Ten Things You Need to Know Today: Sunday 17 Jun 2018

Leave.EU campaign spokesman Andy Wigmore passed confidential
legal documents to high-ranking officials at the Russian embassy
and then denied it to parliament, claims The Observer. Wigmore is
the business partner of Arron Banks, the biggest funder of Brexit.
A leader of the campaign also suggested forwarding a “message of
support” to the Russian ambassador after the then foreign secretary
was critical of Moscow.

Ministers have announced additional funding of £20bn for the
NHS, describing it as a 70th “birthday
present”.  Although Theresa May told the BBC the boost
will partly be funded by a “Brexit dividend”, critics say much of
it will come from tax rises. The Mail on Sunday calls the move a
“gamble”, betting on whether the public will be willing to face tax
hikes to pay for better care.

Eight people were injured when a cab drove into a crowd of
people in central Moscow. Although local authorities said the
driver had not driven into the crowd of people deliberately, video
footage posted on social media showed the yellow Hyundai taxi
swerve abruptly out of a line of stationary traffic, mount a
pavement and collide with pedestrians, including Mexico World Cup
supporters.

Beijing will retaliate against new US tariffs on $50bn in
Chinese imports. China’s finance ministry said it would begin
imposing its own 25% tariffs on 545 categories of US products worth
$34bn, including soyabeans, beef, whiskey and some vehicles. The
Financial Times says the move takes the world’s two largest
economies to the brink of a full-scale trade war.

There are demands for the legalisation of medicinal cannabis
after the home secretary allowed a severely epileptic boy to be
treated with the remedy. Crispin Blunt MP, the co-chair of the
all-parliamentary group on drug policy reform, described the
existing law as “frankly absurd”. Billy’s mother Charlotte has
called for the oil to be freely available.

A newspaper cartoonist who lost his job believes his critical
sketches of Donald Trump were the cause of his firing. Rob Rogers
was terminated by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette after 25 years. He
says six cartoons in a row were spiked and his employer tried to
change his terms of working. “Suppressing voices in any situation
is bad,” he told The Guardian. 

Some 630 migrants and refugees from the Aquarius rescue ship
have disembarked in Valencia, after being turned away from Italy
and Malta. The Aquarius sparked a major diplomatic row when it was
left stranded on Monday but Spain’s new socialist government has
promised free healthcare. “It is our duty to help avoid a
humanitarian catastrophe,” said Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez.

The BBC has admitted defeat in the battle for radio audiences,
reports the Sunday Telegraph. The corporation will instead focus on
the threat from music on Spotify and podcasts. The BBC’s director
of radio, James Purnell, will declare in a speech this week that he
does not “care” about audience share or beating commercial
stations. “We’ll need to change where we allocate our money,” he
will say. 

Germany has shelved plans for international high-speed services
between London, Cologne and Frankfurt due to “changes” in the
“economic environment,” reports The Independent. The state rail
operator, Deutsche Bahn, said the services to London would now “not
be on the agenda in the foreseeable future”. The company refused to
comment on whether Brexit was the cause.

Scientists say that faecal transplants could boost the health
and viability of endangered creatures. They believe the method
could save the endangered koala bear after researchers altered
microbes in koalas’ guts in order to improve type of food they
consume. They found they could alter the koala’s gut bacteria from
one type to the other.