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By Monday morning, Perry Barr will be hosting something Britain has never hosted before. The European Athletics Championships open at Alexander Stadium on 10 August and run for a full week through to 16 August — and this is the first time in the competition's history that a British city has staged it.

It's been a long time coming for this newsletter's readers, too — we first flagged it back in June as one to pencil in, and now the countdown clock is genuinely down to hours rather than weeks. The scale of it is hard to overstate: roughly 1,600 athletes from 48 nations are due to compete, turning Perry Barr into the centre of the European sporting calendar for seven days straight.

The stadium itself has previous. Built in 1975 and opened the following year as the long-time home of the Birchfield Harriers, it went through a major redevelopment between 2019 and 2022 to serve as the centrepiece venue for the Commonwealth Games — hosting that opening and closing ceremony, plus the track and field programme. That Commonwealth-grade infrastructure is exactly why Birmingham could pitch for these championships in the first place, rather than building anything new from scratch.

For this event, temporary seating pushes capacity past 30,000, and the daily rhythm will be familiar to anyone who caught the 2022 Games: morning sessions from around 10am carry the heats and qualifying rounds, while the evening sessions from 7pm bring the finals and semi-finals in the events people actually stay up for.

Expect the usual ripple effects across the city while it's on — extra footfall around Perry Barr and the wider transport network, a noticeably busier city centre in the evenings, and no shortage of flags and face paint on the 11 bus. If you've been near Alexander Stadium in the run-up, you'll already have clocked the extra scaffolding and seating going up; by Monday it'll all be finished and full.

Whether you've got tickets or you're planning to watch from the sofa, it's worth taking a moment to register what's actually happening here: a stadium built for Birmingham's local athletics club fifty years ago is about to host the biggest names in European sport, live, on our doorstep, for the very first time anywhere in this country. Not bad for Perry Barr.

A 21-year-old man is due to appear before Birmingham Magistrates' Court today, charged with attempted murder in connection with the shooting of a teenage boy in Newtown last month.

The incident happened just after 10.30pm on 23 July, when a 15-year-old boy was found with a gunshot wound in Newtown Row. Officers say he is understood to have been shot nearby in Porchester Street. He was taken to hospital, and West Midlands Police have said his injuries were not life-threatening.

Jibril Abdi, 21, of Newtown, was arrested in High Wycombe on Wednesday and brought back to a West Midlands custody block for questioning. He has since been charged with attempted murder and was remanded to appear before magistrates.

As with any case now before the courts, it's worth being clear about what a charge does and doesn't mean: it is an allegation, not a conviction, and Abdi is entitled to a fair trial. We'll follow this one through as it moves through the courts and update you with anything genuinely new, rather than reheating today's facts with a new date on them.

West Midlands Police have not issued a further public appeal in connection with this case at this stage. Newtown, just north of the city centre, is a tight-knit, mostly residential part of Birmingham, and incidents like this understandably rattle a community that doesn't often make headlines for the wrong reasons.

We'll keep this one plain and brief, as we do with any story involving a child and a weapon — there's nothing to embellish here, just the facts as the courts have them so far.

A Birmingham city councillor has been charged with a string of assault offences after police were called to reports of disorder in Edgbaston on Thursday afternoon.

Siobhan Harper-Nunes, 66, was arrested following the incident, which West Midlands Police say happened at around 5pm. She has been charged with assaulting a member of the public, three police officers, and a member of police staff — five charges in total.

Harper-Nunes was elected as the Green Party councillor for Ladywood in May this year. She previously stood as the Green Party's candidate for West Midlands Mayor in 2024, giving her a reasonably high profile within local politics beyond the ward she now represents.

Following the charges, she has been suspended from the Green group on Birmingham City Council, meaning she will sit as an independent while the case proceeds. She has been bailed to appear before Birmingham Magistrates' Court on 10 September.

As ever with a case that's now before the courts, the charges are allegations rather than findings of guilt, and Harper-Nunes is entitled to due process like anyone else. We won't speculate on what happened in Edgbaston beyond what police have confirmed, and we'll report the outcome plainly when the case is heard next month.

