Ten Things You Need to Know Today: Friday 6 Jul 2018

1. No phones allowed at crunch Brexit talks

Ministers are at Chequers today to consider Theresa May’s new proposal for the UK’s customs relationship with the EU post-Brexit. All of the Cabinet members be asked to surrender their mobile phones and to carry on talks late into the night, if necessary, with the prime minister warning that they have “a duty” to come to an agreement. Brexiteer ministers held a separate summit last night.

2. Police search for source of novichok poisoning

The couple poisoned by novichok in Wiltshire this week were exposed to the substance after handling a contaminated item, possibly a vial or syringe, police say. Dawn Sturgess, 44, and Charlie Rowley, 45, are in a critical condition after collapsing at a property in Amesbury, near Salisbury, where the nerve agent was used to poison ex-Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in March. The Amesbury couple were initially thought to have taken heroin or cocaine from a contaminated batch of drugs.

3. Thai cave boys: diver dies during rescue operation

A Thai navy seal diver has died while delivering oxygen tanks to 12 boys and their football coach who have been trapped underground for almost two weeks. Samarn Gunan was coming back to the surface when his air supply ran out. The boys have been practising wearing diving masks and breathing underwater.

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4. Boy of 16 in court over death of six-year-old

A boy of 16 will appear in court later today to be charged with the murder of six-year-old Alesha MacPhail on the Scottish island of Bute. Alesha had been staying there with her father and grandparents during the school holidays when she was reported missing at 6.25am on Monday. Her body was found in the grounds of a disused hotel three hours later.

5. Sarin attack cult executed in Japan

Aum Shinrikyo founder Shoko Asahara and six other members of the doomsday cult have been executed by hanging in Japan, 23 years after they carried out the country’s worst terror attack. Cult members released sarin nerve gas inside train carriages in Tokyo in a coordinated attack on the Tokyo metro in 1995, killing 13 people and leaving thousands more seriously ill.

6. China threatens ‘counterattack’ to Trump tariffs

As tariffs on Chinese goods imported to the US come into effect, China has warned that it will be “forced to make a necessary counterattack” in the trade war started by President Donald Trump. Tariffs on goods worth $34bn (£25.7bn) are now in force, with levies on an additional $16bn (£12.1bn) worth of goods coming into force in two weeks.

7. British backpacker ‘stuck’ in Cambodia hospital

A 27-year-old British backpacker is “stuck” in a hospital in Cambodia where has been treated for more than two months for sepsis from an infected mosquito bite, his family say. Calvin Hill was in a coma but is now recovering. However, his insurer, Flexicover, refuses to fly him home until his health improves. His family say he will not get better until he returns.

8. Diabetic student wins Lucozade compensation

A 20-year-old student with type 1 diabetes has been awarded £2,000 compensation after security staff at a Red Hot Chili Peppers concert in Belfast confiscated her bottle of Lucozade. Kayla Hanna always carries the fizzy drink in case her blood sugar levels sink too low, but Eventsec Ltd staff removed it, despite her showing them her insulin pack.

9. Spiders found to use electric fields to fly

A long-running debate among biologists has been settled by a study at Bristol University which found that baby spiders use natural electric fields to fly, with a length of their silk acting as a “sail” . The idea that spiders fly on the currents of Earth’s electric fields, rather than air currents, was first proposed as long ago as the 1830s.

10. Briefing: what novichok nerve agents do to your body

Novichok is a series of highly toxic nerve agents, each with a different potency, first developed in the former Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s. The specific circumstances of their creation remains shrouded in secrecy.

The lethal nerve agents are believed to have been developed in an attempt to circumvent the Chemical Weapons Treaty. They bear a “slightly different chemical composition than the more commonly known VX and sarin poison gases”, Reuters reports, but they are believed to be five to ten times more lethal.

Novichok nerve agents: what they do to your body