Top story: gunman might have planned to survive
Good morning to you, Graham Russell here with the headlines at the start of the day.
Police are piecing together the “secret life” of Las Vegas gunman Stephen Paddock and believe he may have had help as he amassed dozens of weapons to carry out modern America’s deadliest mass shooting. “Do you think this was all accomplished on his own?” Sheriff Joseph Lombardo said at a press conference overnight. “You’ve got to make the assumption he had to have some help at some point.”
Lombardo also said he had seen evidence Paddock may have intended to survive his murderous attack, and that a week earlier he had rented a room overlooking the Life is Beautiful music festival, also in Las Vegas. Girlfriend Marilou Danley, who arrived in the US from the Philippines for questioning by the FBI released a statement saying she no idea Paddock “was planning violence against anyone”.
Earlier, Donald Trump visited Las Vegas where he praised the courage of victims and police, but flatly refused to engage in a wider discussion about gun violence.
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PM, as in post-May? – Farce, nightmare, shambles ... take your pick and you’ll find it on a front page today in the reporting on Theresa May’s speech. And so the talk turns not to policy but to her future. One MP said colleagues were asking: “Is it going to improve over the next 18 months?” and added: “It’s hard to see how it can.” Yet in a curious way, it was only when her voice faltered that her audience really engaged, writes Simon Jenkins, who suspects she may emerge curiously strengthened. May attacked Jeremy Corbyn, drawing comparisons with the socialism of Venezuela, but judging by the way the Tories are behaving, they think he is on to something, says Larry Elliott.
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Social media, wotevs – Nearly two-thirds of pupils would not care if social media did not exist, and even more said they had at some point temporarily ditched their devices to escape it, a survey in England has found. More than half said they had received abusive comments and a similar proportion said it made them feel less confident about how they looked or how interesting their life was.
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Edward Heath – Police examining claims that Sir Edward Heath sexually abused children have been the victim of a “chilling” campaign to silence them, a Conservative MP has said on the eve of the conclusion of a two-year investigation into the former PM. The Wiltshire police report is expected to say Heath would have been interviewed under criminal caution had he still been alive.
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Bad science – Stem cell research has great potential, the problem is it’s being threatened by all the dodgy clinics and charlatans, a group of experts has told the Lancet. Huge excitement about possible treatments for incurable diseases such as multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s disease, inflated by media reports, has led desperate patients and families to clinics peddling “untested and potentially ineffective therapies”, they said.
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Pinkie promise – You’ve got a Carnegie Hall season opener looming, you’re a famous pianist but only one hand is currently working. What to do? Borrow one from your teenage protege, of course.
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Lunchtime read: what it feels like to have a brain injury
As a science journalist, Elizabeth Lopatto, was au fait with reporting on brain injuries, but then she suffered one in a bike crash. She writes: “I had written about CT scans, but I’d never had one, I told her [the specialist]. So this was exciting. As they moved me into the CT scanner, I wondered: was I a science journalist? I had spoken without thinking. My entire life before the ambulance felt dim and far off. I might as well have been born on the pavement, with the neck brace half on.”
Sport
England’s World Cup 2018 base is a no-frills, out-of-town Baltic Sea hotel with an ambience that stands in contrast with opulent choices of the past, Daniel Taylor reveals in a Guardian exclusive. Ben Stokes and Alex Hales are to get their ECB central contracts renewed, but the former’s hopes for a place in the Ashes squad hang in the balance.
Barcelona and Spain defender Gerard Piqué asks, not unreasonably, “why can a journalist or a mechanic express themselves but not a footballer?” He speaks eloquently about the Catalan referendum and says he is not retiring from international football because that would give satisfaction to the people who “whistle and insult”.
Sebastian Coe is considering introducing an Indian Premier League-style auction to athletics as one of a range of radical proposals in an effort to revive the ailing sport. “I’m not ruling anything out – what about cities and franchises?”
Business
The economy might not be strong enough to support an interest rate rise, Standard & Poor’s has warned, following hints of a rate rise next month. It says an expected recovery from a weak first half of the year had failed to materialise. And a deputy governor at the Bank of England says the government has less than 12 weeks to agree a transition deal with the EU to prevent City firms starting to move out of the UK.
The pound is buying $1.324 and €1.126.
The papers
May had a nightmare of a speech, and er ... that’s it. But there were a variety of treatments for the PM’s time at the podium.
The Guardian describes how “May’s British dream turns into a nightmare” with a second story on the Catalan president repeating his vow to declare independence. The Times says May is on her “final warning” after a shambles of a speech. Metro focuses on the lettering mishap with a punchy “What the F?” and the Sun follows a similar line with “Buiding a cntry tha orks.” The Telegraph has some sympathy for “Luckless May” and the FT says she had to endure an ordeal. The Independent gets the lols with “Carry on Conference”.
The Mail has a double header splashing on the prospect of having to opt out of organ donation, plus Quentin Letts congratulating May on surviving her bad luck. “The old girl made it to the end,” he writes. The Mirror claims a campaign victory on the change to organ donation legislation.
If you missed it higher up, we’ve done a round-up of the papers here.
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