Welcome to Wednesday’s Early Edition from i.

If one thing is clear after the first day of the rail strikes it is this: no one will ever want to debate RMT General Secretary Mick Lynch on live TV again. Clip after clip showed the union leader dismantling interviewers and TV pundits over this week’s industrial action. “I don’t know enough about the rail dispute. I only observe that RMT’s Mick Lynch cleaned up every single media picador who tried their luck today,” actor Hugh Laurie tweeted. So who is winning the war? We’ll take a look at what mud’s been slung and who is doing the slinging, after the news.

Today’s news, and why it matters

Dominic Raab is set to introduce plans to override rulings by the European Court of Human Rights, with a Bill of Rights that would replace the current Human Rights Act. It would mean decisions such as the blocking of the Rwanda deportation flight could be ignored. Campaigners say it is not about tinkering with rights “it’s about removing them”. Labour has also warned it would remove a key obligation that has allowed women to force police to investigate rapes and for families seeking justice after atrocities such as Hillsborough.

Public-sector workers are to be told they will be getting a real-terms pay cut as soon as next month, while pensioners will receive a £10bn uplift. Rishi Sunak has warned Cabinet colleagues they will have to cut salaries of civil servants, doctors, nurses teachers and other key workers in real terms or risk further stoking inflation and wrecking the public finances. It is likely that salaries will increase by no more than 4 per cent for most workers, a cut in real terms of thousands of pounds.

Covid cases in Britain could exceed 200,000 a day by this weekend as infections surge beyond predicted levels, a leading expert says. The forecast by Tim Spector, the King’s College London professor who runs the ZOE Covid study app, puts the infection rates among the highest they have been for the vast majority of the pandemic.

But in more positive news on Covid, Moderna will make vaccines for the virus in the UK with a centre due to open by 2025. The Government is hoping to make Britain’s medical supply chains more secure in the event of another Covid-style crisis. Clinical trials on future versions of Covid jabs and other promising vaccines made by Moderna will also be carried out in the UK.

Tens of thousands of gay and bisexual men most at risk of contracting Monkeypox will be offered a vaccine, as health chiefs try to limit the outbreak in the UK. The number of people expected to be offered the jab is in the tens of thousands, but eligibility will depend on a number of criteria, with doctors assessing an individual’s risk level.

Five key indicators on how the rail strikes are playing out:

Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that Russia could deploy its intercontinental ballistic weapon, which is nicknamed ‘Satan II’. The missile is said to be capable of reaching Britain in three minutes. “We will continue to develop and strengthen our armed forces, taking into account potential military threats and risks,” he said.

The school in Uvalde, Texas, where a gunman killed 19 students and two teachers, will be demolished, according to the city’s mayor. The announcement came as the state’s public safety chief described the police response to the shooting as an “abject failure and antithetical to everything” known about how to respond to such crises. “The officers had weapons – the children had none. The officers had body armor – the children had none,” he said.

A nationwide ban on the wearing of the burkini in French public pools has been upheld by the country’s highest administrative court. The French Conseil d’Etat said allowing the burkini would “undermine the principle of neutrality of public services”.

A jury has found comedian Bill Cosby guilty of sexually assaulting a teenager at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles in 1975. Cosby must also pay Judy Huth, who testified to the civil trial that he had forced her to perform a sex act on him when she was 16, £407,000 in damages.

The island nation of the Maldives is planning to create the world’s largest floating city as a solution to the threat posed by climate change. The government joined forces with a Dutch developer to create a man-made floating city spanning two square kilometres in the Indian Ocean, meaning the city will rise along with sea levels. The first inhabitants are due to arrive in 2024.

After a three-year hiatus, today fans will begin their descent on Worthy Farm at Glastonbury.  

The public won’t be turned against striker, they know who the real enemy is, says Simon Kelner. It is simplistic to characterise this as a Summer of Discontent. It may be a Summer of Inconvenience, he writes.

Boris Johnson has a serious problem with women, argues Katy Balls. While there is an appetite for female-friendly policies such as cheaper childcare, it is harder to work out how to sell Johnson himself to these voters.

Meghan and Harry’s Jubilee visit will confirm they were right to leave the UK, says Yasmin Alibhai-Brown.

Beyoncé is back with a new track that samples ‘Show Me Love’ and seems to suggest an exciting, dance-adjacent direction for her upcoming seventh album, Lauren O’Neill writes.

‘I may only have three months left’. A study has found that life expectancy from pancreatic cancer is plummeting as patients can’t see their GP. Patrick Strudwick speaks to those affected.

Richarlison wants to leave Everton for a ‘bigger club’ with Arsenal, Chelsea and Tottenham all interested. The 25-year-old loves Everton but is looking for a new opportunity to cement his place in Brazil’s World Cup plans, the i can reveal.

Richarlison has become something of a cult hero on the blue half of Merseyside (Photo: Reuters)

The Canterbury suburbs were one of the earliest known Palaeolithic sites in northern Europe, research has confirmed. Homo heidelbergensis, an ancestor of Neanderthals, occupied southern Britain between 560,000 and 620,000 years ago, when it was still attached to Europe. The findings come a century after stone tool artefacts were first uncovered at the site in Fordwich.

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