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The number of drug deaths in Scotland fell to 1,051 in 2022, the lowest since 2017, but still the worst record per head in Europe. Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, who in March had pledged ‘to stop the boats once and for all’, said that ‘there is not one simple solution and it can’t be solved overnight’. On a sunny Monday, 661 migrants landed in Britain in 16 small boats; one man, on making landfall, made the Albanian eagle gesture popular among football supporters. England was defeated 1-0 by Spain in the final of the women’s football World Cup; the Spanish Prime Minister said that Spanish FA president Luis Rubiales kissing the forward Jenni Hermoso on the lips afterwards was an ‘unacceptable gesture’. Sir Michael Parkinson, the sports journalist and television interviewer, died aged 88.

Lucy Letby, a nurse, was given a life sentence without possibility of release on being found guilty after a ten-month trial of murdering seven babies and attempting to murder six more at the Countess of Chester hospital. She did not appear in court for the sentencing or to hear the victim impact statements of her victims’ parents. Doctors who had asked for the nurse to be taken off duty and for the police to be called in had been told by hospital managers to apologise to her.

The government paid debt interest of £7.7 billion in July, the most ever for that month; but the shortfall between tax income and spending in July was £4.3 billion, less than general forecasts of about £5 billion. Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, called on the Prime Minister somehow to make Nadine Dorries leave the House of Commons, even though it is not sitting: ‘I would say to Rishi Sunak, “Get a grip of this. This is one of your MPs. Do something about it.”’ P&O Ferries is to close its Liverpool-Dublin route after it could not secure a berth on Merseyside. On the railways, RMT union members announced a strike on 26 August and Aslef members on 1 September. Police investigated suspicions that more than 1,500 objects kept in the British Museum had been stolen, damaged or destroyed. In January, Michel Roux is to close Le Gavroche, opened by his father, Albert, and uncle Michel in 1967.

Abroad

A Russian supersonic long-range Tupolev Tu-22M bomber was destroyed in a Ukrainian drone strike on the Soltsy-2 airbase, south of St Petersburg. Drones struck Moscow six nights running. Seven people were killed when a Russian missile hit a theatre in the Ukrainian city of Chernihiv. The United States approved the transfer to Ukraine of American-made F-16 fighter jets from Denmark and the Netherlands once Ukrainian pilots are trained. The African Union suspended Niger, which had suffered a coup on 26 July; its statement was dated 14 August but was released only on 22 August, after a video was posted by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of Russia’s Wagner mercenaries, purporting to be in Africa. General Sergei Surovikin was sacked as head of Russia’s air and space forces. Russia’s first moon mission in 47 years failed when its Luna-25 spacecraft crashed into the moon. A tour guide and the seven members of a party being shown Moscow’s sewers were found dead after being trapped underground by flood waters.

Donald Trump, the former president of America, far ahead in polls as the favoured Republican candidate for the next presidential election, skipped the first Republican televised debate but planned to turn himself in to a court in Georgia to face charges relating to election interference in 2020. Thaksin Shinawatra, the former prime minister of Thailand, returned (hours before his party’s candidate was voted the next Thai PM) after 15 years abroad, and was immediately sentenced to eight years in prison. The People’s Bank of China lowered its one-year loan prime rate to 3.45 per cent as property sales flagged; Evergrande, the giant Chinese property company, filed for bankruptcy protection in America.

The charred bodies of 18 people, thought to be migrants, were found in the Dadia forest in northern Greece, near the Turkish border, engulfed by wildfires. All but 1,000 of the 20,000 people of Yellowknife, the capital of Canada’s Northwest Territories, were evacuated for fear of wildfires. More than 380 fires were burning in British Columbia. Six children and two adults were rescued by helicopter and zipwire after hours stuck in a cable car dangling 900ft in the air after a cable broke north of Battagram in Pakistan.           CSH