Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Four reservoirs supplying India’s sixth largest city dry up as state accused of inaction
Authorities in Chennai have been criticised for failing to deal with a crippling water shortage that has brought the Indian city to crisis point, leaving taps dry in homes and forcing schools, offices and restaurants to close as temperatures soar.
The four reservoirs supplying the bulk of the city’s drinking water have completely dried up, leading the Chennai Metro Water to cut the water it provides by about 40%.
Research shows government could make more than £5m by charging vulnerable children
The UK government could profit by more than £5m by charging children who have fled war-torn Syria to apply for British citizenship, according to research.
The revelation, based on the Home Office’s own data, has sparked accusations that the government is profiteering from vulnerable children and making a windfall profit by driving vulnerable families into debt.
Here is more on Nicola Sturgeon from my colleague Severin Carrell.
@NicolaSturgeon says @BorisJohnson asked her recently (paraphrasing) “So Nicola: full fiscal autonomy. Does that buy you guys off?” “I’m going to make that the starting point of our negotiations should he become prime minister” @reformscotland#devo20
Nicola Sturgeon has said that Boris Johnson’s “almost certain” election as the next Conservative leader has proven how sharply Scotland is now diverging from the rest of the UK, increasing the case for independence.
In a speech to mark 20 years since devolution, the first minister said Johnson’s apparent relish for a no-deal Brexit, and his “gratuitously offensive” opinions about women and minorities are in stark contrast to Scotland’s open, diverse and tolerant politics.
It is surely deeply concerning that the Conservative party is even contemplating putting into the office of prime minister someone whose tenure as foreign secretary was risible, lacking in any seriousness of purpose or basic competence and who, over the years, has gratuitously offended so many, from gay people, to Africans, Muslim women and many others.
But while that, for now, is a matter for the Tories it does further illustrate the different political trajectories of Scotland and other parts of the UK. And it raises the more fundamental question of whether the UK and therefore devolution, in its current form is capable of accommodating those differences.
Lib Peck insists tactics are succeeding despite Londoners ‘feeling powerless’ over crime
The head of London’s newly formed violence reduction unit has said Londoners feel powerless about levels of street crime but insisted that increased use of stop and search powers had been successful.
Lib Peck, the former leader of Lambeth council who was appointed to the role in January, made the comments while on a two-day fact-finding trip to Glasgow, visiting some of the Scottish unit’s key projects and meeting senior officials.
In 2014 supreme court ruled sanctions on Bank Mellat had been unlawful
The UK government has made a last minute out-of-court deal to settle a £1.3bn damages claim made by an Iranian bank over a UK trading ban.
The undisclosed settlement to Bank Mellat on the eve of what was expected to be a five-week trial raises questions about how big the UK taxpayer’s bill is likely to be, as well as how the UK will transfer the payment to circumvent the comprehensive sanctions regime imposed by the US, which affects the bank.
Veterans with complex needs report overwhelmingly negative experiences of benefits system
Ex-service personnel with physical and mental health issues have described how they felt ignored and let down by their country after falling foul of a social security system that failed to offer adequate support when they fell on hard times.
Research has found that many armed forces veterans with complex needs report overwhelmingly negative experiences of universal credit, fit-for-work tests used to gauge eligibility for disability benefits, and benefit sanctions.
Iván Duque decries social acceptability of drug that inflicts environmental and social damage on producers
Middle-class cocaine users are inconsistent hypocrites if they fail to recognise the environmental and social damage their drug use is inflicting on producer countries, the Colombian president has said during a visit to London.
In an interview with the Guardian on Monday, Iván Duque said that cocaine’s social acceptability had to end. “There are many people who present themselves as environmentalists, and if they want to be coherent, they must understand all the environmental damage that is caused by the production of cocaine – not just destroying tropical forests, [but] spreading chemicals in protected areas and destroying human capital,” he said.
Eurosceptic backer warns that hardliners want frontrunner to rip up May’s deal
Boris Johnson has been accused of giving MPs contradictory promises on Brexit to win their votes, as one of his highly Eurosceptic backers warned that hardliners want to see him effectively tear up Theresa May’s deal with the EU.
The Conservative leadership frontrunner will face questions on his Brexit stance in a television grilling for the first time in the campaign on Tuesday, amid frustration among his rivals that he is getting away with pledging to be “all things to all MPs” on issues from Brexit to HS2 in one-on-one meetings with them.
Rolling coverage of the day’s political developments as they happen, including Tory leadership candidates take part in the press gallery hustings
And here’s another story from the hustings, filed by the Press Association.
Tory leadership hopefuls Rory Stewart and Sajid Javid believe they have the required number of supporters to survive Tuesday’s second round of voting.
