.

A million barrels of oil were removed from a tanker abandoned off Yemen in 2015. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were reported to be buying Nvidia chips to enable them to develop artificial intelligence projects. The Islamic State killed at least 33 Syrian soldiers in an attack on a bus in eastern Syria. China stopped publishing youth unemployment figures; in June, unemployment among 16- to 24-year-olds in urban areas had reached 20 per cent.      CSH