US President Donald Trump has prevented Ukraine from using long-range missiles to strike deep into Russian territory, the Daily Telegraph reports. The Pentagon review mechanism limiting long-rage strikes was introduced to “entice” Russian President Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table. It means Kyiv has been unable to fire US-made Atacms weapons, as well as the Franco-British Storm Shadow missile, which uses US targeting data.
Buckingham Palace is bracing for “fresh revelations” when the memoir of Jeffrey Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre is published this autumn, writes the Daily Mail. Giuffre, who died by suicide earlier this year, sued the Duke of York, saying he had sexually assaulted her when she was 17. Prince Andrew, who reached an out-of-court settlement with her in 2022 in which he accepted no liability, denies all the claims against him. The paper is one of several to feature the new “sun-kissed look” of Catherine, Princess of Wales.
Catherine’s “lighter locks” also appear on the front page of the Sun, but the paper leads with Giuffre’s memoir set to be published in October. An unnamed source quoted by the paper says the book is Giuffre’s “ultimate revenge”.
New tapes of Jeffrey Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell are a “whitewash”, according to victims of the sex offender. The Daily Mirror reports that Maxwell told US officials that Epstein had no “client list” and that Prince Andrew had never met Giuffre. Two Epstein victims have accused US officials of giving Maxwell a “stage” to protect Donald Trump, who previously had a friendship with the disgraced financier.
Catherine’s “new blonde look” features prominently on the Daily Express front page. “Hair to the throne” is the headline. But the paper leads with an Albanian people-smuggler saying that the government could stop small boat crossings “tomorrow” if it wanted to. The man adds that Labour is not stopping the boats because it needs a cheap workforce willing to do “undesirable jobs”.
Labour grandees and ministers are calling on Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer to take a “more radical approach” to the small boats crisis, according to the Times. A YouGov poll for the paper suggested that 71% of voters believed the prime minister was mishandling the issue, including more than half of Labour voters.
The i Paper leads with a fast-track appeals process for migrants which “could become law within weeks”. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper is moving to close asylum hotels, as protests against using them to house migrants continued this weekend. The new hearings procedure could take months to become operational, and a similar process introduced by Labour in 2005 was ruled unlawful for not giving asylum seekers enough time to find legal representation.
“Everything has become frighteningly polarised,” Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi tells the Guardian, which leads with MPs reporting a sharp rise in online abuse linked to the immigration debate. Another Labour MP said the abuse was “worse than Brexit”, with several MPs receiving death and rape threats over their stance on protests at hotels used to house asylum seekers.
Private equity firms are offering a “smorgasbord of discounts” as the industry faces a profitability crisis caused by higher interest rates and a slowdown in dealmaking, according to the Financial Times. Fundraising has shrunk by nearly a third since from its record levels in 2021.
The Daily Star lauds a “rare rain-free bank holiday”. The second-warmest August holiday in 60 years means the UK is set to be “hotter than Morocco”. “We’ll drink to that,” writes the paper.
Several front pages carry news of the new memoir to be published this autumn by Virginia Giuffre, who accused the Duke of York and Jeffrey Epstein of sexual abuse. The Daily Mail says the “bombshell” new book, which was completed before Giuffre took her own life in April, will contain “intimate, disturbing, and heartbreaking details”. The Daily Mirror reports Giuffre previously told the book’s co-author, the journalist Amy Wallace, that she wanted to shed light on “systemic failures” that allowed vulnerable individuals to be trafficked across borders. The Sun’s headline brands the book “Virginia’s revenge”. Prince Andrew has always denied Giuffre’s allegations.
The Times has a poll that suggests nearly three-quarters of voters believe Sir Keir Starmer is mishandling the issue of asylum seekers being housed in hotels. The paper says its YouGov survey is a sign of growing public concern about what the “crisis”. The Guardian highlights a number of politicians who have reported a sharp rise in the level of online harassment and death threats directed at them, with one MP calling it “worse than the Brexit years”. According to the i Paper, ministers want migrants who arrive on small boats to be the first to have fast-tracked asylum hearings, but it will take months for a new law to become operational.
The Daily Telegraph says Ukraine is being prevented by the Trump administration from firing long-range US-made missiles into Russia, in order to draw Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table. The Wall Street Journal first reported on Sunday that Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth had effectively been given final permission for any strike using the Atacms system. But the Telegraph says Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky played down the restrictions, saying Ukraine had developed its own arsenal of long-range weapons and no longer needed to rely on American approval.
And the Daily Star is jubilant at the prospect of an August Bank Holiday Monday without any rain forecast on the UK mainland. The paper says Brits will “sizzle” in temperatures of up to 29C, making it “hotter than Morocco”.
