Brexit 

Express
REMAINERS’ hopes to taking Britain back into the EU have been dealt a crushing blow after two directors of the People’s Vote campaign resigned from the beleaguered organisation.
Meanwhile Britain is bouncing back from the ravages of the pandemic and flexing its muscles with the EU shackles removed, data published today has indicated – with the economy growing four times faster than France and three times faster than Germany, one expert pointed out. Roland Rudd, the group’s former chairman, and Richard Reed, both confirmed their decisions to quit today. One former staffer said: “This is a sorry end to a promising campaign which held the government to account for a shoddy Brexit deal.” 
Labour peer Andrew Adonis has insisted the prospect of rejoining the EU remains alive thanks to the European Movement group which he chairs, which he said has record number of members and more than 100 local groups which are “growing steadily”.
In other news, he UK economy grew by 4.8 percent in the second quarter of 2021 as lockdowns lifted, getting people back into pubs, the Office for National Statistics figures showed.
The country’s gross domestic product (GDP) increased by a further one percent in June, creating five consecutive months of growth.
The economy also speeded up from 0.6 percent growth in May, the ONS said.
Lockdown restrictions slowly eased through much of the quarter.
Outdoor dining opened again in April, the first month the quarterly data includes, and further restrictions were lifted in May. 

Trade 

Express
BRITONS feel “left in the dark” about the benefits of the UK’s brilliant new Brexit trade deals, a survey has found.
Details of deals struck by International Trade Secretary Liz Truss continue to be a mystery, according to the findings. A poll for the consumer choice group Which? found 67 percent felt the public receives too little information from ministers about trade deals.
Ms Truss has signed deals covering 67 countries in the past two years.
Most of the pacts are roll over deals mirroring the terms of agreements in place from when the UK was a member of the EU.
But fresh agreements with Japan and Australia have been signed since Britain quit the bloc.
On top of the agreements coordinated by the Department for International Trade (DIT), there is the deal brokered with Brussels by Lord Frost covering the 27 EU member states. 

Illegal migrants 

Mail
A migrant has died after being airlifted to hospital as part of a huge air and sea rescue operation in the Channel today.
Rescue crews launched the rescue after a boat carrying around 40 people began taking on water as it headed to the UK from France this morning. 
French prosecutors have launched a manslaughter investigation following the man’s death. 
This morning French coastguard officers were informed that ‘a number of migrant boats were in difficulty,’ said a border force source in France.
‘The Elena cargo ship reported as many 40 migrants in the sea, 13 nautical miles off Dunkirk.
‘They were all on a flimsy boat that was thought to have been provided by people smugglers, before it sank.
‘A search and rescue operation was launched, and it included the fishing vessels Nicolas Jérémy and Notre Dame de Boulogne, as well as a fast rescue boat from the Elena.’
French Army and Belgian Airforce helicopters were also scrambled, along with the French Navy ship Flamant.
‘The French helicopter NH90 hoisted a number of men onboard, as did the other vessels involved,’ said the source.
‘One of the men was unconscious when he was transferred to the Flamant, and so he was rushed to hospital in Calais by helicopter, but he did not survive.’ 

Similar stories can be read in the Telegraph, Sun, Mirror 

EU 

Express
“PETTY” EU rules requiring UK drivers to sport a sticker on their vehicle whenever they drive in Europe underline the bloc’s desire to “cause difficulties rather than assist”, a Brexiteer has said.
Prior to quitting the bloc, British motorists on the continent have been able to drive quite straightforwardly. However, since severing ties with Brussels, the situation has become rather more complex.
If a vehicle has an EU, England, Scotland, or Wales flag alongside a GB mark on the number plate, it needs a GB sticker, or the driver could be liable to pay a fine issued by the local authorities – and such stickers will become invalid in any case next month.
Former Brexit Party MEP Ben Habib told Express.co.uk: “It is petty in the extreme.
“They gain no better understanding of the vehicle or its driver just because it has a GB sticker on it. We live in a digital age.”
Mr Habib added: “All they need is sight of the number plate to know everything they need to know. 

Climate change 

Telegraph
Europe will have to brace for summer temperatures of 50C in future, the Met Office warned on Thursday, a day after Sicily registered blistering heat of 48.8C in what is believed to be a new European record.
The grim warning came as four people died in Italy’s wildfires, firefighters in Greece continued to battle blazes across the country and Algeria announced days of national mourning for its dozens of dead. 
The 48.8C recorded in the town of Floridia, near Syracuse in eastern Sicily, was a harbinger of things to come, the Met Office said.
Exceeding the previous record of 48C in Athens in 1977, it “raises concerns that even higher temperatures are potential in future, possibly even exceeding 50C,” the Met Office said.
“The chances each summer of seeing really extreme temperatures are pretty high now,” said Prof Peter Stott, the Met Office’s leading expert on climate change and an authority on European heatwaves.
“We can’t say exactly when it is likely to happen, but Europe will need to prepare for the eventuality of further records being broken with temperatures above 50C being possible in Europe in future, most likely close to the Mediterranean where the influence of hot air from North Africa is strongest.”
Since the pre-industrial era, the temperature in North Africa has increased by about 2C – far more than the average temperature rise around the world of 1.1C. 

