Verstappen storms to Italian Grand Prix win as Norris narrows gap to Piastri

Lando Norris’ world championship bid was controversially kept alive by his McLaren team, despite a poor pit-stop threatening to deal the British driver another title blow.

Norris had been on course to finish as runner-up to runaway winner Max Verstappen until he dropped behind title rival Oscar Piastri following a slow change of tyres with seven laps remaining.

However, Piastri was ordered by McLaren to move aside for team-mate Norris, which the Australian did on the 49th lap of 53 at Monza’s Temple of Speed.

Charles Leclerc took fourth for Ferrari, one place ahead of Mercedes’ George Russell. Lewis Hamilton made up four places from 10th – after he served a five-place grid penalty – to finish sixth.

Japan’s Shigeru Ishiba resigns as prime minister after less than a year

Japanese prime minister Shigeru Ishiba has announced his decision to step down, less than two months after his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) lost its majority in the country’s upper house election.

Mr Ishiba has been in power for less than a year, but faced calls to resign from the right-wing faction of his own party after a bruising defeat in July’s vote, amid discontent from the public over the rising cost of living and economic stagnation.

The conservative LDP and its junior partner Komeito needed to win 50 seats to retain control of the upper chamber but took 47, as the coalition saw its vote eroded by an increase in support for far-right nationalist parties.

Mr Ishiba called a press conference at 6pm (local time) on Sunday in Tokyo, where he said he intended to resign as LDP president and would stay on as prime minister until a new leader is elected.

He told the press conference that he had decided “this is the right timing” to step down, having agreed a deal to alleviate US tariffs on Japanese imports. He said he had asked the LDP’s general secretary to begin organising a party leadership election immediately.

A former defence minister, Mr Ishiba came to power last October as the face of the LDP’s moderate faction. He then called a snap general election, hoping to cash in on public backing during his honeymoon period. Instead, his party lost its majority, throwing the country into the kind of political uncertainty not seen for many years.

Mr Ishiba’s decision to resign came one day before the LDP was due to meet to decide whether to hold a special leadership election – effectively a no-confidence vote in his administration.

In recent days, polls of LDP parliamentarians and regional representatives had shifted significantly against Mr Ishiba. Of those contacted by the Yomiuri newspaper on Friday, 149 said they were in favour of a leadership vote, while just 48 said they were opposed.

In truth, Mr Ishiba has struggled to project confidence in his leadership from the moment he entered office. He replaced Fumio Kishida, who was in office for three years, at a time when a scandal over political slush funds had deeply eroded trust in the ruling party.

Mr Ishiba’s name will now be added to the relatively long list of Japanese prime ministers to have enjoyed brief tenures in office. While he became leader thanks to the support of grassroots members, he only ever had “a very weak support base” among LDP MPs, says professor Yu Uchiyama, a political scientist at the University of Tokyo. “His power base was so weak that he was unable to do what he wished,” he told The Independent.

Most of Mr Ishiba’s spell in power has been dominated by the threat of US tariffs on the Japanese economy. On 7 February, Mr Ishiba became one of the first world leaders to travel to the White House to meet Donald Trump after the Republican entered office for his second term, and the two met again in April as Mr Ishiba sought to avoid steep “reciprocal” tariffs on Japanese goods.

Shortly after July’s bruising upper house election, those efforts to spearhead trade talks personally seemed to have paid off, with Mr Trump announcing a “massive” agreement involving a reduction in tariffs in exchange for $550bn of Japanese investment in the US.

Mr Ishiba described the deal as a “win-win” development but said implementing its terms would be the biggest challenge, and vowed to stay in office to see it through.

Yet weeks of uncertainty for key industries have followed. Japanese officials only discovered days after the deal was agreed that it appeared to add 15 per cent to existing tariff rates, rather than replacing them. Washington later acknowledged a mistake had been made, but that it would take another two weeks for an order correcting the matter to take effect.

In his press conference on Sunday, Mr Ishiba referenced the economic challenges that the country has been facing, saying his administration had worked to help “those who are suffering”, to strengthen the struggling yen and to bring down the soaring cost of key daily staples like rice.

