Top story: ‘People like him are seen as traitors’
Hello – it’s Warren Murray giving you the skinny on things today.
A former Russian double agent and a woman in her 30s are fighting for their lives this morning after being found unconscious from exposure to an “unknown substance”. Sergei Skripal, 66, and the woman were found slumped on a seat inside the Maltings shopping centre on Sunday afternoon. Police said Zizzi restaurant in the city centre was closed as part of the investigation, though they did not believe there was a threat to the public.
Skripal was jailed in 2006 in Russia after being convicted of spying for MI6 since the 1990s. He was freed in 2010 as part of prisoner swap involving a Russian spy ring in the US that included Anna Chapman, and had been living in Salisbury under his own name.
The case has sparked fears of another Russian “hit”, similar to the polonium poisoning in 2006 of Alexander Litvinenko, whose death was officially blamed on Kremlin agents by British authorities. Russia is headed into a presidential election and Alex Goldfarb, a friend of Litvinenko who helped him escape Russia in 2000, said: “Russia is a nationalistic country where state-run propaganda portrays the UK as the enemy and people like Skripal as traitors.”
Skripal remained critically ill last night while the women was reported to be in a serious condition. Police were at Skripal’s home in Salisbury. James Puttock, a neighbour, said Skripal had lived in the area for more than seven years and was “very quiet … If I see him in the street I say hello”.
Feeling is not mutual – Theresa May’s vision of free trade with the EU has been dealt a series of fresh blows. Last night a key adviser on the Brussels side said the PM’s plan for “mutual recognition of standards” was in serious conflict with the EU’s centralised regime. Stefaan de Rynck, who advises Michel Barnier, also claimed EU businesses “are more concerned with maintaining the integrity of the EU single market than any loss of access to British markets”. On the Irish border, May has clumsily suggested it could be something like the US-Canada frontier – evidently not having thought too hard about the armed guards, search dogs and customs posts in operation there. The idea was immediately rejected by the Irish taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, while the chancellor, Philip Hammond, was forced to reassure the EU scrutiny committee: “I am clear what infrastructure at the border would mean, and I’m absolutely clear we are not going back there.”
Fiery end of ‘Heavenly Palace’ – We are beginning the final countdown for a rogue space station to crash into planet Earth. China’s Tiangong-1 spacecraft has been in an out-of-control death spiarl since 2016. The “Heavenly Palace” is likely to re-enter the atmosphere sometime between 24 March and 19 April and experts say though it should mostly burn up, at 8.5 tonnes it is large enough for substantial pieces to make it to the surface. No one can predict exactly where, though – only that it will be between the latitudes of 43° north and 43° south. The chances of re-entry are slightly higher in northern China, the Middle East, central Italy, northern Spain and the northern states of the US, New Zealand, Tasmania, parts of South America and southern Africa.
‘Britain needs a diet’ – Food companies should cut 20% of calories from their products by 2024 or face being named and shamed, says Public Health England. Many children and more than 60% of adults are overweight or obese, and the NHS spends £6.6bn every year on obesity-related illnesses. PHE says the calorie target would slash £9bn in NHS and social care costs while saving more than 35,000 lives.
Meanwhile, latest figures show the higher cost of groceries is making consumers tighten their belts when it comes to other retail items – as evidenced by the demise of Maplin and Toys R Us. And if we are worried about a food crisis after Brexit brought about by a lack of cheap EU farm labour, we should be agitating for fair pay and working conditions on farms, writes Felicity Lawrence.
‘Lady Lex’ rediscovered – The wreck of the second world war aircraft carrier USS Lexington, scuttled during the Battle of the Coral Sea, has been located off the east coast of Australia. The badly damaged “Lady Lex” was deliberately sunk during the May 1942 engagement with Japanese carriers.
More than 200 members of the crew died in the battle but most were rescued by other US vessels before the Lexington was scuttled. A search team led by the Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen discovered the wreck, along with some remarkably well preserved examples of its complement of fighter planes.
Lunchtime read: How the ‘male glance’ overlooks women
A thought-provoking essay today from Lili Loofbourow on the “male glance”, how it pervades our reactions to women’s stories and, she argues, costs the arts a huge amount of talent. “The male glance,” write Loofbourow, “is how comedies about women become ‘chick flicks’, how discussions of serious movies with female protagonists consign them to the unappealing stable of ‘strong female characters’, how soap operas and reality television become synonymous with trash.
“We still don’t expect female texts to have universal things to say. We imagine them as small and careful, or petty and domestic, or vain, or sassy, or confessional. We have been hemorrhaging great work for decades, partly because we are so bad at seeing it.”
Sport
The five-times Olympic cycling champion Sir Bradley Wiggins has said that he is in a “living hell” after his reputation was vaporised by a parliamentary inquiry that concluded he cheated within the rules in order to win the 2012 Tour de France. The UCI has said the fallout from the affair has reinforced its concerns about potential abuse of the anti-doping system.
José Mourinho praised his team’s intensity in recovering from two goals down to beat Crystal Palace 3-2 but conceded their late victory was a “fantastic comeback with mistakes”. The International Cricket Council is set to consider a series of radical proposals designed to stem the talent drain caused by domestic Twenty20 and protect the sport from being cannibalised at all levels. Eddie Jones has warned that “no one is indispensable” as he mulls over his best options for the key Six Nations away game against France on Saturday. And the president of the Lawn Tennis Association has temporarily stepped down after the governing body of British tennis decided to commission an independent investigation into a 2004 allegation of sexual assault by a coach, and concerns about how it was handled
Business
After Wall Street posted its strongest gains in a week, Asian stock markets have surged despite tension over possible US steel tariffs. Analysts said any rally could be short-lived depending on signals from Donald Trump’s administration.
The pound has been trading at $1.384 and €1.121 overnight.
The papers
The mysterious circumstances of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal’s apparent poisoning cover most of Tuesday’s front pages: the Guardian, Telegraph, Times, Mail, Mirror, Sun, i and Metro all lead on it. The Financial Times reports that UK airlines’ Atlantic routes could be at risk post-Brexit.
The Daily Star opts for Bradley Wiggins insisting he is not a drugs cheat, while news that former TV presenter Bill Turnbull has prostate cancer leads the Express. The Scotsman says police could check social media posts before issuing firearms licences. And City AM makes a rare appearance in the Briefing with its headline on the US/EU tariff row: “Hit the chevy with a levy, tax your whiskey and rye.”
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