Category Archives: News

‘Russia’s frontline moving west,’ Moldova’s president warns after border checkpoint attack – Europe live | Ukraine | The Guardian

News, , , , , , , ,

Keyword – World news
Trefwoorden – Ukraine, Europe, Russia, Moldova, Germany, Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), Friedrich Merz, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Norway
Title – ‘Russia’s frontline moving west,’ Moldova’s president warns after border checkpoint attack – Europe live | Ukraine | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/jakub-krupa,https://www.theguardian.com/profile/jonhenley
Link – ‘Russia’s frontline moving west,’ Moldova’s president warns after border checkpoint attack – Europe live | Ukraine | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-09-09T10:39:41.000Z
Category – News
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2026/sep/09/europe-ukraine-russia-zelenskyy-germany-merz-afd-norway-king-harald-v-latest-news-updates

‘Russia’s frontline is moving west,’ Moldova’s president warns

Moldovan president Maia Sandu warned that “Russia’s frontline is moving further west” after a Russian strike on the Moldovan-Ukrainian border overnight, a day after a drone incursion into Moldovan airspace.

“We condemn these attacks and this brutal war. Our thoughts are with the victims and with Ukraine. Moldova will keep strengthening its air surveillance and defences with our European partners – and I urge more air defence support for Ukraine,” she said .

The overnight attack forced the closure of the border checkpoint, around 500 kilometres (310 miles) south of Kyiv, Ukraine’s State Border Guard Service said.

Russia hopes to see restarted peace talks with Ukraine, says Europe ‘harming itself’ by cutting off Russian gas

Russia hopes ⁠that peace talks between Ukraine ⁠and Russia, ⁠mediated ​by the United States, will resume ⁠in the near future, Kremlin ⁠spokesperson Dmitry Peskov ​said in comments reported by Reuters.

No such ‌direct talks have taken ‌place since February.

But t he Kremlin will not publicly discuss potential elements of a possible ‌peace settlement, Peskov added.

He was ​speaking after Russian president Vladimir Putin and US president ⁠Donald Trump had a ​telephone ​call on ​Tuesday to discuss ​prospects ‌for ending ​the ​war.

Peskov also said that European countries have ⁠found themselves ⁠in ​a difficult position amid rising gas ⁠prices, and that they could buy gas at ⁠cheaper prices from ​Russia.

European ‌natural gas ‌prices have soared amid ‌the war in Iran, hitting their highest level last week since late 2022, when the ‌start of the Ukraine conflict prompted Europe ​to cut off Russian pipeline gas.

Peskov said ⁠ Europe was harming itself by ​buying ​expensive gas at ​spot prices as ​opposed ‌to ​the more ​affordable Russian option , and suggested that the controversial Nord Stream pipeline could be restarted soon.

Kremlin’s spokesperson also confirmed that Russia would respond to Hungary’s decision to expel 10 Russian diplomats from Budapest.

Funeral procession for Norway’s King Harald begins

Back to Oslo, the funeral procession for King Harald is about the begin, and the 1.2km route to the Oslo Cathedral is lined up with 1,900 soldiers from all branches of the Norwegian defence forces.

The procession is expected to walk very slowly – at around 60 steps per minute – and will include the royal family, including King Haakon , followed by a royal car with the widow, Queen Sonja.

Other distinguished guests – including foreign royals, heads of state, prime ministers – will follow.

Thousands of members of the public are also along the route, with more screens set up to help them follow the events.

Irish police investigate suspected drone sighting ahead of Trump’s visit this weekend

Meanwhile, Irish police are investigated a suspected – and as of yet unconfirmed – sighting of a large drone over the Irish Sea on Tuesday night – just days before US president Donald Trump is expected to visit the country.

The drone was first reported by a pilot of an Aer Lingus plane just after 5pm local time. He said the “large black” drone was operating at 6,000ft.

In a statement reported by the Irish Times, the Garda said : “Gardaí in the Dublin Region are aware of an alleged sighting of an unconfirmed object over the Irish Sea, off the east coast, earlier this evening, Tuesday, 8 September 2026.”

The incident comes just days before US president Donald Trump is expected to visit Ireland for the Irish Open golf tournament this weekend.

Ireland also currently holds the rotating presidency in the European Council, and regularly hosts senior EU ministerial meetings in the country.

Swiss emergency services responding to a reported explosion at hydroelectric powerplant in Ticino canton

Swiss media are reporting an explosion at a hydroelectric power plant in the Swiss canton of Ticino, and part of the building reportedly collapsed.

A major emergency response operation is under way.

Local media carried conflicting reports about potential injuries. They also said that it’s not clear if the explosion happened within the old plant, or a new facility being built next door, which is meant to open in 2027.

I will keep an eye on this for you.

Norway to bid farewell to King Harald at ceremonial funeral in Oslo

Meanwhile, large crowds are gathering in Oslo for the funeral of late King Harald V, which is expected to attract some of other leading royals from Europe and beyond, including Britain’s Prince William , Japan’s Crown Prince Akishino , Spain’s King Felipe , and Denmark’s King Frederik. Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy is also in Oslo.

A procession on foot from the royal palace to Oslo Cathedral is expected to start in about half an hour, with a church ceremony at midday UK time (1pm local time).

Despite its recent troubles, the monarchy remains broadly popular: 72% of Norwegians support it, while 20% favour a republic or another form of government, a Norstat poll for broadcaster NRK published on 1 September found, the first poll taken since Harald’s death, as reported by Reuters.

French far-right leader Bardella faces domestic criticism over migrant deal with Reform UK

Rowena Mason and Angelique Chrisafis in Paris

Reform UK has insisted its deal with France’s far-right National Rally to return migrants back across the channel was fully approved by the party and signed off by its president, Jordan Bardella, amid a furious backlash in France.

The agreement unveiled on Friday between Nigel Farage and Bardella, who is the 30-year-old protege of presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, appeared to directly contradict Le Pen’s long-held policy of refusing to accept the return of those who arrive in the UK in small boats from France.

Le Pen was pressed for her position by journalists from France TV, the state broadcaster, on Monday. Le Pen declined to comment, saying she would talk about the issue soon, but at a time of her choosing.

In 2021, Le Pen said she wanted a rewriting of border agreements for the UK to specifically send people arriving on boats back to their countries of origin, instead of returning them to France.

Since the agreement, Bardella has come under fire from political parties in France for signing the deal, with Benjamin Haddad, the Europe minister, criticising Bardella for “submission” that was “against our interests and sovereignty”.

Some French media have questioned whether Bardella was duped by Reform, querying whether the French translation accurately conveyed the meaning by Farage that the National Rally (RN) was prepared to accept any migrants back who travel by small boat.

‘Russia’s frontline is moving west,’ Moldova’s president warns

Moldovan president Maia Sandu warned that “Russia’s frontline is moving further west” after a Russian strike on the Moldovan-Ukrainian border overnight, a day after a drone incursion into Moldovan airspace.

“We condemn these attacks and this brutal war. Our thoughts are with the victims and with Ukraine. Moldova will keep strengthening its air surveillance and defences with our European partners – and I urge more air defence support for Ukraine,” she said .

The overnight attack forced the closure of the border checkpoint, around 500 kilometres (310 miles) south of Kyiv, Ukraine’s State Border Guard Service said.

Europeans want a united Europe but question whether it can get there, study finds

Europeans overwhelmingly want a strong, united and independent Europe but question whether it can get there, according to a study that suggests a continent-wide crisis of confidence is creating fertile ground for far-right narratives of decline.

The report , based on 5,800 interviews in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and the UK and analysis of the way Europe is discussed in the politics and media of 15 countries, paints a picture of an ambitious but disillusioned public.

It found that 68% of respondents spoke about Europe in terms of a “general deterioration or loss of normality”, compared with just 12% who said they viewed the present moment as a time of “European awakening and renewal”.

Many recognised the major challenges facing Europe, including war (43%), economic pressures (33%) and the need for greater international autonomy (29%). But 74% said Europe was not dealing well with them, and 56% believed its future was “in danger”.

The problem is not lack of ambition: an overwhelming 73% of respondents harbour a strong European vision of unity and political integration (35%), peace and security (28%) or prosperity (19%), while only 13% hope for “less Europe” or EU dissolution.

For many, said the study’s author, Paweł Zerka , a senior fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) thinktank, the problem was “not that they’ve stopped wanting a stronger Europe, but that they no longer believe it’s achievable”.

The result, Zerka added, was an “imagination gap. People can picture the kind of Europe they want, but struggle to imagine a credible path from where it is today to where they want it to be. These are matters of policy, not just communication.”

Major material damage from Leipzig drone attack prevented ‘only by pure chance,’ Merz says

In his comments, Merz also responded to the attempted drone attack at Leipzig airport last month, saying it had ⁠been ​prepared in Russia over an extended period and that ⁠a disaster was only narrowly averted.

“This attack was ⁠planned in Russia for months ​and was specifically ‌targeted at Germany , ‌and only by pure chance ‌was major material damage and harm to people prevented ,” Merz told the parliament.

Russia ⁠has rejected any involvement in the ​drone ​incident at Leipzig airport.

Chancellor Merz, AfD’s Weidel clash over German policy on Ukraine, migration, economy

Over in Germany , AfD’s Alice Weidel said in the Bundestag the result of the Saxony-Anhalt election over the weekend showed “the people finally want a change in policy,” saying the ruling coalition should be “over.”

She also harshly criticised the government’s track record on migration , “war propaganda” against Russia , and on energy, calling for resumption of deliveries through the Nord Stream pipeline.

“You failed to understand the message the voters in Saxony-Anhalt sent you last Sunday. But that hardly matters, because your time is up anyway ,” she told chancellor Merz.