“The US-Japan alliance is making progress,” he said. “I had calls and meetings with US president Donald Trump many times. We will strengthen our relationship with the United States, that is, of course, something that we need to do.” He said it was “a pity” that he had to step down now rather than continue his diplomatic efforts, but that he would pass the torch to the next leader.

He said it was a “very difficult decision” to step down, but he took responsibility for July’s election loss and admitted that he was concerned about growing internal divisions within the LDP. He warned that an erosion of trust in the country’s moderate conservative party risked seeing Japanese politics “slide towards popularism”.

There are now two frontrunners to replace Mr Ishiba. One is the more right-wing Sanae Takaichi, who came second in last year’s leadership election and would have become Japan’s first female prime minister had she won. She is likely to have the backing of the LDP’s powerful hardline faction and “might be able to bring back the voters who are now supporting more right-wing parties like Sanseito,” Professor Uchiyama notes.

The other leading candidate is Shinjiro Koizumi, a more moderate, pro-reform figure who would be better placed to attract centrist voters.

Leif-Eric Easley, professor of international studies at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, says the direction the LDP turns could have significant ramifications for foreign policy in the region, where Japan and South Korea are vital strategic partners for the United States.

“Japan’s next prime minister could have unexpected interactions with Trump’s burden-sharing demands and South Korean historical sensitivities, whether the leader is more nationalistic like Takaichi or next-generation minded like Koizumi,” he said.

“The endurance of trilateral cooperation among Tokyo, Washington, and Seoul will be closely watched after Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong-un so visibly displayed solidarity in Beijing.”

Sirens blare as emergency test alert sent to phones across UK

Siren sounds blared from mobile phones across the UK on Sunday afternoon as the national emergency alert system underwent its second test.

At approximately 3pm, devices connected to 4G and 5G networks vibrated and emitted a distinctive sound for around 10 seconds.

The first test of the system was conducted in 2023.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer confirmed the success of the exercise, writing on X: “Tens of millions of phones successfully sounded across the country during today’s Emergency Alert test.

“This is an important step in keeping people safe during national emergencies.”

The alert prompted adjustments to sporting schedules, with the Super League derby between Hull KR and Hull FC reportedly pushed back.

Meanwhile, the alarm happened between overs at England’s third ODI cricket match against South Africa at Southampton.

Fans had been warned via a message on the big screen about the alert.

In the Ireland v New Zealand Women’s Rugby World Cup at Brighton, there was an announcement on the big screen a minute before the alert.

The referee briefly paused the match while it was happening.

Theatre-goers were earlier advised to turn their phones off and drivers urged not to be distracted behind the wheel.

Mobile phone users received a message making clear that the alert was a drill.

A small crowd in the atrium at London’s Liverpool Street Station hastily checked their phones when sirens emitted from devices in the test.

One man was seen waving his phone around after it sounded at about 3pm.

Some appeared surprised by the sudden noise but others seemed aware that the test would be happening.

Jasmine Patel, 53, and her 19-year-old daughter Meera Sreejit, both from Ipswich, were standing by one of the departure boards when the alert went off.

Jasmine Patel said: “It did take me by surprise but then because Meera was with me she explained.

“It wasn’t loud, but you could understand that many people were getting it at the same time.”

The Government has used the system to issue real warnings five times, including in January during Storm Eowyn to warn people in Scotland and Northern Ireland about severe weather.

Approximately 3.5 million people across Wales and south-west England received an alert during Storm Darragh last December.

A 500kg unexploded Second World War bomb found in a Plymouth back garden triggered a warning to some 50,000 phones in February last year.

Messages can be targeted to relatively small areas to pinpoint those at risk.

Around 15,000 phones were alerted during flooding in Cumbria in May 2024, and 10,000 received a warning during flooding in Leicestershire in January this year.

The system is designed for use during the most likely emergencies to affect the UK and warnings would also be transmitted on television, radio and locally by knocking on doors.

Government officials also met with domestic violence charities and campaigners for discussions on helping those who needed to opt out of the test.

Thunderstorm alert issued as rain, lightning and hail set to batter parts of UK

Heavy rain, lightning and hail is expected to batter parts of the UK on Sunday as the Met Office issued a yellow warning for thunderstorms.

