1. Business ‘not ready for no deal’, says Carney
Bank of England boss Mark Carney has told the BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that fewer than half of British firms have contingency plans for a no-deal Brexit – and refuted claims he was trying to scare the public. The Bank warned yesterday that leaving the EU without a deal would create the worst recession since the 1930s.
2. Knife deaths climbing as drugs trade thrives
This year is on track to be the worst in a decade for numbers of young people killed in stabbings in Wales and England, The Guardian reports. The crisis is being fuelled by cuts to policing, youth work and mental health care. Sky News says the “county lines” drugs trade is now worth more than £3m a day across the UK.
3. Ukraine asks Nato to deploy ships to Azov
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has asked Nato to send ships to the Sea of Azov “to assist Ukraine and provide security”, after Russia opened fire on and seized three Ukrainian vessels at the weekend. Russian President Vladimir Putin has accused Poroshenko of hyping up the confrontation to win votes in upcoming elections.
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4. Education: ‘disturbing’ rise in unconditional offers
Education Secretary Damian Hinds has called on the universities regulator to investigate a “disturbing” rise in the number of unconditional offers being made to prospective students. New figures from Ucas show that nearly a third of applicants gets some sort of unconditional offer. The total number of unconditional offers has risen to 87,500 from just 3,000 in 2013.
5. Met police ‘ignore a third of all crimes’
London’s Met Police ignores around a third of all crime reports after just a single phone call with the alleged victim, The Times reports. The newspaper claims that the Met, the biggest force in the country, introduced a secret policy last year under which burglaries, low-level assaults, criminal damage, theft and affray as classed as crimes that do not have to be investigated.
6. No-deal Brexit ‘poses risk to UK security’
Security Minister Ben Wallace will warn today that leaving the EU without a deal would have a “real impact” on the security services’ ability to protect the UK public. He will say that the “heart of effective security is close cooperation” between nations and that Theresa May’s Brexit deal would lay a safe foundation for security.
7. Doubts increase over royal ownership of ‘Leonardo’
Further doubt has been cast on the attribution of an alleged Leonardo da Vinci painting sold to a Saudi Arabian buyer at auction for a record price last year. The Renaissance master’s Salvator Mundi was said to have been owned by Charles I, but experts now believe the artwork sold for $450m (£350m) last November may have been a painting of the same name by another artist.
8. Rancher Bundy on Trump: ‘I don’t like walls’
US far-right hero and cattle rancher Cliven Bundy has come out against Donald Trump’s migrant policies. The 72-year-old and his sons are best known for their armed stand-offs with the federal authorities over cattle grazing in 2014. Bundy told The Guardian that he doesn’t like Trump’s border wall plan and that migrants should be welcomed.
9. Boa constrictor on loose in Lincolnshire
A boa constrictor is on the loose after escaping from a tank at its owner’s home in the Lincolnshire town of Boston. Police are warning the public not to approach the animal, which has a white tail and grey, black and brown spots. Boas are not venomous but bite their prey and then kill it by constriction, or squeezing. The snake went missing on Wednesday.
10. Briefing: is university worth the money?
Tuition fee hikes have triggered questions about whether getting a university degree still pays off but now new research appears to confirm that it does - for female graduates, at least.
As the Government prepares to publish a review of higher education funding in 2019, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has released the results of an analysis of the tax records of UK graduates now aged 29.
Is university worth the money?
