Top story: Eight Britons among bombing victims
Hello, Warren Murray back with you as we begin the day.
Sri Lanka remains on edge as it observes a national day of mourning, grieving the loss of at least 310 people killed in Easter Sunday’s bomb attacks on hotels and churches in Colombo, Negombo and Batticaloa.
The vast majority of those who lost their lives were Sri Lankan while it is thought as many as 40 foreign nationals may also have been killed. At least eight Britons are among the dead: those identified include lawyer Anita Nicholson, her son Alex, age 14, and daughter Annabel, 11; as well as Billy Harrop, an ex-firefighter from Greater Manchester, and his wife, Sally Bradley, a doctor and the sister of the Labour peer Lord Keith Bradley; and siblings Daniel and Amelie Linsey, aged 19 and 15, who were travelling with their father and escaped one explosion in a restaurant, only to be killed by a second blast.
The Sri Lankan authorities received warnings two weeks before the attacks, the government has admitted. An intelligence memo on 9 April named the radical Islamist group National Thowheeth Jama’ath as planning suicide bomb attacks on churches. Experts have questioned whether the newly formed group could have mounted an attack on this scale without outside help. The information from the memo was not passed to the prime minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe, and his cabinet, a government minister said. The president, Maithripala Sirisena, chairs the national security meetings where the memo was tabled, and he is bitterly at odds with Wickremesinghe.
A state of emergency has been put into effect. Sirisena is expected to meet with foreign diplomats to “to seek international assistance to combat terrorism”.
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IRA dissidents admit to McKee killing – The New IRA has admitted its responsibility for the killing of Northern Ireland journalist Lyra McKee, 29, who was shot while observing rioting in the Creggan estate of Derry on Thursday night. Friends of McKee have smeared red handprints on the walls of the Derry offices of Saoradh – a party that reflects New IRA thinking, and has tried to portray McKee as an unfortunate bystander killed in a military conflict. The Irish taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, said Saoradh’s response to McKee’s death had been “beneath contempt”. Two men in their late teens were arrested over the killing and later released without charge. Police continue to appeal for witnesses and information.
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Brexit plan still not hatched – Easter is over so talks between government ministers and Labour will resume today, against the background noise of Tory efforts to oust Theresa May from Downing Street over her handling of Brexit. Some of the 1922 committee of Conservative backbenchers apparently want a June departure date, despite the PM being safe as leader for a year under party rules. There have been more revelations about faux-grassroots online campaigns that were overseen by Tory-aligned Lynton Crosby’s firm CTF Partners. Innocuous-sounding Facebook pages such as Small Business For Britain, Protecting British Heritage and Northern Industry were used to promote pro-Brexit messages to unwitting readers. There is speculation Crosby, a longtime confidant of Boris Johnson, may be positioning his company to benefit from placing the hard Brexiter in Downing Street.
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‘Old-style asylums’ – A patient locked in a secure ward for more than 21 years is among hundreds of people with mental health problems being kept in what one MP has called “old-style asylums” in NHS hospitals. Using freedom of information the Guardian found that at least 435 patients spent time in locked rehabilitation wards in 2018 and some had been there for years. The wards started being used about 10 years ago, mainly provided by the private sector, to treat people considered a high risk to others. Critics say they put priority on confinement rather than patients’ recovery. The Care Quality Commission has previously said: “We do not consider that this model of care has a place in today’s mental healthcare system.” But an NHS spokesperson said that “in a tiny number of cases” it remains the safest and most appropriate treatment setting for the individual patient and wider community.
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‘You can’t be a little bit sustainable’ – Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old founder of the school strike for climate movement, has backed the idea of a general strike to drive the cause forward. Speaking at an event in London, Thunberg gave her support to the city’s continued Extinction Rebellion protests: “We need to do everything we can to put pressure on the people in power.” Having already met the pope and addressed members of the EU parliament, Thunberg will today meet the Commons Speaker, John Bercow, and leaders of all the main parties including Jeremy Corbyn, but not Theresa May. Thunberg told last night’s event that her autism had worked in favour of her activism: “We are more likely to see through lies … You can’t be a little bit sustainable – either you are sustainable or you are not.”
