Vermont becomes first US state to ban paraquat herbicide over Parkinson’s fears

Officials say still not safe for 16,000 people to return home as crews in Orange county work to neutralize damaged tankA crack that formed by chance in an overheated chemical tank in southern California relieved pressure and helped avert a catastrophic explosion, but officials said on Tuesday it still was not safe enough for 16,000 people living closest to the aerospace plant to return home.The crisis forced 50,000 people to evacuate in and near the Orange county city of Garden Grove last week. Most returned home after the crack formed over the Memorial Day weekend, but the risk of a smaller explosion or potential spill kept evacuation orders in place for about a third of residents. Continue reading...

Intervention by former PM almost feels designed to inflict maximum annoyance on his partyTony Blair says Labour must abandon net zero, support Trump and cut benefitsDid Tony Blair ever mention he was quite good at winning elections? If you happened to miss it, then his 5,700-word opus on where Labour, Keir Starmer and the UK more generally have gone wrong is here to remind you. Several times.“I led the Labour party for 13 years and through three general elections,” goes the second sentence. Further on, Blair laments that when the party tries to puzzle out how to win a second term, the one thing ruled out was “learning from the only time in the party’s 120-year history it has ever done so”. Continue reading...

Jerome Laxale breaks ranks to publicly back reforms that would also wind back the diesel fuel rebateFollow our Australia news live blog for latest updatesGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastThe Labor MP Jerome Laxale says it’s “reasonable to expect more” from mining giants, breaking ranks to publicly back changes to the generous tax concessions blamed for holding back decarbonisation after revelations BHP delayed major projects to cut emissions.Labor’s grassroots environment action group has also renewed calls to wind back the diesel fuel rebate following an exclusive investigation by the Guardian and the ABC, which revealed BHP scrapped a project to significantly reduce global emissions, delayed vast renewables projects in the Pilbara and war-gamed options to push the electrification of its polluting diesel truck and train fleets into the next two decades. Continue reading...

In highly unusual intervention, ex-PM says his party’s ‘almost infinite capacity for self-delusion’ makes it likely to lose next electionAnalysis: Tony Blair’s essay on Labour failings gets full marks for being unhelpfulTony Blair has accused Keir Starmer, Andy Burnham and Wes Streeting of putting Labour’s future at risk by abandoning the centre ground, warning that the party’s “almost infinite capacity for self-delusion” means it is likely to lose the next election.In a scathing 5,700-word attack on the prime minister and his would-be successors published on Tuesday night, Blair argued that the party’s agenda should move firmly to the right, calling for the government to crack down on welfare spending, abandon net zero goals and support Donald Trump. Continue reading...

Australia’s foreign affairs minister Penny Wong met with US secretary of state Marco Rubio in New Delhi meeting. Follow today’s news liveGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastReacting to the Quad meeting, Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said that cooperation “should not be directed against any third party”, AFP reports.“We also do not support exclusive cliques or bloc confrontations,” she told reporters. Continue reading...

Three lunar landings are planned for this year in preparation for the construction of a $20bn moon baseSign up for the Breaking News US newsletter emailNasa announced on Tuesday ambitious plans for three uncrewed lunar missions this year to kickstart construction of a $20bn moon base, and said it had chosen Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin, ahead of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, to conduct the first.The revelation by Nasa’s administrator, Jared Isaacman, at a press conference in Washington DC marked the first detailed public explanation of how and when the moon base will be built. Continue reading...

Bid to remake maps before midterms and reduce Democratic voters in Jim Clyburn’s district fails in state senateRepublican lawmakers in South Carolina have defied Donald Trump and rejected a breakneck bid to redraw the state’s congressional districts ahead of November’s US midterm elections.In a 26-18 vote, state senators rejected mid-decade redistricting in a special session of the legislature, ending hope in Washington to split up congressman Jim Clyburn’s district and add to the list of gerrymandered gains for Republicans. Continue reading...

Channel quietly debuts over weekend with Only in Monroe video days after Thursday’s final Late Show episode Stephen Colbert hasn’t even been off the air for a week, but is already causing some hubbub with the launch of a new YouTube channel that has garnered more than 120,000 subscribers.The popular late-night host, who aired his final episode of The Late Show last Thursday, quietly debuted the channel over the weekend with a single video titled: “Only In Monroe --- May 22, 2026.” Continue reading...

Police officer in charge says budget could reach £19.3m and nearly 100 more investigators are neededThe police criminal inquiry into the Post Office Horizon IT scandal faces a five-year delay unless it is handed millions in extra funding and nearly 100 more staff, according to the chief officer in charge.The Metropolitan police commander Stephen Clayman said he needed to nearly double the number of investigators to 210 to meet a deadline of late next year or early 2028 for submitting files to prosecutors. Continue reading...

Analysis of party’s proposed cuts also suggests it would get rid of two-thirds of psychologists who support prison staffA Reform UK plan to cut the size of the civil service would involve sacking more planning officers than exist and getting rid of at least two-thirds of the psychologists who support prison officers’ welfare, it has emerged.The policy paper, led by the Reform MP Danny Kruger and published in December, promises to save more than £5bn a year by cutting civil service roles, with the full-time-equivalent (FTE) headcount falling by 13%. Continue reading...

Three people have been arrested on suspicion of murder after shooting outside One Four One in the city centreA woman shot dead outside a bar in Sheffield was an innocent bystander, police say.Officers were called to the scene outside the One Four One bar on West Street in in the city centre at 2.45am on Monday after reports of a shooting. Continue reading...