Portrait of the week: Palestine Action arrests, interest rate cuts and an Alaska meeting
Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, said: 'The Israeli government's decision to further escalate its offensive in Gaza is wrong… It will only bring more bloodshed.' Police arrested 532 people at a demonstration in Parliament Square at which people unveiled handwritten signs saying: 'I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action'; the group was proscribed by the government in July under the Terrorism Act of 2000. J.D. Vance, the Vice-President of America, stayed with David Lammy, the Foreign Secretary, at Chevening House in Kent before going on holiday in the Cotswolds at a house rented for £8,000 a week. Work began on removing 180 tons of congealed wet wipes near Hammersmith bridge.
Rushanara Ali resigned from her post as the minister for homelessness after it emerged that she had ended her tenants' fixed-term contract in order to sell the house, but then relisted it for rent at a higher price within six months, something she wanted to make illegal under the Renters' Rights Bill. The government proposed that foreign criminals in England and Wales who are given fixed-term jail sentences could be deported upon sentencing and barred from re-entering Britain. Protests continued outside the Bell Hotel in Epping, Essex, which houses male asylum seekers; other protestors protested against the protestors. The number of migrants arriving in England in small boats in the seven days to August 11 was 1,593, bringing the number since Labour was elected to 50,271.
The Bank of England cut interest rates from 4.25 to 4 per cent, though four of the nine members of the committee wanted no change. Job vacancies fell by 5.8 per cent to 718,000 between May and July. By the government's own figures it will cost £34.7 billion over 99 years to give the Chagos Islands to Mauritius; the sum of £3.4 billion previously announced took account of future inflation and the 'Social Time Preference Rate'. Barbara Harvey, the historian, died aged 97. Biddy Baxter, for 23 years the editor of Blue Peter, died aged 92. After publishing an autobiography called Frankly, Nicola Sturgeon, the former first minister of Scotland, was asked about the rapist going by the name of Isla Bryson, who identified as a woman and was sent to a women's prison. Ms Sturgeon said: 'What I would say now is anybody who commits the most heinous male crime against women probably forfeits the right to be, you know, the gender of their choice.' A large gorse fire spread across Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh. The Environment Agency suggested deleting old emails to save water.
Abroad
President Donald Trump of America and President Vladimir Putin of Russia arranged to meet in Alaska to discuss the war in Ukraine. 'There will be some swapping of territories, to the betterment of both,' said Mr Trump. 'Ukrainians will not give their land to the occupier,' said President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. 'The path to peace in Ukraine cannot be decided without Ukraine,' said a joint statement by Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Poland, Finland and the European Commission. Russia hurried to make territorial advances before the meeting. India's Supreme Court ordered Delhi to round up its stray dogs – estimated at a million – after the city reported 49 cases of rabies this year.
Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel, activated his plan to occupy the Gaza Strip, saying: 'We don't want to be there as a governing body. We want to hand it over to Arab forces.' Israel's chief of the general staff, Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir, warned that this would endanger the remaining 20 or so hostages held by Hamas. The plan would force a million Palestinians in Gaza City into evacuation zones in the south. Germany suspended the delivery to Israel of arms that could be used in Gaza. Australia will recognise the state of Palestine at next month's UN General Assembly. Five Al Jazeera journalists were killed by a targeted Israeli strike on their tent in Gaza City. A fire badly damaged a chapel in the Mosque-Cathedral in Cordoba, Spain. In France, a swarm of jellyfish shut down a nuclear power station.
President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan and Nikol Pashinyan, Prime Minister of Armenia, shook hands at a meeting with Mr Trump at the White House. More than 3,000 cases of chikungunya, a mosquito-borne virus, were reported in China's Guangdong province. Italy decided to build the world's longest suspension bridge, two miles across the straits of Messina to Sicily. Jim Lovell, the astronaut who guided the Apollo 13 moon mission back to Earth in 1970 after radioing 'Houston, we've had a problem', died aged 97. CSH
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