News 21/08/25

Donald Trump has launched fresh criticism of Joe Biden, accusing his predecessor of stopping Ukraine from being able to “fight back”.

In a social media post, Trump compared Ukraine to a sports team with strong defence but no chance to play offense, adding there was “no chance of winning”. The remarks are the latest in a string of attacks from the former president, who continues to use Ukraine policy to highlight differences with his 2020 election rival.

One of Britain’s last remaining steel producers has been forced into compulsory liquidation.

Speciality Steels UK, part of Sanjeev Gupta’s Liberty Steel empire, will now fall under government control. The company employs nearly 1,500 staff in Rotherham and at several sites across South Yorkshire. It is the third-largest steel producer in the country, after Tata Steel and British Steel.

Negotiations to save the business are understood to have collapsed in recent days, raising concerns about the future of its workforce and the wider steel industry.

Two German Eurofighter jets have been scrambled from Romania as part of NATO’s air policing mission.

The jets were launched from the Mihail Kogalniceanu air base in what marks the first deployment for the German detachment. NATO has not said why the aircraft were scrambled, but it follows Polish jets being launched earlier today to protect their airspace after Russian strikes hit the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, close to the Polish border.

Italian police have arrested a Ukrainian man accused of helping coordinate the 2022 Nord Stream pipeline attacks.

The suspect, identified under German privacy laws only as Serhii K, was allegedly part of a team that planted explosives near the Danish island of Bornholm. He was detained while on holiday with his family in San Clemente on Italy’s Adriatic coast. He is now in custody in Rimini and awaiting a ruling on extradition by the Bologna appeal court.

This year’s GCSE pass rate has dipped slightly, with 67.4 percent of grades across England, Wales and Northern Ireland awarded at grade 4 or C and above.

That is marginally lower than last year’s 67.6 percent. Exam outcomes have been turbulent since the pandemic, with sharp rises in 2020 and 2021 when teacher-assessed grades replaced cancelled exams.

A total of just over thirty-two thousand asylum seekers were being housed in UK hotels at the end of Labour’s first year in office, according to new Home Office figures.

That’s a slight fall from the end of March, but still an eight percent increase compared with July last year, before Labour took power. The party has pledged to end the use of asylum hotels completely by 2029.

A childminder from Northampton who was jailed for inciting racial hatred in the wake of the Southport murders has been released.

Lucy Connolly, whose husband is Conservative councillor Raymond Connolly, was sentenced to 31 months last October. She admitted posting and sharing abusive material on X, including a message calling for asylum hotels to be set on fire.

Hundreds of thousands of teenagers who started secondary school during the pandemic have now received their GCSE results.

This year’s figures show the gender gap for top grades is still present, though narrower than before. Nearly a quarter of girls achieved grade seven or above, compared with just under a fifth of boys. For passes at grade four and above, 70.5 percent of girls succeeded, against 64.3 percent of boys.

The government borrowed the least amount of money in three years last month, offering a boost for Chancellor Rachel Reeves.

Data from the Office for National Statistics shows public sector net borrowing in July was just £1.1 billion, the smallest gap between government spending and income since July 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The figure was also well below expectations, with economists surveyed by Reuters predicting £2.6 billion. The lower borrowing was helped by increased tax and National Insurance receipts.

Poland has scrambled aircraft to protect its airspace following Russian strikes in Ukraine.

Moscow targeted the western city of Lviv, less than 50 miles from the Polish border. In response, the Operational Command of the Polish Armed Forces said Polish and allied aircraft are now operating over the country to monitor and secure its airspace.

The police watchdog has ended its investigation into the events leading up to the decision to charge TV presenter Caroline Flack with assaulting her boyfriend.

Flack died in February 2020, with a coroner ruling she took her own life after learning she would face trial.

The Crown Prosecution Service had initially recommended a caution after the alleged assault in December 2019, but the Metropolitan Police appealed and Flack was charged with assault by beating.

Since her death, the CPS, the Met and the Independent Office for Police Conduct have all reviewed how the case was handled. In April, Flack’s mother said she believed her daughter’s celebrity status played a role in the decision to prosecute.

Frank Caprio, the US judge who gained global fame for his compassionate courtroom manner, has died.

He served in Providence, Rhode Island, for almost 40 years, and became known as the “nicest judge in the world” after clips of his rulings went viral, viewed more than a billion times on social media.

Caprio’s later years on the bench, before retiring in 2023, were also captured in the TV show Caught In Providence.

Campaigners are calling again for a ban on smacking across the UK after a new poll suggested more young adults believe it’s unacceptable.

Scotland banned all forms of corporal punishment in 2020, with Wales following in 2022.

But in England and Northern Ireland, it remains legal to physically punish a child if it is deemed “reasonable” – something that is judged on a case-by-case basis.