Ten Things You Need to Know Today: Tuesday 17 Sep 2019

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1. Johnson: I’ll wait and see what Supreme Court says on prorogation
2. Truss apologises for breaking Saudi arms embargo
3. Maori tribe bans replica Captain Cook ship
4. Pollution hotspots site ‘could drive down house prices’
5. Musk denies accusing diver of paedophilia
6. US woman swims Channel four times non-stop
7. Israelis head to polls for second election in five months
8. World’s largest amphibian ‘discovered’ in museum
9. US woman swallows engagement ring in sleep
10. Briefing: inside David Cameron’s memoirs

published 17 September 2019

1. Johnson: I’ll wait and see what Supreme Court says on prorogation

Boris Johnson last night said he will “wait and see what the judges say” before deciding whether to recall Parliament. The Supreme Court is sitting in London today to consider whether the prime minister acted unlawfully in proroguing Parliament for five weeks in an apparent attempt to prevent bids to block a no-deal Brexit. A Scottish court ruled that the shutdown was unlawful but London’s High Court said it was not a court matter.

International Trade Secretary Liz Truss apologised to the Court of Appeal last night for two breaches of a government pledge to block new military exports to Saudi Arabia. She said that both violations, involving the sale of radio parts and cooling systems, were “inadvertent”. Ministers promised in June not to licence exports to the kingdom that could be used in the Yemen conflict, following a challenge by campaigners at the Court of Appeal.

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A town in New Zealand has banned a replica of Captain Cook’s ship Endeavour from docking during events marking 250 years since the British explorer reached the country, following an outcry from local Maori tribes who say he was a “barbarian”. Welcoming the decision to scrap the stop at Mangonui, at the top of the North Island, Anahera Herbert-Graves of the Ngati Kahu tribe said: “Wherever [Cook] went… there were murders, there were rapes...”

A new website that gives a detailed breakdown of nitrogen dioxide pollution levels across London could trigger big property price drops in streets with particularly unclean air, according to the non-profit campaign group behind the project. The Central Office of Public Interest (Copi) says its addresspollution.org site could lead homebuyers to seek discounts of as much as £250,000 on property prices in areas including Chelsea, where air pollution is reportedly well above the legal limit.

Scientists say analysis of the preserved remains of a salamander once kept in London Zoo has revealed it is a new species that they believe may be the world’s largest amphibian. The animal, preserved at the Natural History Museum, was thought to be a Chinese giant salamander, but tests have revealed it to be a completely new species that was bigger than its cousin. The “newcomer”, which has been called the South China giant salamander, is presumed to still live in the wild.

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