Responding to her comments, Merz said Weidel “is and will remain a destructive force,” as he pledged Germany “will continue to support” Ukraine , “because it is defending our freedom too.

“You are openly demonstrating the downright grotesque reversal of who is the victim and who is the perpetrator,” he said in a speech, which was repeatedly interrupted by AfD.

Merz also strongly criticised Weidel’s “remigration” proposals, saying they amounted to an attempted “ethnic cleansing based on origin and skin colour,” which would leave Germany “no longer able to function” as one in six skilled workers are of immigrant background.

“Not a single nursing home will remain open, and not a single hospital in Germany will remain open, not a single restaurant will be able to operate in Germany. That would be the result of your immigration policy,” he said, while stressing that his government will push to tighten its policy against irregular migration.

Morning opening: ‘Too little response’ to Russian strikes on Ukraine, Zelenskyy says

At least two people died were injured in Russian attacks on Ukraine overnight, with Volodymyr Zelenskyy saying “there has been too little response from the international community to these strikes.”

Two people were killed, three injured and 16 evacuated after a strike on the Starokozache border crossing with Moldova . Four people were injured after a Russian drone struck an apartment building in Kyiv. More strikes were reported in Dnipro, Mykolaiv, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia and Zhytomyr.

“ A response is needed – Moscow must not go into the winter believing that it can get away with missile and drone terror without consequences. The aggression must be stopped here and now, before it spreads any further, ” Zelenskyy said.

He called for “effective” sanctions against Russia and support for Ukraine , saying “the partners who can help know exactly what is needed every day.”

The Russian defence ministry said ⁠that its forces ⁠had struck a Ukrainian ⁠cargo vessel ​carrying ‌military equipment ‌in the ‌Black Sea en route to the port of ‌Odesa, as well as ​a warehouse in Kyiv, belonging ⁠to a company ​manufacturing drones, ​Russian ​news agencies ​reported.

I will keep an eye on this.

Elsewhere, Germany’s embattled chancellor Friedrich Merz is facing AfD’s leader Alice Weidel in a general debate in the Bundestag this morning after a bruising result in the Saxony-Anhalt state election on the weekend. I will monitor it for key lines.

Over in Oslo, Norway will bid farewell to King Harald V with a funeral paying tribute to the 35-year reign of the monarch, with many international guests expected to attend.

Lots to cover.

It’s Wednesday, 9 September 2026 , it’s Jakub Krupa here, and this is Europe Live .

Good morning.

Burnham refuses to commit to raising defence spending to 3% of GDP by 2030 as he faces Badenoch at PMQs – UK politics live | Politics | The Guardian

News, , , , , , ,

Keyword – Politics
Trefwoorden – Politics, UK news, PMQs, Andy Burnham, Ed Miliband, Israel, West Bank, Foreign policy
Title – Miliband defends sanctions on Israeli settlements and pushes back against chief rabbi’s criticism – UK politics live | Politics | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/andrewsparrow
Link – Miliband defends sanctions on Israeli settlements and pushes back against chief rabbi’s criticism – UK politics live | Politics | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-09-09T10:37:25.000Z
Category – News
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2026/sep/09/uk-israel-west-bank-ed-miliband-andy-burnham-uk-politics-latest-news-updates

Miliband defends sanctions on Israeli settlements and pushes back against chief rabbi’s criticism

Good morning. Yesterday Ed Miliband , the foreign secretary, made what may turn out to be one of the most important Commons statements of the year. Here is our overnight report by Pippa Crerar, Jessica Elgot and Kiran Stacey.

Here is an analysis by Patrick Wintour , the Guardian’s diplomatic editor.

And here is the Guardian’s editorial .

It starts: “Rarely in recent years has the Commons felt like the cockpit of history. On Tuesday it did.”

Ministers were worried about a backlash from Donald Trump. So far, that has not happened, and in the US Axios is reporting that, when Andy Burnham spoke to Trump on Monday, “two sources with knowledge of the call said Trump didn’t push back or ask Burnham to change course”. In his report for Axios, Barak Ravid says: “US officials told their British counterparts they shared their concerns about the Netanyahu government’s West Bank policy, even if they disagreed with these specific sanctions, sources say.”

But in the UK some of the leading organisations representing the Jewish community have strongly condemned the decision to ban trade with Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and Sir Ephraim Mirvis , the chief rabbi, described yesterday as “truly a dark day for British Jews”. The rightwing papers are all leading their coverage on his remarks.

Miliband has been giving interviews this morning, and he has said he does not agree.

Asked about the chief rabbi’s statement, Miliband told Sky News:

Well, I’m a proud British Jew, and I don’t agree with the chief rabbi.

I have great respect for the chief rabbi, but I don’t agree with him, and I believe that it must be possible to do what we did yesterday, which is to stand up for British values of the rule of law, of dignity for people, of the prevention of injustice, and do so in a way, as I did yesterday, to say to anyone in our country who holds British Jews responsible for the actions of the Israeli government, that is antisemitism, pure and simple.

We will hear from Andy Burnham on this later at PMQs.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9am: Zack Polanski, the Green party leader, speaks at the Wild Summit in Bristol. Words and video planned

From 9am: David Anderson and Jonathan Hall, the former and current independent reviewer of terror legislation respectively, are among those giving evidence to phase two of the Southport inquiry, looking at Prevent’s role in managing violence-fixated individuals.

10am: Prof Alexis Jay, chair of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), is among the experts giving evidence to the London assembly’s police and crime committee on grooming gangs.

Noon: Andy Burnham faces Kemi Badenoch at PMQs .

After 12.30pm: Heidi Alexander, the transport secretary, may make a Commons statement on the air traffic control chaos . She is also opening the second reading debate on the civil aviation bill.

I’m afraid we are no longer able to have comments open below the line every day on this blog . If you want to contact me, please email politics.live@theguardian.com. You can use this email to flag up corrections, comments for publication, questions or complaints.

There are three Commons statements after PMQs today.

After 12.30pm: Yvette Cooper, the health secretary, on summer health and resilience.

Around 1.30pm: Lucy Powell, the education secretary, on education skills and reform.

Around 2.30pm: Blair McDougall, the reindustrialisation minister, on the Jaguar Land Rover redundancies.

On Newsnight last night Nicholas Watt , the programme’s political editor, said he had been told by one cabinet minister there was a simple explanation for the Israel sanctions announcement: “We’re doing things which Keir [Starmer] wouldn’t let us do,” the minister said.

Today Watt says the Starmerites are disputing this. He says :

Allies of Sir Keir Starmer are strongly disputing what this cabinet minister told me last night. One Starmer ally tells me that earlier this year the former prime minister asked his aides to chase Foreign Office ministers for “proper advice” on blocking settler trade or imposing sanctions on West Bank settlements.

“He was no blocker,” the Starmer ally told me. They claim that the Foreign Office told them the issue was “complicated” which showed, according to that ally, that they simply “had no plan”.

The ally tells me: “There’s just a lot of rewriting of history going on.”

Deputy Tory leader Alex Burghart accuses Labour of ‘hypocrisy’, saying it is not taking similar action against China

Alex Burghart , the deputy Tory leader, was giving interviews this morning. On Israel , he opened up a new line of attack against the government, accusing it of hypocrisy. This is what he told GB News.

At the same time that Labour were saying all these things about Israel in the House of Commons, they put out a communique.

They put out an account of a conversation that Andy Burnham has had with the Chinese president, and it said how constructive they wanted to be with China, how they wanted to work with China, and what a great relationship we have.

Now, I’m not saying we should put sanctions on China, but I would point out that the Chinese over the past few decades have been guilty of some of the very worst human rights violations that we’ve seen anywhere, and yet Labour’s hypocrisy is capable of allowing it to have these two totally different approaches at the same time. I think that this is madness.

Reform UK insists National Rally agreed migrant policy after backlash in France

Reform UK has insisted its deal with France’s far-right National Rally to return migrants back across the Channel was fully approved by the party and signed off by its president, Jordan Bardella, amid a furious backlash in France. Rowena Mason and Angelique Chrisafis have the story.

Israeli foreign minister Gideon Saar thanks Badenoch for her ‘firm opposition’ to UK sanctions

Gideon Saar , the Israeli foreign minister, has thanked Kemi Badenoch for her “firm opposition” to the government’s sanctions against his country. They spoke last night and afterward he posted this on social media.

Great conversation this evening with UK Opposition Leader @KemiBadenoch and Shadow Foreign Secretary @TomTugendhat.

I thanked them for their firm opposition to the hostile Labour Government’s announcement today and its series of anti-Israel policies since taking office.

I welcomed their support for the friendship with Israel and their commitment for the future relations between our countries. We know that we have many friends in the UK, but unfortunately we are faced with the ongoing hostility of the current Labour government.

I also thanked Kemi for her warm wishes ahead of the Jewish New Year.

Miliband says he is ‘confident’ that security cooperation with Israel will continue despite backlash over sanctions

In his interview on the Today programme, Ed Miliband also said that he was “confident our security cooperation with Israel will continue” despite the sanctions.

The Tories are claiming the government’s move puts that cooperation in jeopardy, and that British lives are at risk as a result .

Asked why he was confident that there would not be a problem, “given how angry [the Israelis] are”, Miliband replied:

I won’t go into the details of this, but we have important intelligence and security relationships with Israel and I’m confident they will continue.

And I was very clear yesterday that we do believe in working with our Israeli partners when it comes to the threats they face from Iran. For example, I announced new sanctions on Iran yesterday.

Miliband confirms UK sanctions could hit Israeli banks dealing with West Bank settlers

Emma Graham-Harrison wrote a good explainer for the Guardian yesterday about the potential impact of the sanctions imposed by Ed Miliband .