Similar stories can be read in the Independent, Evening Standard, Mirror, iNews 

WFH 

Guardian
Ministers, civil service leaders and employers are “wrongheaded” to be trying to make people come back to the office against their will, and should not be standing in the way of progress around working from home, Keir Starmer has said.
Speaking to the Guardian, the Labour leader said it was wrong for people to be forced back into offices when it was the government that had asked them to work from home in the first place, especially if they were being threatened with pay cuts or the loss of London weighting from their salaries.
He said that this “misses a deeper understanding of what the pandemic has done to change our society”, as the move to more flexibility had been one of the few good things to have come out of the last 18 months.
“I just think it’s wrongheaded,” he said. “People were asked to work at home. And they did, and they worked very hard. The idea now that people are being threatened, if they don’t come in when there’s no good reason – it’s wrong.”
He said it had been learned in the pandemic that “there are many jobs where you can do them at home and people work very well and hard from home, we’ve absolutely destroyed the myth of people working at home [are] not really working”.
Starmer also said it was “a bit rich” of Boris Johnson to encourage people to get back to the office when he has been known to sometimes work from his grace-and-favour country home at Chequers. 

Covid 

Mail
The world’s first Covid-19 patient may have been infected by a bat while working for a Wuhan lab in China, a World Health Organization chief has admitted. 
Dr Peter Embarek, who led the WHO probe into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic in China, made the shocking claim despite initially dismissing the notion that the virus escaped from a lab as extremely unlikely. 
Now, Embarek has admitted that the lab leak theory could have happened, suggesting that a Chinese researcher could have been infected by a bat while taking samples in connection with research at a Wuhan lab.  

Similar stories can be read in the Telegraph, Times, Sun, Mirror,  

Independent
Covid could rip through classrooms when schools reopen next month unless mitigation measures are brought in immediately to protect pupils against the virus, ministers have been warned.
Experts told The Independent that Britain must follow the example of other countries in improving school safety to ensure high rates of illness and further disruption are avoided.
Germany is spending €200m on mobile air filters for schools, while some 100,000 air purifiers have been installed in classrooms across New York. Carbon dioxide monitoring equipment is also being rolled out in Scotland to help identify poorly ventilated areas in schools.
The government is set to begin trialling air purifiers and ultraviolet light in 30 schools in Bradford, though it’s reported the technologies won’t be rolled out in England until 2022.
Scientists and education leaders have called upon Downing Street to act now in improving classroom ventilation, and consider mask-wearing too, amid concerns that the highly transmissible Delta variant will rapidly spread through schools upon their reopening at the start of September.
“The key things to an effective prevention strategy are good masking and good indoor air quality,” said Orla Hegarty, an assistant professor of architecture, planning and environmental policy at University College Dublin. 

INews
Poorer and more urban parts of England are more likely to have lots of unvaccinated young people than wealthy rural parts of the country, according to an analysis of official data.
Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Nottingham, Coventry and parts of inner-city London are among the 10 per cent of local authorities which have the smallest proportion of their under-40 population protected against Covid-19.
More than 70 per cent of the 18 to 29 age group have now had at least one coronavirus jab, the Government said on Thursday. But there is wide geographical variance in vaccine coverage among the young, with rates for the under-40s ranging from well over 90 per cent to less than 60 per cent.
Coventry has the lowest coverage of anywhere in England, with 57.6 per cent of under-40s and just 53.1 per cent of those aged 18 to 24 getting at least one dose as of Wednesday.
Liverpool, Birmingham and the London borough of Barking and Dagenham are also running at rates below 60 per cent, with Westminster, Camden and Islington just above that threshold.
Relatively deprived areas of the country such as Boston, Thurrock, Knowsley and Luton also have fewer than two thirds of their young people protected so far. Previous statistics have shown that less well-off Britons, as well as members of certain ethnic groups, are less likely to take up the offer of a vaccination.
Cambridge, Oxford, Woking, Harrogate and Cheshire East are among the areas where more than 90 per cent of locals under 40 have received at least a first dose of the jab. 

Furlough 

Mail
A permanent furlough system should be baked into the UK economy to help workers see off the impact of future crisis, union leaders demanded today.
The TUC called for a ‘daughter of furlough’ scheme based on Rishi Sunak‘s eye-wateringly expensive Job Retention Scheme.
It argues that climate change, technological change and the threat of future pandemics mean that such a scheme may be required in future.
It argues that such a scheme would lessen the impact on the economy in terms of lowering unemployment, boost recovery through support of retail spending and ‘prevent widening inequalities’, which see women, disabled workers and minorities become the first to lose jobs.
However the eye-watering outlay is likely to raise eyebrows at the Treasury. The furlough scheme has cost the taxpayer around £66billion over the past 18 months and is due to be wound down at the end of September – six weeks’ time.
But TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady said: ‘The pandemic shows how an unexpected economic shock can wreak havoc on jobs and livelihoods with little warning. 

A similar story can be read in the Sun. 

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