Top story: ‘Everybody is going to remember him’
Good morning – Warren Murray with Wednesday’s priority stories.
George Floyd’s life has been celebrated at his funeral with eulogies that honoured him as a father, brother, athlete and mentor whose death sparked a global reckoning over police brutality and racial prejudice. “Everybody is going to remember him around the world. He is going to change the world,” Floyd’s brother, Rodney, told mourners at the Fountain of Praise church in Houston, Texas, after Floyd’s body was returned to his childhood hometown. In New York traders at the stock exchange paused for eight minutes and 46 seconds to mark the length of time the Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was filmed kneeling on Floyd’s neck.
“Lives like George will not matter until somebody pays the cost for taking their lives,” said the civil rights advocate the Rev Al Sharpton in his eulogy. Celebrating the passion of the mass protests, he added: “All over the world I’ve seen grandchildren of slave masters tearing down slave master statues.”
In London, the statue of slave owner Robert Milligan outside the Museum of London Docklands has been removed by local authorities, while the campaign to take away Cecil Rhodes’s statue at Oxford has been reignited. All statues in Labour councils across England and Wales, and across London, will be examined for links to slavery and plantation owners, their leaders have said. In Derbyshire, local people have removed and hidden a wooden bust of a black man with exaggerated features from outside the Green Man & Black’s Head Royal hotel – preventing the local council from taking the head into its keeping following objections. “It’s not black anyway, it’s Turkish,” said one Tory councillor.
Neville Lawrence, the father of Stephen Lawrence, has said black people are still treated as second-class citizens in Britain, more than two decades after police were shamed by their failure to find his son’s racist killers. This morning, two clergy from BAME backgrounds claim discrimination has blocked their efforts to advance within the CofE hierarchy. The rapper Wretch 32 has shared video dated to 21 April of his father, Millard Scott, 62, being Tasered and tumbling down stairs during a police action at his London home. The Met said its professional standards unit found no misconduct. Sadiq Khan, the London mayor, has called for a further investigation.
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Coronavirus latest – Boris Johnson will need an urgent national plan to get all pupils back to school in England from September including an army of support staff, the requisitioning of public buildings and extra help for disadvantaged students, unions and cross-party MPs have said. The waiting list for hospital treatment could soar to almost 10 million by Christmas amid a huge backlog, NHS leaders are warning. Beer gardens in England will not be allowed to open before the end of the month, Downing Street has said, quashing suggestions that ministers were considering allowing pubs to serve beer outside from 22 June. However, zoos and safari parks will be back in business from Monday.
Dr Anthony Fauci, the US government’s top infectious disease expert, has said the coronavirus pandemic “just took over the planet” and is far from being over. Modelling studies have estimated up to 40% of coronavirus infections could be transmitted by people who have the virus but no symptoms, a World Health Organization expert has acknowledged, clarifying her earlier comment that asymptomatic transmission was “very rare”. But Dr Maria Van Kerkhove said real-world data, as opposed to modelling, suggested it could still be a rare event.
There’s more in our Coronavirus Extra section further down … and here’s where you can find all our coverage of the outbreak – from breaking news to factchecks and advice.
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Midweek catch-up
> Babylon Health has confirmed a software error allowed UK users of its GP teleconsultation app to view other patients’ private sessions. In a statement it said there had been no hack and it had notified the Information Commissioner’s Office.
> Fifteen potential cases of torture or rendition involving British intelligence were examined in a secret Whitehall review last year. Its existence was revealed in court proceedings where the former MPs David Davis and Labour’s Dan Jarvis are seeking to reinstate a judge-led inquiry ditched by Theresa May into British involvement in torture and rendition.
> Brexit, tightening budgets and unchecked expansion have seen nearly three-quarters of UK universities slip down the QS international league table in their worst-ever performance. Imperial College London climbed one spot to reach eighth – the only UK university in the top 20 to improve.
> Property sales in most of England have rebounded to the same levels as just before the lockdown, although London lags behind the rest of the country and markets in Scotland and Wales remain closed, according to website Zoopla.
> A gas well has erupted into a huge fireball after leaking uncontrolled for weeks in Assam state, India. The explosion at the Oil India field caused a fire that spread to nearby homes, according to reports.
