Both the Times and the Mail lead with President Volodymyr Zelensky’s renewed plea to the west to allow Ukraine to fire British missiles into Russian territory. The Times quotes some of a statement he made on X – before President Joe Biden and Sir Keir Starmer’s meeting in Washington – expressing what it describes as his “frustration” at the time it’s taking them to make a decision. The Mail says he is accusing the west of “dithering”, while Russian forces burn down cities and villages in Ukraine.
The Guardian reports that the Ormiston Academies Trust will become the first in England to phase out access to smartphones for pupils at all of its 44 state schools. The paper quotes the Trust’s chief executive Tom Rees as saying that schools have a “responsibility” to make it harder for children to access inappropriate content through the school day and to restrict “the draw of social media.”
The Telegraph‘s lead features detail from the autobiography of Sir Graham Brady, the former chairman of the Conservative 1922 committee, which runs the selection process for new Tory leaders. He oversaw the departure of five prime ministers during his 14 year tenure. The paper says his book, Kingmaker, details his private conversations with them as they were being forced from power. The Telegraph says the book also reveals that Rishi Sunak was not facing a confidence vote when he called the election; that Lord Cameron and George Osborne had contempt for people who did not share their backgrounds; and that Boris Johnson was fed up with backbenchers criticising his adviser Dominic Cummings during the pandemic.
A Tear for Sven is the headline in the Mirror. It carries photos of the funeral of the former England football manager Sven Goran Eriksson, where an emotional David Beckham was among the mourners yesterday in Sweden. The pictures show him wiping his eyes, laying a hand on the coffin of his former boss and comforting Mr Eriksson’s former partner Nancy Dell’Olio. The paper says the celebrations of his life included a New Orleans-style procession with a brass band.
The i paper reports that more of us are using private healthcare than ever before because of the length of NHS waiting lists, with the number of admissions to private hospitals hitting a record high so far this year. But as a result, it claims, insurers are “cashing in” by raising prices. It says that chemotherapy is among the most “in-demand” services that people are paying for, and that cataract surgery, colonoscopies and hip replacements are in the top five.
Drinking water has little or no effect on your ability to cope with a hangover, according to the Mail. It says scientists at Utrecht University in the Netherlands have looked at three different studies, involving hundreds of party-going students, and recorded the hangover symptoms of those who drank water before going to bed, and those who didn’t. The results, published in the journal Alcohol, showed that while those who drank water felt less dehydrated, they still had the same degree of nausea, exhaustion and pain as the students who skipped it.