Tuesday briefing: 'I don't regret what I did'
Top story: Dutch PM didn’t travel to see dying mother
Hello, Warren Murray here and you are not breaching any guidelines by reading this – but make sure it’s on your own device, or one recently sanitised.
At an unprecedented press conference Dominic Cummings, the prime minister’s chief aide, has repeatedly refused to resign or apologise for breaking the rules by relocating his family from London to Durham during lockdown. His appearance in the Rose Garden of No 10 raised yet more questions after the admission he suspected both he and his wife had coronavirus when they travelled across the country. “I don’t regret what I did … reasonable people might disagree,” Cummings said.
Questions remain unanswered including why the family did not explore feasible options that might have avoided travelling much of the length of England. By way of contrast, the Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, has revealed that his mother has died and due to Covid-19 restrictions he did not visit her in her last days. Following the press conference, Johnson once again gave his full backing to his senior adviser, who was a key architect of Brexit and of Johnson’s election victory last year.
People with a genetic mutation that increases the risk of dementia are more susceptible to severe Covid-19, researchers think. The vulnerability does not depend on a person’s age, or whether they have already developed dementia. “This is an example of a specific gene variant causing vulnerability in some people,” said David Melzer, a professor at Exeter University and a co-author of the study, which drew on gene profiles of half a million people.
The coronavirus pandemic will have a “disastrous” impact on children’s rights worldwide, making them more vulnerable to forced labour and underage marriage, a rights group has said, as the World Health Organization warned of an “immediate second peak” if restrictions were lifted too soon. Globally the virus that has infected nearly 5.5 million worldwide and killed more than 346,000 according to the Johns Hopkins tracker. In Australia’s most populous state of New South Wales, where children went back to school full time on Monday, two schools reported new coronavirus cases and closed their gates. And in the US, rodents deprived for months of restaurant waste and street garbage are displaying “unusual and aggressive” behaviour, with reports of cannibalism and infanticide, health officials have warned.
Please watch our global live blog for continuing coverage and here are more overnight developments at a glance.
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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Bank holiday brings water fatalities – Two people died in separate incidents along the Cornish coast on bank holiday Monday. A teenage girl was pronounced dead in hospital after a rigid inflatable boat overturned in the water in Wadebridge. Three other people were taken to the Royal Cornwall hospital. A man was pronounced dead at Treyarnon Bay in Padstow after being pulled from the water by a member of the public. In a third incident, surfers pulled an unconscious man from the water in Porthtowan, Truro, at about 2.30pm. The man was taken to the Royal Cornwall hospital by air ambulance in a serious condition and was receiving treatment.
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Poverty and self-harm – Young women are being driven to self-harm as a result of poverty, debt and their struggles to pay household bills, research shows. Women aged 16-34 from the poorest backgrounds are five times more vulnerable, according to findings from NatCen Social Research and the charity Agenda. Sally McManus, who led the research for NatCen, said: “This report indicates that self-harm often occurs in the context of poverty and debt, especially for young women.”
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‘Climate velocity’ threat to sea life – Different rates of ocean water heating are threatening to force deep-dwelling species away from areas where they feed, researchers have warned. Under a phenomenon known as “climate velocity” – the rate at which species migrate to follow survivable temperatures – deepwater species are projected to move from their native waters much faster because they are more sensitive to temperature. Researchers say that even if emissions fell sharply from now, climate velocity in the depths would rocket from about 6km per decade to 50km by the 2050s. But over the same period the rate of migration would halve at the surface. Tuna, for example, could become separated from their surface-dwelling plankton food source. “This means that marine life in the deep ocean will face escalating threats from ocean warming until the end of the century, no matter what we do now,” said Prof Anthony Richardson of the University of Queensland and the CSIRO, one of the study’s 10 authors.
Coronavirus Extra
The World Health Organization, citing safety fears, says it will temporarily drop hydroxychloroquine from its global anti-Covid drug trials. Concerns were raised in the Lancet. Other treatments in the WHO’s “solidarity trial”, including the experimental drug remdesivir and an HIV combination therapy, are still being pursued.
