Afternoon.

Today: why England is somehow dealing with drought and flood alerts at the same time, whether another expensive winter is brewing for energy bills, why Britain’s mobile signal is quite so unimpressive, and some robots attempting sport.

🎸 On this day: In 1966, The Beatles played their final concert in front of a paying audience, at San Francisco's Candlestick Park. They'd famously return to the stage once more, on a London rooftop in 1969.

Nothing sums up British weather like being told it's a drought on a day you needed an umbrella just to get the bins out.

The Environment Agency says 71% of England by land area is currently classed as being in drought, while rainfall so far this August has been just 34% of the long-term average.

River levels aren't looking especially perky either. Of the monitoring sites reported by the Environment Agency, 39% had notably low flows and another 19% were exceptionally low for the time of year.

And yes, somewhat confusingly, there have also been dozens of flood alerts. That's because a few bouts of heavy rain don't necessarily fix a drought. Dry ground can struggle to absorb sudden downpours, while reservoirs, rivers and groundwater need sustained rainfall to properly recover.

The bigger question is whether this is becoming a structural problem rather than simply a very dry summer. England's population is growing, climate change is increasing the likelihood of hotter and drier summers, and the water system needs enough reservoirs, pipes and other infrastructure to cope with both.

So while the bank-holiday forecast may involve an umbrella, England's water problem hasn't gone away.

Europe is heading towards the colder months with considerably less gas tucked away than usual.

EU gas stores were about 63% full in the final week of August, compared with an average of roughly 80% at this point in recent years. They're reportedly at their lowest level for this time of year in 13 years.

That matters here because Britain uses plenty of gas but has relatively little storage of its own. We therefore rely heavily on being able to buy what we need from international markets. If supplies are tight, prices can move quickly.

Households are already facing another increase. Ofgem confirmed this week that its energy price cap will rise 4% from October, taking the typical annual bill for a household paying by direct debit from £1,663 to £1,723.

Wholesale energy prices have also risen 11% over the past three months.

There isn't currently a suggestion that Britain is about to physically run out of gas. The concern is the price we'll have to pay for it if Europe enters a cold winter with unusually depleted stocks and global supplies remain disrupted.

There is at least some choice for households worried about further rises. Fixed tariffs can protect against future increases, although they also mean missing out if prices subsequently fall, so it's worth comparing the actual unit rates and exit fees rather than fixing purely because winter sounds ominous.

In short: the heating's probably staying on. But the meter's staying on too, and it's counting faster.

If you've ever found yourself holding your phone at an increasingly ambitious angle in the hope of finding one extra bar, Britain has some explaining to do.

Analysis by Which? recently ranked the UK 57th in the world for overall mobile network performance and 70th for download speeds. Not only that, but they also found Britain had worse mobile coverage than every other EU and G7 country it compared.

The good news is the UK's got full-fibre broadband nailed. The bad news is you'll need to stand next to the actual fibre to get any signal.

Britain has made much better progress on full-fibre broadband, but upgrading the mobile network to 5G has proved slower. Telecoms executives are now warning that this could become more than an irritation when you're trying to load Google Maps.

AI services, connected devices and increasingly data-hungry applications are expected to put much greater demands on telecoms infrastructure. That's potentially awkward for a government with ambitions to make Britain an AI superpower. VodafoneThree says that without upgrades, today's occasionally ropey service could become worse as the amount of data travelling through the network grows.

The industry says planning restrictions are partly responsible for holding up new and upgraded infrastructure. VodafoneThree (yes, that’s their name now) has committed £11bn over a decade to its 5G network and wants the government to make the planning process easier.

There is an obvious caveat here. Telecoms companies asking the government to make life easier for telecoms companies isn't exactly an independent assessment.

But the international comparison is difficult to wave away. Britain wants to be an AI superpower but still can't beat Albania at getting 4G into a Tesco car park.

Hundreds of households are set to receive compensation after suppliers cancelled heating-oil orders when prices surged earlier this year. The Competition and Markets Authority says some customers then had to buy replacement oil costing £150–£350 more.

Eligible customers don't need to apply: suppliers will contact them directly. Presumably with the urgency of a mate who owes you a tenner.

German insurance giant Allianz is among a small number of potential buyers considering a takeover of the AA. Talks are reportedly taking place over a deal valuing the British breakdown-recovery business at roughly £5bn.

No word yet on whether the deal includes free roadside assistance.

A major randomised trial has found that statins can reduce the risk of a first serious cardiovascular event among healthy people aged over 70. The trial involved almost 10,000 older adults who had not previously suffered cardiovascular disease.

Britain's new online-safety rules are starting to change what you can actually access on the internet. Ofcom says some websites it considers particularly risky for children have now introduced proper age checks, while others have decided it's easier to block UK users altogether.

The first young people have begun work through the government's new Jobs Guarantee. The scheme is aimed at young people who have been unemployed for a prolonged period. The government says it intends to create more than 90,000 fully funded jobs across the UK by 2029, including support for 3,500 people in Wales.

Asda has recorded underlying sales growth for the first time in more than two years, with sales excluding fuel up 0.2%. This isn't enough to make Tesco nervous, but it's enough to reassure us the pizza counter isn't going anywhere just yet.

London's Science Museum is ending its long-running relationship with BP when the current agreement expires, following years of criticism from climate campaigners over fossil-fuel companies sponsoring cultural institutions. BP has funded the museum's science-engagement academy, which the museum says has reached more than one million young people.

British F1 world champion Lando Norris has signed a new contract keeping him at McLaren until at least 2030. Norris joined McLaren in 2019 and says he'd like to spend his entire F1 career with the team. How romantic.

Major engineering work is disrupting parts of the rail network over the bank-holiday weekend, including no East Coast Main Line trains between Potters Bar and Peterborough/Royston, plus works at London Bridge, Birmingham, Leeds/York and Guildford. Most trains are still running, but National Rail's advice is simple: "check before you travel."

Four words that sum up the entire British rail experience: you do the homework, they do the apologising.

Icelanders are voting today on whether the country should restart negotiations to join the European Union. This isn't a referendum on actually joining. A Yes vote would reopen talks that were suspended in 2013, with Icelanders eventually expected to get another vote on any negotiated membership deal.

Fishing rights, sovereignty, the economy and changing security concerns have all featured heavily in a very close campaign.

China's humanoid robots have been playing sport. The World Humanoid Robot Games featured machines running, playing football and attempting various other activities traditionally performed by people with knees.

China is investing heavily in humanoid robotics, and the games showed how quickly the technology is advancing, but also how difficult it remains to get machines to move around the real world reliably.

That said, they're definitely getting better. They're also still falling over quite a lot, which, to be fair, is already a key skill in the Premier League.