What happened
Andy Burnham has pledged to use a major increase in UK defence spending to revive domestic manufacturing – rather than channel billions of pounds to overseas arms suppliers – if he becomes prime minister.

In his first major foreign policy statement, Burnham said Britain should use its commitment to raise defence spending to 3.5% of GDP by 2035 to strengthen the country’s industrial base, create jobs and reduce dependence on foreign equipment. He also promised closer defence cooperation with European allies.

Who said what
Writing in The Times, Burnham said Britain must “rebuild our hard power for a new era” and ensure that increased defence investment “backs British workers and businesses”.

Senior defence officials are now “pushing for Andy Burnham to borrow more to fund military spending” by utilising war bonds, said Tony Diver in The Telegraph. “Here we owe again,” said Martina Bet in The Sun. Burnham “could be forced into a rethink on Labour’s fiscal rules” as defence chiefs ask for billions more.

What next?
Burnham said he would be more candid with voters about the scale of investment needed to meet Britain’s defence commitments and confirmed that he would retain Jonathan Powell as national security adviser if he enters Downing Street. His last remaining leadership threat, former defence minister Al Carns, told Sky News he would not run, paving the way for Burnham’s “coronation”.

What happened
Justice Secretary David Lammy said the King had granted a conditional pardon to Ruth Ellis, 71 years after her execution. Lammy said the court at Ellis’s 1955 trial for fatally shooting her partner David Blakely had failed to consider evidence that she was a victim of domestic abuse and coercive and controlling behaviour.

Her execution – the last of a woman in the UK – sparked public outcry and contributed to the decision to abolish Britain’s death penalty in 1965. Previous attempts to secure Ellis a pardon had been made in 2003 and 2007.

Who said what
This pardon hopes to bring “some measure of peace to Ruth’s family”, said Lammy. Lauda Enston, Ellis’s granddaughter, told The Guardian that the pardon “does not undo what happened”, but shows “formally and finally” that Ellis was wrongfully killed.

Ellis’s case serves as a “haunting reminder” of a time when the justice system “ignored the realities of domestic abuse”, said Labour MP Pam Cox.

What next?
The pardon is conditional and does not alter the guilty verdict. Rather, it changes the sentence from death penalty to life imprisonment.

New medicine can be found even in the iciest of locations. During an expedition to Antarctica, scientists discovered a species of sea squirt that may promise a new cancer treatment. The marine organism contains bacteria capable of producing a toxin that could eventually become a widely available drug. However, research still needs to be done on the species and bacteria before it can be tested on humans.

The cancer-fighting sea squirt, also called an ascidian, was first discovered 20 years ago and identified as a potential cancer therapy. The bacterium in the organism, Candidatus Synoicihabitans palmerolidicus, can “produce the metabolite palmerolide A, which kills melanoma cells without causing too much harm to healthy human cells”, said Discover.

Scientists have now conducted a second expedition to Antarctica to “better understand the compound and explore whether it could someday contribute to new therapies for patients battling melanoma”, said a news release from the University of South Florida.

The researchers have also tested the sea squirt’s bacteria on melanoma cells in mice. “The good news is it didn’t kill the mice,” Bill Baker, a chemistry professor at the university who led the first expedition and advised the second one, told The Guardian. “It did kill their cancer, so we know it has the physiological properties to act like a drug.”

While the sea squirt shows promise, the “pathway to producing a safe and effective anti-melanoma drug, with approval for use in humans, is long”, said The Guardian. It would “require a succession of strictly regulated and ever-expanding trials even after a drug was formulated”. Still, the knowledge gained from this expedition “could significantly advance the timeline”.