The Light aims to bring art of international significance to north-east England
Works by Tracey Emin, Steve McQueen and Olafur Eliasson have gone on display at a new contemporary art gallery and museum in north-east England which aims to show works of international significance.
The Light is a £17m redevelopment of a museum in Durham that closed 10 years ago to considerable local uproar.
Continue reading...Volume of goods sold in stores and online dropped 0.5% in July, ONS says
Retail sales across Great Britain weakened last month despite the men’s football World Cup and record temperatures boosting the demand for food and drink.
The Office for National Statistics said the volume of goods sold in stores and online fell 0.5% in July. That is down from 0.7% rise in June – revised down from initial estimates of 1% – and a 1.3% rise in May.
Continue reading...The PM will be working alongside chancellor John Healey, Lou Haigh, Angela Rayner and Sally Jameson with regional mayors expected to be involved
The UK government ran a larger than expected £1.8bn deficit in July, underlining the challenges facing the chancellor, John Healey, as he draws up his first budget.
City economists had expected a shortfall of zero for July, a month when Treasury receipts tend to be swollen by self-assessment income tax payments.
Burnham said yesterday that fly-tippers will be forced to pay for the clean-up when they dump waste illegally. The prime minister laid out his plans to crackdown on waste crimes as he visited an illegal dump in West Yorkshire.
Racism and sexism have become normalised in Britain, the equalities minister has said, as she warned that young men were being sucked into violent misogyny by the “cesspit” of social media. Bridget Phillipson said she was increasingly worried about how commonplace misogyny and racism had become, fuelled by online interactions and statements by politicians she said would not have been acceptable a few years ago.
Phillipson suggested her sweeping reforms to special educational needs provision could be adapted to give parents greater protections if they are unhappy about the service being provided for their children. The former education secretary told the Guardian ministers were open to making changes to the plans, which were announced earlier this year but which have since been subject to consultation.
Education Lucy Powell on Thursday addressed the GCSE gender gap, which shrank to its narrowest point this century. Almost one in four boys in England received top grades in maths while results in English improved across the board. “The white working-class review that was recently done, that was one things it found, that more boys need to see the purpose of education, they need to see the line of sight into work,” Powell told the Press Association.
Meanwhile, Burnham told reporters that funding for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s security arrangements on their return to the UK was a “private matter”, the Press Association reports. Harry and Meghan are expected to return to live in Britain later this month. After six years in the US, they will be moving with their two children, Prince Archie, seven, and Princess Lilibet, five, to a non-royal residence outside London.
Continue reading...Film emerges as France says it has stopped 185 small boat ‘events’ in three months since new £660m deal with UK
Footage has captured the moment French police officers clashed with people on a beach in northern France as the authorities tried to intercept a dinghy attempting to reach the UK.
Men wearing lifejackets appear to throw objects at the police to try to keep them away from their dinghy. The officers then use Pava spray before slashing the inflatable boat with a knife.
Continue reading...July data shows total public debt was £2.98tn, or 94% of GDP – up £96bn on a year earlier
The UK government ran a larger than expected £1.8bn deficit in July, underlining the challenges facing the chancellor, John Healey, as he draws up his first budget.
City economists had expected a shortfall of zero for July, a month when Treasury receipts tend to be swollen by self-assessment income tax payments.
Continue reading...Report says violence is moving from Israeli-controlled areas to those earmarked for a future Palestinian state
Violent Israeli settler attacks in the two areas of the occupied West Bank under direct Palestinian rule have almost doubled since 2025, as settlers pursue a self-proclaimed “great settlement revolution” in the very heart of the territory earmarked for a Palestinian state.
According to a report by the Israeli human rights organisation Yesh Din, shared with the Guardian, data shows that almost two-thirds of incidents of settler violence so far in 2026 have taken place in the so-called Areas A and B – placed under Palestinian Authority governance in the 1995 Oslo accords.
Continue reading...Pacific fleet launched missile drills near what Moscow calls the Kuril Islands but Japan regards as its Northern Territories
Japan has criticised missile tests carried out by Russia’s navy around the disputed islands visited by Vladimir Putin last week amid continuing tensions between the two countries.
Russia’s Pacific fleet said on Thursday that it had fired Bastion surface-to-ship missiles from Etorofu, the largest island in the disputed archipelago, simulating an attack on enemy vessels, hitting all of its targets approximately 300km away.
Continue reading...Jenny Ware, member of inquiry that recommended wagering advertising ban, says ‘public health crisis’ demands stronger response from major parties
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The former Liberal MP Jenny Ware has condemned her one-time Coalition colleagues for backing Labor’s gambling legislation, claiming “vulnerable Australians have been let down”, as the parliament failed to back a full ban on wagering ads.
Ware, a member of the Peta Murphy-led inquiry in 2023 that recommended entirely ending wagering advertising and inducements, called gambling a public health crisis that demanded a much stronger response from both sides of politics.
Continue reading...Fawning, deferential, oleaginous – this was the Untruth and Reconciliation Commission as Trump called in to 77 WABC
“Our next guest is a ‘racist’, a ‘conman’ and a ‘cheat’ – someone who behaves more like a ‘mobster’ than a president. Please welcome Donald J Trump!”
That is how Michael Cohen could have introduced Trump on his New York radio show on Thursday. After all, Cohen used such terms to describe the US president in his testimony to Congress in 2019. But now Trump’s former personal lawyer and self-described fixer had different words: “boss” and “sir”. Just like old times.
Continue reading...State senator beats rival Melissa Hernandez and will replace US congressman who quit amid sexual misconduct claims
Progressive Aisha Wahab has been elected to Congress in a special election following a bitter intra-party battle over the seat formerly held by Eric Swalwell, who resigned in April after facing sexual misconduct allegations. Swalwell has denied the allegations.
Wahab, a state senator, was widely considered the frontrunner in the district in California’s East Bay and had the backing of the state Democratic party as well as Our Revolution, labor unions, local officials and the state’s attorney general, Rob Bonta.
Continue reading...The former gang leader was charged with planning the drive-by shooting that killed Tupac Shakur in 1996
Jurors on Thursday heard Duane “Keffe D” Davis tell detectives in 2008 that his nephew Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson fired the shots that killed Tupac Shakur.
Davis, who said in the interview that he was also in the car with Anderson, is accused of orchestrating the 1996 killing of the 25-year-old hip-hop superstar in Las Vegas. At the time of the interview, his nephew had been dead for a decade.
Continue reading...State sought to stop system off coast of Santa Barbara from resuming operations after Trump ordered its reopening
An oil pipeline can continue to operate off the California coast after a judge gave it the green light this week, despite the opposition of state regulators and environmental groups.
The system off the coast of Santa Barbara resumed operations earlier this year for the first time in more than a decade after Donald Trump ordered Sable Offshore Corporation to reopen it, citing US energy needs during the war in Iran.
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