The Democrats hold in their hands constitutional means yet unused to check the Trump regime’s ruthless attempt to impose a police state. In states with a Democratic trifecta (where Democrats control the governorship and both legislative chambers), there are 659 Republican state legislators. In Pennsylvania, the Democrats control the governorship and the state house of representatives, while the Republicans control the state senate by a narrow margin of 27 to 23 seats. Democrats need to flip three of those state senate seats in 2026 to gain control with the Democratic lieutenant governor casting a tie-breaking vote. To flip both chambers, Democrats are targeting seven state house and six state senate seats held by Republicans.

But if lower wholesale prices are sustained, it should begin to bring relief to consumers. Until recently, summer heatwaves put real strain on the power grid, as millions of people fired up their air conditioners at once. Until recently, grid batteries found more use stabilising the grid than powering it. Delays completing the new NSW-South Australia transmission line, EnergyConnect, also pushed back the planned closure of the Torrens Island gas power plant near Adelaide. The question is whether there’s enough time left to replace retiring coal plants with new offshore wind.

A message from Donald Trump celebrating the 19th-century US invasion of its southern neighbour – and the subsequent loss of more than half its territory – has touched a historical nerve in Mexico, with some seeing it as a veiled threat for future incursions. Reacting to the US president’s statement, which described the invasion as “a legendary victory”, Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico’s president, said during her morning news conference on Tuesday: “We must always defend our sovereignty.”Others were less subtle in their criticism. “He continues to view Mexico as a territory to be conquered, not as a partner,” wrote the columnist and political analyst Denise Dresser on X. Mexico is “a country that has done nothing but cooperate with US interests on all levels”, he said. “He wants to go down as a great president who expanded the American Empire,” he said.

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Richard Branson, Noam Chomsky, Steve Bannon, Mandelson, Andrew (obviously) – all of these men offer strategic advice, or media training, or chummy solidarity. Or, in the case of Chomsky, all of the above plus a drive-by on the notion of female victimhood. Here is Britain’s Best Loved Businessman TM in 2013, opening by saying to Epstein: “would love to see you. Then it’s on to helping Jeffrey downplay his sex crimes, three years after he’s finished doing time for them. All those men know the world doesn’t work like that – and didn’t in this case, with Epstein gifted an incredibly controversial secret plea deal.

Aldi handed the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) a list of 45 items, used by the Co-op in an ad for its price-match scheme in August, which it did not believe were the most appropriate for comparison. The ASA also found that in some cases, products were compared with a less similar alternative despite a nearer match being sold by Aldi, such as Co-op matching their Wholemeal Farmhouse Loaf with an Aldi White Farmhouse Loaf. “But this ASA ruling underlines why price-match claims should be treated with caution. research found that some price-matched products weren’t like-for-like on ingredients, quality or pack size. “Shoppers shouldn’t assume a price match guarantees the same product or the best value – it pays to look beyond the label and check what you’re really getting.”

Net migration figures show the difference between the number of people moving long-term to the country and the number of people leaving. It would be net zero if the number of people leaving was equal to those arriving. ​The latest official figures showed that net migration dropped to 204,000 in the year to June, down 69% year-on-year, and raising the possibility of Britain reaching net zero before the end of the decade, according to some forecasters. But if net migration stayed positive, a larger working-age population would broaden the tax base and help stabilise the debt to GDP ratio, Niesr said. Stephen Millard, Niesr’s deputy director for macroeconomics, said: “Our analysis clearly shows that net zero migration would put pressure on the public finances and worsen the public debt outlook.

Speaking on the podcast Table Manners with Jessie and Lennie Ware, Foy said she thinks she caught the parasitic infection when she was in Morocco. Claire Foy attending the screening of her latest film, H Is For Hawk (Ian West/PA)She said: “Quite a few years ago, I had parasites. Symptoms include a red, itchy worm-shaped rash, sickness or stomach aches for longer than two weeks and losing weight for no reason. Foy said she no longer eats gluten or sugar to help manage an autoimmune condition she has, and avoids eating foods that could cause more inflammation. Foy also starred in 2022’s Women Talking, alongside Hamnet star Jessie Buckley, and the new biographical drama H Is For Hawk.

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A collection of writings by the imprisoned Palestinian political leader Marwan Barghouti will be published in November, bringing together prison letters, interviews, personal material and documents from the last three decades of Barghouti’s political life and incarceration. Despite more than two decades in prison, successive opinion polls show Barghouti is the most popular Palestinian politician in Gaza and the West Bank. He is often cited by supporters as a potential unifying leader across factional divides, and has been described as “Palestine’s Mandela”. An introduction to the book has been written by Barghouti’s wife, Fadwa Barghouti, a prominent advocate for his release. “This book finally makes that possible – and I hope it helps people understand who Marwan Barghouti truly is, and how he embodies the Palestinian struggle for freedom and dignity.”

European publishing and legal software companies have suffered sharp declines in their share prices after the US artificial intelligence startup Anthropic revealed a tool for use by companies’ legal departments. Anthropic, the company behind the chatbot Claude, said its tool could automate legal work such as contract reviewing, non-disclosure agreement triage, compliance workflows, legal briefings and templated responses. Shares in the UK publishing group Pearson fell by nearly 8% on the news, and shares in the information and analytics company Relx plunged 14%. The software company Sage lost 10% in London and the Dutch software company Wolters Kluwer lost 13% in Amsterdam. Shares in the London Stock Exchange Group fell by 13% and the credit reporting company Experian dropped by 7% in London, amid fears over the impact of AI on data companies.

The group won a Supreme Court case in April last year, with judges at the UK’s highest court making clear that the term “woman” in the Equality Act refers to a biological woman. Aidan O’Neill KC, representing FWS, told the court the current Scottish Prison Service (SPS) policy of holding some trans women in the women’s prison estate is “just wrong”. He said 51 of those prisoners were trans women, and that 14 were housed on the women’s prison estate. He added that three of the 22 trans male prisoners were housed on the male estate. He added: “Why is it women have to bear the cost of allowing trans-identifying male prisoners to live out their chosen identity”.

The latest revelations became public after the US Department of Justice released more documents relating to Epstein and his links to the rich and powerful on Friday. “We’re talking about at least one woman who was sent by Jeffrey Epstein over to Prince Andrew. And she even had, after a night with Prince Andrew, a tour of Buckingham Palace,” Edwards told the broadcaster. Andrew’s complicity and involvement with Epstein and Maxwell has been well known to us, to Andrew, and to the palace for many years. The anti-monarchy campaign group Republic had said British police should investigate the claims that Epstein trafficked the woman to the UK to have sex with Andrew in 2010.