In your briefing today:

👋 Good morning Early Liners! This edition comes to you from the beautiful city of Leipzig, Germany where - along with my two boys and a few tens of thousands of fellow Crystal Palace fans - we’re preparing for tonight’s Europa Conference League final against Rayo Vallecano of Spain.

If we win, that’ll be Palace’s first European trophy, and service may be a little… disrupted tomorrow morning. So please accept my pre-emptive apologies. I fully intend to post as usual, but this evening has all the potential to be entirely unusual.

Up the Palace! 🦅

📣 There are growing calls for an inquiry into how Peter Murrell was able to embezzle more than £400,000 from the SNP.

Alex Neil, a former SNP cabinet minister, said a senior lawyer should be tasked with looking into what went wrong. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said there were “questions that needed to be answered” by those at the top of the party. And Jackie Baillie, deputy leader of Scottish Labour, said a parliamentary enquiry would “help get to the truth and restore trust in politics”. (Daily Record) (Scotsman)

📣 The Murrell scandal overshadowed a Holyrood motion tabled by John Swinney, calling for a second independence referendum. The First Minister used the first full day of parliamentary business to stage the symbolic vote, which passed, demanding that the Scottish Parliament be given the power to call the vote. The call was immediately rejected by Downing Street.

Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar accused the SNP of putting its own ambitions first, while Russell Findlay, the Scottish Conservative leader, called the timing of the debate “comical”. (Guardian) (BBC)

📣 Former Prime Minister Tony Blair has urged Keir Starmer and his rivals to abandon net zero and move closer to US President Donald Trump.

In a lengthy essay seen as a significant intervention in the Labour leadership battle, he has accused his successors - including Starmer, Andy Burnham and Wes Streeting - of abandoning the political centre ground.

A senior Labour source retorted: “Tony has evidently not been near a working-class Brit for decades but he’s clearly been away with the tech bro fantasists.” (Guardian) (Sun)

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📣 Net-zero-related jobs are making a huge contribution to the Scottish economy, the CBI claims - adding it’s already double the size of Scottish agriculture. (BBC)

📣 A skip lorry has ploughed backwards into the home of a gangster blamed for starting Scotland’s drug war. (Daily Record)

📣 The derelict torpedo station on the banks of Loch Long at Arrochar could become a holiday village. (BBC)

📣 The official fund for Donald Trump’s “board of peace” is empty, despite members states pledging £7 billion for its Gaza “relief package” and Trump himself pledging $10 billion from the US. (The FT (£) has the exclusive)

📣 Oil giant BP has removed its chairman amid claims he was verbally abusive towards colleagues and mishandled company information. (WSJ)

📣 Ukraine has warned Belarus it has a list of 500 targets ready to strike should the country join Russia’s war. (Independent)

📣 A climate scientist has painted a vivid picture of a London in 2052 which “resembles a colossal refugee camp” as residents attempt to cope with the crushing summer heat, in an extended warning about climate change. (Guardian)

📣 Japan’s obsession with cats has led to a $18.8 billion industry… Justin McCurry has a fascinating long read. (Guardian)

⚽️ Lawrence Shankland has signed for Rangers for an undisclosed fee - it may be nothing at all - returning to the club that released him 18 years ago. “I’ve come full circle,” the striker said, as he made the move from the Hearts side he captained to second place this season. (Daily Record)

⚽️ Scott McTominay says he’d “love” to see Steve Clarke stay on as Scotland boss beyond this World Cup. (Scotsman)

🩼 Sean Ingle went to the Enhanced Games - and told its founder it would fail by 2031. He found elements of the anything-goes games farcical. (Guardian)

🗣️ If you were seeking some higher evidence AI is one of the great themes of our lifetimes, it arrived earlier this week: Pop Leo XIV issued his first encyclical on Monday, and used most of it to issue a warning to humanity about AI and its threat to… humanity.

“Magnifica Humanitas” (Magnificent Humanity - link takes you to full doc) warned AI “threatens to normalize an anti-human vision” and argued against the concentration of its power in the hands of a few.

The opening line pulls no punches: “Humanity, created by God in all its grandeur, is today facing a pivotal choice: either to construct a new Tower of Babel or to build the city in which God and humanity dwell together.”

The Pope urges new policy, legal frameworks, independent oversight and public education on and of AI. “What is needed is a more active political involvement that is capable of slowing things down when everything is accelerating,” he writes.

Reaction has been global and warm. Reports AP: “Experts in the tech industry, academia and Catholic morality said the document will likely become a benchmark in the debate over AI, a point of reference for policymakers, researchers and ordinary folk alike.”

The Guardian, in a leader, applauded the Pope’s ambition, and notes Leo XIV chose his name in a nod to Leo XIII, a predecessor, who analyzed the social forces unleashed by the Industrial Revolution. The suggestion is Leo XIV views the AI revolution as just as profound and challenging to humanity.

“In 42,000 or so words the document itemises the daunting challenges posed by developments in artificial intelligence,” the newspaper says, “and urges political leaders to safeguard human dignity as new technologies emerge at a pace which is outstripping ethical regulation and control.

“The Pope’s intervention is, naturally, informed by a theological perspective. But a humanity first message is one that the secular world can get behind.”

The New York Times also spots the juxtaposition. “Just as the new religion of A.I. seemed to be solidifying its control over mankind’s destiny,” writes David Streitfeld, “a new voice is being heard on the other side of the world. Its message to the tech industry: Slow down. Elevate the human. Machines are not gods.”

“Magnifica Humanitas arrives as a challenge to tech moguls like [Elon] Musk, whose power and influence rival such medieval popes as Innocent III,” Streitfeld continues. “Pope Innocent asserted that the papacy was the sun and mere kings the moon: The latter could not be seen without the light cast by the former.

“Love ’em or hate ’em, Mr. Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel, Sam Altman and their peers exert similar influence on our modern kings, which is to say politicians. The American economy is being propped up by spending on A.I. The technology is being deployed in offices and classrooms with dizzying speed and unknown effect.

“The old religion challenging the new is a dramatic story, the stuff of thrillers.”

Where the NYT finds a thriller, in the Washington Post George Weigel, biographer of Pope John Paul II, finds “a great and energizing hope born of Christian faith.

“In contrast to today’s cacophonous public “discourse,” Leo XIV speaks in Magnifica humanitas with an adult voice: a voice appealing to our highest aspirations rather than pandering to our worst prejudices or most virulent fears. That in itself is entirely welcome, and no small contribution.”

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