Top story: Call for May to collar Trump over climate
Good morning – it’s Warren Murray bringing you up to speed.
All eyes are turning to Hamburg today with world leaders due to converge for the two-day G20 summit, which gets under way officially on Friday. There are fears of a violent reception – police have already been clashing with protesters, and have seized weapons as they warn a hard core of 5,000 individuals are intent on putting on a riot.
Theresa May is to use a meeting with Donald Trump to emphasise that Britain remains committed to the Paris climate accord. Labour has called for the prime minister to go further and “take President Trump to task” for pulling the US out of the climate change agreement. Trump might also be headed for a prickly encounter with Xi Jinping, the Chinese president – their comfortable meeting at Mar-a-Lago seems now a distant memory as turbulence swirls over Taiwan, North Korea and the South China Sea.
How to deal with Kim Jong-un and North Korea is bound to be a question on the lips of the leaders of the major economies. The US and its allies face a shortage of good options in bringing force to bear against the regime to stop it developing missiles and nuclear weapons, writes Emma Graham-Harrison. Talk of a “surgical strike” is an illusion – because any attack, large or small, risks provoking a military retaliation that would endanger thousands of South Koreans. Simon Jenkins suggests we observe how China continues to patiently wait on the sidelines – and that we consider the disarming appeal of economic prosperity, as opposed to sanctions, in persuading the regime in Pyongyang to change course.
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Chilcot on Blair – Some breaking news this morning on comments by Sir John Chilcot, head of the Iraq war inquiry, that Tony Blair was not “straight with the nation” about his decisions leading up to the invasion. In a BBC interview, Chilcot said: “I think any prime minister taking a country into war has got to be straight with the nation and carry it, so far as possible, with him or her. I don’t believe that was the case in the Iraq instance.” Blair’s people responded that “all these issues” have been dealt with, but there is bound to be fallout today. Meanwhile a high court decision is awaited on whether Blair can be privately prosecuted over the war.
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Aged care warning – One in three nursing homes in England has failed official inspection and 37% have been told to improve safety. Only one in 50 of all care services achieved the top rating of “outstanding” from the Care Quality Commission, with the situation in aged care the most worrying. A shrinking of the nursing workforce, and billions in cuts to social care, add to fears that the system is headed for a “tipping point”. Older people and their families were “now effectively playing Russian roulette when they need care”, said Age UK director Caroline Abrahams.
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‘Austerity or Greece’ – Theresa May has raised the spectre of a Greek-style economic collapse as she defends the government’s 1% cap on public sector pay increases. Jeremy Corbyn mounted a sustained attack on the prime minister in the Commons, accusing her of presiding over a “low-pay epidemic” as she faces intense pressure to ease the strain for cash-strapped public servants, including nurses and teachers.
May fired back: “What did we see with [Greece’s] failure to deal with the deficit? Spending on the health service cut by 36%. That does not help nurses or patients.” May’s use of the Greece example steps up her pro-austerity argument at a time when some Tory MPs feeling bruised from the election want the PM to allay fears of more cuts and give a clear signal that the 1% across-the-board cap will be lifted.
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Finding Amelia Earhart – A photograph uncovered in the US national archives has fuelled theories about what happened to the pioneering female aviator when she disappeared on her round-the-world flight. But it shows no more than “a bunch of people on a wharf” in the Marshall Islands, according to one expert on the possible fate of the aviator and her navigator, Fred Noonan.
One far-fetched but popular theory is that the pair somehow survived and were held captive by the Japanese who controlled the islands at the time of the crash in 1937 – said to be proven by the picture. But Ric Gillespie, a rival theorist, said the idea of the photograph as proof was “just silly” – he supports the idea that Earhart died a castaway on an island in Kiribati.
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Evolving electrically – Volvo has signalled its confidence that the future of motoring is electric, announcing it will cease to build cars that are solely petrol or diesel-engined from 2019. All its cars will either be battery-powered or hybrid (the latter usually include a combustion engine). Sales of electric cars have been slow globally but switching over to zero emissions is seen as vital to tackling climate change – transportation accounts for 14% of global greenhouse gas emissions – as well as cleaning up air quality in cities.
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Baby names when you’re minted – What to call your sixth child? Sixtus, if you’re the wealthy Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg – then append “Dominic Boniface Christopher” and you have a moniker befitting the latest heir of the “honourable member for the early 20th century”. Much social media mirth has greeted Rees-Mogg’s Instagram announcement of the joyous occasion. The Briefing leaves it to you to delve further.
Lunchtime read: In the clutches of ‘disaster capitalism’
A warning today from Naomi Klein: don’t let the Grenfell fire be exploited by “disaster capitalism”. Klein traces the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and other catastrophes to show how conservatives, free marketeers and corporations are practised at rushing in to expand their interests when the population and officialdom are still reeling from the effects.
In New Orleans, contractors fresh home from the Iraq invasion profited hugely in the aftermath, while something called the Republic Study Committee (RSC) quickly handed President Bush its list of “Pro-Free Market Ideas for Responding to Hurricane Katrina” – all “straight out of the disaster capitalism playbook”, says Klein. The RSC’s leader at the time: none other than Mike Pence, now vice-president to Donald Trump. Other appointments like ExxonMobil’s Rex Tillerson as the new secretary of state, plus various defence contractors and lobbyists, show the Trump administration has no short supply of “shock doctrine” exponents who will be ready when the next big one hits, says Klein.
Sport
Rafael Nadal prowled the baseline confidently in a straight sets win over Donald Young, but the otherworldly Spanish champion showed he’s a lot more like the rest of us when he steps up to the self-service checkout at Tesco. Elsewhere at Wimbledon, Andy Murray put his shopping list aside and made light work of Dustin Brown, while Jo Konta beat Donna Vekic to reach the third round. Not so young Russian Daniil Medvedev, who did even worse with his coins than Nadal, throwing them at the chair umpire in his loss to Ruben Bemelmens. There might be a fine on the way for that one. Maybe the money can be used to rid the All England Club of flying ants.
Chris Froome has taken the yellow jersey from Geraint Thomas after stage five of the Tour de France was won by Fabio Aru. Marina Hyde says that Team Sky chief Sir Dave Brailsford’s marginal gains are now being applied to bumptiousness. In rugby news, Warren Gatland has named an unchanged side for the deciding Lions Test against the All Blacks, and Andy Bull reports from Auckland that New Zealand coach Steve Hansen is viewing the resultant pressure as a challenge, not a burden.
Business
Many of the Asian markets have fallen overnight on the back of uncertainty over future US interest rate increases. Britain’s FTSE 100 is expected to open unchanged along with minor movements in other European markets.
The pound has been buying US$1.29 and €1.14.
The papers
Lots of Wimbledon pictures on the front page – plucky Brits and swarms of flies in SW19 – but the headlines mostly revolve around health and Volvo. The Guardian leads with news that one in three residential nursing homes has failed official inspections, a state of affairs branded unacceptable by ministers. The Daily Telegraph’s take is that “one in four care homes are unsafe”.
The Sun has a story about a vicar in Knightsbridge while the Mirror splashes with research predicting that as many as 1.2 million people could be living with dementia by 2040 – adding a huge burden on to an already struggling health service. The Daily Mail has the headline “Volvo death knell for petrol cars” while reporting the news that the Swedish company will sell only hybrid or electric cars from 2019. The Times has the same lead, saying it signals the “end of the road” for diesel and petrol. Volvo sold 47,000 cars last year in the UK.
Lastly, the FT has a story that the chief executive of Lloyds Bank is staying on in his job to oversee an overhaul at the group – defying expectations that he might quit.
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