A look ahead at the key events leading the news agenda next week, from the team at Foresight News. Delivered to your inbox on Fridays.
Leading the week
The Scottish National Party will hope to reinvigorate the party’s fortunes this week as its annual conference opens in Edinburgh on Friday (August 30). Now on its third leader in two years, the party has been mired in internal strife and scandal surrounding the fraud investigation into former leader Nicola Sturgeon and her husband, Peter Murrell. And with the conference coming off the back of a troubled general election campaign which saw the party lose 39 seats in the House of the Commons, new First Minister John Swinney will be keen to reassure the party faithful he can turn the ship around and offer a new path forward in its flagging campaign for a second independence referendum. Westminster leader Stephen Flynn, now commanding the support of just nine MPs in the House of Commons, makes his address on Saturday (August 31), followed by Swinney on Sunday (September 1).
Sunday (September 1) also sees the long-planned expansion of the Government’s free childcare programme come into effect. Announced by former Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt in his Spring Budget in 2023, the expansion gives working parents 15 hours of government-funded free childcare for children from 9 months old – a provision which currently only kicks in at age two. Prior to the general election, the Labour Party committed to the full implementation of the previous government’s plans, ensuring that the scheme for eligible working parents will be expanded to 30 hours of free childcare from September 2025. But Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson recently warned of the ‘enormous challenge’ to increase capacity to keep up with the plans, following reports this summer that over half of councils were unsure they would have enough places to meet demands.
The Paris Olympics saw a host of star names deliver on the biggest sporting stage and managed to overshadow the political division in France that had threatened to overshadow the country’s hosting of this year’s games. Attention now turns to the Paralympics, which begin with an opening ceremony in the centre of Paris on Wednesday (August 28) before the sporting competitions get underway the following day. The 2024 Games will feature more than 4,000 athletes competing for 549 medals and boasts the highest-ever number of female competitors, so there are plenty of candidates to add their names to the pantheon of Paralympic greats over the 11 days of action.
There are medals up for grabs from day one, with early highlights likely to come in the swimming and track cycling finals on Thursday (August 29). The athletics gets underway on Friday (August 30) with finals in the women’s and men’s 100m teeing up an action-packed track and field calendar where medals are awarded every day until the Games end on September 8. The first archery medals are handed out on Saturday (August 31), while qualification hots up in the wheelchair sports along with rowing, badminton and boccia. Sunday (September 1) is the busiest medal day of the Games so far, with winners crowned across 10 different sports.
ParalympicsGB’s hopes of improving on a second place finish in the Tokyo medal table are again carried by the likes of track cyclist (and most decorated Paralympian) Sarah Storey, the unbeaten wheelchair racer Hannah Cockroft and the colourfully-coiffured boccia star David Smith, with debutants Lizzi Jordan (track cycling) and Jack Eyers (paracanoe) looking to emulate swimmer Maisie Summers-Newton, who won two golds in Tokyo, by claiming a medal in their maiden Games.
Elsewhere, Italy’s Simone Barlaam will be looking to improve on his Tokyo haul of four medals in the men’s swimming, while Japan’s 53-year-old Keiko Sugiura will be aiming to follow up on her success in the women’s track cycling. Dutch wheelchair tennis star Diede de Groot is aiming for a second consecutive gold, German ‘Blade Jumper’ Markus Rehm is going for a fourth Paralympic long jump title (and a potential tilt at his own world record), and Brazil’s blind football team will be looking to secure a sixth Paralympic title and maintain their record of winning gold at every Games since Athens 2004.
Looking abroad
SpaceX looks to make history again early Tuesday (August 27) morning with the launch of Polaris Dawn and what would be the first-ever all-civilian spacewalk on the third day of its five-day orbit. Bankrolled by American billionaire Jared Isaacman, the flight’s mission commander, the Polaris Dawn project is intended to push the boundaries of space exploration by illustrating the viability of sending non-commissioned astronauts into space and eventually to Mars.
While the mission will include a slew of scientific experiments, including on the effects of radiation as the capsule passes through the high-radiation South Atlantic Anomaly, the main focus will be on the spacewalk, set to take place at an orbital altitude three times higher than the International Space Station. Two of the four crew members, which include a former US Air Force Colonel and two SpaceX engineers, will spend about 20 minutes tethered outside the craft to test SpaceX’s new space suits.
If Polaris Dawn is successful, it will stand in stark contrast to Boeing’s efforts in the ongoing space race with SpaceX. Boeing’s first crewed flight of its Starliner, which launched in June, has not gone to plan. Astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore are still onboard the ISS despite initially being scheduled to return on June 14. NASA managers are set to decide as soon as tomorrow whether Starliner can safely return the astronauts soon or if they need to catch a ride on a SpaceX dragon flight in February 2025.
Leaders from the Pacific Islands Forum gather in Tonga on Monday (August 26) for a five-day summit focused on regional issues. As always, climate change is likely to be top of the agenda for the vulnerable island states, and to that end leaders will be hoping to make progress on the establishment of the Pacific Resilience Facility, with UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres on hand to lend support. There’s also likely to be discussions on the situation in New Caledonia, where a PIF fact-finding mission following violent protests earlier this year was recently delayed over disagreements with France on the terms of the visit.
But the regional issues may be overshadowed by the global ones as the US and China continue to compete for influence in the region. Some PIF members raised concerns when a Chinese police delegation visited Tonga in April to provide assistance ahead of this week’s summit, and Chinese President Xi Jinping used a visit by Fijan Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka this week to pledge stronger trade and investment ties. Just beyond the PIF’s borders, US troops will be taking part in this year’s Super Garuda Shield 2024 exercises in Indonesia from Monday (August 26) until September 6, which Washington views as a key show of solidarity for Indo-Pacific security amid ongoing tensions between China and its neighbours over the South China Sea.