Top story: 2040 – end of the road for petrol and diesel
Good morning, it’s Warren Murray with the news to start your day.
Britain is to ban the sale of all petrol and diesel cars from 2040. Ironically, as the UK moves towards Brexit, the measures are being partly driven by EU rules.
Rather than global warming, the main reason for the ban is dangerously poor air quality, which has been linked to 40,000 premature deaths a year and £2.7bn in lost productivity. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has already made the same 2040 pledge. The European commission in February threatened Britain with penalties for failing to take action on nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions. Aston University car industry expert Prof David Bailey says the timescale is long enough to be taken seriously and could speed up the transition to electric cars.
The ban includes hybrid vehicles with fuel-burning combustion engines. Action by councils is central to the plan, which the environment secretary, Michael Gove, is due to publish today. Local authorities will have to improve air quality in areas where emissions have breached EU thresholds by retrofitting buses and taking steps to improve traffic flow.
“Clean air zones” (CAZs) that polluting vehicles, especially diesels, would be charged to enter are one contentious element. The strategy calls for 27 CAZs – the government is shying away from making charges compulsory, but Greenpeace says “proper clean air zones” are vital to the plan’s success. There are also calls from the London mayor for a fully funded scheme to scrap diesels, the worst emitters of poisonous NOx.
The strategy has been at the centre of a legal battle. ClientEarth, which has taken the government to court over the air pollution crisis, says the document contains “promising measures … but we need to see the detail”.
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‘We’ve got acid on us’ – Two young men were taken to hospital in London last night after liquid was thrown over them in another suspected acid attack. A shopkeeper in Bethnal Green, east London, told how he doused the pair with water after they ran in with “their faces and their legs all burnt”. The Met has kitted out response vehicles with acid attack first-aid kits, amid warnings that gangs are using corrosive substances as a weapon. The government is working on restricting access to noxious substances.
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Bankable art – Girl with Balloon, the wall stencil by street artist Banksy, has eclipsed Constable’s Hay Wain as Britain’s favourite work of art in a poll. Both are immediately identifiable with their creators, and have been copied into ubiquity, as our art, quirk and curio specialist Maev Kennedy points out: the Constable reproduced on biscuit tins and tea towels everywhere, and the Bansky turning up as an instant street art kit and Justin Bieber tattoo.
Jack Vettriano’s The Singing Butler came in third. Further down the national poll came the Beatles’ Sgt Pepper album cover at eighth, just ahead of the sleeve art for Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon.
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‘Disaster area’ – French firefighters have been battling blazes on Corsica and the Côte d’Azur that ripped across thousands of hectares of land. More than 4,000 personnel have been mobilised, backed up by 19 water bombers. Fires have gutted a forest near the popular Mediterranean resort of Saint-Tropez, and on Corsica 1,800 hectares went up. An especially hot, dry summer has contributed to a series of fires in south-eastern France.
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Sperm shortage – Researchers are puzzling over a declining sperm count among western males, with the figure falling by half since 1973. An international study led by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem is said to be the most rigorous to date on the subject and concludes that the count has been falling by an average of 1.4% a year. Smoking, obesity and even exposure of their mothers to household chemicals in pregnancy have been cited as some of the possible factors affecting men’s fertility. Experts say it highlights the importance, for men contemplating fatherhood, of getting on with it sooner rather than later.
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Killer robots – Elon Musk has accused Mark Zuckerberg of possessing only artificial intelligence about whether robots pose a risk to human life. “His understanding of the subject is limited,” the Tesla CEO said rather witheringly of the Facebook founder. Musk has declared that robots ultimately pose a risk to human civilisation and even if they are far from being perfected, governments should begin regulating them now to protect us. Zuckerberg says those sorts of warnings are “irresponsible” because robots will be better at driving cars.
Lunchtime read: Don’t believe everything you lip-read
If you’re worried about fake news, worry harder. A new generation of software is making it easier to literally put words in the mouth of anyone speaking on camera – and the manipulation is getting harder to spot.
Researchers have taken it as far as altering people’s facial expressions in real time; synthesising a voice that is convincing enough to fool a person or speech-activated security system; and synchronising Barack Obama’s lip, face and head movements in one video, to the audio from a speech he gave at an entirely different time. Potential for jokey memes aside, the implications could be serious, writes Olivia Solon: imagine what a convincing video of Donald Trump declaring war on North Korea might precipitate. “We already see it doesn’t even take doctored audio or video to make people believe something that isn’t true,” says computer scientist Nitesh Saxena. “This has the potential to make it worse.”
Sport
Cricket is on the verge of making its application for Olympic inclusion in a bid that would help the sport’s image become more global and less colonial, writes Tim Wigmore.
The shadow sports minister has criticised the Rugby Football Union’s decision not to renew the contracts of England women’s 15-a-side players and urged the governing body to reconsider. José Mourinho has identified Tottenham as strong rivals to win the Premier League title next season and compared his challenge at Manchester United to the one he faced previously at Real Madrid.
Meanwhile the Tottenham chairman, Daniel Levy, has mocked the Premier League’s summer spending, labelling it “unsustainable”. It’s a good job Levy’s not involved in Spanish football then, with Real Madrid closing on the world record capture of the 18-year-old France striker Kylian Mbappé for €180m (£161m).
Business
The Guardian’s campaign against the iniquities of the leasehold property system continues with calls for more action to help 100,000 householders who fear they have unsaleable homes.
Stock markets in Asia rose overnight thanks to rising commodity prices such as the industrial bellwether copper, which is at a two-year high. The pound was up slightly against the greenback at $1.303, but down against the euro at €1.118.
The papers
Theresa May on holiday in Italy and the announcement of a ban on the sale of diesel and petrol cars by 2040 dominate most of the front pages today.
The Guardian splashes on the government plan to take polluting vehicles off the road in an effort to improve air quality, while the Daily Mail declares: “War on diesels getting dirty”. The Mail story says the crackdown could also see the introduction of levies on busy roads for the most polluting vehicles.
The Times heralds the “End of the diesel and petrol car”, noting that the supply of hybrid vehicles will also stop when the new legislation comes into force. The Telegraph has the headline “Diesel car ban to cut pollution” and a picture of the PM strolling along a street with her husband in Desenzano del Garda.
Others tell a different story. The Sun leads with a Love Island exclusive about Kem and Amber’s “Secret Sex Sex Sex”. So good they did it thrice. The Express splashes on Trump trade joy for Britain after the US president promised a “new chapter for stronger trade” between the two nations. The Daily Mirror, meanwhile, fills its front page with a story about how the killer of Stephen Lawrence gets legal aid while the parents of Charlie Gard do not.
The FT shuns Theresa May on holiday for a picture of Angela Merkel in the rain and splashes on Greece making a return to capital markets with a €3bn bond sale.
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