Top story: Amendments tumble in article 50 debate
Hello, this is Warren Murray bringing you today’s Guardian morning briefing.
The government has voted down several amendments to the bill authorising Theresa May to trigger Brexit negotiations. Devolved assemblies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland were denied a say in the final deal, and a requirement of regular reports by the prime minister to parliament was rejected along with a number of other Labour proposals in the House of Commons.
Dozens of other amendments are still up for consideration – such as guaranteeing the rights of EU nationals already living in the UK. But May has warned MPs not to use parliamentary procedure to delay the bill’s progress, saying this would amount to obstructing the verdict of the June 2016 referendum.
While upbeat projections about Brexit are hard to come by, the consultants PwC are touting the idea that the worst will be over by 2020 and Britain could become the fastest-growing economy in the G7 if it can nail down the right trade deals while using its flexible economy and relatively large working-age population to maximum advantage.
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Trump’s ‘under-reported’ terror – Donald Trump has declared that the media he despises has let terror attacks go under-reported – an assertion that appears to be contradicted by another of his old enemies, the facts. The president, beleaguered by a string of legal challenges blocking his travel ban, has claimed that “dishonest” journalists are holding back from reporting on terrorism. The White House did what it could to back him up, releasing a not entirely coherent list of 70-odd instances of what Trump might have been talking about. No one was too surprised to find that many of them – the Bataclan in Paris, the Nice and Berlin attacks – received blanket coverage in the world’s press.
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‘Housing market is broken’ – The communities secretary, Sajid Javid, is to say that “the housing market in this country is broken” as the government pushes for councils to build thousands of new homes “in the places that people want to live”. The vision includes high-rise developments in the inner city where land is scarce. Home ownership is declining and the average house now costs eight times average earnings.
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Horror of Syrian hangings – Up to 13,000 opponents of Bashar al-Assad were secretly hanged during the first five years of the country’s civil war, according to Amnesty International. Martin Chulov reports on the horror of Saydnaya prison, where thousands more people are believed to have died through torture and starvation before being dumped in mass graves. In “a conflict that has consistently broken new ground in depravity”, civilians were subjected to sham trials, hanged in groups of up to 50, then buried on military land, witnesses have told Amnesty.
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Commons decency – We have an editorial praising John Bercow, the speaker of the House of Commons, who has ruffled Conservative feathers by declaring that leader of a global superpower or not, Donald Trump is unfit to be afforded the honour of giving an address at Westminster when he takes up Theresa May’s invitation to visit Britain. Bercow has been accused by some of overstepping his authority and breaching the impartiality of his office.
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Spice back on menu – The ban on what we used to call “legal highs” may have driven them out of high street stores, but instead they have been added to the offering of illicit street dealers, a study warns. A wave of “head shops” that sold what are now known as “novel psychoactive substances” closed down in 2016 when the ban came into force – but wares like “Spice” have re-emerged in clear plastic bags sold by drug pushers.
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Eyes have it – The hassle of buying a train ticket could be over in the blink of an eye if rail companies decide to bring in retinal scanning. Using a phone with Bluetooth to pass through the turnstiles is already being trialled and now the Rail Delivery Group is looking at biometrics to speed things up. Other RDG ideas that sound a little less like progress: seats that fit more people in by making you sit bolt upright, and seats that are folded away altogether at peak time to create more standing room on your sardine-can commute.
Lunchtime read: into the unknown without a map
From the tangled fjords of Greenland’s “Forbidden Coast” to the dark expanses between stars, the neural connections inside our heads or even the spread of a disease outbreak, we are in the “great age of cartography” as technology takes the art of map-making into new, unexpected, uncharted realms.
Sport
Alastair Cook has resigned as England’s Test captain, paving the way for Joe Root to take over the role. In rugby Joost van der Westhuizen will be remembered for his inspirational spirit and dignity, writes Robert Kitson, following the South African great’s death at the age of 45. Denis Shapovalov, the Canadian Davis Cup player, has been fined $7,000 for smashing the ball into an umpire’s eye during the weekend’s tie with Great Britain. And Russia faces expulsion from this summer’s World Athletics Championships in London on advice from an IAAF task force.
Business
All Asian markets were trading slightly down with some nervousness about the outcome of the Trump meeting with Japanese PM Abe in Washington this weekend, particularly as the president has signalled he wants to remove post-Lehman financial regulations and drive the dollar down to help American exporters.
The pound traded at US$1.2476 and €1.16 overnight.
The papers
The Times splashes on the extraordinary Amnesty report into the Syrian regime’s execution of as many as 13,000 prisoners in one jail.
The Sun lays into David Beckham on the leaked email saga, saying he had used social media postings to “grovel” for a knighthood. The Mirror meanwhile leads on the same story as the Guardian and Telegraph but with the headline: “Racist Trump banned from speaking in Parliament”.
The Mail attacks the UK government’s foreign aid budget, saying diplomats were encouraging applications from groups including in China to improve “care in the community for the elderly”. The FT leads on the French election, saying that the troubles of François Fillon are affecting bond prices, with fears of the rise of Marine Le Pen.
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