Business warns Tories over no-deal Brexit
The first of the dozen candidates (so far) to enter the race, Esther McVey, believes the UK needs to “actively embrace leaving the EU without a deal”, while ex-cabinet colleagues Boris Johnson and Dominic Raab want to renegotiate the terms agreed by Theresa May but would enforce the 31 October deadline either way. However, Ms Fairbairn’s letter argues: “Short-term disruption and long-term damage to British competitiveness will be severe if we leave without [a deal].”
Struggling to keep track of who’s in the running to get the keys to No 10? See our potted guide.
Trump announces tariffs on all Mexico goods
Shamima Begum was ‘groomed’, says lawyer
Shamima Begum, who at 15 ran away to Syria to join Islamic State rebels, was “groomed” by the terror group, her family’s lawyer has claimed. Tasnime Akunjee says Home Secretary Sajid Javid’s decision to revoke Ms Begum’s citizenship in February was a “politically-driven abuse of power” to try to further his “own personal political objective” of becoming prime minister. The lawyer says the family was not told she had been interviewed by police when a fellow school pupil left for Syria the previous year. Had they known, he says, the family would have been able to stop Ms Begum from following her. The Home Office hasn’t commented but foreign policy think tank the Henry Jackson Society said the UK must be “very careful employing terms of victimhood to individuals who have joined terrorist organisations”.
The man who might have stopped Sri Lanka’s Easter bombings
By Secunder Kermani, BBC News
Lying on a hospital bed, Mohammad Razak Taslim’s face contorts with pain. The left side of his body is completely paralysed, but he reaches out with his right hand, trying to clutch at his wife and brother-in-law who stand anxiously over him. His wife, Fatima, presses a handkerchief to his head. One side of his skull has caved in. It’s where he was shot in the head in March. Ever since, he’s been unable to speak, unable to walk.
Police believe Taslim was one of the first victims of the Sri Lankan extremist network, linked to the Islamic State group, that would go on to kill more than 250 people in a series of suicide bombings on churches and hotels on Easter Sunday in April. According to officials he was shot on the orders of the ringleader of the attacks, Zahran Hashim.
What the papers say
There’s a mixed bag on front pages, with the Mail and Mirror focusing on the number of GP surgeries to have closed over the past year – 138, according to the Mail – which the papers say have left 500,000 people without a doctor. Others zone in on comments from the EU’s chief Brexit co-ordinator Michel Barnier, who reportedly claims voters’ decision to leave the bloc was based on “nostalgia” for the days when the UK was a more prominent global power.
Daily digest
Uber Ride-hailing firm posts $1bn loss weeks after stock market listing
Lib Dems Deputy leader Jo Swinson confirms leadership bid
Malaria GM fungus rapidly kills 99% of malaria mosquitoes
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Lookahead
09:30 Voices of Liberation sound installation – a bench which plays audio of D-Day veterans talking about their experience on the battlefield to people who sit on it – to be unveiled at Portsmouth Naval Memorial.
19:00 Liberal Democrats hold their first leadership hustings in Islington, north London, with participants expected to include deputy leader Jo Swinson and Sir Ed Davey.
On this day
1998 Geri Halliwell (now Horner) – aka Ginger Spice – leaves the Spice Girls, citing “differences between us” and amid reports of a power struggle with “Scary” Melanie Brown.