Friday briefing: Could Thames Water’s cautionary tale end the UK’s love affair with privatisation?

In today’s newsletter: Guardian business correspondent Alex Lawson on how things got so bad for the private water company, and where we go from here

• Sign up here for our daily newsletter, First Edition

Good morning.

For the last few years, the water industry has faced growing criticism over everything from increasingly common hosepipe bans to dumping sewage in England’s waterways. Thames Water is the biggest water company in the UK and it is facing a particularly acute crisis after its chief executive, Sarah Bentley, suddenly resigned with no explanation and reports began appearing that the government and regulators had started to draft contingency plans for the potential collapse of the water provider after concerns grew about its ballooning £14bn debt pile.

France | Violence has erupted for a third night over the fatal police shooting of a 17-year-old boy of north African descent during a traffic stop. An officer was charged with voluntary homicide on Thursday as an estimated 6,000 people marched in Nanterre, near Paris, in memory of the boy, identified as Nahel M. More than 400 people have been arrested across France.

Immigration | A bitter legal battle over the government’s plans is set to reach new heights after Downing Street insisted it would challenge a ruling that sending refugees to Rwanda was unlawful. Rishi Sunak said that the government would seek permission to appeal and insisted that Rwanda was a safe country and said that the court had agreed with this.

NHS | Thousands more doctors and nurses will be trained in England every year to plug the huge workforce gaps that plagues almost all NHS services. Amanda Pritchard, the chief executive of NHS England, hailed the long-awaited plan as “a once in a generation opportunity to put staffing on a sustainable footing for years to come”.

Society | A critical report has found that undercover police operations to infiltrate leftwing groups in the 1970s and early 1980s were not justified and should have been rapidly closed down. Sir John Mitting also concluded that the undercover officers gathered a “remarkable” quantity of information on activists who posed no threat to public order.

Health | Aspartame, a popular artificial sweetener used in thousands of products worldwide including Diet Coke, ice-cream and chewing gum, is to be declared a possible cancer risk to humans by the World Health Organisation.