San Francisco saw a 17% increase in its homeless population since its last homeless count, with numbers rising to levels that haven’t been recorded on these streets in 17 years. The increase comes amid an IPO boom in a tech industry that has the city’s rich growing richer, the wealth disparities starker and the cost of living more unaffordable than ever. “The cost of housing hasn’t gone down, so why does anyone expect that the amount of people experiencing homelessness would go down?” said Kelley Cutler, the human rights organizer for the Coalition on Homelessness. The city released a preliminary summary of its one-night street count on Thursday, tallying the number of homeless people at 8,011. The uptick, according to the mayor’s office, came primarily from people living in their cars, who totaled 68% of those counted. Read more HERE.

A California jury has ordered Monsanto to pay more than $2bn to a couple that got cancer after using its weedkiller, marking the third and largest verdict against the company over Roundup.

A jury in Oakland ruled Monday that Monsanto, now owned by the German pharmaceutical corporation Bayer, was liable for the non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL) cancer of Alva and Alberta Pilliod. The jury ordered the company to pay $1bn in damages to each of them, and more than $55m total in compensatory damages.

The victory for the Pilliods follows two consecutive trial wins for families taking on Monsanto over Roundup, the world’s most widely used weedkiller, which research has linked to NHL, a cancer that affects the immune system. Dewayne Johnson, a former school groundskeeper with terminal cancer, won a $289m victory in state court last year, and Edwin Hardeman, who sprayed Roundup on his properties, was awarded $80m in the first federal trial this year. Read more HERE.

Police are hunting for a man suspected of firing a shot outside an east London mosque during evening prayers for Ramadan. The man was reported to have entered the Seven Kings mosque in Ilford on Thursday night, but was “ushered out” by those inside, police said. A shot was then heard at 10.45pm. Police said there were no injuries and they were not treating it as a terrorist incident. They said they believed the shot came from a blank-firing handgun.

One theory police are considering is that the gunshot followed a dispute linked to gangs or criminality which started in the street and then moved into the mosque. Read more HERE.

The threat of a full-blown trade war between the US and China and Brexit uncertainty are posing mounting risks to the EU economy, the European commission has warned, after downgrading its growth outlook for 2019.

Brussels’ executive arm said a recent slowdown in global trade volumes had taken its toll across the continent, as it cut its GDP growth forecast for the 28-nation bloc for 2019 to 1.4%, down from a forecast of 1.9% in the autumn. Sounding the alarm as tensions between the US and China threaten to boil over ahead of crunch meetings between the two countries later this week, the commission warned that further escalation of trade conflicts around the world could trigger a “major shock” for the EU. Read more HERE.

Tropical cyclone Fani, the most severe storm to hit the Indian subcontinent in two decades, has made landfall on the coast of the eastern state of Odisha, where officials are still trying to evacuate the homes of the most vulnerable one million people in its path.

The “extremely severe” storm bearing winds of up to 185km/h barrelled into the small city of Puri, home to about 200,000 people, at approximately 8am local time on Friday, according to Indian meteorological officials. Read more HERE.