In your briefing today:

👋 Good morning Early Liners! Apologies to those of you who didn’t get an edition in good time yesterday: a technical issue meant the full mailing list wasn’t processed, and it took a second try later to reach everyone. Fingers crossed for today’s, which comes to you live - although only just - from the aftermath of last night’s Scottish Press Awards in Glasgow….

📣 Detectives investigating Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor on suspicion of misconduct in public office have repeated a call for people to come forward with information, with officers now considering offences including sexual misconduct and corruption.

There are concerns that witnesses might think the police are focusing only on claims Mountbatten-Windsor shared a confidential trade report with the late financier Jeffrey Epstein.

But misconduct in public office - the broad remit of the investigation into Mountbatten-Windsor - can encompass a wide range of behaviour, including abuse of position, sexual misconduct and corruption. (BBC) (Times)

📣 As the row rumbles on over last weekend’s title-deciding football match between Celtic and Hearts, the Scottish Football Association has released audio from the radio communications among officials at the match, which appears to fly in the face of Hearts’ claims the game was abandoned, not stopped at full time.

The audio suggests that, as fans were flooding the pitch in the aftermath of Celtic’s third goal, Hearts head coach Derek McInnes was happy for the title-deciding defeat to Celtic to be called. It still appears, however, that no full-time whistle was blown in the confusion. (Daily Record)

📣 Republican lawmakers have been forced to call off a vote that would have compelled President Donald Trump to end the war with Iran.

The vote in Congress - which they opposed - would have passed if it had been allowed to continue, with Republicans struggling to find the votes to have it dismissed.

Republicans in the Senate are also working to ensure they can block another war powers resolution that is approaching approval. (AP)

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📣 Protestors say John Swinney has delivered a “dagger blow” to victims of IRA terrorism by telling them to ‘move on’ so he can work with Sinn Féin. (Mail)

📣 There may be trouble ahead at Scotland’s two busiest airports: nearly 700 staff at Glasgow and Edinburgh have voted in favour of walking out, potentially during the World Cup, Commonwealth Games and school summer holidays. (BBC)

📣 Running a private school is getting harder: Hutchiesons’ Grammar in Glasgow is “a big, old, academically selective” school that is grappling with the pressures that have closed some of its smaller rivals. (Herald)

📣 Access to single sex spaces must be based on biological sex, new statutory guidance has ruled.

But transgender people should not routinely be challenged over which facilities they use, with the guidelines from the Equality and Human Rights Commission saying it was “unlikely to be either practical or appropriate” for workers to make enquiries about the sex of people using changing rooms and bathrooms. (Times)

📣 Donald Trump has performed a U-turn on US troops in Europe, announcing a plan to send 5,000 to Poland. (Independent)

📣 The number of cases of the riskiest form of skin cancer has risen to a record high, with more than 20,000 diagnosed with melanoma last year. (BBC)

📣 Residents have set fire to an Ebola treatment centre in eastern Congo after they were stopped from retrieving the body of a local man. Anger is growing in the region over a health crisis that doctors are struggling to contain. (AP)

📣 Yellow weather warnings have been issued for parts of the UK as temperatures are expected to soar to 33C over the Bank Holiday weekend. (Sky News)

⚽️ England’s World Cup squad will be unveiled today but an early leak suggests manager Thomas Tuchel has made some big calls: Harry Maguire, Phil Foden and Cole Palmer won’t be on the plane, it’s claimed. (The Sun)

⚽️ Motherwell have confirmed their head coach, Jens Berthel Askou, has left Fir Park to become the new head coach of Toulouse. (Scotsman)

🗣️Two extraordinary things have happened in the last few days, writes John Power. The first: the Treasury is covertly pressuring supermarkets to freeze prices on essential goods. The second: Keir Starmer is lifting some sanctions on Russian oil.

What links these two hugely significant about-turns? “The answer is simple,” he writes. “We are barrelling towards economic catastrophe because of the continued closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

“Chancellor Rachel Reeves and Starmer, who are receiving privileged briefings about the situation every day, are well aware of the gravity of the situation. Soon, with shortages of some foods and spiking prices, we will be too.“

Power repeats warnings we’ve seen in the Early Line in recent weeks: we’re beyond most worst-case scenarios, now. Stocks of carbon dioxide are declining, he notes: “it is plausible that in the coming months you will find there are no carbonated drinks and no fresh meat available at the supermarket”.

But worst of all will be the food inflation. Earlier estimates of 10% inflation this year will prove to be optimistic, he says: by November, food prices may have increased by 50% since late 2021. The pain will really start to be felt from September.

He reflects on the political ramifications, with the voters of Makerfield charged with a poll that could determine the next Prime Minister. “This moment demands seriousness, not just because of the difficulties and the risks, but because, like Covid-19 and the war in Ukraine, the problems caused by a deepening of the cost-of-living crisis may also present the right leader with a once-in-a-generation opportunity to implement the structural reforms that are needed to recover Britain’s deteriorating economic position.” (The Spectator(£))

🗣️ What’s it like inside the embattled Keir Starmer Number 10? Things are “very, very odd” according to Ailbhe Rea: “After a week of high adrenaline and moments where it all looked to be over, people are picking themselves up, dusting themselves off and returning to ‘semi-normal’.”

But while Starmer has continued as if everything is business as usual, she writes, he’s also furious with his colleagues, who he feels have betrayed him both personally and politically.

“Egged on by figures like Steve Reed, the pugnacious Housing Secretary, Starmer has adopted a new mindset: ‘keep on fighting until you can fight no longer’.”

Yet the writing is on the wall. Starmer and his remaining loyal cabinet members are “desperate to set a legacy and bank achievements” while they can.

In the meantime, Wes Streeting and Andy Burnham have been talking. Streeting has pledged Burnham his support in the forthcoming Makerfield by-election. But he has also said he looks forward to a “proper battle of ideas soon”. Burnham agrees. (New Statesman (£))

🗣️SpaceX is capitalism on rocket fuel, reflects the Economist in a leader this week. “To channel one of Elon Musk’s favourite science-fiction authors, SpaceX is a product of infinite improbability,” it says.

“In two ways, [the company’s] IPO is infinitely improbable, too. It is inspiring in that Mr Musk aims to carry off yet more seemingly impossible feats of engineering. And it is worrying in that he is asking investors to trust their savings to a lossmaking outfit with hardly credible financial plans over which he will have total control.

“In a populist age, many people will see the concentration of power in trillion-dollar companies—not to mention trillion-dollar men—as a failure of capitalism. Yet as a story of risk-taking, competition, the ability to mobilise resources and thereby turn the improbable into reality, SpaceX is in fact capitalism at its most remarkable.” (The Economist (£))

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