“People were like animals!” From shoppers stockpiling toilet roll to spending £3,000 on wine, supermarket workers have had to cope with a panicking public – while finding themselves unexpectedly on the frontline.
More than 200 organisations representing at least 40 million health workers – making up about half of the global medical workforce – have signed an open letter to the G20 leaders saying governments’ chief medical officers and scientific advisers must be directly involved in designing stimulus packages now under way to ensure they include considerations of public health and environmental concerns.
Today in Focus podcast: The Cumming storm
The prime minister’s senior adviser has provoked national outrage by admitting travelling hundreds of miles to stay with family at the height of coronavirus lockdown. The Guardian’s Matthew Weaver reveals how he helped break the story.
Lunchtime read: The man in the iron lung
When he was six years old Paul Alexander contracted polio and was paralysed for life, consigning him – like so many others at the time – to an existence inside an iron lung that took over his breathing. But over time he learned to force air into his own lungs so he could spend time outside the machine.
Extraordinarily, Alexander graduated from high school, then university, and became a practising lawyer. Today, at 74, he needs an iron lung again, and is one of the last people in the world to be using one. After barely surviving one deadly outbreak, he did not expect to find himself threatened by another.
Sport
Players and managers will at last be able to examine the Premier League’s rules for a return to contact training on Tuesday, just 24 hours before they are put to a crucial vote. The pile-up of championships in 2022 could rob the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham of some of its biggest stars and will make it impossible for Dina Asher-Smith to attempt a unique treble, Kelly Sotherton has warned.
Fifa has provisionally suspended Yves Jean-Bart pending an investigation into claims the president of the Haiti Football Federation sexually abused young female footballers at the country’s national training centre. Barnsley have sent a stinging letter to the English Football League expressing their concern over the “inability of governance to hold its members accountable” and warning they “will not accept” relegation from the Championship. And doing away with reset scrums and eliminating “upright face-to-face” tackles would significantly reduce the risk of coronavirus transmission, according to a new study by World Rugby.
Business
Shares have risen in Asia as some regions in Japan resumed close-to-normal business activity. Japan lifted its state of emergency under what the PM, Shinzo Abe, called a new lifestyle with widespread wearing of masks and face shields. The Nikkei 225, Australia’s S&P/ASX 200, the Kospi, Hang Seng and the Shanghai Composite all recorded gains. The FTSE is trending 0.75% higher at time of writing. The pound is worth $1.221 and €1.118.
The papers
“No regrets” features prominently on several front pages – you can see them here – with the Daily Mail and the Daily Mirror using the same phrase but in alternative order: “No apology, no regrets” and you can work out the other. The Mail refers to Cummings’ “rose garden roasting” on TV appearance. “Boris’s defiant svengali refuses to quit” the Mail says over his trip to Durham, and asks: “So how CAN he survive?” Metro considers the inequity of it all and riffs off Boris Johnson’s “stay alert” messaging with the headline: “Stay elite”.
“‘I don’t regret what I did’: Cummings refuses to quit” is the Guardian’s headline, describing his TV appearance as “extraordinary”. As for his excuses, “it might have helped if he had had a whiteboard to sketch it out on”, writes political editor Heather Stewart. The Mirror indicts Cummings as “shameless”. The Times splashes with “Cummings: I did not break lockdown rules”, adding he believed he behaved “reasonably and legally”. It says Downing Street has tried to “orchestrate a show of support” but some senior ministers are angry: “My jaw continues to drop. He’s saying he’s so much more important than us plebs,” one is quoted as saying.
The Telegraph runs a large picture of Cummings but a very small headline: “I don’t regret what I did”. It saves its splash for “High street to reopen as UK edges back to normality”. The Sun also grabs the “Open for business” angle and allots Cummings the top right hand corner with the headline: “Cummings out fighting: I did what was right for my family and my country”. The Express is also glad to lead on the hope of businesses reopening (“Hurrah! Shops to open doors soon”) with a side serving of “I’ve no regrets: Cummings faces down his critics”. The FT carries a picture of Cummings, but its headline is about the PM: “In the open: Johnson sorry for public’s anger after Cummings defends trips”.
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