TODAY’S WEATHER

☁️ An overcast Glasgow and Edinburgh will brighten later, albeit with a chance of some rain in the west. Aberdeen will be bright and mild all day. London will be hot, and (along with much of England) has a ⚠️ weather warning for thunderstorms starting at 9pm and stretching through tomorrow. (Here’s the UK forecast).

THE BIG STORIES
Claims over Israel’s demolition campaign | Nurse’s “unacceptable” challenge | Trump’s Epstein file move

📣 Israel has demolished thousands of buildings across Gaza since it withdrew from a ceasefire with Hamas in March, according to a BBC investigation.

BBC Verify has confirmed that whole towns and suburbs - once home to tens of thousands of people - have been levelled in the past few weeks. It has footage of destruction in 40 locations since the ceasefire, and its report shows vast areas lying in ruin.

The Geneva Convention largely forbids the destruction of civilian infrastructure by an occupying power. But the Israel Defense Force said it operated in accordance with international law. (BBC)

• Former judge says Israel’s actions are a “war crime” - see “From the weekly magazines”, below ⬇️

📣 The head of nursing at NHS Fife told an employment tribunal she cannot recall seeing a risk assessment which led to the suspension of nurse Sandie Peggie. But Gillian Malone said she perceived that allegations about Ms Peggie confronting transgender medic Dr Beth Upton were “unacceptable”. (BBC) (Mail)

• SNP MSP Annabelle Ewing has described the Sandie Peggie tribunal as a “farce”, joining SNP colleague Michelle Thomson in criticism of NHS Fife. Their comments add pressure on Health Secretary Neil Grey to act. (Herald)

📣 Donald Trump has told his attorney general, Pam Bondi, to seek the release of grand jury testimony related to Jeffrey Epstein’s sex-trafficking case.

The move comes amid furious speculation about the Epstein case among Trump’s MAGA supporters, and claims he contributed a sketch of a naked woman to Epstein’s 50th birthday album. (BBC)

• WSJ: “Jeffrey Epstein’s Friends Sent Him Bawdy Letters for a 50th Birthday Album. One Was From Donald Trump.” (🎁 WSJ - free to read)

IDEAS
From the weekly magazines: Former judge’s powerful claim over Israel in Gaza | Bank “wrecked” economy | Winning the war on cancer | Don’t trust travel writers?

🗣️ The New Statesman’s cover is striking: white words on a black background, a long quote from an essay by Lord Jonathan Sumption, the former senior judge once named by the same magazine as one of the most influential right-wing figures in British politics. He’s writing about Israel and Gaza.

“I have no ideological position on this conflict. I approach it simply as lawyer and a historian. But I sometimes wonder what Israel’s defenders would regard as unacceptable, if the current level of Israeli violence in Gaza is not enough. It is impossible for any decent person to be unmoved by the scale of arbitrarily imposed human suffering, or the spectacle of a powerful army brutally assaulting a population already on its knees. This is not self-defence. It is not even the kind of collateral damage which can be unavoidable in war. It is collective punishment, in other words revenge, visited not just on Hamas but on an entire population. It is, in short, a war crime.”

Inside, he writes, “Israel once enjoyed a great deal of moral capital […] That moral capital has now been largely dissipated.”

For those wondering about Israel’s actions, this will be a challenging read. (New Statesman £)

🗣️The Spectator says the Bank of England wrecked the British economy, and specifically points its finger at the Bank’s Governor, Andrew Bailey. “Politicians deserve much of the blame for the country’s economic state,” writes Michael Simmons, the magazine’s economics editor. “But behind four prime ministers over the past five years has been Bailey – the banker who has enabled their recklessness and whose decisions will determine the extent to which we can recover.”

