Ten Things You Need to Know Today: Tuesday 31 Jul 2018

1. Manchester bomber was ‘saved’ on navy ship

The suicide bomber who killed 22 people after an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester last year was rescued from Libya by the Royal Navy three years earlier, it has emerged. Salman Abedi, then aged 19, and his younger brother Hashem, were among 217 civilians, either Britons or diplomatic staff, taken by ship to Malta as war broke out.

2. ‘Abject failure’ of aid agencies to tackle abuse

A cross-party committee of MPs has damned the aid sector for its “abject failure” in tackling sexual abuse meted out by employees to women and girls. Committee chair Stephen Twigg said abuse was still “endemic” in a sector characterised by “complacency” and victims were still “at the mercy of those who seek to use power to abuse others”.

3. Weather wetter and hotter than in 100 years

The Met Office has published its annual climate report and says the UK is hotter and wetter than it has been in the last 100 years, with 20% more rain falling every year during the last decade than did in the 30 years before 1990. Last year was the fifth-warmest on record and nine of the 10 hottest years have been since 2002, the report says.

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. North Korea ‘working on new missiles’, US says

Un-named US officials have anonymously told media there they believe North Korea is working on new ballistic missiles, despite US President Donald Trump’s claim that the rogue nation is “no longer a nuclear threat”. The officials said it was not clear how far work has progressed. This is not the first claim that missile production continues.

5. Missing flight MH370 ‘was turned manually’

The controls of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 were used to turn the flight manually away from its planned route and south instead, an international report on the missing Boeing 777 jet released yesterday concludes. MH370 disappeared on 8 March, 2014, after changing course 37 minutes into its journey to Beijing with 239 people onboard.

6. Dump nuclear waste under national parks, MPs say

A select committee has backed the government’s proposal that national parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty (AONBs) should not be excluded when it is decided where to bury highly radioactive nuclear waste. The Green Party objected, pointing out that it has also been decided to allow fracking for gas in national parks.

7. Missing airman Corrie McKeague: ‘body lost’

The father of RAF airman Corrie McKeague, who went missing after a boozy night out in Bury St Edmunds on 24 September 2016, says his son is “no longer missing” as the family are sure he died when a large rubbish bin he was sleeping in was picked up by a lorry. Martin McKeague said his sons remains “are essentially irretrievable”.

8. Girl of 7 gets sexist NZ road signs changed

New Zealand’s transport agency is to change a men-at-work sign which warns of “linemen” in the road to say “line crew” after a seven-year-old girl wrote to its chief executive to complain. Zoe Carew added: “I don’t really want to be a line-worker when I grow up because there are so many more exciting things I would like to do.”

9. Love Island reality show winners announced

The winners of ITV2’s Love Island reality show were announced on air last night. Dani Dyer, daughter of actor Danny Dyer, came first with pen salesman Jack Fincham, who has been her partner on screen since the first episode of the romance-themed show, eight weeks ago. The pair were given a £50,000 cash prize to share.

10. Briefing: British prime ministers on holiday

With Brexit negotiations still in deadlock, the British PM can’t even go on holiday without attracting some form of criticism.

Snaps of Theresa May and her husband, Philip, strolling around Italy’s Lake Garda were described as “even more boring than the mutual recognition of goods standards post-Brexit” by the Daily Mirror’s political reporter Dan Bloom.

British prime ministers on holiday - in pictures