She explained that, while the most obvious part of the announcement relates to the ban on the import of goods produced in settlements, the measures relating to financial services are potentially much more significant.

She said:

Miliband highlighted that the Israeli settler population in occupied Palestine had almost tripled over the past three decades, from 270,000 in 1993 to 770,000 today.

That expansion is underpinned by large government subsidies. A trade ban alone would be unlikely to have much impact on the viability of construction that is a government priority, or on the broader Israeli economy.

However, plans to place sanctions on any company that finances or facilitates settlement expansion could force Israel’s main banks and insurance companies to choose between their business interests in the UK and those in occupied Palestine.

Miliband has not provided details of the new measures, which he said would take between six and nine months to put in place. But they have the potential to slow or stop construction.

The activist Yehuda Shaul wrote in a social media post about new building projects: “Companies that bid for tenders on government-led projects, including settlement expansion, must have a financial guarantor. Without the backing of Israeli financial institutions, these projects cannot occur.”

Some Israeli commentators have expressed doubts as to whether, in practice, these sanctions really will cover mainstream Israeli banks. But, in his interview on the Today programme this morning, Miliband insisted they could.

He said:

I also make this wider point, because this is about a substantive intervention to make a difference to the facts on the ground.

With our sanctions regime, we are also seeking to cut off the supply of the supply lines of British finance, British construction, for settlement expansion. This is about a clear purpose, which is to draw a line in the sand and to stop this infinite, ever-expanding settlement expansion.

Asked if Israeli banks would be covered too, Miliband replied:

The way this works is that we sanction companies, and we don’t name the companies in advance. We sanction companies that might be engaging in the occupied territories. And then it is about the relationship with British citizens and British companies.

When Justin Webb , the presenter, put it to Miliband that this meant the sanctions would go much wider than just applying to people “selling dates”, and that they would apply to companies in Israel with relationships with settler companies, Miliband replied:

Yes, because this is about seeking to have an impact on the services that are provided to expand the occupation.

And we are very serious about making a substantive difference and using the power of our sanctions regime to make a difference to the facts on the ground.

A spokesperson for the Israeli embassy in London has accused the UK of deploying a diplomatic “nuclear option” against his country.

In an interview with the Today programme this morning, Alex Gandler said:

A response and a conversation between friends is something that is wanted.

Operating a nuclear option of sanction between democratic countries, especially towards a country that is at war for the past few years and is fighting a shared enemy in Iran, is something that is unheard of.

Hence, our assessment that this has nothing to do with realities on the ground and everything to do with the fact that there’s politics involved.

Gandler also claimed the timing of the announcement was particularly bad.

The timing couldn’t be worse than it is regarding Israel, as we are less than 50 days away from elections in the country, days away from our high holidays in Israel.

It definitely does not promote the relationship between Israel and the United Kingdom, that is for sure, and it does create an atmosphere for violence against Jews.

The BBC’s Tom Bateman has posted this on social media . It is the sign outside the UK consulate in Jerusalem that Israel is now closing. (See 9.21am .)

Bateman says:

The very long standing sign that used to be on the wall in the British consulate in East Jerusalem. Israel has said it will close the consulate in retaliation for the UK’s trade ban on settlements

In his interview with Sky News this morning, Miliband sidestepped a question about what Washington is telling the UK government about its decision to impose sanctions on Israel relating to the illegal West Bank settlements.

Miliband said:

I’ll let our American friends speak for themselves.

We obviously talked to them in advance of our announcement.

You know, I think the whole international community has been quite frustrated, to put it mildly, with some of the actions of the Israeli government.

I will let them say what they feel, but I think there is real concern about what is happening … Underlying so many of the conflicts in the Middle East is this failure to really grasp the situation between Israel and Palestine, and this is why it’s in our interest to act.

Miliband plays down significance of Israel’s retaliatory measures, saying UK sanctions still ‘right thing to do’

In his interview with Sky News this morning, Ed Miliband , the foreign secretary, said that he regretted the fact that Israel is ordering the UK to close its consulate in Jerusalem in response to the UK sanctions . But he said the government had weighed up “the costs and benefits” of its move in advance.

He said:

I regret what the Israeli government has announced, but I’m proud of what we did yesterday and it was the right thing to do.

It will be damaging, that’s true, but we weighed up the costs and the benefits in advance of this.

And we did something very important. We talked to the representatives of the Palestinian people, the Palestinian prime minister, the representative here, and they both said to us with a very clear voice, you need to act from our point of view.

He added:

I would prefer that Israel hadn’t announced what it did, but overall, I strongly believe that what we did, along with other international allies, was absolutely the right thing to do.

Miliband defends sanctions on Israeli settlements and pushes back against chief rabbi’s criticism

Good morning. Yesterday Ed Miliband , the foreign secretary, made what may turn out to be one of the most important Commons statements of the year. Here is our overnight report by Pippa Crerar, Jessica Elgot and Kiran Stacey.

Here is an analysis by Patrick Wintour , the Guardian’s diplomatic editor.

And here is the Guardian’s editorial .

It starts: “Rarely in recent years has the Commons felt like the cockpit of history. On Tuesday it did.”

Ministers were worried about a backlash from Donald Trump. So far, that has not happened, and in the US Axios is reporting that, when Andy Burnham spoke to Trump on Monday, “two sources with knowledge of the call said Trump didn’t push back or ask Burnham to change course”. In his report for Axios, Barak Ravid says: “US officials told their British counterparts they shared their concerns about the Netanyahu government’s West Bank policy, even if they disagreed with these specific sanctions, sources say.”

But in the UK some of the leading organisations representing the Jewish community have strongly condemned the decision to ban trade with Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and Sir Ephraim Mirvis , the chief rabbi, described yesterday as “truly a dark day for British Jews”. The rightwing papers are all leading their coverage on his remarks.

Miliband has been giving interviews this morning, and he has said he does not agree.

Asked about the chief rabbi’s statement, Miliband told Sky News:

Well, I’m a proud British Jew, and I don’t agree with the chief rabbi.

I have great respect for the chief rabbi, but I don’t agree with him, and I believe that it must be possible to do what we did yesterday, which is to stand up for British values of the rule of law, of dignity for people, of the prevention of injustice, and do so in a way, as I did yesterday, to say to anyone in our country who holds British Jews responsible for the actions of the Israeli government, that is antisemitism, pure and simple.

We will hear from Andy Burnham on this later at PMQs.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9am: Zack Polanski, the Green party leader, speaks at the Wild Summit in Bristol. Words and video planned

From 9am: David Anderson and Jonathan Hall, the former and current independent reviewer of terror legislation respectively, are among those giving evidence to phase two of the Southport inquiry, looking at Prevent’s role in managing violence-fixated individuals.

10am: Prof Alexis Jay, chair of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), is among the experts giving evidence to the London assembly’s police and crime committee on grooming gangs.

Noon: Andy Burnham faces Kemi Badenoch at PMQs .

After 12.30pm: Heidi Alexander, the transport secretary, may make a Commons statement on the air traffic control chaos . She is also opening the second reading debate on the civil aviation bill.

I’m afraid we are no longer able to have comments open below the line every day on this blog . If you want to contact me, please email politics.live@theguardian.com. You can use this email to flag up corrections, comments for publication, questions or complaints.

Trump center stage at RNC in midterms gamble – US politics live | US news | The Guardian

News, , ,

Keyword – US news
Trefwoorden – US news, Donald Trump, Republicans, US politics, JD Vance, US midterm elections 2026
Title – Trump center stage at RNC in midterms gamble – US politics live | US news | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/tom-ambrose
Link – Trump center stage at RNC in midterms gamble – US politics live | US news | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-09-09T10:32:52.000Z
Category – News
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2026/sep/09/donald-trump-rnc-republican-national-convention-jd-vance-midterms-latest-news-updates

Republicans put Trump center stage for convention in US midterms gamble

Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.

Donald Trump is due to address Republicans tonight at the party’s first ever national convention ahead of the crucial midterm elections, with the GOP hoping to energize voters as it fights to hold its narrow congressional majorities.

The two-day gathering takes place in Dallas, marking a break from the longstanding tradition of holding national conventions only during presidential election years.

“It has never been done before, and will be a truly Historic Event,” Trump said in July while announcing the convention, promising the convention would feature “Great Entertainment”.

Trump first floated the idea for a convention last year, arguing that it would provide an opportunity to showcase his administration’s achievements since he returned to the White House in 2024.

More than 100 House members and candidates are expected, with over 50 speakers or presentations scheduled each night.

Trump delivers this evening’s keynote speech and returns for Thursday’s finale after vice-president JD Vance speaks. Cabinet members, congressional leaders and candidates in closely watched House and Senate races are also on the program.

Republicans plan to highlight tax cuts, immigration enforcement, manufacturing and prescription drug prices, while depicting Democrats as dangerously far to the left.

In other developments:

Clashing court rulings plunged Missouri’s congressional elections into uncertainty. The US Supreme Court decided not to intervene to reinstate a Donald Trump-backed US House map, upholding a a ruling from the state’s highest state court that prevented the use of the map in the November elections. But shortly after a federal judge temporarily barred the state from using its old congressional maps in November.

The US military destroyed five Iranian crude oil carriers after a US navy warship was targeted with ballistic missiles. Iran had targeted the warship twice over two days, the US Central Command said.

The US will ban Canadian dairy products, motorcycles and most alcoholic beverages. The move marked an escalation in the ongoing trade war between the North American countries, and comes just after Canada announced retaliatory tariffs on $20bn in US goods.

Congressman Chris Pappas beat back progressive challenger Karishma Manzur in the New Hampshire Democratic primary for US Senate. Former senator John E Sununu, who is backed by Trump, won the state’s Republican Senate primary.