Later, Simmons makes the case Bailey was essentially directly responsible for the downfall of at least one of those prime ministers under which he has served. “There is perhaps no one angrier at Bailey than Liz Truss,” he says. That, of course, won’t condemn him in some eyes.(The Spectator £)

🗣️Want some good news? The world is winning the war on cancer, says The Economist. It might not feel like that war is going well: as the newspaper notes, “Today every adult has had cancer, knows someone who has, or both.” But cancer-related deaths, adjusted for longer lifespans (for this is a disease of long life), has been falling since the 1990s. Better health advice, medicines and new technologies will yield further improvement. “Good news often goes unreported, especially if it happens gradually,” the newspaper says. “That is the story of the war on cancer.” (Economist £)

🗣️Referencing the Salt Path controversy, Matthew Parris encourages us never to trust travel writers. “Were we to subject (say) Michael Palin’s or David Attenborough’s TV documentaries about our planet to the critical scrutiny that the Winns’ account of the Salt Path has met, we would encounter no personal dishonesty,” he says, “but a look behind the scenes at how such documentaries are made would blow to pieces any idea that the journeys these presenters have made will have felt anything like the narrative we see on the screen.”

In other words, the best travel writing is - at best - a little like high-end cooking: recognisable, real ingredients, but blended and glazed and cooked and seasoned together to create something otherworldly. The alternative, goes the argument, is tedium. But it’s a fine line between that and being manipulated for profit. (Spectator £)

AROUND SCOTLAND

📣 A 12-year-old boy has been charged in connection with a fire which destroyed a number of businesses in the centre of Kilmarnock. (STV)

📣 Donald Trump will visit Scotland next week, arriving on Friday 25th and staying until Tuesday 29th. (Herald)

📣 An Aberdeen woman has been forced to sleep in her car after discovering hundreds of bats roosting in her home. She can’t remove them. (BBC)

AROUND THE UK

📣 Labour has suspended MP Diane Abbott for a second time after she reiterated her view that people of colour experience racism “all their lives”, and it is different from the “prejudice” experienced by Jewish people, Irish people and Travellers. (Guardian)

📣 A child was killed and 21 people taken to hospital when a coach carrying pupils home from a day trip to a zoo flipped onto its roof. (BBC)

📣 John Torode was offered a route back to presenting Masterchef, according to author and podcaster Richard Osman, but rejected it. (Mirror)

AROUND THE WORLD

🌎 The US Congress has given its final approval to $9 billion in cuts to public broadcasting and foriegn aid. (AP)

• US broadcaster CBS is cancelling “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” next year, silencing one of Donald Trump’s most prominent critics. The company says the move is purely financial. (BBC)

🌎 The daredevil extreme sportsman Felix Baumgartner has died in an accident while on holiday. Baumgartner, who gained fame for his record-breaking freefall from the edge of space, suffered a heart attack while flying his paraglider in Italy. (Mail)

🌎 And finally… you may have seen the footage of the embarrassed couple caught in an embrace by Coldplay’s “kiss cam” during a concert in the US.

Footage captures a chorus of laughter echoing around a stadium as the band’s singer, Chris Martin, says: "Oh what... either they're having an affair or they're very shy."

It has now emerged the middle-aged man and woman enjoying a cuddle at the concert was a tech company CEO, and the company’s HR director: both are married, but not to each other. The footage is becoming social media’s viral hit of the summer. (Sun)

(The email version of The Early Line linked to reports of a statement from the CEO involved. Those reports, it turned out, were untrue).

SPORT

🏉 Coach Andy Farrell has picked his British & Irish Lions team for the first Test against Australia, and the selection of Finn Russell, Sione Tuipulotu and Huw Jones “means Scotland provides the creative axis” of the side, says Graham Bean. . (Scotsman)

⚽️ England’s women made it into the semi-finals of the Euros - but only just. 2-0 down with ten minutes to go, they fought back before one of the most exciting - or worst, depending on your view - penalty shootouts in recent top-level competition. (🎥 BBC)

• How the “greatest and worst shootout of all time” unfolded (BBC)