Ceremonial event marks start of new parliamentary year, and outlines government policies and proposed legislation

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Health secretary met with Keir Starmer this morning in brief meeting at No 10 ahead of the king’s speech

• Wes Streeting plans to resign and mount leadership challenge, allies say

Libby Brooks is the Guardian’s Scotland correspondent.

An odd dispute of interpretation has emerged overnight between the Scottish and UK governments. Yesterday evening a Scottish government spokesperson announced that, during a call between first minister John Swinney and prime minister Kier Starmer, both parties agreed to meet face to face next month to discuss a referendum on independence.

It is particularly welcome that the prime minister agreed to meet next month to discuss a referendum on independence.

The PM committed to meeting to discussed shared issues including the cost of living.

As the PM told the first minister, the manifesto this government was elected on was unambiguous that ‘Labour does not support independence or another referendum’. Our position remains unchanged.

We, in Scotland, as in the rest of the UK, had a devastating set of election results and we were simply unable to articulate our offering, or indeed critique, of the SNP government because of the noise created at the centre.

Therefore, we became, and the prime minister became, the inadvertent midwife of a fifth-term SNP government. And that scenario you saw then, people waiting for a speech to try and articulate his new direction, a strategy, and it simply was not forthcoming.

This is not one faction of the Labour party. This is about the Labour party articulating, I think, now a commonly held view that this is unsustainable and unstable.

Sergei Lavrov comments before leaders of the ‘Bucharest Nine’ meet later today with Nato’s secretary general Mark Rutte

More than 1,700 people – 1,233 passengers and 514 crew members – are confined on a cruise ship docked in Bordeaux after a death of a 90-year-old passenger amid a reported gastroenteritis outbreak, AFP, Le Figaro and BMFTV reported.

Some fifty people have shown symptoms of norovirus, prompting the French health authorities to step in, it was reported.

The Iran war will cast a long shadow over the talks. Plus, the 100 best novels of all time

Good morning.

Donald Trump is due to arrive in Beijing on Wednesday evening, the first visit to China by a US president since he was last there nearly a decade ago, as he seeks to mend power and prestige weakened by the war in Iran.

What is the state of US-China relations? The two countries remain locked in a fragile tariff truce, reached last autumn after tensions threatened to erupt into a full-scale trade war. Trump has long complained about China’s trade surplus with the US, while Beijing has opposed American export controls and sanctions.

What is the latest with the US-Iran ceasefire? The war has entered its third month, with Tehran tightening its grip over the strait of Hormuz and Washington struggling to turn a fragile ceasefire into a lasting settlement. Behind the scenes, US officials have spent weeks urging China to put pressure on Iran to reopen the strait and accept US terms for peace.

What did the Atlantic allege? It reported that Patel’s alcohol consumption had become “a recurring source of concern across the government” which made him a “national-security vulnerability”, citing interviews with more than two dozen people including current and former FBI officials. Patel denies all the allegations, calling them “outrageous” and “malicious”.

Demarcation of 410,000 hectares of territory is intended to protect the Amazonian community from farming, illegal mining and logging

More than 25 years after the existence of one of the Amazon’s most vulnerable nomadic hunter-gatherer communities was confirmed, the Brazilian government has begun demarcating the Pardo River Kawahiva Indigenous territory, giving greater protection to the uncontacted people.

The demarcation of the 410,000-hectare (1m-acre) territorylocated between the states of Mato Grosso and Amazonas in north-west Brazil, was confirmed by the National Indigenous Peoples’ Foundation (Funai) last week. But the process remains fraught, with legal challenges from groups linked to the country’s agribusiness sector, and the forthcoming presidential election in October.

Sources say health secretary intends to trigger leadership election as early as Thursday

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Allies of Wes Streeting have said he is preparing to stand down as health secretary amid deep frustration with Keir Starmer’s leadership, and could mount a formal challenge for the leadership as early as Thursday.

Downing Street insiders had suggested Streeting did not yet have the required support from 81 MPs, which is needed to formally launch a leadership bid, after the prime minister issued a “put up or shut up” ultimatum to his cabinet.

King Charles unveils government agenda for the next year as PM faces leadership threat from within Labour

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Keir Starmer has put long-promised changes to education, health and the courts at the heart of his agenda for the next year, as the embattled prime minister looks to prove he can enact the scale of change being demanded by Labour MPs and voters.

The prime minister unveiled his legislative programme for the next parliamentry session on Wednesday, a moment he hopes will persuade wavering Labour MPs he should remain in office.

Industry body says energy consumption driven by AI up 15% globally in two years as it warns of societal backlash

Datacentres are consuming 6% of electricity in the UK and US, with the growing strain of AI on energy supplies prompting community resistance, according to research.

The proportion of electricity used by vast warehouses stacked with microchips to power AI and the internet has risen 15% worldwide in the past two years as annual global investment in datacentres approaches $1tn (£740bn) – nearly 1% of the global economy, according to the International Data Center Association (IDCA).

Rapper known as Ye must pay six-figure sum to four plaintiffs who successfully argued he infringed copyright

Kanye West has lost a lawsuit which alleged he infringed on other artists’ copyright by playing an uncleared sample of their work during a live event.

In July 2021 the artist, now legally known as Ye, played his then-unreleased album Donda to 40,000 fans at a listening party held at Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium. The version of the song Hurricane featured a sample of MSD PT2, an instrumental composed by four musicians: Khalil Abdul-Rahman, Sam Barsh, Josh Mease and Dan Seeff. They had made the instrumental in 2018, and it made its way to Ye via another producer.

Fugitive faces charges including corruption and money laundering in US and Malaysia for role he allegedly played in scandal

The fugitive Malaysian financier Jho Low, a central figure in the multibillion-dollar scandal at the state fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), is reportedly seeking a pardon from the US president, Donald Trump.

Low faces multiple charges including corruption and money laundering in the US and Malaysia for the important role he allegedly played in the misappropriation of at least $4.5bn (£3.3bn) from 1MDB.

Lai wins $60,000 literary award for her study of a young woman’s repression and rage as she struggles to juggle the needs of those around her

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As the 2026 winner of the Stella prize, Lee Lai has established two new firsts: the first ever non-binary winner with her book Cannon, which is the first graphic novel to win the $60,000 Australian literary award for women and non-binary writers.

Cannon follows the titular, queer Chinese woman living in Montreal on the “uncool side of [her] twenties”. Cannon’s real name is Lucy, which became Luce then (loose) Cannon – and much like her unwanted nickname, she shoulders responsibility without complaint. During the day she cares for her gung-gung (maternal grandfather), a former tyrant enfeebled by age, without any help from her emotionally avoidant mother; and by night she works in the kitchen of a fine-dining restaurant, corralling chaos into order. Cannon’s longtime best friend Trish uses her as a soundboard for all of her problems, and is secretly mining Cannon’s life as a troubling source of inspiration for her writing career.

Condolences poured in for the Louisiana beaver-like legend who once appeared on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show

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Condolences have poured in for a Louisiana couple who successfully battled wildlife authorities to keep their domesticated nutria as a pet, watched the semi-aquatic rodent appear on cable news and accumulate a social media following tens of thousands strong, and then endured the animal’s recent death from cancer.

Denny and Myra Lacoste announced Neuty’s death on Monday on Instagram, where more than 37,000 users followed an account dedicated to documenting the nutria’s life.