The alert came into force just after 8am and will be in effect until midday covering parts of Gloucester, Bath, Salisbury and Newport.

Forecasters warned of difficult driving conditions, a small chance of homes and businesses experiencing power cuts, being flooded or getting damaged by water, lightning strikes, hail or strong winds, and potential disruption to train and bus services.

A band of heavy rain and thunderstorms is due to move north across the affected area, with some places potentially seeing 30-40mm of downpour and frequent lightning and hail, according to the Met Office.

Meteorologist Ellie Glaisyer said: “It’s a very windy start for many of us out there this morning particularly across the west where we’ve seen some coastal gales and we’ll continue to see some very strong winds as we go throughout much of Sunday.

“A bit of a brighter start across eastern areas this morning, plenty of hazy sunshine on offer through the afternoon but further west a bit of a wetter picture.

“Some outbreaks of heavy, showery rain push their way northwards as we go through this afternoon.”

It comes before a total lunar eclipse “blood moon”, which is expected to be visible in parts of England and Wales on Sunday night.

The moon is to turn a deep, dark red – sometimes called a “blood moon” – as the Earth passes directly between the sun and the moon, casting its shadow across the lunar surface, for the first time since 2022.

Where skies are clear, the eclipse will be visible at around 7.30pm.

Fears for health of cancer survivor jailed for ‘Allah lesbian’ T-shirt

The family and friends of a woman jailed in Morocco over a T-shirt saying “Allah is lesbian” have expressed fears over the cancer survivor’s health in prison.

Ibtissame “Betty” Lachgar, 50, a Moroccan feminist activist and psychologist, was sentenced to two and a half years in prison after she was convicted on blasphemy charges.

She was arrested on 10 August at her home in the capital Rabat after a picture circulated online showing her wearing the T-shirt, her sister Siham Lachgar told The Independent. She explained the shirt was inspired by the quote: “I saw God. She is black, communist, and lesbian”, attributed to the French feminist Anne-Marie Fauret.

Siham said her sister was diagnosed with Ewing’s sarcoma, a type of bone cancer, in her twenties. She has ongoing health issues, with a prosthesis replacing the bone in her upper left arm. Siham fears her sister may not have access to healthcare in prison, and that she needs urgent treatment for her prosthesis or risks having her arm amputated.

Describing the sentencing on Wednesday as a “shock and an injustice”, she said: “Not taking her health into consideration is simply inhumane.

“I’m very worried because she has no medical follow-up in Morocco – all of her doctors are in France – and she doesn’t seem to have seen a doctor in prison.”

Ibtissame posted the photo on her social media in 2022 in response to the conviction and death sentence of two LGBT+ activists in Iran. She had never worn the T-shirt in Morocco, where same-sex relations are illegal, her sister said.

The photo was shared by a stranger on the social media platform X in July, accompanied by a message calling for her arrest, her family says. The post was reportedly shared by hundreds of other users, many tagging the official X account of the Moroccan police.

Ibtissame was held in pre-trial detention before appearing in court in Rabat this week, wearing a headscarf and appearing exhausted. According to her lawyers, she has been kept in isolation in prison and is forbidden from speaking to other inmates.

Loubna Rais, an activist in Rabat who has known Ibtissame since they were teenagers, has only seen her three times since her arrest, during her court appearances.

“We can see each time her health is deteriorating,” she told The Independent. “Her mental health has suffered, and her physical condition is getting worse.”

Her sentencing on Wednesday was also Loubna’s birthday. “When I saw her in court, she said happy birthday, because she didn’t forget,” she said, her voice breaking. “She is a very generous and loyal person.”

Ibtissame told the court she had no intention of offending Islam, but she was found guilty of violating part of Morocco’s penal code that outlaws offending the monarchy or Islam.

Maryam Namazie, a close friend, said she believes the photo was taken in London, where the activist has frequently taken part in LGBT+ and human rights campaigns.

She is known in Morocco for her provocative activism, having called for the decriminalisation of sex outside of marriage, which also remains illegal, and organised a demonstration outside Morocco’s parliament where couples kissed to support two teenagers facing indecency charges over a photo of themselves kissing on Facebook.

