“Harry Kane’s finally scored!” Boris Johnson yelled while watching England’s win over Germany at a No 10 Pride event last night, says Sky News. England will play Ukraine in Rome on Saturday in the Euro 2020 quarter-finals. The government is ditching plans to make Covid passports compulsory for those going to music festivals, sporting events and other big get-togethers from 19 July, says the Daily Mail. Temperatures reached 49.5C in British Columbia yesterday as western Canada continued to roast in a record-breaking heatwave that has claimed 65 lives since Friday. The Guardian says it found Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab’s mobile phone number on Google. The private number has been online for a decade.
Lockdown tensions were probably the reason Hancock was toppled, says Glen Owen in The Mail on Sunday. The footage of him kissing Gina Coladangelo was leaked by an anti-lockdown whistleblower in the Department of Health & Social Care, who approached lockdown sceptics on Instagram, claiming: “I have some very damning CCTV footage of someone that has been recently classed as completely f***ing hopeless.”
Zeitgeist
An academic has put French noses out of joint by suggesting that the country’s hallowed cuisine is racist, says The Times. Mathilde Cohen, a law professor from Connecticut University, writes that the “whiteness” of French food enables “the racial majority to benefit from food privileges without having to acknowledge their racial origin”. Perhaps the French should take the knee in their kitchens and “beat themselves with their whisks”, joked journalist David Abiker.
Gone viral
A video of a 400lb black bear taking a cold bath in a heatwave has been shared by Oregon Zoo. The “goofy” bear is called Takoda, which means “friend to all” in Sioux. It’s no surprise he needed a cooldown – much of the Midwest and northwest of America has been enveloped by a “heat dome”. This week temperatures reached a record 46C.
Noted
British Museum staff have been circulating a Times interview from 2020 in which George Osborne, the museum’s incoming chairman, offered an insight into his cultural life. “I like to veg out on the sofa watching rubbish TV,” he said. “I watch Love Island. I love Ant and Dec. I listen to all the latest pop songs… I’m normal.”
Quoted
Quoted 30-06
“The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.”
Bertrand Russell
Snapshot answer
It’s a spectacular outdoor gala that took place on Monday at the Olympic stadium in Beijing. It was organised by the Chinese Communist Party, which celebrates its 100th anniversary tomorrow. President Xi Jinping pledged his allegiance to the party at the event on a giant video screen, while thousands of red-shirted performers waving wrenches and bushels of wheat recreated great national struggles of the past and present – including the Covid crisis. As the Mail pointed out, they didn’t mention “that they gave it to the world in the first place”.
