Wednesday briefing: London violence is 'worst I've seen', MP says
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Version 0 of 1. Top story: Second teenager dies after Easter shootings Good morning. I’m Martin Farrer and these are the top stories this Wednesday. Young black people are risking their lives in the battle over London’s cocaine trade while white people enjoy the “decriminalisation” of the drug in the city’s affluent areas, Labour MP David Lammy has said in the wake of the latest murder in the capital. He and other campaigners say the authorities are failing to tackle the crime epidemic that has seen 48 suspected murders in the city this year, the worst rate for more than a decade. In the latest incidents, 17-year-old Tanesha Melbourne-Blake was shot dead on a street in Tottenham in a drive-by attack on Monday night and a 16-year-old boy died on Tuesday after being shot in Walthamstow. Lammy, who is MP for Tottenham, said the situation was the “worst I’ve ever seen” and said it was “driven by gangsters, by massive amounts of cocaine coming into Britain ... You’ve got a decriminalisation of coke for white folk in Notting Hill, but it’s black young foot soldiers” risking their lives. He also blamed cuts in services for young people in the London borough of Haringey and the lack of decent mental health care. Gender pay deadline – Businesses have been given a final warning to report details of their gender pay gap by midnight tonight. Amber Rudd, who is the minister for women and equalities as well as home secretary, reminded employers with 250 or more staff that refusing to report was breaking the law. Theresa May, writing in the Daily Telegraph, said she would put the issue at the centre of her political agenda. However, it has emerged the Conservative party did not plan to file its own figures until a day after the deadline. Although it employs only 200 staff, the party decided to publish the figures voluntarily but not until Thursday. Party insiders suggested it was strange to leave it until after the deadline. One senior Tory MP said: “It’s important that we’re seen to be leading from the front. But it’s a shame that we didn’t decide to do it a bit earlier.” Poison proof – Britain will today face a series of questions tabled by Russia about what evidence it has linking Moscow to the poison attack on poison Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury. After experts at Porton Down defence facility said yesterday that they could not establish that the nerve agent used in the attack was made in Russia, the government will face the questions at an extraordinary meeting of the executive council of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in the Hague. A Foreign Office spokesman said Russia had called the meeting to try to undermine the work of the organisation. Troop wall – Donald Trump has vowed to use troops to guard the border with Mexico until his controversial wall can be built. Announcing the plan at a media conference at the White House on Tuesday, the US president bemoaned the “pathetic” security at the border and said “we’re going to be doing things militarily”. While US troops could be heading south, they could be heading out of Syria after Trump reiterated his surprise comments from last week about withdrawing soldiers from the war-torn country. He said Isis was “almost defeated” and wanted US troops to return home. But, as our Middle East correspondent Martin Chulov reports, the move will further strain US relations with Kurdish forces enlisted by Washington to help defeat the terrorist group. Some policymakers fear the Kurds could lose faith in the alliance and make it harder to finally root out a rump of about 2,200 Isis fighters still entrenched in the Syria-Iraq border region. YouTube shooting – A shooting at the headquarters of YouTube in California has left one woman dead, believed to the attacker, and at least three people wounded. The woman opened fire on the campus of the video-sharing company in Silicon Valley around lunchtime on Tuesday, forcing employees to barricade themselves into rooms or flee into the surrounding streets. “Heard shots and saw people running while at my desk. Now barricaded inside a room with coworkers,” Vadim Lavrusik, a YouTube employee, said on Twitter. Police have not named the dead woman or commented on a possible motive. Huffing and puffing – Scientists believe they may have shed some more light on the anatomical differences between homo sapiens and Neanderthals. It has long been supposed that our distant cousins, who had big brows, oversized noses and jutting jaws, needed a forceful bite to use as a kind of third hand to grip things. But analysis of homo sapien skulls and those of Neanderthals and other extinct human species suggests they used their large nostrils as a way to warm and moisten large amounts of cold, dry air as they battled for survival in an often severe climate – albeit with a lot of huffing and puffing. From the ridiculous to the sublime – He may be the subject of the worst statue ever made – now arguably made even worse – but you have to say that Cristiano Ronaldo’s latest goal is a thing of beauty. Real Madrid’s star striker leapt more than two metres in the air to score a spectacular overhead kick in his team’s 3-0 Champions League quarter-final win over Juventus last night. The opposing manager, Massimiliano Allegri, who also had to watch the Portuguese score another, said “you can only congratulate him”. Lunchtime read: Don’t forget Martin Luther King’s radical legacy The United States will this week indulge in “an orgy of self-congratulation” as it marks the 50th anniversary of the death of Martin Luther King, brazenly forgetting to mention that the black civil rights preacher was well on the way to becoming a pariah by the time he was killed, Gary Younge argues. White America has sought to bury the fact that King championed radical causes such as striking garbage workers and the anti-Vietnam war movement, he says, and focuses on turning him into a national treasure. The ultimate insult, Gary says, is that excerpts from King’s famous “I have a dream” speech have been used in a car commercial, but more effort must be made to ensure that his legacy isn’t stripped of all militancy. Sport Liverpool and Manchester City go head-to-head in the Champions League tonight in front of a wall of noise at Anfield, where the home crowd will play its part in a hotly anticipated quarter-final first leg. Finally listening to his doctors and taking time off has helped put Tiger Woods back on his feet and, ahead of the Masters this weekend, Augusta is feeling the enhancing effect of the four-times champion’s return to combat. The Scarlets coach, Wayne Pivac, has confirmed he has held talks with the Welsh Rugby Union with a view to replacing Warren Gatland as Wales head coach after the 2019 World Cup. And one of the most anticipated fights of the year is off after Canelo Álvarez withdrew from his rematch with Gennady Golovkin. Business Donald Trump has intensified his trade war with China by slapping 25% tariffs on 1,300 products including electronics, medicine and machinery. It is seen as an attempt to force Beijing to rethink its approach to intellectual property rights, a longstanding bugbear of American business. Unlike previous announcements on trade, it hasn’t caused any great ructions on the financial markets so far with Asian shares largely becalmed overnight. The FTSE100 is set to open down 0.2%. The pound is buying $1.409 and €1.147. The papers The death of teenager Tanesha Melbourne-Blake in a shooting in Tottenham fills several front pages today. The Express asks “How many more must die?”, while the Sun leads with “She died in her mum’s arms”. The spike in gun crime in the capital also makes the front page of the Metro, while the Guardian’s front page also has a picture of the teenager. The paper leads on the latest in the Skripal poisoning case: “UK chemical experts unable to confirm nerve agent made in Russia.” The Telegraph has an exclusive in the form of a column written by the prime minister in which she attacks the “injustice” of the pay gap. The Times also leads on May and her “battles to preserve alliance against Russia.” Meanwhile, the leader of the Labour party is on the Mail’s mind. The paper asks “How low can you go Mr Corbyn?” on its front page, referring to his controversial appearance at a Jewdas event. The Mirror is worried about the health of the Duke of Edinburgh: “Queen’s fears as Philip, 96, to have op today”. Finally, the FT reports on Disney offering a deal for Sky news “to ease fears on Murdoch’s power”. For more news: www.theguardian.com Sign up The Guardian morning briefing is delivered to thousands of inboxes bright and early every weekday. If you are not already receiving it by email, you can sign up here. |