Lonnie G Bunch III announced he is stepping down as secretary of the Smithsonian Institution after seven years in the role amid Donald Trump’s unprecedented crackdown on the world’s largest museum’s autonomy.

UK flight cancellations top 2,000 as pressure grows on air traffic control boss on second day of travel chaos – business live | Business | The Guardian

News, , , ,

Keyword – Business
Trefwoorden – Business, Stock markets, Currencies, Commodities, Airline industry
Title – UK flight cancellations pass 1,900 as pressure grows on air traffic control boss on second day of travel chaos – business live | Business | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/juliakollewe
Link – UK flight cancellations pass 1,900 as pressure grows on air traffic control boss on second day of travel chaos – business live | Business | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-09-09T10:25:20.000Z
Category – News
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/business/live/2026/sep/09/nats-boss-to-meet-uk-transport-secretary-as-second-day-of-flight-chaos-takes-cancelllations-past-1300-business-live

More than 1,900 flights cancelled over two days, according to Cirium

In total, more 1,900 flights had been cancelled by 5am today, according to the aviation analytics company Cirium, since yesterday’s system issue at National Air Traffic Services .

Nats provides air traffic control services to 15 UK airports. While the technical problem has been resolved, the flight chaos has continued into a second day. Other flights have been delayed, causing chaos for tens of thousands of passenggers travelling to and from the UK.

Cirium says:

8 September: More than 1,750 flights arriving into and departing from UK airports were cancelled — 902 departures and 860 arrivals, out of 5,800 scheduled. A normal day is under 1–2%.

9 September: So far, 153 flights are cancelled — 55 departures and 98 arrivals. Just over 3%.

Ryanair calls on UK transport secretary to sack Nats boss

Martin Rolfe , the chief executive of National Air Traffic Services , has been summoned by the UK transport secretary Heidi Alexander this morning to answer questions about yesterday’s system issue that has led to widespread flight chaos.

Ryanair , the UK’s largest airline, has called Alexander to sack Rolfe, after the UK boss of Wizz Air urged him to consider resigning.

Ryanair highlighted the frequent and repeated failures of the Nats air traffic control system under Rolfe’s leadership – failures that are not replicated in any other EU air traffic control provider. It said yesterday’s problem, described as a “flight plan processing failure,” was the same as the one that caused a system outage in August 2023, when Rolfe promised this would not happen again.

Yesterday’s latest NATS system failure shows that the primary system is unreliable, and the backup system is useless.

Ryanair’s CEO Michael O’Leary said:

Martin Rolfe’s position as NATS CEO is untenable. We don’t need more ‘investigations’, we don’t need more “reports”, and we don’t need another parliamentary committee hearing where Martin Rolfe will promise change, will promise resilience, and will promise an effective backup system. Martin Rolfe is an overpaid (£1.4m p.a.) failure. It is time for his removal, and it is time that somebody competent was appointed to run UK ATC, which is one of Europe’s most expensive ATC systems, and yet it keeps repeatedly failing.

Under Martin Rolfe’s watch, UK NATS has spent more money paying dividends to its shareholders (the UK Govt and UK airlines), but it has failed to invest in a resilient primary system, has failed to invest in an effective backup system, and as yesterday’s events show now UK NATS keeps failing under Martin Rolfe’s leadership.

Transport Minister Heidi Alexander, who owns 49% of NATS, must today demand that failing Martin Rolfe must quit, or be dismissed. Airlines and passengers serving the UK keep picking up the tab for Martin Rolfe’s repeated failures. It is time for this expensive, failing CEO to go, and allow UK NATS to be led by somebody competent and capable of delivering a resilient system and a backup system that actually works.

Prices at the pump spike, AA and RAC say

Petrol and diesel prices at the pump have also gone up, according to the AA and RAC motoring groups.

The AA said petrol prices have gone up by 4.4p a litre since the Bank Holiday last week. Diesel is up 4.1p a litre since 1 September. Yesterday, the two fuels averaged 166.2 and 187.7p a litre respectively.

The RAC said the average price of unleaded has increased by 5p a litre in just the last week to reach 167.17p, while diesel has gone up by the same amount to 188.63p. This means the cost of filling a family-size car has increased by £2.75 over this short period.

RAC senior policy officer Rod Dennis said:

Drivers are having to dig ever deeper into their pockets every time they fill up, and there’s no sign of any relief yet. With the cost of a barrel of oil having averaged $96 for the last week, wholesale prices are surging and that’s already feeding through to prices at the forecourt.

The latest price rises throw into sharp focus just how exposed UK drivers can be to events thousands of miles away, and will likely increase calls for the chancellor to demonstrate support for households already struggling with the rising cost of living. As things stand, fuel duty – which, together with tax, accounts for half of the cost of every litre of petrol we buy – is set to start rising from January but we believe there is a very strong case for leaving it at its current level, at least until the end of the parliament.

With no end to the US/Iran conflict in sight, there’s little drivers can do to protect themselves from rising prices, apart from driving as efficiently as possible.

Luke Bosdet , the AA’s spokesman on pump prices, said:

Once again, with petrol wholesale costs shooting up to their highest since the Ukraine war, we can see average pump prices wasting no time in reflecting that. However, there are savings to be made by those drivers prepared to use the Fuel Finder tools now available to them.

However, what also irritates drivers in England, Scotland and Wales is the persistent 6p gap between what they pay on average for fuel and the cheaper petrol and diesel in Northern Ireland. AA analysis of yesterday’s prices registered with Fuel Finder shows that, in fact, hundreds of fuel stations on the mainland manage to retail fuel at prices on a par with Northern Ireland.

The trouble is, as the Competition and Markets Authrity reported, the vast majority choose to over-price petrol and diesel at the expense of commuters, families and businesses. Little wonder that electric vehicle sales have been booming this summer.

European stock markets slide while energy stocks are higher

Energy companies BP , Shell and British Gas parent Centrica are among the main risers on the FTSE 100 index today, as the oil price surged through $100 a barrel, for the first time since 24 July.

Centrica shares are up 2.1%, BP has gained 1.5% and Shell is 0.9% ahead.

The wider FTSE 100 index is trading lower, down 0.6% or 66 points at 10,745. The German, French, Italian and Spanish indices have fallen even more, between 1.1% and 1.9%.

Daniela Hathorn , senior market analyst at the trading platform capital.com, said:

Markets remain on the defensive as the latest escalation in the Middle East pushes Brent to $100 a barrel. US forces have struck Iranian oil tankers following attempted attacks on US naval vessels, while Iran retaliated against a US-used base in Jordan and says it targeted vessels attempting to cross the strait of Hormuz. Houthi attacks on Saudi energy facilities have widened the threat further, raising concerns that disruption could spread beyond Iranian supply to the infrastructure and alternative routes that have helped keep Gulf crude flowing. That has brought the inflationary consequences of the conflict firmly back into focus. Wall Street fell on Tuesday as higher crude revived concerns that the energy shock could stall disinflation and force central banks to remain restrictive. US rate expectations have shifted accordingly, while upcoming inflation data will be particularly important in determining whether $100 oil is beginning to feed more materially into the Fed[eral Reserve] outlook. Europe faces an even more immediate policy test with the European Central Bank meeting on Thursday. Markets are widely positioned for a 25 basis point hike, after the ECB explicitly warned in July that the full inflationary impact of the energy shock had yet to emerge. The latest surge in oil, and European gas prices, makes that concern harder to dismiss. Focus will be on Christine Lagarde ’s guidance on whether this is sufficient insurance against the energy shock or whether further tightening remains likely.

UK and European gas prices surge to multi-year highs

UK and European gas prices have risen to a multi-year highs, while the oil price jumped above $100 a barrel.

The escalating Middle East conflict, cooler weather and rising Asian gas prices has led to aggressive gas buying ahead of the winter.

The benchmark Dutch gas contract leapt nearly 4% to €78.73 per megawatt hour, the highest since January 2023.

The British contract rose 7.77 pence 196.57p per therm, the highest since late December 2022.

In oil markets, Brent crude surged through $100 a barrel for the first time since July, rising 2.7% to $100.68 a barrel.

European gas stores are only 67% full, compared to 79.5% a year ago, according to data from Gas Infrastructure Europe.

Analysts at HSBC are forecasting that European stock levels will reach 73% by 1 November, the lowest since data collection began in 2009, and do not expect Qatari liquefied natural gas exports, excluding damaged facilities, to return to normal until early next year at the earliest.

British Airways has cancelled more than 190 flights today because of yesterday’s Nats outage.

The technical issue has been resolved, but there is still chaos at UK airports.

More than 1,900 flights cancelled over two days, according to Cirium

In total, more 1,900 flights had been cancelled by 5am today, according to the aviation analytics company Cirium, since yesterday’s system issue at National Air Traffic Services .

Nats provides air traffic control services to 15 UK airports. While the technical problem has been resolved, the flight chaos has continued into a second day. Other flights have been delayed, causing chaos for tens of thousands of passenggers travelling to and from the UK.

Cirium says:

8 September: More than 1,750 flights arriving into and departing from UK airports were cancelled — 902 departures and 860 arrivals, out of 5,800 scheduled. A normal day is under 1–2%.

9 September: So far, 153 flights are cancelled — 55 departures and 98 arrivals. Just over 3%.

UK airport disruption: what are your rights if you have been affected?

We’ve done a handy explainer.

UK boss of Wizz Air urges Nats CEO to consider resigning

The UK boss of Wizz Air has urged Martin Rolfe to consider resigning over the repeated technical failures at National Air Traffic Services .

