WeekDay AM: 10 Things you need to know this morning
A 'backbench revolt', Camp Mystic floods, and a 'mega-forces' proposal

 
today's POLITICS story

Backbench row brewing over special educational needs

What happened
Labour is set to "face a fresh battle" with MPs and charities after the education secretary refused to guarantee millions of children the legal right to special educational needs, said The Telegraph. Speaking to the BBC on Sunday, Bridget Phillipson "repeatedly refused to rule out scrapping education, health and care plans (EHCPs)". These are the "legally binding documents" that lay out the teaching requirements for children with additional needs.

Who said what
Phillipson said no decision on EHCPs had been taken, but that the current system was "too adversarial", takes "too long" and is "too bureaucratic".

In a letter to The Guardian, more than 100 charities and campaigners said removing the care plans altogether was not the answer. "Without statutory support" it is "extremely unlikely that ministers will achieve their aim of more children with Send thriving, or even surviving, in mainstream education", they said.

What next?
A white paper on the reforms is due to be published in October, when Keir Starmer may face a "backbench revolt", said The Times. Senior Labour insiders told the paper it could turn into "welfare mark two" as dozens of MPs prepare to rebel. One Labour MP told the paper: "If they thought taking money away from disabled adults was bad, watch what happens when they try the same with disabled kids."

 
 
today's US story

Search for survivors continues after Texas floods

What happened
Authorities in central Texas are still looking for missing people after Friday's devastating pre-dawn floods caused the banks of Kerr County's Guadalupe River to collapse. At least 78 are thought to have died, including 28 children. Houses and cars were swept away, and the water swept through a Christian summer camp where 750 people were staying. 

Who said what
The wait for news has been "agonising" for Camp Mystic's "tight-knit community of parents and alumni", said The New York Times. Many of the campers have emerged with "harrowing but piecemeal stories of the torrential rains". Some spoke of being woken in the night and having to "wade through rushing water" to higher ground. There are still 10 campers and a counsellor missing.

Donald Trump, who yesterday signed a major disaster declaration to unlock federal aid for those affected, said the families were "enduring an unimaginable tragedy".

What next?
The search continues, said The Texas Tribune, and "scale of the disaster" has led to questions about "whether more could have been done to warn people in the path of the floodwaters".

 
 
Today's UK story

Top police chief calls for overhaul of force structure

What happened
The most senior police officer in England and Wales has called for the 43 county-based forces model to be replaced by up to 15 regional "mega-forces", said The Sunday Times. Writing for the newspaper, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Mark Rowley (pictured above) said it was time for a "deliberate redesign".

Who said what
The current model "hasn't been fit for purpose for at least two decades", said Rowley. Some forces are "too small to operate" and are "knitted together by a collection of complex collaboration agreements". We need a smaller number of "bigger and fully capable regional forces", with one national policing body responsible for key capabilities.

A similar suggestion to "drastically" streamline the number of forces was made 20 years ago by His Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary, said The Sunday Times. But it "failed to get off the ground due, in part, to resistance from local police chiefs".

What next?
Rowley said other chief constables across the country – and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper – agreed there was a need for "reform". But a "lack of money" could delay this from happening, said The Guardian, "and some smaller forces may oppose the changes".

 
 

It's not all bad

An anti-slavery scroll written in 1847 has been discovered by a volunteer searching through American Baptist church archives. Jennifer Sten Cromack found the handwritten "Declaration and Protest Against Slavery", signed by 116 Baptist leaders, tucked in a box in a storeroom in Massachusetts. It's seen by church officials as one of the most important abolitionist era Baptist documents and was assumed to have been lost.

 
 
UNDER THE RADAR

Fungus tied to a pharaoh's tomb may help fight cancer

Scientists have discovered that molecules in the fungus behind the legend of the "pharaoh's curse" stop the proliferation of cancer cells and could be as effective as currently used treatments.

Aspergillus flavus is called "pharaoh's curse" because it is "linked to the deaths of several archaeologists who opened ancient tombs around the world" – most famously that of Tutankhamun – said Popular Mechanics. At the time many believed the deaths to be the result of an ancient curse rather than fungal inhalation.

Researchers were able to isolate four molecules from A. flavus, which they named "asperigimycins", two of which "had potent effects against leukaemia cells", said Popular Science. When fatty molecules called lipids were added as part of the study, the asperigimycins were as effective as leukaemia drugs approved by the US Food and Drug Administration.

Asperigimycins are part of a class of molecules called ribosomally synthesised and post-translationally modified peptides, or RiPPs. A number of them have been found in bacteria, although they are "rare in fungi and notoriously hard to study", said Wired. But fungi have long been a source of medicine, most famously penicillin.

"Nature has given us this incredible pharmacy," said Sherry Gao, an associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania and the senior author of the study. "It's up to us to uncover its secrets." The next step will be to test asperigimycins on animals. It will likely still be many years before the treatments can be widely used on people.

 
 
on this day

7 July 2005

Coordinated terrorist bomb blasts struck London's public transport system during the morning rush hour, killing 52 and injuring 700. A new YouGov poll to mark the anniversary found that concerns among the British public over the threat of terrorism had grown in the past five years.

 
 
Today's newspapers

Britain was "less than 10 years away" from having to bring in "water rationing", reports The i Paper, as the government promises to avoid a "water crisis". Keir Starmer is facing a "fresh revolt" over a special educational needs and disabilities shake-up in schools, says The Times. And the smell of cannabis can make police officers feel "unsafe", says the Daily Mail.

See the newspaper front pages

 
 
tall tale

Cat-ch me if you can

A man dressed as a giant black cat has been spotted near Wallasey Beach on the Wirral in Merseyside. One video showed the man in the moggy costume wriggling under fences near a local branch of the Harvester restaurant chain before meowing and writhing on the ground. Some residents have taken to social media to brand the man a "freak", but others are not so scared. "He just likes being a giant cat," one man told the BBC.

 
 

Morning Report was written and edited by Hollie Clemence, Jamie Timson, Rebecca Messina, Chas Newkey-Burden and Devika Rao, with illustrations by Julia Wytrazek.

Image credits, from top: Dan Kitwood / Getty Images; Ronaldo Schemidt / AFP / Getty Images; Dan Kitwood / Getty Images; Illustration by Julia Wytrazek / Getty Images.

Morning Report and Evening Review were named Newsletter of the Year at the Publisher Newsletter Awards 2025