“She’s a well-regarded activist and feminist who has fought for people’s rights for so long,” Maryam said. “She does so much at such a great risk to herself. She has a great deal of empathy and is kind, caring and thoughtful.

“The fact that someone can be arrested for a T-shirt is outrageous.”

A member of the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain, which aims to break the taboo that comes with leaving Islam, Maryam said supporters will continue to demand her release while she plans to appeal her conviction.

The Moroccan General Directorate of National Security has been contacted for comment.

The funniest, strangest and best things from this year’s Fringe

The Edinburgh Fringe is a place where British eccentrics take centre stage and the country’s weirdest most wonderful talents get to explore the craziest outreaches of their creativity, whether it’s staging immersive theatre in a bathroom, or performing a show on a treadmill.

For all the silliness, though, there’s a seriousness to the whole thing: the Fringe is the breeding ground for Britain’s comedy trendsetters: The Mighty Boosh and The League of Gentlemen first found audiences here and the international phenomena that are Fleabag and Baby Reindeer got their first outings on the stages of the Fringe.

This year, as ever, the festival’s packed schedule sees Edinburgh veterans rubbing shoulders with dozens of emerging voices on the hunt for an audience, many of them willing to perform anywhere from the backroom of a pub to a book shop, or even a bathtub.

The summer of 2025 is looking like it’s going to be a particularly strong year for established heroes of the Fringe. Winner of the Edinburgh Comedy Award back in 2009, Tim Key returns to the Fringe with a new show Loganberry, likely to be informed, in part, by his recent experiences starring in the film The Ballad of Wallis Island and appearing as pigeon in Bong Joon Ho’s Mickey 17. Expect deadpan poems and much hilarity.

Following the success of her smash hit Channel 4 show The Change, about a menopausal woman rediscovering herself in the Forest of Dean, Fringe-favourite and 2013 winner Bridget Christie returns to Edinburgh with a work in progress at the Monkey Barrel. Also showing a work in progress is Ahir Shah, who has pedigree when it comes to licking a show into shape at the festival – when he did so in 2023, he won the main prize. Television presenter and podcaster Nish Kumar is back on his old stomping ground too with a new show Nish, Don’t Kill My Vibe at the Gordon Aikman Theatre.

For all the tried-and-tested performers who pretty might guarantee laughs, one of the real joys of the Fringe is to be found in taking a risk on an up-and-coming comedian in the hope you stumble across a star of the future.

In some cases that might mean checking out a Fringe first-timer like Toussaint Douglass, who makes his Edinburgh debut with his hotly-tipped show Accessible Pigeon Material, which promises to be joyfully absurd and very pigeon-heavy in terms of content. Or popping in to see if promising young talents can pull off that tricky second album: having scooped a Best Newcomer gong at last year’s Fringe, Joe Kent-Walters is reprising his gloriously demonic working men’s club owner, Frankie Monroe, at the Monkey Barrel Comedy venue (Cabaret Voltaire).

Also keen to build on a promising start will be Leila Navabi, a television writer from South Wales, whose 2023 musical comedy show Composition included a song about having her ears pierced in Claire’s Accessories. This year, she’s back with Relay, which blends jokes and songs to explore her attempts to make a baby with her girlfriend and a sperm donor.

Whether they’re promising young tyros or established names, for many comedians the creative freedom and outright silliness of the Fringe has them coming back time and time again. Take, for example, Ivo Graham whose show this year is called Orange Crush and is described by the man himself as “a show about hats, haters and hometown heroes, from a man who promised everyone he loved that he wouldn’t do Edinburgh in 2025, but then came back anyway, because he simply had to do this show.”

If you are planning to join Ivo in Edinburgh to soak up the comedy chaos in person, don’t forget provisions. The average Fringe day involves walking 15,000 steps, climbing 43 hills and sitting through at least one show in a sauna-like attic with no ventilation. So, pack accordingly: a bottle of water, a sturdy fan and a packet of Maynards Bassetts Wine Gums or Jelly Babies to keep your blood sugar and national pride intact. Nothing says “I’m here for the arts” quite like chuckling through a late-night experimental mime while chewing on a Jelly Baby’s head.

Now you’re in the know, don’t forget to set the juice loose with Maynards Bassetts – grab a bag today!