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Unfolding drama – Samsung has pulled the release of its Galaxy Fold smartphone because of its signature bendy screen breaking. Several journalists who were given trial units reported the inside screens flickering, freezing and finally dying within the first few days. The phones, which fold open to the size of a small tablet device, had been slated to go on the market this coming Friday but that has been put off while Samsung works out what to do.
Today in Focus podcast: Genesis of the ‘Green New Deal’
In 2007, over a friendly drink, the Guardian’s economics editor, Larry Elliott, came up with a radical plan to address the effects of the financial crisis and climate change. He called it the Green New Deal. Plus: the Guardian’s education correspondent on why schools are going to test four-year-olds.
Lunchtime read: ‘Believe in humans again’
Environmentalist and author Bill McKibben writes today that to stop global catastrophe, we must believe in ourselves as humans again. One pessismistic argument, he says, runs that the average person won’t do anything voluntarily about climate change, because it would reduce their standard of living by too much – so individual choice and technological solutions to cope with an overheated planet, going as far as editing our own DNA, should run their course instead. But “around the world, polling shows that people are not just highly concerned about global warming, but also willing to pay a price to solve it.
“Americans, for instance, said in 2017 that they were willing to see their energy bills rise 15% and have the money spent on clean energy programmes … The reason we don’t have a solution to climate change has less to do with the greed of the great unwashed than with the greed of the almost unbelievably small percentage of people at the top of the energy heap, corrupting the political debate with rolls of cash.”
Sport
Manchester United’s woes continue to stack up, with reports that three of their top stars may leave the club if they fail in their bid to secure a top four finish. One of those stars, Paul Pogba, who has previously been courted by Barcelona, admitted that players had disrespected the club in their 4-0 loss to Everton: “We didn’t respect ourselves, the club or the fans. Everything went wrong but the most important thing is the mentality that we put on the pitch, that has to change.”
Meanwhile the title race is heating up, with only two points separating Liverpool (88) from Manchester City (86). With the Premier League on the home straight, there is a scramble afoot to avoid relegation, while in the Women’s Super League, Arsenal and Manchester City have sealed Champions League places, with the Gunners looking to seal their first title since 2012. In cricket, Peter Siddle has called for Australia’s Steve Smith and David Warner to be cut some slack on their international return in the world cup, saying: “They weren’t the first people to ball-tamper and they’re probably not going to be the last.”
Business
Asian shares were little changed on Tuesday, hovering not far from nine-month peaks hit last week. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was almost flat, while Japan’s Nikkei average eased 0.2%. Many markets around the world remained shut on Monday after the long Easter weekend. Sterling has been trading around $1.298 and €1.154 overnight while the FTSE looks like being down a tad at the open.
The papers
The Times leads with “Families destroyed by bombers” as it covers the Sri Lanka attacks. The Express focuses on Anita Nicholson and her two children whom it says were “Murdered at the breakfast table”, while the Mirror says the atrocity has left “A nation broken”. Sri Lanka’s own Daily Mirror runs a black front page with small type at the bottom saying: “In memory of those who lost their lives on 21.04.2019”.
“Sri Lanka given warning about blasts two weeks ago”, reports the Guardian. The FT has a similar top line for its front-page picture story, but its splash is a crackdown on bonuses at Barclays where activist investor Edward Bramston – who the Guardian says has been “compared to Mr Burns in The Simpsons” – is trying to force his way on to the board. The i tells us there is a “stop Boris campaign” under way among Tories to prevent him becoming leader in place of Theresa May.
The Daily Mail leads with how customers are “Secretly filmed as you shop” to manipulate them to spend more. It also joins the Express and Times in celebrating the first birthday of Prince Louis with a picture across the front. The Times runs with the outlawing of gag orders against NHS staff whistleblowers.
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