Keir Starmer admitted he must bring down immigration today after shock figures showed the annual record has been smashed again. The PM insisted Britain can no longer be a ‘soft touch’ after huge revisions to official data showed net inflows were 906,000 in the year to June 2023. Arrivals in the 12 months to June this year were 728,000 higher than those leaving the country. In itself that was almost as much as the previous long-term immigration record.

The Spanish government is bringing in new rules demanding hotels gather personal data on tourists – including family information, bank cards and addresses – and hand it over to security services. Spanish hotels already ask guests for their ID card or passport details, but the new rules are expected to be the strictest in the EU with up to 31 pieces of personal data collected. The legislation is set to come into force from Monday, and will require tour operators, holiday rental platforms and car hire companies to gather data on customers.

Russian forces are advancing westward in Ukraine at a rate faster than any other time after the initial days of the 2022 invasion, taking an area half the size of London over the past month as the return of Donald Trump to the White House looms large. Vladimir Putin’s troops swept through swathes of Ukraine in early 2022 and were bearing down on Kyiv in a matter of days, but they were held on the outskirts of the capital before being pushed back and retreating further east. Since then, the 1,000 km (620-mile) front line remained largely static save for some minor offensives one way or the other – that is until Ukraine launched a lightning incursion into Russia’s Kursk region this summer.

Police forces have stopped using Elon Musk’s X social media platform amid concerns about misinformation. X, formerly named Twitter before Musk’s takeover in 2022, was used to spread false information that sparked riots across Britain this summer. The app has also reinstated British based accounts that were previously banned for extremist content.

Mrs Brown’s Boys star Brendan O’Carroll has claimed that a racist joke he made on set ‘was a good thing’ for the BBC. The Irish actor, 69, became embroiled in a racism row after he ‘implied’ the N-word in front of shocked co-stars and production staff. During a reading of the script while in character as Agnes Brown, O’Carroll is said to have said ‘I don’t call a spade a spade, I call a spade a…’ He then started to utter the N-word before he was stopped by a co-star, whose intervention was allegedly delivered while in character as Agnes’ daughter.

The two-year term in a young offenders’ institution handed to a teen driver who left a single mother quadriplegic when he drove into her while filming at the wheel ‘in no way reflects the severity of his crime’, critics said today. George Taylor made two calls, sent text messages and recorded five videos showing him driving a Volkswagen Golf at speed and overtaking other vehicles while using his knees on his steering wheel when he crashed into Catherine Davies, 51. Ms Davies, who worked as a fitness instructor, is now quadriplegic and requires lifelong care in a specially adapted property fitted with life-support equipment. Her disability means she may never again be able to hug her son, 10.