Yvonne Moynihan , the managing director of Wizz Air UK, said Wizz Air had 24 cancellations on Tuesday and more than 21 flights had long delays, so over 10,000 passengers coming in and out of London were disrupted at the Hungarian budget carrier alone.

“It’s completely unacceptable that the travelling public has to pay for this,” told BBC radio 4’s Today programme.

This is now the third time that we have had an ATC [air traffic control] failure, and during the peak period as well. So major questions need to be asked. At the moment, of course, the immediate priority is getting passengers to their destinations. But the longer term question really is understanding what exactly has happened and how has this happened on three different occasions? There are serious questions about the resilience of the system.

Asked whether the Nats boss should resign, she said:

In any industry when you’ve had three failures you need to consider three strikes and you’re out. It’s certainly something that he needs to look at.

A third time and a third excuse is not enough any more. What we need to see from leadership is accountability. There are serious questions about the resilience of the system.

I think Nats and the leadership need to look deep inside themselves.

What we need to see from the leadership is accountability and reassurance that we won’t face these repeated failures.

Oil price hits $100 a barrel for first time since July

Brent crude has just hit $100 a barrel for the first time since 24 July, as military strikes in the Middle East escalate.

Brent crude, the global oil benchmark, jumped to $100.19 a barrel, up more than $2, and a 2.2% increase. The oil price has risen by a quarter since early last month as hopes vanish for a deal between the US and Iran to end the six-month war that began with air strikes by the US and Israel on Tehran on 28 February.

This week, attacks by Iran-backed Houthi rebels from Yemen have set Saudi oil facilities ablaze, in an escalation of the conflict. The attacks could threaten oil shipments via the Red Sea, an alernative route to the strait of Hormuz which has been effectively closed for months.

The boss of National Air Traffic Services, which is half-owned by the government, has insisted that the organisation has invested enough in its systems.

Martin Rolfe told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:

Nats was actually a partial privatisation, 25 years ago, and since that point has had access to funding, we’ve invested way more than a billion [pounds], in technology over that time. Our service has consistently improved. Our safety has consistently improved from a very good base. But all of those things don’t detract from the fact that when these things happen, it is disappointing and upsetting, for which I apologise.

We are in a critical national infrastructure business where safety is our priority and it runs 24/7. It runs, you know, every single day of the year, every minute of the day, every minute of the night. It is never quiet in UK skies. Inevitably, things do go wrong in complex systems. We never want them to. We always hope they won’t, but we absolutely plan for them to and make sure we handle them properly.

When asked if they “go as wrong in other countries”, Rolfe replied:

Absolutely. In fact, I would say the UK has one of the best reputations in the world for its air traffic control service, both from a safety perspective and from a resilience perspective.

We do have one of the best systems and one of the best services in the world. and that’s consistently recognised globally.

Ed Miliband: ‘We can’t have this happen again’

The UK cannot have a repeat of the travel disruption seen at airports, the foreign secretary has said.

Asked about the flight chaos, Ed Miliband told BBC Breakfast:

First of all, I want to apologise to all of the passengers who have faced disruption.

This is frankly unacceptable. It was a problem at the National Air Traffic Service, but we can’t have this happen again.

The transport secretary, Heidi Alexander , is calling in the head of the National Air Traffic Service this morning to get answers to this. Miliband added:

Frankly, we’ve got to have our airports running smoothly and properly, without those problems, and that is what the transport secretary will be asking for from the head of the National Air Traffic Service.

Nats boss rules out cyber attack as he apologises to passengers

The boss of National Air Traffic Services , Martin Rolfe , has ruled out a cyber attack as a cause of the flight chaos, and apologised to passengers caught up in the flight chaos caused by a system issue on Tuesday, and said he understands their frustration –- but stressed that safety comes first.

Speaking to BBC radio 4’s Today programme, he said:

I’d like to start, as you might expect, by apologising to everyone who’s been impacted by the issue that we had yesterday.

In terms of the recovery, I absolutely understand the frustration. There is nothing we hate more than delaying people, and not allowing them to get to their destination. It disrupts airports and disrupts airlines. And we absolutely take accountability and responsibility for that. That is our job. But our job is also to make sure that people stay safe. We never do this lightly.

He ruled out a cyber attack.

We will be doing a very, very thorough and full investigation. We have at this point ruled out cyber. We don’t believe it was a cyber attack.

Obviously my focus and that of the team has been on both getting our system operating back up normally, which it is now. But there’s obviously a huge tail to the disruption. And we’ll be working on that through the course of today.

And then obviously our attention will turn to exactly what’s happened, this particular incident. What I will say is I don’t believe we’ve ever seen an incident happen more than once. So this will be something different that we’ve never seen in 50 years of operation.

Rolfe insisted that Nats dealt with the issue as quickly as it could:

We had everybody on site. Everybody was in the right place. We had all the engineers in place. We had our various partners from software industries and so on, all on hand. So this was resolved as quickly as it could be , but within the limits of making sure that it all stayed safe .

Oil prices rise towards $100 a barrel

In the markets, oil prices are rising towards the $100 a barrel level for the first time since July.

Brent crude has jumped 1.5% to $99.36 a barrel, as escalating attacks across the Middle East are fuelling fears over supply disruptions.

Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen launched strikes on several Saudi cities while US forces hit several Iranian oil tankers and Iran targeted a US base in Jordan and attacked ships.

There is some confusion over the situation at Heathrow airport.

Heathrow said on X this morning:

Following yesterday’s NATS technical issue, flights are operating today, but some disruption may continue as airlines reposition aircraft and crew. Please check your flight status with your airline before travelling to the airport and only travel if your flight is confirmed to be operating.

We apologise to those affected and have extra colleagues across our terminals to support passengers while we work with NATS and airline partners to restore normal operations as quickly as possible.

However, the flight tracking website Flightradar24 says 177 flights have been cancelled so far on Wednesday, nearly all at London-Heathrow.

Air traffic control boss to meet UK transport secretary as second day of flight chaos takes cancellations past 1,300

Good morning, and welcome to our rolling coverage of business, the financial markets and the world economy.

The boss of the air traffic control provider Nats has been summoned by the UK transport secretary, as flight chaos carried on into a second day after a system issue, with after more than 1,300 flights cancelled to and from UK airports.

National Air Traffic Services provides air traffic control services to 15 UK airports. Its chief executive Martin Rolfe is due to speak to Heidi Alexander , before she addresses MPs in the Commons for the second reading of the Civil Aviation Bill.

Tens of thousands of passengers have been caught up in the chaos, with more cancellations and delays expected as airlines deal with the knock-on effects at airports including Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester and Stansted.

According to FlightRadar, 246 flights had been cancelled at Heathrow Airport by 6am on Wednesday, while Gatwick passengers faced 33 cancellations.

Rolfe said he “always accept(s) full responsibility” when asked if he was considering his position after the incident.

He told Sky News:

I am the CEO of a piece of critical infrastructure, so it is my job to take responsibility for that.

What I absolutely take responsibility for is keeping people safe and delivering the best service we possibly can on a day like today.

You will understand my focus is entirely about how we actually resolve this issue, get things back to normal, help our airlines, our airport customers and the travelling public.

The “technical issue” at the air traffic control services provider Nats caused Britain’s third major stoppage in just over three years. Nats said on Tuesday evening:

This has been a very complex recovery and has created difficulties for the whole aviation network, from which it will take time to recover.

The breakdown started at about 1pm on Tuesday and affected departing flights at many of Britain’s biggest airports including Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester and Stansted. By the time Nats said it had fixed its flight processing system almost four hours later, most flights scheduled to depart were yet to take off. The disruption spread to include incoming flights to much of southern England.

US allies lack resources to keep pace on AI, top Pentagon official says | US military | The Guardian

News, News around the world, , , , ,

Keyword – US news
Trefwoorden – US military, AI (artificial intelligence), US news, World news, Technology, Computing
Title – US allies lack resources to keep pace on AI, top Pentagon official says | US military | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/joseph-gedeon
Link – US allies lack resources to keep pace on AI, top Pentagon official says | US military | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-09-09T10:00:05.000Z
Category – News
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/sep/09/us-military-pentagon-allies-ai

The Pentagon’s top artificial intelligence official said on Tuesday that America’s closest allies lack the resources to keep pace with the US military’s adoption of AI, and that Washington is working to steer them away from mistakes it made along the way.

“They don’t have the resources that we do, they don’t have the experience that we do, they don’t have the scale that we do,” Cameron Stanley, chief digital and artificial intelligence officer at the Department of War, said at an event at the Billington Cybersecurity summit. Of Nato and the Five Eyes, an intelligence-sharing partnership of the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, Stanley said Washington was “actively working with a number of our partners” so “they don’t make the same mistakes that we make”.

The comments come less than a year into Stanley’s tenure, during which the Pentagon’s AI office has rolled out several new tools while losing a number of senior staff. Since January, Stanley has overseen the launch of GenAI.mil, an internal chatbot platform he says has reached 1.7 million users, and Agent Network, a system designed to shorten the time between intelligence-gathering and a commander’s decision. Pentagon secretary Pete Hegseth has directed Stanley’s office to report AI deployment speed as a monthly metric, part of a wider push to expand military computing power.

Much of Stanley’s appearance focused on speed. He described watching a commander halt a scheduled briefing to take a 30-second phone call and issue an order on the spot, without a formal decision brief or a review of the room’s security clearance level. He called the moment “revolutionary”.

“I know it sounds simplistic,” Stanley explained. “It’s only simplistic because we’re good at it now.”