Stewart managed to secure just 19 votes in the first ballot and Javid had 23 - both short of the 33 required to stay in the race after the second vote.
Here is my colleague Peter Walker’s story about what the Tory election candidates had to say at the press gallery hustings about Donald Trump.
Jeremy Hunt has vigorously defended Donald Trump for quoting the far-right commentator Katie Hopkins in an attack on the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, as Downing Street declined to condemn the US president’s words.
The foreign secretary said that while he would not have used the same words as Trump he would “150% agree” with the overall sentiment.
Jeremy Hunt has vigorously defended Donald Trump for quoting the far-right commentator Katie Hopkins in an attack on the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, as Downing Street declined to condemn the US president’s words.
The foreign secretary said that while he would not have used the same words as Trump he would “150% agree” with the overall sentiment.
Rebecca Bryant told girlfriend of son ‘don’t tell them who you are’ in text before murder trial
A police officer who hid the fact she knew a juror on a murder trial she was involved in and then lied about it to a senior officer has admitted breaching standards of professional behaviour.
DC Rebecca Bryant sent her son’s girlfriend, Laura Jones, a text on the eve of the murder trial in which she said: “Don’t tell any of them who you are.”
Victims include imprisoned followers of Falun Gong movement, China Tribunal says
An independent tribunal sitting in London has concluded that the killing of detainees in China for organ transplants is continuing, and victims include imprisoned followers of the Falun Gong movement.
The China Tribunal, chaired by Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, who was a prosecutor at the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, said in a unanimous determination at the end of its hearings it was “certain that Falun Gong were used for forced organ harvesting”.
Readers respond to Larry Elliott’s stance on the republican cause in Britain and debate the possibility of radical change
I was a little surprised by Larry Elliott’s suggestion that the republican movement has rarely been weaker (How the House of Windsor saw off British republicanism, 13 June). In his analysis he ignores opinion polling, which shows no growth in support for the monarchy, and he ignores the perilous and imminent succession of King Charles.
A YouGov poll commissioned by Republic at the time of Prince Harry’s wedding last year showed widespread indifference to the royals. As expected, a clear majority (60%) said they liked the Queen, but only a third said they liked her “a great deal”. Meanwhile, only 37% wanted Charles to succeed the Queen; 46% said they would prefer “someone else”.
Foreign secretary says it is wrong to commit rigidly to leaving the EU by 31 October
Jeremy Hunt has said the Brexit deadline of 31 October should not be a “hard stop” and that Boris Johnson is posing a “stark choice”, between leaving the EU without a deal and a general election.
As the five remaining rivals to Boris Johnson prepare for a televised debate on Sunday evening, Hunt warned it would be wrong to commit now to leave the EU by Halloween, come what may.
Fast must not go ‘to bitter end’ as they are parents to Gabriella, says Richard Ratcliffe
Richard Ratcliffe will join his wife, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, in her hunger strike for as long as he can, he has said, as the couple sought to increase pressure on the Iranian government for her release after three years’ imprisonment in Iran on charges she denies.
But Ratcliffe said it was important the action did not go “to the bitter end” because of their five-year-old daughter, Gabriella, who is also unable to leave Iran and return to the UK.
Factory production of sandwiches linked to five cases is halted as health secretary demands action
Health secretary Matt Hancock has ordered a “root and branch” review of NHS food after two more patient deaths were linked last week to a listeria outbreak. The new deaths bring the number of suspected fatalities to five and doctors have warned that further cases could occur.
Hancock said he was “incredibly concerned” after it emerged the patients were suspected of dying as a result of eating pre-packaged sandwiches and salads linked by the same supplier, The Good Food Chain.
Military helicopters are drafted in to repair broken bank of River Steeping in Wainfleet
Hundreds of homes have been evacuated in a Lincolnshire town following severe flooding as the local MP warned that residents are “by no means out of the woods yet”.
Residents in at least 590 homes in Wainfleet and Thorpe Culvert were told to leave as waters continued to surge on Saturday.
Top Tories say attempt to appease hardliners means coalition of support for his leadership bid will not survive the autumn
Boris Johnson’s attempts to appease hardline Tory Brexiters will tilt the party into a “disastrous general election” that could be just months away, senior Conservatives are warning.
The runaway favourite to replace Theresa May is being told that the coalition of support set to deliver him Downing Street “won’t survive the autumn”, when he will have to decide whether to accept a deal with the EU or try to force a no-deal Brexit – a move likely to precipitate an election.
Acquitted woman says media created story about her role in death of Meredith Kercher
An emotional Amanda Knox has castigated the media for depicting her as a “dirty man-eater” when she was on trial for the murder of the British student Meredith Kercher.
Knox, now 31, was twice convicted and twice acquitted of killing Kercher, 21, in the home they shared in the Italian university town of Perugia in November 2007.