Applications for legal aid in homelessness cases have fallen by 34% in six years

Lawyers who help people in danger of losing their homes claim they are being forced to take on cases at their own financial risk as the Legal Aid Agency adopts a “culture of refusal”.

Applications for legal aid in homelessness cases have tumbled despite a steep rise in the number of street sleepers over the past six years, the agency’s figures show.

“Hell is coming,” one weather forecaster tweeted this week, warning not of further political turmoil but of the hottest heatwave in decades that’s advancing across continental Europe. Extreme weather events like this remind us that climate change is not a remote and distant threat – but a reality that is already taking an unacceptable human toll.

In recent months, Extinction Rebellion and the school climate strike have turned up the heat on the climate debate. They’ve both done an astonishing job of getting the climate change back on the public and political agendas. Their warnings of impending apocalypse, disruptive tactics and robust demands that others “tell the truth” about climate change have made huge waves. Parliament has declared a climate emergency. The Guardian has updated its own editorial guidelines to use language that accurately reflects the threat that climate change poses.

Free London newspaper edited by George Osborne has not been in the black since 2016

The Evening Standard made a loss of almost £12m last year as the freesheet continues to struggle in a tough advertising market.

The title, which is controlled by Evgeny Lebedev and edited by the former chancellor George Osborne, made a pre-tax loss of £11.5m in the year to the end of September 2018. It takes losses at the Standard, which recently cut jobs as part of a cost-saving merger of print and online operations, to more than £23m in the last two years.

Two men in their 30s sustained injuries after being approached by three male youths

A 12-year-old boy has been arrested on suspicion of a homophobic assault on two men in Liverpool.

The men, both in their 30s, were walking down Manningham Road in the Anfield area of the city at 9.20pm on Saturday when they were approached by three male youths, Merseyside police said.

Citizens Advice research finds half of landlords don’t know or understand legal obligations

Weak regulation of private renting has left hundreds of thousands of tenants living in mouldy or dangerous homes, Citizens Advice has warned.

A survey of English landlords and tenants conducted on behalf of the charity found that half of landlords do not know or understand their legal obligations. Meanwhile, renters aren’t aware of their rights or don’t feel able to enforce them.