Top story: Pressure mounts on Saudis over Khashoggi

Hello, I’m Warren Murray. Let’s get the day under way.

Turkish authorities are searching motorway CCTV in suspicion that dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered in Istanbul’s Saudi consulate and his body smuggled out in a van. Khashoggi, a US-based critic of the Saudi leadership, went to the consulate to finalise his divorce and did not come out.

Officials say a convoy of six cars with diplomatic plates left the consulate about two hours after Khashoggi entered. Security footage showed boxes being loaded into a blacked-out van that has become the focus of the investigation. Saudi authorities have denied wrongdoing but acknowledged a “security delegation” was in Istanbul.

Britain and France have called for an explanation from Saudi Arabia: “These are extremely serious allegations,” said the UK foreign office. Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, challenged the Saudis to prove Khashoggi left the consulate freely soon after he arrived, as they have claimed. The US vice-president, Mike Pence, said he was “deeply troubled” to hear of Khashoggi’s disappearance. “Violence against journalists across the globe is a threat to freedom of the press and human rights. The free world deserves answers.” The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, called for Saudi Arabia to support a thorough investigation and be transparent about the results. Donald Trump earlier said he was “concerned” by “some pretty bad stories” about Khashoggi’s fate. “Hopefully that will sort itself out,” the president offered, adding: “Right now nobody knows anything about it.”

More Novichok intrigue – Further details are due to come out today about one of the two men blamed for the Salisbury poisonings. Alexander Mishkin, a doctor with Russia’s GRU intelligence unit, is the latest to be unmasked. He posed as tourist “Alexander Petrov” to get into Britain, along with an accomplice who has been revealed as Colonel Anatoliy Chepiga, a Russian special forces veteran. The novichok affair led to the death of Dawn Sturgess and the serious illness of Sergei Skripal, Yulia Skripal and Sturgess’s boyfriend, Charlie Rowley. The investigative website Bellingcat says it will now release interviews with people who know Mishkin as well as visual evidence confirming he and “Petrov” are the same person.

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Trump gets his kind of justice – Donald Trump has declared Brett Kavanaugh innocent of the sexual misconduct allegations that were levelled against him in the course of his Senate confirmation. At a primetime re-staging of Kavanaugh’s swearing-in as a supreme court judge, the president was scathing: “On behalf of our nation, I want to apologise to Brett and the entire Kavanaugh family for the terrible pain and suffering you have been forced to endure … What happened to the Kavanaugh family violates every notion of fairness, decency, and due process. Our country, a man or woman must always be presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.”

Play Video 2:24 Trump declares Kavanaugh ‘innocent’ at primetime swearing-in ceremony – video

Kavanaugh – who had already been sworn in on Saturday – was more measured, saying “the Senate confirmation process was contentious and emotional. That process is over. My focus now is to be the best justice I can be. I take this office with gratitude and no bitterness.”

Strong-arm of the law – Use of force by the Metropolitan police has risen sharply in the past year, analysis by the Guardian suggests, with black people the most likely to be on the receiving end of handcuffing, stun guns, CS spray, batons or the use of firearms. Police have urged caution, saying the figures come from a new system for reporting statistics that is still being bedded down. The Met’s deputy assistant commissioner Matt Twist said many of the uses of force recorded were at the lowest possible end of the scale, such as handcuffing where the arrested person fully complied. The policing union suggested that cuts had led to more “single-crewed” patrols where lone officers were more likely to need to use force to do their job.

Message in a bottle – A plastic Fairy Liquid container at least 47 years old has been found washed up on Brean beach near Burnham-on-Sea, with its pre-decimal-pound offer of “4d off” still clearly legible. “It’s shocking how long rubbish can survive and ultimately harm nature,” wrote the Burnham Coastguard on Facebook.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The well aged Fairy liquid bottle was found on Brean Beach, Somerset. Photograph: Burnham Coastguard/Facebook

Decimal currency was introduced in Britain in 1971. It is a reminder that some types of plastic bottles take 450 years to break down. Much of the UK’s 170m tonnes of waste a year is food packaging and only a third of plastic is recycled.

Google+ subtracted – A Cambridge Analytica-style security flaw has been exposed at Google+, forcing the company to shut down the service. A report in the Wall Street Journal says Google tried to keep the problem quiet despite up to 500,000 account holders potentially having their data harvested including people who had not consented. As it fights a rearguard action after the revelation, Google has argued the seriousness of the flaw did not meet its “threshold” for disclosing it. Jeff Hauser from the Centre for Economic and Policy Research, argued Google and Facebook were “‘too big to secure’ and are certainly ‘too big to trust’ blindly” and should be broken up, with “public-minded privacy monitors” installed by regulators in the meantime.

Lunchtime read: ‘Bombarded by Photoshopped lives’

We are living in an age of envy, where social media every day makes us feel like the lives of others are “better” than our own. “It exerts a toll on us the likes of which we have never experienced in the history of our species,” says psychology professor Ethan Kross. “And it is not particularly pleasant.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Illustration: Alva Skog

“We know that these images and narratives that are presented aren’t real,” says clinical psychologist Rachel Andrew. “But on an emotional level it’s still pushing buttons. If those images or narratives tap into what we aspire to, but what we don’t have, then it becomes very powerful.” Moya Sarner relives two moments of piercing social media envy of her own as she asks leading psychologists how to be happy when everyone else’s life seems perfect.

Sport

Mo Farah has hinted at a surprise return to the track after his emphatic performance in the Chicago Marathon, but his management hasn’t ruled out the European record holder going toe-to-toe with Eliud Kipchoge at the Tokyo Olympics. Khabib Nurmagomedov’s father and coach has condemned his son’s actions following the post-UFC bout fracas in Nevada on Sunday. The Russian also faces complaints from the Nevada State Athletics Commission.

Eden Hazard faces a tricky decision, with the long-mooted want-away to Real Madrid enjoying good form and success with Chelsea under Maurizio Sarri, writes Jacob Steinberg. Rassie Erasmus’ Springboks have shown Ireland a way to get at the All Blacks, with the northern hemisphere’s top-ranked side a chance to bump New Zealand off top spot for the first time in a decade. And, as Lewis Hamilton edges closer to a fifth Formula One title the blame for Sebastian Vettel’s shortcomings in Japan could point back to the Ferrari leadership, writes Richard Williams.

Business

Asian markets are mixed after the IMF downgraded its economic outlook, citing rising interest rates and mounting tensions over trade. Mike Pompeo, the US secretary of state, said Washington had a “fundamental disagreement” and “great concerns” about Chinese actions ahead of a meeting with Beijing’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, as the two countries battle it out over technology policies, tariffs and territorial claims in the South China Sea.

The pound has been trading at $1.310 and €1.139 overnight.

The papers

“Revealed: sharp rise as Met uses force on suspects 270 times a day,” is the Guardian splash today. Also on the front page are stories about the second Novichok attacker’s true identity being revealed and more news of the IPCC report.

The Times leads with: “Military doctor named as second novichok spy”, the i has : “£40 DNA test can predict risk of heart attack” and the Express splashes with “Criminal! Thin blue line gets thinner” as police cut front desk officers. The Sun has a Facebook tax story: “Sweet f all” , using the Facebook logo in place of the “f”. The Mail continues the run of bad news for Pret with “‘Fresh’ Pret baguettes are up to a year old”. The FT has “China rebukes Trump as fear of trade war fallout mounts” while the Telegraph says “UK refuses to take back Isil fighters from Syria”. The Mirror has news that the Strictly star photographed kissing his dance partner has been dumped by his girlfriend: “You are cha-cha chucked”.

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