Top story: War is still just words so far
Hello – it’s Warren Murray taking you through things this morning.
A rain of missiles into the seas around Guam would be North Korea’s way of bringing Donald Trump into line, Kim Jong-un’s military has declared – calling the US president “a guy bereft of reason” following his promise to visit “fire and fury” on the regime in return for its constant threats.
The North’s propagandists overnight elaborated on a threat to strike the US territory and military outpost – announcing that a salvo of Hwasong-12 rockets could be dropped into the Pacific within 30km of the shore, if Kim gave the go-ahead, to teach Trump a lesson. “Only absolute force can work on him … [Trump] let out a load of nonsense about ‘fire and fury’ failing to grasp the ongoing grave situation. This is extremely getting on the nerves of the infuriated Hwasong artillerymen of the KPA.”
A strike might come within weeks, the regime said, but experts questioned whether the North would risk a devastating counter-attack by the US and its allies. On Wednesday the US defence secretary, James Mattis, said that a North Korean attack would risk the “end of its regime and the destruction of its people”. Mattis reminded Pyongyang that the allied militaries “possess the most precise, rehearsed and robust defensive and offensive capabilities on Earth”.
Rex Tillerson, the US secretary of state, sought to calm fears of war: “Nothing that I have seen, and nothing that I know of, would indicate that the situation has dramatically changed in the last 24 hours.” Defending the president’s “fire and fury” outburst, which was blurted out without warning to his top brass, Tillerson said: “What the president is doing is sending a strong message to North Korea in language that Kim Jong-un can understand, because he doesn’t seem to understand diplomatic language.”
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‘My life has completely changed’ – The anti-Brexit campaigner Gina Miller says she is afraid to leave her home after being threatened with acid attacks. Miller won a supreme court case forcing the government to take the Brexit trigger to a vote of parliament. Since then she has been subjected to a campaign of racial abuse and threats of violence. One of her numerous tormentors, Rhodri Phillips, the 4th Viscount St Davids, was given three months’ jail after offering a bounty on social media for someone to run her over. Miller says she and her family feel confined to their home and may have to leave the UK: “This would break my heart because I love this country and I am fighting for it.” She has called on social media companies to do much more to stop abuse being spread.
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Property slump – House prices and rents will stay flat for at least the next year, according to Rics, the official surveyors’ body. “Political uncertainty” and higher stamp duty take some of the blame, but sellers asking unrealistic prices are cited as well by valuers and estate agents in the national survey. Prices are falling in London and south-east England, but there have been rises in the West Midlands, south-west and Northern Ireland. Overall the housing market is at its “softest” since 2013 nationally, and since 2011 in the south-east.
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Live feed of break-in – A family away on holiday have watched their home being burgled on a CCTV app that notified them of the intrusion. Donna Marusamy from Sutton Coldfield received the alert during a trip to Burnham-on-Sea in Somerset, 120 miles away. She and her husband watched helplessly on her phone as a limping thief skulked through their living room and disappeared upstairs, where he stole jewellery and passports.
She notified police – as well as her brother-in-law, who arrived and scared the offender off with a torch. “We sat there feeling completely violated as he helped himself to our things,” said Marusamy, who shared the video on Facebook. Police are investigating.
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Death comes to dinner – A man fatally choked on his meal while another died of a heart attack from seeing it happen, authorities in a French village have concluded. A neighbour spotted Olivier Boudin, 38, lying on the ground one morning and Lucien Perot, 69, sitting at a terrace table before a half-finished plate of food and glass of wine. She thought they were resting after a boozy night – but six hours later they still hadn’t moved. After ruling out foul play, police suspected a fast and lethal case of botulism poisoning. But tests on table fare came back negative. Postmortems eventually determined Perot choked to death trying to swallow a too-large piece of beef rib, while Boudin succumbed to the strain that the sudden trauma put on his genetically weak heart. At least the innocent though “stupid” cause of their deaths was finally known, locals said. “They were certainly not the sort of people to be picked off by the mafia,” said one.
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Claybot – The lady is for turning … into a waxwork. Theresa May is undergoing the inevitable process of being immortalised by Madame Tussauds, whose sculptors are taking the first step by crafting a clay model in the prime minister’s likeness.
They will use that to make the mould. The whole process takes four months – let’s see if the minority government lasts long enough to get the wax poured in …
Lunchtime read: Thinking like a North Korean
What do average North Koreans think of their country? It’s hard to pin down, Tania Branigan explains, because their voices are so rarely heard. But disaffection with Kim Jong-un’s regime appears to be growing.
After a prosperously industrialised and well-fed country fell into devastating famine in the 1990s, faith in the leadership never fully recovered. These days the ruling elite visibly live comfortably, while ordinary people have to bribe their way out of their official jobs to find better, privately paid work. Fear and stringent controls are key to keeping the regime in power – but on the other hand, however ground down the people, they still harbour a certain pride in “standing up to America”. When Donald Trump threatens to rain down “fire and fury”, he is likely doing more to shore up Kim than weaken him.
Sport
It has taken a series of plot twists worthy of a Hollywood thriller but now, staggeringly, the athletics world championships has the showdown between Wayde van Niekerk and Isaac Makwala it has craved all along. But not before Makwala ran a bizarre solo time trial, which became the day’s must-watch event and was a good reflection of the rising levels of crazy at these championships.
Elsewhere, Liverpool have again told Barcelona that Philippe Coutinho is not for sale after rejecting a €100m (£90m) bid for the Brazil midfielder, while José Mourinho has compared Manchester United’s struggle in the Champions League to having “a giant on our chest” before their return to the competition. In tennis, Andy Murray has pulled out of the Cincinnati Masters owing to the hip injury he struggled with at Wimbledon and could be usurped as the world No1 by Rafael Nadal next week. And Huddersfield is embracing revivalist talk before the Yorkshire town’s football team takes the Premier League plunge this weekend, writes Matthew Engel.
Business
Jitters about rising tension between the US and North Korea saw stocks in the Asia-Pacific region fall sharply overnight. The market in Seoul hit a two-month low and Hong Kong was down 1.3%. No such problems in Australia though where strong corporate earnings helped overcome geopolitical concerns. The FTSE 100 is expected to open down a few points. The pound has been buying $1.30 and €1.107.
The papers
Two stories dominate the front pages this morning: Kim v Trump, and the guilty verdicts in the shocking Newcastle trial that saw 18 people convicted of multiple sexual offences against vulnerable women and girls. The Guardian and the Times feature both on page one, while the Mail focuses on the question of how many more grooming gangs could be operating.
The Mirror, the i and the Sun have questions over the money paid to a convicted child rapist who acted as a police informant in the case.
The Telegraph splashes on what it calls an EU “expenses scandal”, the news that officials including Jean-Claude Juncker have spent tens of thousands of euros chartering private planes. And the Financial Times opts for news of a potential bid by Altice for US cable company Charter Communications.
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