Andy Burnham to meet Donald Trump for first time

Andy Burnham is to meet Donald Trump for the first time as world leaders gather in New York for talks on the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and the rapid development of AI.

The Prime Minister and the US president will hold talks on Tuesday in the margins of the United Nations General Assembly meeting as the Ministry of Defence stepped up co-operation with American counterparts on the next generation of drones and autonomous systems.

Officials hope the talks will build on productive phone calls between the two leaders, but Mr Burnham’s previous criticism of the president and Mr Trump’s unpredictability, his recent comments about Irish unification and hostility to UK immigration and clean energy policies make it a diplomatically awkward challenge for the Prime Minister.

Time-varying electricity prices could help household bills fall, says report

Household electricity bills could fall if the Government promoted the take-up of time-varying prices, according to a report.

The costs of producing electricity vary ‘a lot’ over time and place, but most consumers do not face prices that reflect these differences, said the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) and LSE report, published as part of the IFS Green Budget and funded by the Nuffield Foundation.

The study said electricity in Scotland could often be “effectively free” because of frequent windy weather, to the point that there could be so much electricity that the grid operator must pay to have wind turbines turned off to avoid overloading the grid.

At other times, and particularly in the south of England, it must pay expensive gas generators to boost supply.

Google fined £345m for GDPR breach

Google has been fined more than £345m for breaches of GDPR (general data protection regulation).

Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) launched an inquiry into Google Ireland six years ago, after complaints from multiple European consumer rights organisations about the tech giant’s processing of location data.

The DPC examined the lawfulness and fairness of its processing of location data and Google’s accountability obligations under GDPR.

It found that Google users could have been unaware that their location was being used to influence them with ads or to infer their interests.

The markets

European stocks closed higher on Monday as oil prices fell amid optimism for progress in stalled US-Iran peace talks this week.

In London, the FTSE 100 index ended up 79.88 points, or 0.8%, at 10,739.01. The FTSE 250 rose 285.95 points, 1.2%, to 24,491.37, but the AIM all-share fell 0.69 of a point, 0.1%, to 795.40.

Markets started the week on the front foot as “oil prices retreated and talks on trade and AI between the US and China made apparent progress”, said AJ Bell investment director Russ Mould.

Household spending power hits six-month low

Household spending power has hit a six-month low as rising essential costs outstrip wage growth, according to supermarket figures.

Although wages continued to rise, higher transport, housing and energy costs absorbed an even greater share of household incomes, leaving families with less money available to spend, according to Asda’s latest income tracker.

Its figures suggest essential costs increased by 3.9% in August, outpacing year on year income growth of 3.8%.

This left families with an average of £260 a week after paying bills and other essential costs, the grocer said.

Young driver crashes kill or seriously hurt more than 23,000 in five years

More than 23,000 people have been killed or seriously injured in crashes involving a driver aged 17 to 24 in the past five years, police have warned.

Analysis of figures from the Department of Transport between 2021 and 2025 show that the accidents included 7,500 crashes where the driver was in that age bracket, 4,000 who were passengers being driven by a young driver, and 11,600 other road users including pedestrians and people in other cars.

Around a fifth of all road accidents that end with death or serious injury involve young drivers, defined as those age 17 to 24.

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