Morning Report
Gray's ousting, a dark anniversary, and Nasa's Europa Clipper mission

 
today's POLITICS story

Downing Street reset as Gray quits as chief of staff

What happened
Keir Starmer has overhauled his top team after Sue Gray resigned as No.10's chief of staff. She has been replaced by Morgan McSweeney, who oversaw Labour's election campaign, following "weeks of internal criticism of her performance and a power struggle behind the scenes", said the Financial Times.
 
Who said what
"The end, when it came, was brutal," said The Times. The PM had supported Gray for weeks both in public and in private, but finally concluded that her position was no longer tenable. "She was basically the victim of a coup," one friend told the paper. According to another insider, Starmer had come to the view that Gray was ultimately to blame for the negative press coverage about Labour freebies and donations.

She had also been "dogged by headlines about her leaked salary", which was greater than Starmer's, said The Telegraph. One source said "Team Morgan" had been "chipping away at Sue for months", and now it had succeeded. 
 
What next?
Gray has a new role as envoy for the regions and nations, and some say she might be given a peerage so she can work from the Lords. "The position is set to be part-time," said The Telegraph. "A pay cut is inevitable – if she is paid at all."

 
 
today's MIDDLE EAST story

Conflict escalates in Middle East amid dark anniversary

What happened
Israel has struck Beirut and Gaza as families commemorate the Hamas attacks that killed about 1,200 people and took more than 250 as hostages on 7 October last year. More than 40,000 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

Who said what
As relatives and friends gather at the site of the Nova Festival where hundreds of people were killed, "a wider, multi-front war between Israel and Hamas's regional allies is now unfolding", said The New York Times. The "overwhelming" question one year on, said The New Humanitarian, "is when and how will Israel's war end, and what will be left when it is over?"

What next?
Ceremonies and protests are expected to take place this morning in Jerusalem and Israel's south. While Israel has invaded Lebanon, and Iran has been bombarding Israel, said The New York Times, "the core of the conflict remains the original battle between Hamas and Israel, and the almost Sisyphean challenge of ending it".

 
 
Today's SPACE story

Nasa mission to probe possibility of life on Europa

What happened
A Nasa spacecraft bound for Jupiter's icy moon Europa is scheduled to blast off from the Kennedy Space Center this week. The Europa Clipper mission is to conduct 44 fly-bys of the moon to determine whether it could support life.

Who said what
Among the top puzzles scientists are hoping to solve is whether the moon has the "water, energy and chemical building blocks required to host life as we know it", said National Geographic. This "frozen world" is a similar size to our own moon, but potentially contains "twice the amount of water as all of Earth's oceans combined".

While the Europa Clipper (pictured above) "cannot detect life directly", said James O'Donoghue, a planetary astronomy expert from Reading University, on The Conversation, it "marks humanity's first dedicated mission to study an ocean world and search for signs of habitability".

What next?
The spacecraft is due to launch on Thursday, but won't reach Jupiter's orbit until 2030. If there's "even a hint that the stuff of life exists" on Europa, added O'Donoghue, a separate surface lander would then be needed to probe deeper.

 
 

It's not all bad

A long-lost tree species has been brought back to life from a 1,000-year-old seed found in a cave in the Judean Desert in the 1980s. The botanists involved in the project, led by Dr Sarah Sallon, believe the unnamed species could have been the source of a healing balm called "tsori" that is mentioned in the Bible. Sallon has nicknamed the resurrected tree "Sheba".

 
 
UNDER THE RADAR

India's lengthening working week

India's notoriously intense workplace culture is under renewed scrutiny after the death of a young woman at a leading accounting firm.

Anna Sebastian Perayil, a 26-year-old accountant, died four months after joining the Indian offices of Ernst & Young (EY). Her mother wrote to the EY India chairman blaming her daughter's death on the "overwhelming work pressure", in a letter that went viral.

Anita Augustine said her daughter's experience "sheds light on a work culture" that "seems to glorify overwork while neglecting the very human beings behind the roles".

India has one of the toughest work cultures in the world. In 2022, according to the most recently available data from the International Labour Organization, the average employee in India worked 46.7 hours a week, compared to about 36 in the UK.

Not only are employees in India working long hours, but many are also doing it under intense pressure. "The pressure is very, very high," Jennifer Hephzibah, a senior HR professional in India, told Business Insider, because "if you don't deliver", you "either lose your bonus or you lose your job".

A Boston Consulting Group survey of 11,000 workers in eight countries in October last year found that 58% of Indian respondents reported feeling burned out – the highest share of any of the countries.

The official cause of Perayil's death is still unclear, but her father Sebastian Perayil believes she died of a combination of conditions including work stress and insomnia.

EY told Business Insider that it was "taking the family's correspondence with utmost seriousness and humility", and called Perayil's death an "irreparable loss".

 
 
on this day

7 October 2023

Hamas launched a major air and ground attack on Israel, killing more than 1,000 people and taking hundreds of hostages, prompting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to declare: "We are at war." Tens of thousands of people have died in the subsequent conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

 
 
Today's newspapers

Many of the papers lead on Sue Gray's exit. Keir Starmer's chief of staff was "ousted as PM wields the knife", said The Telegraph, while Metro asks if it was a "A bad Gray at the office?" On the first anniversary of the 7 October attacks, Israel is intensifying its air strikes, says The Guardian. The Mirror leads on Mandy Damari's plea for the safe return of her daughter Emily, who is the last British hostage still being held by Hamas.

See the newspaper front pages

 
 
tall tale

Suitcase snacks

A pop-up version of the TikTok viral sensation Crumbl Cookie has left a sour taste in the mouth of some Australians. The invite-only pop-up on Bondi Beach in Sydney appeared to be a genuine affiliate of the bakery chain, which normally only sells to customers in the US and Canada. But it emerged that some enterprising locals were selling days-old cookies brought back in suitcases from Hawaii, charging $17.50 (£9) for the stale snacks. The cookie peddlers have apologised for what has come to be known as "Crumblgate".

 
 

Morning Report was written and edited by Hollie Clemence, Sarah Collins, Chas Newkey-Burden, Jamie Timson, Harriet Marsden and Natalie Holmes, with illustrations by Julia Wytrazek.

Image credits, from top: Charles McQuillan / Getty Images; Leon Neal / Getty Images; Mario Tama / Getty Images; Illustration by Julia Wytrazek / Getty Images.