National lottery faces questions over new boss’s record in gambling industry

Bank Melli, Iran’s largest lender, already faces waves of sanctions that severely limit its ability to operate abroad. Every foreign branch must be shut down, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said.

The vast majority of the global public wants international cooperation on human rights, climate and AI. Like-minded countries must stand together to deliver Britain’s new prime minister, Andy Burnham, is already having to make one of his gravest decisions. He has to issue the instructions that he alone gives to the military, setting out the UK response in a doomsday scenario of a nuclear weapons attack on us. He will, as I did two decades ago, sign a piece of paper telling commanders whether or not to retaliate and, if so, whether through targeting civilian conurbations or military sites. These instructions are written down in the aptly named “letter of last resort”. Now, more than at any time since the 1960s Cuban missile crisis, the European public fears a third world war. With the nuclear Doomsday Clock developed by atomic scientists moving ever closer to midnight, and Japan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, Poland and Germany contemplating either acquiring nuclear weapons or siting them on their soil, our world is descending from a rules-based order to a power-based one, where might is deemed right and brute force dominates. Gordon Brown is the UN’s special envoy for global education and was UK prime minister from 2007 to 2010 The future starts with us: Gordon Brown in conversation On Thursday 10 September, join Hugh Muir and Gordon Brown to discuss the intricate connections between global instability and civic decline, as explored in Brown’s new book, The Future Starts With Us. Book tickets here..

South Korea said on Wednesday it had scrambled fighter jets in response to Russian military aircraft entering its air defence zone, the second such incursion in weeks. The relationship between the countries has worsened since South Korea joined Western sanctions following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and since Moscow built stronger ties with North Korea. Seoul’s defence ministry said multiple Russian aircraft had entered and then left its air defence identification zone over the East Sea, also...