Author: James Carter

Volodymyr Zelensky joked he could not safely meet Vladimir Putin in Moscow due to Ukrainian drone strikes, during a strikingly warm exchange with Donald Trump at the NATO summit in Turkey that also saw the US president offer Kyiv a licence to manufacture Patriot air-defence missiles. Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky put on a display of warmth at Wednesday’s NATO summit in Turkey, a marked shift from their fractious history, as the US president floated giving Ukraine the right to manufacture its own Patriot interceptor missiles. Asked by Trump whether he would travel to Moscow to meet Vladimir Putin, a…

Only 27 of Victoria’s 79 councils have adopted Daniel Andrews’ mandatory glass recycling scheme, with a growing coalition of local governments warning the multi-million-dollar rollout is unaffordable and unnecessary given the success of the state’s Container Deposit Scheme. A signature recycling policy introduced by former Victorian premier Daniel Andrews has been described as “all but dead” nearly three years after he left office, as the majority of the state’s councils refuse to implement it. Andrews’ 2027 deadline requiring all Victorian councils to introduce purple-lidded glass recycling bins is facing widespread resistance, with government insiders telling the Herald Sun the target…

William Nieporte says he was forced out of the $8 billion asset manager he co-founded for breaching a return-to-office policy he himself signed off on, in a rare legal dispute now playing out on two separate fronts. The co-founder of an asset management firm now worth more than $8 billion has launched legal action claiming he was pushed out of the business for failing to comply with a return-to-office policy that he helped put in place. William Nieporte, 57, ran Bramshill Investments for nearly a decade alongside his high school friends Art DeGaetano and Stephen Selver before being fired in…

A Reform UK MP reduced the House of Commons to tears on Wednesday when she revealed for the first time that her mother had been pressured by the church into giving up a baby for adoption — a secret she carried to her grave — as Sir Keir Starmer issued a formal state apology for one of the most painful chapters in modern British history. Sarah Pochin, the MP for Runcorn and Helsby, was visibly overcome as she told MPs that she only discovered her mother’s secret after her death, that she had been forced to pay privately to trace…

House prices edged down slightly in June but remain almost £6,000 higher than this time last year, according to Nationwide Building Society, as mortgage approvals slump and uncertainty surrounding the Middle East conflict and UK political turmoil continues to weigh on buyer confidence. The typical home fell by £540 compared to May to reach £277,484, though on an annual basis prices are up 2.2 per cent, a rise from 1.7 per cent recorded in May. Nationwide, Britain’s biggest building society, said prices were essentially flat on a monthly basis once seasonal adjustments were applied. Anthony Codling of RBC Capital Markets…

A social housing company that acquires newly built affordable homes from developers before leasing them to registered providers has entered administration after failing to meet its financial liabilities, with administrators moving quickly to reassure tenants that their arrangements remain unaffected. RPA1 Limited, a subsidiary of Rentplus-UK Limited and registered at an address on North Fourth Street in Milton Keynes, confirmed it had entered administration following “financial challenges resulting in it being unable to meet its liabilities.” The company has been operating since 2014, according to business information provider Endole, initially registered in Devon before moving to its current Milton Keynes…

Sir Keir Starmer has unveiled a £15 billion defence investment plan he says will protect Britain in an increasingly “volatile” world, but the package falls billions of pounds short of what military chiefs say they need and will see the UK scrap older equipment including Storm Shadow cruise missiles and a range of military helicopters. The plan, delayed for months by Treasury wrangling over funding, follows the resignation of John Healey as defence secretary earlier this month in protest at insufficient cash being made available. The Treasury subsequently agreed to give the Ministry of Defence an extra £1.5 billion, pushing…

Venezuela’s acting president Delcy Rodríguez has drawn fierce criticism after admitting that international rescue teams were pulled away from ongoing earthquake recovery operations to attend a formal government ceremony — with survivors still trapped beneath collapsed buildings and the death toll rising past 1,400. Rodríguez herself confirmed the decision in a public statement, saying: “We wanted to pull them away from their vital tasks to say thank you.” The admission has sparked outrage in Venezuela and internationally, with critics describing the event as a cynical propaganda stunt that sacrificed precious time in the critical window for finding survivors alive. The…

Andy Burnham has announced plans to establish a prime minister’s office in Manchester if he becomes Prime Minister, describing it as the “nerve centre of a rewired Britain” designed to redistribute power and resources across the entire country rather than simply the North. The Labour leadership frontrunner confirmed that a “No 10 North” would be based in Manchester but stressed its purpose would extend far beyond the region. “It will only be based here,” Burnham said, “but its job would be to make power flow into the Midlands, into the South West, into the East of England and yes, into…

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood is to create a new independent appeals authority to dramatically accelerate the processing of asylum cases, tackling a backlog of more than 150,000 people waiting for their claims to be heard in what amounts to the biggest shake-up of the immigration appeals system in a generation. The Independent Immigration Appeals Authority, due to be operational by late 2027, will replace the existing system with a single appeal route, cutting off the ability of those whose claims have been rejected to lodge successive further claims as a means of delaying removal. At present, the average time to…