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‘Hateful extremism’ – Extremists are exploiting gaps in existing laws to push their agenda such as peddling antisemitic coronavirus conspiracy theories, Sir Mark Rowley, the former counter-terror chief, has warned. Rowley is to lead a review, under the auspices of the Commission for Countering Extremism (CCE), to examine whether existing legislation adequately deals with “hateful extremism”.
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Buried stories – Archaeologists believe they have found remains of the earliest purpose-built playhouse in Britain, a prototype for a theatre that staged plays by a young William Shakespeare. The Red Lion is thought to have been built around 1567 and, after years of conjecture and debate, archaeologists feel certain they have found it under the site of an old self-storage facility in the East End of London.
Coronavirus Extra
It’s not the same for every family: in some a furloughed parent can oversee home learning, but many mothers and fathers are forced to leave their children to “self study” while they work upstairs. Photographer Matt Davis profiles schoolchildren on lockdown in Leeds.
In Italy, families have been told that it will be two years before they can reclaim their relatives’ bodies from a mass burial plot. Campo 87, a section of the Maggiore cemetery in Milan, was intended for unclaimed bodies that overwhelmed hospitals and morgues could no longer hold – but it has emerged that people who did have family were buried there by mistake.
Today in Focus podcast: Doing the Rees-Mogg conga
MPs have been on a crash course in video conferencing in recent months as the pandemic meant access to parliament was severely restricted and remote voting was permitted for the first time. But with Jacob Rees-Mogg leading attempts to revert to in-person voting has the chance to permanently modernise been squandered?
Lunchtime read: ‘We are not above nature’
The naturalist Chris Packham has always spoken his mind – and attracted death threats in the process. But Covid-19 has given him a new perspective on how humans can live in harmony with the natural world, writes Zoe Williams.
Sport
The former Brighton manager, Chris Hughton, has told the Guardian that Raheem Sterling’s comments in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests have struck a chord. Gareth Southgate has urged people to speak out against white privilege in football as he described the blocking of pathways for black coaches, managers and executives as the “biggest crime”. Ellis Genge has revealed that he and England coach Eddie Jones were subjected to racist abuse on the rugby tour of South Africa in 2018.
Stoke have been forced to cancel a friendly against Manchester United at the last minute after learning that their manager, Michael O’Neill, had tested positive for coronavirus. World No 1 Novak Djokovic is thinking of skipping the US Open – if it is played – and instead returning to competition on clay ahead of the rescheduled French Open in September. UFC chief Dana White has confirmed the mixed martial arts promotion’s Fight Island will be located in Abu Dhabi and will host four events next month. And Geoffrey Boycott’s removal from the BBC commentary team came later than it should have, writes Andy Bull.
Business
The grounding of airlines could result in job losses on the same scale as those seen by the mining industry in the 1980s, according to a new report. Up to 70,000 jobs could be lost in aviation – including engineering, catering and duty free shopping – before the end of summer in Britian, the New Economics Foundation says. Stock markets in Asia edged upwards overnight despite some losses on Wall Street and the FTSE100 looks like making a modest gain at the opening bell. The pound is buying $1.274 and €1.122.
The papers
The Guardian leads with “Urgent plan needed to get schools ready by September, MPs warn” while the front-page picture is a scene of grief and consolation at George Floyd’s funeral service. The i has “Take the rest of the year off” referring to the school year. The Telegraph says “Lightning a bigger risk to pupils than Covid” (which seems more of a Mail number) as it campaigns to “Save our schools”. Columnist Allison Pearson declares it a “national scandal … every child has a right to an education”.
The Metro bemoans “Generation of kids left behind” and the Mirror calls schoolchildren “The lost generation” under a shot of Cecil Rhodes statue protests in Oxford. The Mail has “Toppling the past” as it shows Robert Milligan being uplifted from his plinth. A bust of Sarah Vine floats under the masthead saying “To erase our history, good or bad, makes me fear for our future”. The Times says “Dozens of statues could topple over slavery links” and the picture has a different slant quite literally, with Milligan lying nearly on his side.
The Express says “Covid-19 crisis: NHS waiting list could hit 10m”. It has a picture of the Queen standing with Prince Philip, who looks statuesque at 99 years old today. The FT leads with “Huawei ban would deal terminal blow to 5G lead, warns Vodafone”.
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