Top story: Assessor alerted Ofqual, DfE

Good morning, Warren Murray helping you keep your balance halfway across the tightrope that is the week.

Gavin Williamson was offered evidence of serious flaws in the grading of this year’s exams two weeks before A-level results were published in England, the Guardian has been told. But the education secretary and his department were reassured by the exam regulator, Ofqual, that the flaws could be managed by letting schools appeal.

Cambridge Assessment, which operates the examination board OCR, says it approached ministers and the DfE in July, two weeks before A-level results were published, and again days before GCSE results were released, about major problems in grade allocations. Ofqual chiefs will go in front of MPs on the Commons education committee today, while Cambridge Assessment will say that confidence in GCSE and A-levels “has been eroded by events this summer and it needs to be urgently rebuilt”. The exam board said the fiasco could have been avoided “if extensive checking of individual school and college results had been conducted prior to A-level results being awarded”.

‘Orange man in the White House’ – Donald Trump has blamed racial injustice in policing on “bad apples” rather than “systemic” problems during a visit to Kenosha where he said its residents were more concerned about “law and order” than racism. Three nights of protests over the shooting of Jacob Blake led to more than 30 fires and culminated in a 17-year-old militia supporter allegedly shooting and killing two demonstrators – which Trump has pointedly failed to condemn. Since then, marches organised both by police sympathisers and Blake’s family have been peaceful with no vandalism. Trump did not meet the Blake family and they were unaffected: “We don’t have any words for the orange man in the White House,” said Justin Blake, Jacob’s uncle. “Keep your disrespect and foul language away from our family.”

Coronavirus latest – Abolishing Public Health England (PHE) will damage the fight against obesity, smoking and alcohol misuse, more than 70 medical organisations have told Boris Johnson. The government has been accused of using the abolition to deflect attention from its own failings in the coronavirus crisis. PHE will be axed at the end of March but not all of its work is being taken over by the new National Institute for Health Protection. The government has admitted it does not yet know what will happen to functions such as tackling bad diet and stopping smoking.

The Scottish government has announced a ban on household gatherings in three local authorities in the Greater Glasgow and Clyde area for the next two weeks and has imposed quarantine restrictions on people coming from Greece to Scotland from Thursday. On the world stage, the US has refused to join the WHO-backed global effort to find a coronavirus vaccine. Health experts say the US is betting on its own vaccine development and encouraging other countries to do the same, which could lead to hoarding of the vaccine and higher prices. More coronavirus news as it comes to hand at our global live blog.

Same-sex Strictly pairing – The Olympic gold medallist Nicola Adams will appear on this year’s Strictly Come Dancing in the show’s first same-sex competing couple, the Guardian understands. The former professional boxer, 37, will pair up with a female dance partner in the series starting next month, a first in its 16-year history.

Adams won gold at the London 2012 Olympics and again at Rio 2016 before retiring from the sport in 2019. She was awarded an OBE for services to boxing in 2017, and has been hailed as an LGBT role-model.

Plastic harming soil’s tiny stewards – Microplastic pollution causes significant damage to soil-dwelling mites, worms and other tiny creatures that maintain the fertility of the land, research has found. The study notes that discarded bags, cups, threads and other forms of plastic waste are concentrated more in the earth than the oceans, and the organisms that recycle carbon, nitrogen and organic matter are increasingly threatened by oil-based synthetic refuse. Separately, Unilever, the owner of Persil, Domestos and other brands, is aiming to eliminate fossil fuel-based ingredients from its cleaning products by 2030. Meanwhile a project called Trash Free Trails (TFT) is looking for walkers, runners, horse riders, mountain bikers and others to take part in countryside clean-ups. Last year 282 TFT volunteers removed almost 500kg of litter from eight trails, including 644 single-use plastic bottles, 756 confectionery wrappers and 830 dog-poo bags.

UK in net’s slow lane – The UK has plummeted 13 places in global broadband speed rankings to rate as one of the slowest countries in Europe and the 47th fastest in the world. The average home in western Europe can download a movie in half the time it takes in Britain. “The UK is comparatively late in its rollout of pure fibre networks, which is causing it to stagnate while other nations gain ground,” said Dan Howdle, consumer telecoms analyst at Cable.co.uk, which publishes the annual report.