The London-born teen becoming Britain’s first millennial saint

Saint-making in the Catholic Church – or canonisation as it is called – is traditionally a drawn-out, opaque process with the successful candidates who have emerged from it in recent times usually worthy but unsurprising long-dead clerics and nuns. That is why Carlo Acutis joining their heavenly ranks has caught the attention of so many.

London-born, raised in Italy, this tech-savvy, deeply devout teenager tragically died aged just 15 from leukaemia in 2006. Pope Francis’s decision in 2024 to approve his canonisation saw him labelled “the first millennial saint”.

As with many of the late Pope’s bold, breaking-with-precedent decisions, this one appeared to be based, in part at least, on a realisation that the Church feels alien and irrelevant to many young people because of its outdated stance on sex before marriage, women’s equality and same-sex relationships.

Holding up Acutis as a role model – which is part of their job description – is therefore showing a sceptical young audience that Catholicism isn’t only for the old and the conservative. If in doubt of the symbolic power of Carlos Acutis, take a look at the stained-glass window featuring him that was installed in 2022 in St Aldhelm’s Catholic Church in Malmesbury.

Unlike the medieval bishop in vestments and carrying a crozier in the window next door, he is depicted dressed in standard 2006 teenager garb, with a digital watch and a phone strapped to his rucksack. In other words: very ordinary, very now, yet simultaneously the Church has decided through its canonisation process someone extraordinary by dint of his religious devotion and his “heroic virtue” in living his short life as “a servant of God”.

These are the key qualities for any saint in Catholicism’s famously lengthy rulebook. Francis had planned to preside at the canonisation ceremony last month (the latest of 900 saints he had made during his reign, 813 of whom came from the 15th century), but it was postponed as the seriousness of the health problems that led to his death became apparent.

Acutis will be canonised today by Leo XIV in a ceremony at the Vatican. His link to the new pope was hailed by a popular American Catholic priest podcaster, David Michael Moses, who upped the ante by telling his 330,000 YouTube followers that Leo has a special connection with the teenager.

The bond between the two rests, Moses enthuses, on the fact young Carlo did his secondary education at the Leo XIII Institute in Milan. “What are the chances,” he says in his folksy way, “that the school he’s attending when he dies was named after Pope Leo XIII, the predecessor of our new Pope Leo XIV, the pope that Leo XIV says inspired him to choose the name? How cool is that?”

And there is more. “If that wasn’t enough, listen to this quote from Carlo Acutis. ‘I offer all the suffering I will have to suffer for the lord, for the pope, and for the Church.’”

It might not pass muster as a watertight argument in a court of law, but in the Vatican, the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, which has been in charge of saint-making for centuries, assesses evidence in a very different way.

Acutis, the boy now also referred to as “God’s Influencer”, was born in 1991 in west London and baptised in Our Lady of Dolours parish in Chelsea. His Italian mother Antonia and half-Italian, half-English father Andrea moved to Milan six months later and raised their only child there. Early on, his banker parents say, he showed a particular empathy and social conscience, saving up his pocket money to hand over to good causes that helped the poor, or standing up for those bullied at his school.

But it was the always present religious dimension in him that was so unusual in an age where church attendance, especially among the young in Italy, is in steep decline. When on family holidays at Centola in southern Italy, little Carlo would wander over as a child and join the group of old women who gathered each day to say the rosary on the beach. And it was Carlo who insisted on the family going to church each Sunday. Before that, his parents had been pretty much lapsed from the religion of their own upbringing.

As a teen, he would cook food and deliver it to those who were homeless and on the streets of Milan. He became a catechist aged 12 in his local parish of Santa Maria Segreta, preparing younger children for their first communion. Next, the skills he mastered early with digital and computer technology saw him producing the parish newsletter and compiling and updating a public website that collected all reported miracles around the world attributed to the Virgin Mary and the Eucharist.

It is all the more remarkable that he did all this while limiting himself to one hour a day on screens, his mother later stressed. When diagnosed with incurable leukaemia in 2006, he told her, “I die happy because I didn’t spend any minutes of my life on things God doesn’t love.”

