Ten Things You Need to Know Today: Thursday 12 Apr 2018

1. May summons Cabinet to discuss Syria attack

Theresa May has called an emergency cabinet meeting today to discuss a possible response to the latest chemical weapons attack allegedly carried out by Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian regime on its own civilians. The Prime Minister has not ruled out joining the US in a military reaction to the attack on Douma, after US President Donald Trump pledged action.

2. Yulia Skripal: no one speaks for me or father

Yulia Skripal has said she does not want help from the Russian embassy in London, in her first public statement since being discharged from hospital following last month’s nerve agent attack. She insisted that “no one speaks for me” and said she hopes to be strong enough to give an interview “one day”. Her father Sergei Skripal, a former Russian double agent, remains seriously ill as a result of the attack on them in Salisbury, she added.

3. Stephen Lawrence murder inquiry ‘unlikely to progress’

Scotland Yard investigators say they have run out of leads in the inquiry into the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence at a bus stop in south London in 1993, and may close the case if nothing new emerges after the BBC airs a documentary on the stabbing next week. Two of the gang of at least five who attacked Lawrence were convicted of murder in 2012.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

4. Barnier: UK can change mind on single market

EU chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier has said he will hold open the door for Britain to stay in the single market until the beginning of 2021. Barnier told Theresa May that she can reverse her position on the single market even after the UK leaves the EU. He said: “If Britain decides to change its red lines, we too will change our positions, we remain open, there are no dogmas.”

5. Security officer who dragged man off flight sues

A former airport security officer in Chicago is suing United Airlines over his involvement in a notorious incident last April, when a 69-year-old Vietnamese-American doctor was dragged off a flight, losing two teeth and suffering concussion. James Long says he was not properly trained in the use of force and should not have been called.

6. Police say memorial for burglar should be left

Floral tributes to a suspected burglar stabbed to death inside a pensioner’s home earlier this month should be respected, police have warned. Memorials to Henry Vincent have been placed repeatedly outside Richard Osborn-Brooks’s house, in Hither Green, southeast London, and torn down repeatedly by angry neighbours and other locals.

7. China: baby born four years after parents die

A baby has been born to a surrogate mother in China four years after the death of his parents in a car crash. The child’s four grandparents fought a legal battle to be allowed to use embryos frozen by his parents, who had been undergoing fertility treatment. Surrogacy is illegal in China, but one of the embryos was implanted into a surrogate mother from Laos, who gave birth to the baby in December.

8. House prices ‘killed’ in London by stamp duty

Stamp duty and Brexit have “killed” the London housing market, according to the latest report from the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (Rics). Prices are also “flat” in the southeast of England – but continue to rise in parts of the Midlands and the North. Demand from buyers fell for the 12th month in a row in March.

9. Sub-glacial lakes found beneath Canadian Arctic

Two newly discovered reservoirs of liquid water beneath the ice sheet of the Canadian Arctic may offer a unique opportunity for testing the possibility that life exists elsewhere in our solar system, scientists say. The water in the sub-glacial lakes reaches a maximum temperature of -10.5C, but is believed to remain liquid as a result of its high salt content - similar to the subsurface ocean of Jupiter’s frozen moon, Europa. Researchers say the lakes may still host life.

10. Briefing: how Tesco turned its profits around

Tesco has reported soaring profits, just three years after it unveiled the worst results in its history.

In April 2015, the supermarket group - Britain’s biggest retailer - reported a record statutory pre-tax loss of £6.4bn for the year to the end of February. Today, pre-tax profits stand at £1.3bn, up 28% on the previous 12 months, reports the BBC.

How Tesco turned its profits around