It's an unusual story for a newsletter that more often covers councillors debating bin collections and planning applications — but a serving councillor facing multiple assault charges, including against serving officers, is squarely a matter of public record and public interest.

After years of planning, demolition is finally under way in Walsall town centre as part of the £40m Connected Gateway scheme.

The project will see two large buildings flattened to make way for a new plaza, designed to properly connect Walsall railway station with St Paul's bus station — two transport hubs that currently sit awkwardly close together without a coherent route between them. Once complete, the plaza is meant to be the first thing many visitors see of the town, hence the "gateway" name.

Money-wise, it's a mixed public purse: £11m of the £40m total comes from central government's Future High Streets Fund, with Walsall Council covering the remainder. Contractor Kier is carrying out the works, and the council says preventative measures are in place to keep disruption down — including water jets to suppress dust as the buildings come down, a small but appreciated detail for anyone working or shopping nearby.

One practical note for regular users of the area: Butler's Passage, a walkway through the site, is closed during the works but is scheduled to reopen to the public at the end of September.

It's the kind of project that's easy to be sceptical about while it's mid-demolition — dust, hoardings and a town centre that looks worse before it looks better — but the underlying logic is sound. Walsall's station and bus station serve thousands of journeys a day, and right now getting between them isn't the smooth, obvious walk it should be. A proper plaza fixes that.

Expect the site to look more like a building site than a plaza for some months yet. Demolition is only the first visible milestone in a much longer regeneration programme for Walsall town centre, which has already seen several other schemes progress over the past year or so. We'll keep you posted as the plaza itself starts to take shape.

Three Commonwealth Games medals, one shared alma mater: judoka Acelya Toprak, Kelly Petersen-Pollard and Katie-Jemima Yeats-Brown all studied Sport and Exercise Science at the University of Wolverhampton, and all three came home from Glasgow 2026 with medals for England.

Toprak claimed gold in the under-57kg category, while Petersen-Pollard took gold in the under-70kg division — two golds in two different weight classes for graduates of the same course. Yeats-Brown, also an Olympian, added a bronze in the under-63kg category, rounding out a genuinely striking haul for one university.

The Games themselves ran from 23 July to 2 August, meaning all three medals were won within the last fortnight — fresh enough that the celebratory cakes in the university's sports science department have probably only just been finished off.

It's a reminder that Wolverhampton's contribution to elite sport tends to fly under the radar compared to some of its bigger neighbours, but the university's Sport and Exercise Science course clearly has some serious pedigree behind it. Producing three Commonwealth medallists in one squad, across two different weight categories in the same discipline, is not a coincidence — it points to a genuine strength in how the university trains and supports its athletes.

For any Wolverhampton teenager currently weighing up their A-level options and wondering whether a sports science degree actually leads anywhere, this is about as good an advert as it gets: three graduates, one Games, three medals.

Congratulations are in order all round — and if you spot any of the trio out and about in Wolverhampton over the coming weeks, they've more than earned a nod of appreciation.

An elderly man was targeted in a distraction theft on Dudley High Street on Monday, and rather than let it lie, the local community has rallied to help him recover the money.

Police say the victim had £860 taken from him after being distracted by two men on the street. Footage of the incident circulated on social media over the following days, prompting a wave of local anger — and, more usefully, a wave of local generosity.

A collection pot has been set up at The Glow Lounge in Wall Heath, and a GoFundMe fundraiser has also been launched by locals to help make up what he lost. It's the kind of grassroots response that doesn't need a council motion or a press release to get moving — just people who saw a neighbour targeted and decided to do something about it.

West Midlands Police are investigating and have issued an appeal for information, asking anyone who recognises the two men involved, or who has information about the theft, to get in touch.

Distraction thefts like this one rely on catching someone off guard for just a few seconds — a question, a dropped item, a moment's confusion — before the money disappears. They disproportionately target older residents, which is exactly why this one struck such a nerve locally.

It won't undo what happened on Monday, but a High Street that shows up for one of its own with a collection pot and a fundraiser is a decent advert for the kind of place Dudley still is. If you're able to chip in, the collection pot at The Glow Lounge is open, or you can search for the GoFundMe set up in his support.

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