It’s a term he has used before. Project Maven, the Pentagon’s original AI targeting program launched in 2017, became the Palantir-built Maven Smart System, which the US leaned on heavily during its 2026 air campaign against Iran, helping strike more than 13,000 targets over the first 38 days , according to Stanley at conference in May. Speaking at Palantir’s AIPCon 9 conference in March , Stanley called Maven “revolutionary” too, saying it let commanders go from identifying a target to launching a strike within a single platform.

But the campaign has drawn scrutiny . More than 120 members of the US Congress signed a letter demanding answers from the Pentagon regarding civilian casualties and the use of artificial intelligence, following a 28 February strike on an elementary school in Minab, which Iranian officials say killed at least 168 people, many of them children.

Stanley ended by telling the audience that the department’s old habits were now its biggest liability.

“The way we’ve always done it is the most risky course of action,” he said, adding that the department needs to “think differently” if it wants AI tools in the hands of warfighters faster.

Miliband rejects chief rabbi’s claim that West Bank sanctions put UK Jews at risk | Foreign policy | The Guardian

News, , , , , , ,

Keyword – Politics
Trefwoorden – Foreign policy, Israel, Ed Miliband, UK news, West Bank, Palestine, Trade policy
Title – Miliband rejects chief rabbi’s claim that West Bank sanctions put UK Jews at risk | Foreign policy | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/aletha-adu
Link – Miliband rejects chief rabbi’s claim that West Bank sanctions put UK Jews at risk | Foreign policy | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-09-09T09:15:28.000Z
Category – News
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/sep/09/ed-miliband-rejects-chief-rabbi-claim-west-bank-sanctions-british-jews-less-safe

Ed Miliband has rejected warnings from the UK’s chief rabbi that the government’s sanctions against illegal Israeli settlements will make British Jews less safe, as he emphasised ministers can confront the actions of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government while also fighting antisemitism.

The foreign secretary announced sweeping sanctions on trade with Israeli settlements in the West Bank on Tuesday, with the government taking the position that Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territory was unlawful.

The measures were coordinated with France, Canada and nine other countries that were also introducing sanctions on Israel over the increasing expansion of settlements, which the UK government says is threatening the future of a Palestinian state.

In a joint statement, leaders including Andy Burnham, Emmanuel Macron and Mark Carney said: “The time has come to take further action to uphold our commitment to protect the two-state solution, our interests and to stand up for our values, before it is too late.”

The chief rabbi, Sir Ephraim Mirvis, called the UK sanctions a “dark day for British Jews” and said they could embolden people who “use hatred as a weapon against Jews”.

Milliband, who describes himself as a “proud British Jew”, said he did not agree with Mirvis. Asked on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme whether he was saying the chief rabbi was wrong, Miliband replied: “Yes, I am saying I don’t agree with the chief rabbi, somebody over whom I have great respect.”

He added: “I just want to be very, very clear. As I said it in my statement yesterday, anyone who holds British Jews, or indeed Jews around the world, responsible for the actions of the Israeli government is engaging in antisemitism, pure and simple.

“And it must be possible to stand up in our society for British values of freedom, dignity, and against oppression and injustice, and do so as I believe I did yesterday in a way that calls out antisemitism.”

The foreign secretary was pressed on the chief rabbi’s fear that British Jews could feel less safe as a result of the sanctions and was challenged by the BBC presenter, Justin Webb, who suggested Mirvis’s claim could mean less to Miliband because he did not attend synagogue.

“No, I don’t agree with that,” said Miliband, adding: “Antisemitism is a scourge and an evil … I want Jews, I want people of all faiths and none to feel safe in our country.”

Tuesday’s sanctions announcement also prompted a swift backlash from Israel, which ordered the closure of the British consulate in Jerusalem and banned 12 British MPs and activists from entering Israel.

Washington’s ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, threatened that the US could take retaliatory action over trade, but the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said the US would “obviously” not follow the UK government’s actions but did not want to see the West Bank destabilised.

Miliband told Sky News he would “let our American friends speak for themselves” but insisted the international community had been “quite frustrated to put it mildly, with some of the actions of the Israeli government”.

The foreign secretary said he regretted what the Israeli government had announced but was “proud of what we did yesterday and it was the right thing to do”.

Miliband accepted the closure of the British consulate in Jerusalem would be “damaging” but said the government had “weighed up the costs and benefits in advance if this”.

The government is set to enact:

An import ban on goods from illegal settlements in the occupied territories and a new ban for arms licences and other exports that “materially contribute to the occupation”.

A comprehensive sanctions regime against providing services such as construction or financing for Israeli settlements and a ban on advertising them in the UK.

Personal sanctions against the main individuals accused of promoting settler violence.

A new ban for arms licences and other exports that “materially contribute to the occupation”.

Miliband made an impassioned statement in the Commons on Tuesday, recounting the horrific tales he had heard from Palestinians in the West Bank, whose homes had been destroyed, and doctors in Gaza who saw children dying while waiting for treatment.

The prime minister, Andy Burnham, said the sanctions were “the right thing to do” and emphasised they were aimed “not at the Israeli people”. Burnham is due to face MPs over this issue at prime minister’s questions.

‘I am seen as a Marmite figure’: Margaret Hodge on political battles, victories, errors – and regrets | Margaret Hodge | The Guardian

News, , , ,

Keyword – Politics
Trefwoorden – Margaret Hodge, Labour, Politics, UK news, Antisemitism
Title – ‘I am seen as a Marmite figure’: Margaret Hodge on political battles, victories, errors – and regrets | Margaret Hodge | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/simonhattenstone
Link – ‘I am seen as a Marmite figure’: Margaret Hodge on political battles, victories, errors – and regrets | Margaret Hodge | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-09-09T09:00:05.000Z
Category – News
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/sep/09/i-am-seen-as-a-marmite-figure-margaret-hodge-on-political-battles-victories-errors-and-regrets

M argaret Hodge doesn’t do small talk. “So, how d’you think Andy’s doing?” is her opening gambit. “Not too bad, huh? I think he’s had a really good start.” It’s classic Hodge – sufficiently curious to ask the question about the new Labour prime minister, and assertive enough to provide the answer before you get yours out. “Yep. Fantastic empathy. But then he’s got to deliver. I think the budget is going to be the key moment. And we’ve also got these awful global challenges and Iran and Hormuz. God, it’s a mess. Ugh . Hahahaha!” She hoots with laughter at the horror of it all.

She says she was against ousting Keir Starmer. “I thought we were doing so badly that what we really needed was a complete change in what we were about, what our ambitions were, where we were going, what our priorities were and how we were going to have a message of hope. I thought it was about much more than Keir at that point. I thought changing leaders was like rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic. I think I was wrong, right?”

Hodge has seen it all. Decade-long leader of Islington council when it was regarded as part of the “loony left”; Labour moderate and Blair-Brown loyalist throughout the years in power; scrapper extraordinaire who has taken on the BNP as MP for Barking, antisemitism in Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour and tax-avoiding tech companies as the formidable chair of the cross-party public accounts committee (PAC).

Now, in the week of her 82nd birthday, Hodge is publishing a memoir, Battleaxe. “I’m reclaiming the term. It shouldn’t be a term of derision. It’s a strong woman.” Who came up with the title? “If I’m absolutely honest, it was my agent. My children don’t like it, but lots of people do.”

Does she really feel like a battleaxe? “People do say: ‘Oh, you don’t want to take on Margaret.’” She stares me down, fiercely proud, big brown eyes aglint. “Can I tell you what I think about myself? I listen and reflect, but when I’ve made up my mind I’m quite strong and determined.” She reminds me of the great football manager Brian Clough, who said: “If I had an argument with a player, we would sit down for 20 minutes, talk about it, and then decide I was right.”

We are at her London home, where she lives alone. It’s every bit as immaculate and stylish as she is. “Don’t look in the garden,” she says. “It’s such a mess – I’ve been away for six weeks.” Her gardening tools are at the ready by the door. The walls are covered in lovely paintings. There are busts of her husband (the high court judge Henry Hodge, who specialised in immigration and died aged 65 in 2009) and her father (Hans Oppenheimer, who co-founded Coutinho, Caro & Co, a steel trading firm that became the multinational Stemcor). On the main wall in the living room is a gorgeous splash of abstract colour by Gillian Ayres. “I love it because it’s painted in big bold strokes and is really optimistic.” You could say much the same of Hodge.

She’s had a fascinating life. Her Jewish parents fled Germany to escape the Nazis, and she was born in Egypt. After a window was broken at her father’s business in 1948 during the first Arab-Israeli war, he took the hint. This time the family fled to Kent in England. Although they were atheists, the family’s only friends were other Jewish refugees.

On Christmas Day in 1954, when Hodge was 10, her mother died of stomach cancer. Shortly afterwards, it was decided that as the brightest child in her class, she should skip a year. So within months she had lost her mother and her peer group. She was devastated, and became increasingly unruly. Oppenheimer didn’t know what to do with her and sent her away to boarding school in Oxford, which she hated. In 1966 she graduated from the London School of Economics with a third-class honours degree in economics.

She worked in corporate market research for seven years, and did a stint as an unqualified teacher. In 1968 she married Andrew Watson, an economist with whom she had two children. She joined the Labour party in 1973, and won a seat on Islington council in the same year. A friend had told her that getting involved in local politics would keep her sane while raising a family. She was, and remains, driven by two desires – to equalise life chances and fight racism.

By 1975, she was chair of the council’s housing committee, with Henry Hodge, then a solicitor, as her deputy. In 1978, she divorced Watson and married Hodge. They went on to have two daughters. In 1982, she became leader of the council. Opponents nicknamed her Enver Hodge, a play on Enver Hoxha, the brutal communist dictator who ruled Stalinist Albania.