For some parents, a child self-limiting to an hour of screen time per day would count as a miracle in itself, but the Vatican has a higher bar. To be declared a saint, there has to be evidence presented that praying to the candidate had precipitated two separate miraculous events.

In 2020, the Vatican department in charge of canonisation published evidence that prayers directed to God via Carlo Acutis had cured a Brazilian youngster, Mattheus Vianna, from a rare disease. Pope Francis accepted these findings, reached after interviewing around 500 people, including medical experts who, it was said, could come up with no other plausible explanation.

Then, in 2024, another report accepted that prayers made to Acutis had spared the life of a young woman in Florence who had had a bleed on her brain that doctors had said would kill her. There will, of course, be sceptics who question the science that leads to these conclusions, including many Catholics, who struggle to make sense of the randomness of these divine interventions when so many other tragedies occur each and every day.

Others, too, point to the cost of the Vatican process of discernment, which has to be met by those putting forward the candidate. Pope Francis did move – in line with his wider embrace of what he referred to as “a poor Church, for the poor” – to cut these charges, but they remain considerable. It may explain why usually only religious orders can afford to immortalise their brethren or sisters. Or the occasional wealthy family.

Antonia Salzano, Carlo’s mother, would add another miracle to the list. She was in her forties when her son died, and assumed she would never have another child. One night, he appeared to her in a dream and told her she would have twins. And, at 44, she did.

Quite how the Vatican could verify that as true is hard to imagine, but getting too wrapped up in the process risks missing the point. The Church gets many things wrong about human beings, but it also gets a lot right, including that we do respond well to role models being held up in front of us to emulate. It was doing it long before the advent of social media.

Moreover, there is an argument that connects the cult that has grown so quickly in recent years around Carlo Acutis with those others of his generation who, a recent survey by the Bible Society reported, are returning to the pews in surprising numbers. Perhaps the Church isn’t quite so old-fashioned and otherworldly as we like to think.

Peter Stanford is a former editor of the ‘Catholic Herald’. His book ‘Gaudi: God’s Architect’ will be published next spring by Hodder

Teenagers are prouder to be British than their parents, poll shows

British teenagers are more patriotic than their parents, research suggests.

A new poll revealed almost half (49 per cent) of 16 and 17-year-olds say they are proud of their national identity, while 10 per cent say they are ashamed.

This compares to 45 per cent of the general population who feel proud to be British, while 15 per cent are ashamed.

The poll, conducted by More in Common for The Sunday Times, also revealed that almost three in 10 teenagers support abolishing the monarchy, although 24 per cent would oppose it.

Discussing the royal family, Jake, 17, from Leeds, told the survey: “I don’t really care for it. I understand it’s very good for bringing money into the country and tourism.

“I’ve even visited London and the palace myself and stuff, but I wouldn’t be bothered if one day it randomly disappeared.”

Siya, 17, from Birmingham, added: “The role they played in the British empire to me is quite astonishing, and I feel as if they’re put on a pedestal, but at the end of the day they are just people, and I feel like if you’re ever going to aim towards being a fully equal society, then everybody needs to be treated equally.”

The research, which polled 1,100 British 16- to 17-year-olds, also revealed seven in 10 are worried about climate change – more than any other age group – and 60 per cent support the 2050 net zero target.

A quarter of respondents said they would likely enlist to fight in the event of a war involving the UK, although this increases to 32 per cent among boys compared to 15 per cent of girls.

The research comes as the government prepares to lower the voting age from 18 to 16 before the next general election.

Luke Tryl, the director of More in Common, told The Sunday Times: “Much of this research shows how different the next generation of adults’ experience of childhood has been.

“Today’s young Britons have come of age through a decade of political turmoil, a pandemic, and a cost of living crisis. It’s no surprise they feel like a distinct generation, with different politics and shifting values.

“One example is their view of the monarchy. While most adults support it, just a quarter of teens would oppose abolition, and nearly half say they don’t really mind either way.

“And yet, although they might express it differently, this group is as proud of the UK as the generations before them. Despite the common belief that patriotism is fading among young people, 16- and 17-year-olds are even more likely than adults to feel proud of being British.

“Their pride is clearly less tied to traditional institutions like the royal family, but it is still strong, and possibly growing.”