‘Did he just mark me?’ – After Kim Jong-un winked at Sarah Sanders in Singapore, Donald Trump joked she would have to “take one for the team” and move to North Korea, the former White House secretary writes in her memoir Speaking for Myself. Sanders said that at the 2018 summit she “noticed Kim staring at me. We made direct eye contact and Kim nodded and appeared to wink at me. I was stunned. I quickly looked down and continued taking notes … All I could think was, ‘What just happened? Surely Kim Jong-un did not just mark me!?’” The book is described by Martin Pengelly from Guardian US as “a paean to the president by a loyal follower with the subtitle Faith, Freedom and the Fight of Our Lives Inside the Trump White House”.

Today in Focus podcast: Trump the walking climate disaster

Guardian US environment reporter Emily Holden looks at the Trump administration’s impact on the environment, and the consequences for the climate crisis if he wins another term.

Lunchtime read: Not the best time to be selling China

The Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi, did not exactly end his week-long European tour with his tail between his legs – but did get something of a flea in his ear, writes Patrick Wintour, the Guardian’s diplomatic editor. He writes that China can no longer “get away with simple homilies on win-win solutions, multilateralism and non-interference in another’s internal affairs. Pointing to Donald Trump is also no longer enough to win European friends.

“At every stop on his tour Wang was reminded by the presence of Hong Kong pro-democracy activists that China may now pay a political price for imposing new security laws in Hong Kong and suspending elections there; and insisting that detained Uighur Muslims are simply going through some beneficial work experience training … He will have noted that the European Union’s patience is wearing thin with the unfulfilled promise of equal access to China’s market and an end to Chinese state subsidies. A reassessment of China is having wider security implications. Germany, following France’s lead, is due shortly to publish a strategy for the Indo-Pacific region that will reinforce Berlin’s defence ties with India, Japan and Australia. And polls show the more the public examine China’s response to Covid-19, the less they like it.”

Sport

Showing resistance that defied logic, Andy Murray ground out a 4-6, 4-6, 7-6 (5), 7-6 (4), 6-4 win over Yoshihito Nishioka, after which he revealed that he was walking on aching toes and would ask US Open organisers for “an emergency ice bath”. A tense all-British first round tussle in the women’s draw ended in favour of Johanna Konta, who overcame an exhausting early challenge from Heather Watson. And Serena Williams took her first step toward a record-equaling 24th grand slam title, defeating Kristie Ahn 7-5, 6-2 in her opening match of the tournament in New York.

Eddie Jones hopes England will supply a record number of British & Irish Lions players when Warren Gatland’s squad fly out on tour to South Africa next year. A glorious late flourish from Moeen Ali just failed to take England to victory at Old Trafford as Pakistan won a last-over thriller by five runs to tie the three game T20 series 1-1. Seven-time world champion Stephen Hendry has come out of retirement and will return to the World Snooker Tour for the next two seasons. World Rugby’s proposals to ban trans women from playing women’s rugby have been criticised by dozens of academics. Chelsea Women have signed Pernille Harder from the Champions League finalists Wolfsburg for a fee believed to be around £300,000, which would be a world record in the women’s game. And Primoz Roglic showed he is over the crash he suffered in last month’s Criterium du Dauphiné race with an imperious win in the first summit finish to this year’s Tour de France.

Business

Australia has slumped into recession for the first time in nearly 30 years thanks to the coronavirus pandemic. The country’s economy shrank by a record 7% in the second quarter to combine with negative growth in the first three months of the year and pitch it into recession. Shares in Sydney nevertheless rose 2% on hopes across Asia Pacific’s financial markets that more stimulus is on its way from the US Fed. The FTSE100 is due to rise 0.82% after the humbling news that its total value is now less than that of Apple. The pound is buying $1.338 and €1.123.

The papers

The Guardian splashes today with “Williamson was warned weeks before exams fiasco”. The Metro leads with “Nearly normal service resumes … workers returning to officers in ‘huge numbers’ says PM”. But the Mail sees things very differently: “They’re back at work” (in reference to schoolchildren) “… where’s the rest of the UK” as it depicts the return to work as having “stalled again”.

The Telegraph has “Record number of young on benefits” while the Mirror has the feelgood “Olympic Nicola to be in first Strictly same-sex pair”. The FT leads with “German parliament to open full inquiry into collapse of Wirecard”.

The Express says “Surge in home loans boosts UK fight back” and the Times goes with “Foreign aid billions to be spent on British spies” (Lotus Esprit submarines all round!).

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