Hodge admits she was pretty hardline. “I don’t hold back. Henry always used to try to restrain me.” Can she give an example? “We did a walkout on Michael Heseltine because he did a conference on inner-city regeneration and he was chopping all our funding. I thought it was such hypocrisy.”

Why did Henry object to the walkout? “He said it was a daft thing to do. It was gesture politics. And in that era we were seen as engaging in too much gesture politics.” She pauses. “ But ,” she barks, “having said that, he was incredibly supportive.”

She gives another example of her gesture politics. “I refused to meet Margaret Thatcher. But she did do these awful things.”

I’m fully aware of the things she did, I say, but wasn’t it … She finishes the sentence for me. “It was stupid. It was stupid. I wouldn’t do it today, but isn’t that interesting to learn that of yourself and how you’ve changed? And it fitted with the time. She was taking on local government and the unions. She was destroying what Andy’s now going to try to recreate.”

She says that pre-Thatcher, she had so much power as a council leader, and the Iron Lady gradually stripped it away – rate-capping, grant cutting, privatisations, the abolition of the Greater London Council. “It was a terrible transformation. We did hate her. She was a Marmite figure, wasn’t she? You loved her or you hated her.”

That’s funny, I say: Marmite is how you describe yourself in Battleaxe. “Yep. Ha! This is true. I am controversial. I am seen as a Marmite figure, too. Why is that? Why is that? ” And for once she doesn’t answer her own question .

Has she been surprised by her career? “Yes. As a school kid, I never thought I’d be anybody. I thought I’d be a mum. I’d lost my mother and it made me think the only thing I want to be in life is a mum. So I feel surprised by the extent of my experience and opportunities.” There’s another thing that has surprised her – this time, not so positive. “I never thought I would become a hate figure in the way that I became sometimes.”

What does she consider her greatest achievement? “BNP,” she says instantly. “It has to be the BNP, doesn’t it?” In 2006, the neo-Nazi party won 12 of the 51 seats on Barking and Dagenham council. It looked as if it could go on to win the 2010 council election and that the BNP leader Nick Griffin could oust Hodge as MP in the general election.

Labour had committed the cardinal sin of taking the electorate for granted, Hodge says. What’s more, it was terrified of talking about migration. Meanwhile, her constituency had become unrecognisable to many. “It went from 98% white to under 50% in a generation, which is massive. If your community or my community changed liked that in a generation, we would feel unsettled. At best , unsettled. Kids in the street change, neighbours change, food in the shops changes.”

Hodge discovered her constituents were furious because they believed they were being ignored and that migrants were being prioritised for social housing. She proposed that weighting be given to people’s links to the community rather than housing being based purely on immediate need, which eventually happened.

Many fellow Labour MPs criticised her. Keith Vaz said she “appears to want to be the Alf Garnett of Islington”, while Alan Johnson accused her of pandering to the BNP. “He said that on Question Time. He was going for the deputy leadership,” Hodge says. Did they have a point? “No. I never ever caved in to the racism. Ever . E ver !”

In 2010 Labour wiped out the BNP and she trounced Griffin by 18,000 votes. How did that feel? “Very mixed because it was just under a year since Henry had died. There was a lot of ‘why is Henry not here?’ in it. But I also felt fantastic. Jubilant. If I hadn’t changed the way I’d operated politically, and knocked on doors, I think we would have had a BNP council and a BNP MP. It took me four years of work – it wasn’t just a quick three weeks before the election.”

She talks about the echoes today with Reform. “We lost control of immigration so I think what Shabana [Mahmood] is doing is really important. Now you don’t have massive delays in dealing with asylum seeker applications. People who come here have to abide by our rules, and if they don’t, they lose the right to be here. If they commit a criminal offence they should lose the right to be here.”

Really? Surely our rules are that you serve a sentence for a crime, then come out and get on with your life? I point out that many refugees are deported for minor crimes. “That changes once you’ve got your British citizenship,” she says. But under new Labour legislation, you could wait 20 years for that. “No, I agree,” she says. “I have problems with a 20-year wait.”

What was tougher, fighting the BNP or antisemitism? “The BNP was a much easier fight in an odd way. It was much clearer.” Why? “Because antisemitism was in the Labour party. It was horrible. Antisemitism is the worst of all the battles I have fought. I hated it. I absolutely hated it. It was miserable. I hated the abuse. I hated walking into rooms and thinking: ‘God, who’s for me and who’s against me in this room?’” Abuse on social media included: “The only support she deserves is a handrail to climb the gallows”.

Was she surprised when in 2018 she ended up calling Corbyn … Again she finishes the sentence for me. “ An antisemite ? Was I surprised at myself? No, that’s the battleaxe in me, isn’t it?” She had told two fellow MPs that she had planned to do it beforehand. So, I ask, was there a theatrical element to it? “I didn’t do it publicly. These two lads wanted me to say it to him on the frontbench. I said, ‘I’m not going to do that – I’ll catch him on his way out [of the House of Commons chamber]’, which is what I did.”

The 2022 report by Martin Forde KC into the toxic culture in the Labour party concluded that antisemitism was weaponised by the left and the right of the party. “I was anti-Corbyn; but no, I never used it as a weapon,” Hodge says. Does she agree in general that it was weaponised on both sides? “Yes, probably. I think there was some weaponising.”

If she saw Corbyn now, what would she say to him? “He doesn’t talk to me. Haha! He passes me by. Haha! Ignores me.” She chuckles with satisfaction. The Labour party asked her to apologise to Corbyn, but she told it where to go. After the party dropped its investigation in August 2018, she told Sky News: “On the day that I heard that they were going to discipline me and possibly suspend me, it felt almost like … what did it feel like to be a Jew in Germany in the 30s?”

Was this when she felt most hated in politics? “Yep.” Has it left scars? “It’s still there. But it’s a joy now to be in the Labour party. When Keir became leader, he single-mindedly tackled antisemitism. I hadn’t expected that and I appreciate it. But it’s a part of my life, so it doesn’t disappear.” Now she says it took Corbyn to help her rediscover her identity. “It’s brought me back to feeling an empathy with who I am – a Jewish immigrant refugee.”

What is her biggest regret in politics? She immediately cites the sexual abuse scandal in Islington children’s homes when she was leader of the council. “I just don’t think any of us thought paedophiles were operating out of children’s homes. It was unconscionable. Now it’s unconscionable today to think that we didn’t realise it. That’s probably caused me more political problems than anything.” She had just been made the UK’s first children’s minister when the scandal became headline news again decades later in 2003. She offered her resignation to Tony Blair, who refused it.

But many people knew it was going on and told you so? “We went through each allegation, and I had all the officers there and they denied any of this was happening. Remember, back then kids in care were called naughty. Today that is unconscionable, isn’t it? I’d listened to all the officers, but I didn’t talk to the kids, and that’s a regret.”

What was even more unconscionable is that she tried to close down an investigation by BBC Radio 4’s Today programme and called Demetrious Panton, a child abuse survivor, an “extremely disturbed person”. She squirms when I mention it. “That was a terrible error. Terrible error.” Why did you do that? “I was advised. Everyone was ringing me up saying the Today programme was digging around and I thought: ‘How the hell can I stop this?’ That was an appalling bit of advice. But in the end I took responsibility. I did it.” Hodge was forced to issue an unreserved public apology in the high court, she paid Panton’s legal costs, and was ordered to pay him £30,000, which included a £10,000 donation to a charity of his choice.

But in the end Hodge, who now sits in the Lords, will be remembered more for exposing corruption than for covering it up. Although she never achieved high office as an MP, she became a political rock star as chair of the PAC between 2010 and 2015. She was convinced it was going to be a dull job when she took it on, yet it proved anything but. The cross-party committee tasked with assessing the value for money of government projects became a must-watch as corporate executives and senior civil servants were held to account for dodging taxes, playing fast and loose with public money, failing to answer questions or simply being rude.

Hodge proved herself a fearless one-woman grilling machine. Google’s Matt Brittin (now director general of the BBC) was well and truly Hodged when she threw the company motto back in his face, saying: “You are a company that says you ‘do no evil’. And I think that you do do evil.” After a session challenging BBC execs over excessive severance payoffs, she concluded it was “a very unedifying experience watching seven people at the top of the BBC dancing on the head of a pin to try and avoid responsibility”.

In 2024, she was made the UK’s official anti-corruption champion , a fiscal Wonder Woman fighting dirty money, offshore tax dodgers and economic crime. On her kitchen table today is a tax file she tells me I mustn’t look at on pain of death. For all of Hodge’s warmth, I tell her she can be terrifying. “Why?” Well, I’ve seen you in action on the PAC, I say.

Again, Hodge hoots with happy laughter. That’s the battleaxe, she says. Then she half-whispers, almost conspiratorially: “I’m always surprised when people say: ‘God, you don’t cross Margaret.’” But I’m not so sure she is.

Battleaxe: A Memoir by Margaret Hodge is out on 10 September, published by HarperCollins (£25). To support the Guardian and the Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com

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An embattled Donald Trump is increasingly using sports as prop | Sport | The Guardian

News, Sport, , ,

Keyword – Sport
Trefwoorden – Sport, Donald Trump, US news, US sports
Title – An embattled Donald Trump is increasingly using sports as prop | Sport | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/leanderschaerlaeckens
Link – An embattled Donald Trump is increasingly using sports as prop | Sport | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-09-09T09:00:04.000Z
Category – Sport
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2026/sep/09/donald-trump-sports

L ately, it seems Donald Trump’s scope of interests has narrowed to a few things: remaking downtown Washington DC in his gaudy image; wars he thinks he can win quickly and easily, even though he can’t.

Also, golf. Always golf. Ever golf.

We hear less and less about Trump’s plans to overhaul healthcare, reshore manufacturing jobs or address the budget deficit. Yet one other subject, aligned with his lifelong interests, continues to preoccupy him: sports.

