Contractor on Unite’s disastrous hotel project also allegedly gave football tickets to former union boss

Len McCluskey, the former head of Unite, accepted private jet flights and football tickets arranged by the company building a multimillion pound hotel for the union, according to an internal dossier.

The Flanagan Group, which is run by friends of McCluskey, overcharged Unite by at least £30m for the Birmingham hotel and conference centre project, the interim report said.

The union spent “at least” £72m more than the hotel complex was worth.

Unite awarded the Flanagan Group the contract to build the hotel with “no competitive tendering process” and despite the company “having a history of poor performance, delays … and cost overruns on previous contracts”.

McCluskey described the company’s bosses as “good friends”.

A £400,000 union loan towards the purchase of a £700,000 flat for McCluskey had not been authorised by the executive committee in advance.

CND and experts cite US air force transport flight thought to be carrying tactical bombs that landed at RAF base

Campaigners have called for Keir Starmer to tell parliament whether US nuclear weapons have returned to British soil after a distinctive US air force transport flight was spotted landing at RAF Lakenheath on Friday morning.

The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and several experts believe that it is highly likely that a number of US B61-12 gravity bombs were delivered to a US air force squadron last week, the first US nuclear deployment in the UK since 2008.

Consortium led by RedBird Capital in line to buy group for £500m, in deal that would result in UAE retaining 15% stake

The sale of the Telegraph looks set to finally go through after government legislation to allow foreign states to own up to 15% in British newspapers survived a potentially fatal vote in the House of Lords.

Gerry Cardinale’s RedBird Capital is leading a consortium looking to buy the Telegraph for £500m, in a deal that would result in the United Arab Emirates retaining a stake of 15%.

Cutting aid budget to 0.3% of national income will hurt many African countries, says FCDO impact assessment

Labour’s deep aid cuts will hit children’s education and increase the risk of disease and death in some African countries, according to the government’s own impact assessment.

Keir Starmer announced earlier this year that he would reduce the aid budget to 0.3% of national income, from 0.5%, to fund increased spending on defence.

Having escaped a life of drudgery in Birmingham, Ozzy became the rare rock frontman you could relate to – and then, against the odds, a national treasure

• News: Ozzy Osbourne, Black Sabbath frontman and icon of British heavy metal, dies aged 76
• Ozzy Osbourne: a life in pictures

As he would doubtless have admitted, the teenage John Michael “Ozzy” Osbourne did not seem much like someone with a glittering future ahead of them. His childhood had been troubled – he struggled at school, partly as a result of dyslexia, and suffered sexual abuse at the hands of two older bullies – and his prospects after leaving school aged 15 seemed non-existent. Even his attempts to become a criminal ended in farce. He was, he later noted, “fucking useless” as a burglar: a television he was attempting to steal fell on top of him; operating in the dark, he inadvertently stole a selection of baby clothes rather than the adult garments he had intended to sell around the pubs of his native Aston in Birmingham. Finally, he was caught and sent to prison for six weeks.

“OZZY ZIG NEEDS A GIG” read the card he left in the window of a local music shop, and “need” seems to have been the operative word: by the time he joined a heavy blues rock band called Earth as vocalist, he was out of other options. It wasn’t even as if Earth, or Black Sabbath as they became, offered an obvious ticket to fame and fortune: their big idea to advance their career involved loading their van up with equipment, then driving it to other artists’ gigs uninvited, sitting outside on the off-chance that one of the bands performing pulled out and they could fill in.