Portrait of the week: HS2 cancellations, (another) doctors’ strike and US Congress meltdown

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The Conservatives argued about tax and HS2 at their conference in the former Manchester Central railway station. At the end, Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, announced cancellation of the Birmingham to Manchester leg of HS2. He promised £36 billion for a ‘Network North’ and for transport outside London (where there would be a ‘Euston development zone’). He proposed raising the legal age for smoking by one year every year. He declared his values as ‘service, family, work’ and said: ‘A man is a man and a woman is a woman.’ He wore a bracelet saying ‘Dada’. In her own speech, Akshata Murty, his wife, said ‘aspiration’ summed him up. Lightning struck a food waste recycling tank at Cassington, Oxfordshire, causing a huge explosion.

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Junior doctors and consultants belonging to the BMA union went on strike for three days at the same time.