And in this area, his ideological project has methodically and loudly – since nothing of consequence can ever be done quietly by this administration – made more gains than just about anywhere else.

Which is to say that Trump, or more likely those seeking to swim in the slipstream of Trumpism , are hard at work trying to put sports back to how it looked in the 1980s. After all, that’s when the president’s view of the world, and how it should function, ossified.

This manifests in ways big and small, in consequences intended and accidental.

Here’s a relatively small and surely accidental one. When Los Angeles FC sold Venezuela international David Martínez to Denmark’s FC Midtjylland for $8.4m recently, the club did not do so for sporting reasons – or not entirely. The winger, named to the Guardian’s 2023 Next Generation class, had difficulty adapting to life in Los Angeles after arriving as an 18-year-old because his family couldn’t get visas to visit him, according to the club.

If Trump and his goons had even heard of the now-20-year-old, which they almost certainly hadn’t, he would have hardly been a top target of their policies. But that they have driven him to leave the country will would satisfy them all the same. This is exactly what the administration’s travel bans and curbs on visas were intended to achieve: to put people off coming to the US, or staying here.

Then there’s the big stuff.

The rolling campaign to “save” women’s sports from transgender athletes, who exist in vanishingly small numbers and are far from the threat those on the right would have you believe. This panic is propagated by a rabble who very proudly didn’t care about women’s sports at all until they spotted an opening to make a political profit from it.

Trump’s looming presence over the summer’s World Cup, and his active interference in it. His attendance at the NBA finals, the Daytona 500 and the Ryder Cup, appearances that seemed to curse his favored participants.

There’s the executive order attempting to unwind the decades-overdue gains made by college athletes in winning the right to be treated like every other American worker. They can finally be paid for their valuable labor and move (almost) freely between programs in search of the best opportunities – same as their coaches and administrators have always been able to do.

Foreign students and college athletes, meanwhile, find it harder and less attractive to come to and stay in the US on account of the same difficulties in bagging visas that chased off Martínez. That makes college sports more homogeneous and therefore, in Trump’s thinking, better.

In trying to rearrange things to how they once were – the exact moment in the past when things were great; a time that nobody can seem to pinpoint, but which you’ll no doubt remember with searing clarity – Trump has even gone so far as to issue an executive order to try to protect the Army-Navy football game’s exclusive TV time slot. The College Football Playoff’s lurching expansion threatened to creep into the second Saturday of December, traditionally and legally set aside for the Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy.

“Such scheduling conflicts weaken the national focus on our Military Service Academies and detract from a morale-building event of vital interest to the Department of War,” the order reads.

Also apparently intended as a morale-building event was the much-panned UFC event on the White House lawn to celebrate the nation’s 250th anniversary, and, more pressingly, Trump’s 80th birthday. The first professional sporting event on the White House grounds managed to lose $30m , even though the fighters were apparently paid at least partly in cryptocurrency issued by a Trump company.

When he sensed he would be met by a friendly crowd, Trump became the first sitting president to attend the Super Bowl . In the same spirit, he traveled to a World Series game in 2021, when he was out of power, just to do the racist tomahawk chop with Atlanta Braves fans.

He more or less ordered an IndyCar race to be held in DC, the Freedom 250, which was well attended but severely disrupted car and plane traffic in the capital. The awkward layout of the course, meanwhile, meant that nearly half the cars didn’t finish all the laps. No matter, Trump took a lap around the track in his presidential limousine. With no other cars on the road, he finished first.

Then there are the unprovoked and untethered broadsides. Such as the time Trump suggested the National Football League change its name to accommodate soccer. Or suggested LeBron James was a racist because he doesn’t play golf with the president. Or when he plunged a cleaver into the culture war prime cuts of restoring the Washington Commanders and Cleveland Guardians to their old, racist names.

Several of Trump’s golf courses have hosted events staged by LIV Golf, the Saudi-backed breakaway golf circuit that appears to be on life support . If it should croak, it would share this distinction with the last sporting venture that Trump was intimately entangled with: the New Jersey Generals of the old United States Football League. Trump, who owned the franchise, bungled it into bankruptcy and took the entire league down with him.

Yet the lesson that has stuck with him since childhood is that sports holds a privileged place in our national conscience, and that it serves as a powerful messaging conduit. Now, as president, his efforts have hardly been concerted or coordinated, but sports is the rare topic where Trump has succeeded in shifting the conversation to his preferred terms.

Leander Schaerlaeckens is the author of The Long Game: U.S. Men’s Soccer and Its Savage, Four-Decade Journey to the Top, or Thereabouts, which is out now . He teaches at Marist University.

Supercar maker McLaren to create 1,000 UK jobs as part of £450m tech investment | Automotive industry | The Guardian

News, , , ,

Keyword – Business
Trefwoorden – Automotive industry, Manufacturing sector, Business, UK news, Surrey
Title – Supercar maker McLaren to create 1,000 UK jobs as part of £450m tech investment | Automotive industry | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/marksweney
Link – Supercar maker McLaren to create 1,000 UK jobs as part of £450m tech investment | Automotive industry | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-09-09T08:34:23.000Z
Category – News
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/sep/09/supercar-maker-mclaren-to-create-1000-uk-jobs-tech-investment

The British supercar manufacturer McLaren is to create 1,000 jobs in a welcome boost to the UK’s struggling automotive industry.

The carmaker is creating the jobs as part of a £450m investment in its technology centre in Woking, near to the plant where it manufactures all of its vehicles.

McLaren, which merged with the premium UK electric vehicle startup Forseven Holdings, currently employs 2,500 staff. The new jobs will include indirect and agency workers, according to the Financial Times, which first reported the investment.

The news comes days after Jaguar Land Rover confirmed plans to cut 4,000 jobs over the next two years . JLR, which is restructuring to address falling sales and financial challenges including Donald Trump’s tariff wars and the fallout from a cyber-attack last year , employs 44,000 people globally and 34,000 in the UK.

The cuts will mainly affect the 26,000 UK employees who are salaried and management workers.

Last year, CYVN Holdings, an Abu Dhabi government-owned investment company, acquired McLaren’s automotive business from Bahraini sovereign wealth fund Mumtalakat.

CYVN has said that it plans to invest $2bn (£1.4bn) over the next five years to drive the lossmaking group.

European carmakers have faced tough trading conditions as Chinese rivals, such as BYD and Chery, have enjoyed soaring sales across the UK and mainland Europe.

Last week Volkswagen announced that it was to cut 100,000 of its more than 650,000 global workforce by 2030 and cut the number of models the group produces by half.

VW group also includes the Bentley, Audi, Skoda, Seat, Porsche, Cupra and Lamborghini brands.

From early next year UK carmakers face a 10% tariff for electric vehicles shipped to the EU, and UK-made vehicles do not qualify for “made in Europe” subsidies under current proposals.

Apple expected to unveil folding iPhone as new CEO takes center stage | Technology | The Guardian

Culture, Lifestyle, News, News around the world, , , , , , , ,

Keyword – Technology
Trefwoorden – Technology, iPhone, Apple, Smartphones, California, Computing, US news, Mobile phones, West Coast
Title – Apple expected to unveil folding iPhone as new CEO takes center stage | Technology | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/johana-bhuiyan
Link – Apple expected to unveil folding iPhone as new CEO takes center stage | Technology | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-09-09T06:00:02.000Z
Category – News
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/sep/08/apple-new-folding-iphone

All eyes are on Apple’s annual fall announcement of new products this afternoon, where the company is expected to unveil the most significant change to the iPhone since the smartphone’s introduction in 2007.

Unlike previous iterations, the new iPhone is expected to fold, opening and closing like a passport to double its screen size.

The product release event, titled “Surprise and Shine”, begins at 10am Pacific Standard Time on Apple’s campus in Cupertino, California , south of San Francisco.

While competitors have released foldable smartphones since the late 2010s, the new model will be a first for the iPhone maker and will also serve as the first big test for the company’s new CEO, John Ternus, who assumed the role on 1 September.

Apple is expected to price the phone north of $2000, more than what some of its competitors charge for their foldable phones. A Google Pixel 11 Pro Fold, for instance, retails for $1899. Much remains unknown about Apple’s device, including its name, though it is rumored to be named either the iPhone Fold or the iPhone Ultra.

Apple reportedly began testing prototypes of its folding iPhone display in early 2021 – though at the time there were no plans for its launch, according to a Bloomberg report . Ultimately, the phone the company is rumored to launch will be about 5.5in when it’s closed and 7.8in when it opens. It’s also not expected to have Face ID because the device is too thin to hold the camera that would enable the facial recognition scan. Reports indicate it will only offer Touch ID instead.

Apple is also expected to make several more routine announcements, including new iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max models. Though the foldable iPhone may take center stage Wednesday, demand for foldable phones makes up only a small sliver of overall mobile device sales. Customers’ interest in standard iPhones, by contrast, remains high, as evidenced in Apple’s most recent robust earnings .

The company is also expected to unveil new iterations of some of its other product offerings at its events and over the next few months, including updates to its Apple Watch and AirPods lines, according to Bloomberg , as well as its first-ever touchscreen MacBook.

Ternus will take the stage as CEO for the first time and mark the beginning of his tenure as the head of Apple, replacing outgoing CEO Tim Cook. In a note to employees on his first day, Ternus said that he was excited about “the incredible products already in the works and the ones we haven’t even imagined”.

“I’m honored to be stepping into this role at what is truly the greatest company in the world, and I am so excited about everything we have in store,” Ternus wrote in his letter. “We have a huge launch next week that’s going to be phenomenal. Thanks for everything you’ve all done to make it possible.”