Ten Things You Need to Know Today: Tuesday 29 May 2018

1. Doctor: ‘We didn’t expect Skripals to survive’

A hospital consultant who treated Sergei and Yulia Skripal, the former Russian spy and daughter who were poisoned in Salisbury in March, has said he did not expect them to live. Dr Stephen Jukes told the BBC: “When we were first aware this was a nerve agent, we were expecting them not to survive.” Both Skripals have now recovered.

2. Top North Korean official visits US for talks

South Korean news agency Yonhap says the most senior North Korean official to visit the US for 40 years is heading to America now for crisis talks on the proposed summit between President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un. General Kim Yong Chol is expected to arrive in America today. Trump pulled out of the 12 June summit last week.

3. YouTube takes down violent ‘drill’ music videos

YouTube has agreed to requests from London’s Metropolitan Police to take down around 30 videos for songs by British ‘drill’ bands over the last two years, it has emerged. The songs are said not just to incite violence in general, but to relate to specific real-world arguments between gangs, mostly in London, which can end in violence.

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4. Bank and Treasury in conflict over Brexit

The Financial Times says the Bank of England and the Treasury are at loggerheads over the shape of Brexit. Bank Governor Mark Carney is said to want the Chancellor to outline a ‘Plan B’ to stop it from becoming a “rule taker” if his plans for maintaining close financial services ties with the EU are rejected by the 27-member bloc.

5. ‘Bank of Mum and Dad’ feels the pinch

Many young home buyers still rely on financing from their parents – but the amount they are able to borrow has reduced as the ‘Bank of Mum and Dad’ feels the pinch, financial services firm Legal & General says. The average parental contribution towards a new home this year will be £18,000, down 17% from £21,600 last year. In total, 27% of people buying a home now get help from friends or family.

6. Raheem Sterling defends gun tattoo after criticism

England footballer Raheem Sterling has said a tattoo of an M16 assault rifle on his right leg has a “deeper meaning” after anti-gun campaigners said he should be dropped from the national side. Sterling said his father was shot dead when he was two years old – and “I shoot with my right foot”. He said he has vowed to “never touch a gun”.

7. ‘Final’ search for missing flight MH370 ends

A private search for the Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, missing since 8 March 2014 with 239 people on board, has ended without result – and is expected to be the last. US-based company Ocean Infinity had undertaken 90 more days of searching unpaid, with a £53m reward if it discovered what happened to the missing plane.

8. Citizenship for ‘spiderman’ who rescued child

A Malian man who has been living illegally in France will be granted citizenship after he saved a child dangling from a fourth-floor balcony in Paris by climbing the outside of the building in a matter of seconds. Dubbed ‘Spiderman’, Mamoudou Gassama met President Emmanuel Macron yesterday, to be told he had set a “heroic” example.

9. Champion cheese chaser ‘has nothing to prove’

The annual cheese-rolling races took place in Brockworth, Gloucestershire yesterday – and two of the men’s races were won by Chris Anderson, 30, who said afterwards he now has “nothing to prove”. A professional soldier, Anderson has won 22 races in 14 years – a record. Competitors chase a wheel of cheese down a steep hill.

10. Briefing: is the Le Pen name now toxic – even to the far right?

The name Le Pen “for decades associated with anti-immigration and often racist politics in France”, says The Guardian, appears to have become so out of favour that even a leading member of the country’s far right has abandoned it.

Jean-Marie Le Pen’s granddaughter Marion Marechal-Le Pen, often tipped as a future leader of the far right despite stepping back from public life last year, has revealed she has dropped one of the most famous names in French politics.

Marion Marechal: is the Le Pen name now toxic – even to the far right?