Multiple fatalities have been reported after a chemical explosion occurred at a paper mill in Washington state.

First responders were at Nippon Dynawave Packaging in Longview, “following the rupture of a tank containing white liquor,” the Longview Fire Department said in a joint statement released on Facebook by local officials and the packaging company.

The explosion occurred at around 7:15 a.m. local time on Tuesday, according to officials.

Officials confirmed “multiple critical injuries” related to the explosion. The fire department said people were taken to local hospitals for treatment.

Multiple people had chemical burns and other injuries from the explosion, the fire department said in a previous Facebook post.

There have also been multiple fatalities, according to officials, but an exact number has yet to be released.

There is “no immediate threat” to the community, the fire department said in its most recent statement. But officials have asked people to avoid the area as they investigate.

“Responding agencies continue coordinating closely with facility personnel and partner agencies as the investigation and recovery efforts continue,” the fire department said.

There were five fire trucks, seven ambulances and a hazmat team at the paper mill Tuesday.

Nippon Dynawave Packaging has around 550 employees at its pulp and paper mill, according to Washington’s Department of Ecology.

The mill makes about 280,000 tons of paperboard and pulp each year. It also has about 450 workers at its liquid packaging plant.

This is a developing story…

London City Lionesses are attempting to pull off the biggest transfer in WSL history as they chase the two-time Ballon d’Or winner.

Whether other clubs are also in discussions is unclear, but London City have been linked with a move for Putellas for some time and are the favourites to bring her in.

They are willing to pull out all the stops to boost their ranks, including offering her wages that would reflect her status as one of the greatest players of all-time.

They have been braced for a big summer, starting conversations with several players in January, with the view to boosting the squad at the end of the season.

London City have ambitions of breaking into the WSL’s top three and qualifying for the Champions League in the not-too-distant future, and a signing like Putellas would be a huge step towards that.

Putellas, who only lifted the Champions League trophy with Barcelona on Saturday, is also the blockbuster name billionaire owner Michele Kang craves.

Kang also owns Lyon, who Barcelona beat in Saturday’s final, and she will know all too well what qualities Putellas possesses and the heights she can help London City reach.

This year’s WSL newcomers are not your average club – an independent outfit, backed by seemingly unlimited funds from Kang and a desire to grow a women’s football team from scratch. That makes them an intriguing project.

With Spanish coach Eder Maestre at the helm, close friend Jana Fernandez thriving there, and Barcelona team-mate Mapi Leon also expected to join London City, there are draws for Putellas.

However, going from her childhood club, who she has just captained to her fourth European title, to a team who finished mid-table in the WSL this season would be a drop down.

It further highlights the draw of the WSL and its rapid growth as more of the world’s best players view England as a strong league.

Putellas is a player every club in the world would surely be happy to accept so if London City Lionesses can pull it off, it would be a remarkable achievement for the WSL club.

The outer black pieces were designed by Kevin Germanier, who is known for his sustainable approach to fashion, while the gold dress was custom made by Nike.

“Sometimes people say athletes are in show business or entertainers or whatever,” Osaka said.

“For me, Grand Slam walk-ons are the only time that I possibly feel like I’m an entertainer.”

At the Australian Open in January, Osaka made a statement entrance in a jellyfish-inspired outfit which she dedicated to her two-year-old daughter Shai.

Former British number one Annabel Croft said a lot of players “would not be able to live up to the expectation” of walking out in custom made outfits like Osaka’s.

“If you out there in an extraordinary outfit, you’ve got to live up to that and have the confidence to play in it and give the crowd the tennis as well as the outfit,” she said on BBC Radio 5 Sports Extra.

“Naomi can handle it. She really loves it and she’s not fazed by it.”

Since the birth of her daughter in 2023, Osaka has re-established herself in the world’s top 20 and she reached the semi-finals at the US Open in September.

The former world number one will face Croatia’s Donna Vekic in the next round.

A yellow weather warning is in place across parts of England this evening as thunderstorms are expected to follow a record-breaking heatwave.

Forecasters declared a heatwave in multiple parts of the country on Tuesday, with amber heat health alerts issued in large swathes of England.

But the hot weather is expected to break on Tuesday evening, with the Met Office warning “isolated intense thunderstorms” could bring disruption to some places.

The Met Office has issued a yellow weather warning for thunderstorms covering parts of the south west, the midlands, the north west of England, and Yorkshire and the Humber. The warning came into force at 3pm and is in place until 10pm on Tuesday.

Forecasters said there is a chance of delays and some cancellations to train and bus services in areas where storms occur.

Temperatures reached 35C at Kew Gardens in London, breaking the highest minimum temperature in May for a third consecutive day. The figure also provisionally marks a new all-time hottest meteorological spring temperature, beating the record set on Monday.

The health warnings mean there is likely to be a “significant” impact on health and social services, and a rise in deaths, with alerts in place until 5pm on 27 May.

Met Office Chief Forecaster Andy Page said: “The exceptional late-spring heat is set to continue for much of this week.

“Last night provisionally recorded the warmest May night on record, and we’re likely to see further very warm nights in the south over the coming days. There is a chance a few places will experience a ‘tropical night’ in the south of England and in Wales tonight, which is where temperatures don’t fall below 20°C.

“While many places will stay dry and sunny, the heat and humidity mean that a few isolated thunderstorms have developed with more possibly developing later today, particularly across parts of England. Looking further ahead, the focus for the highest temperatures will shift westwards on Wednesday, with northern areas feeling more of the warmth on Thursday.

“We’ll then see a gradual change later in the week, with temperatures easing slightly, though still above average, before a more marked change to near-normal temperatures by Sunday and an increased chance of showers and some longer spells of rain.”

A heatwave has been declared in eight locations in southeast England, which have now met the threshold of 27C for three consecutive days of hot weather.

The Met Office listed 12 locations where the record was topped on Monday – ranging from Suffolk to Berkshire to Warwickshire – while 97 of its monitoring sites reached or surpassed 30C.

The UK’s previous warmest May night was measured on Sunday when temperatures did not fall below 19.4C at Kenley Airfield.

Those forecasts span the Midlands, the south-east and south-west of England, East Anglia and South Wales.

Here’s what the weather authority has forecast over the coming days:

Tuesday

Another very hot day across much of England and Wales with strong sunshine. Fresher across northern areas with sunny spells. A yellow weather warning is in place for thunderstorms until 10pm across much of England.

Wednesday

Dry on Wednesday with sunny spells for many. Cloudier in the northeast but some bright spells slowly developing. Very warm in the southwest, but feeling fresher elsewhere.

Thursday to Saturday

Staying hot across parts of the south through the next few days. A risk of a few thundery showers at times, but largely dry for many.

The 44-year-old man visited his ex-girlfriend’s house on multiple occasions, despite having a restraining order

A man broke the window of his ex-girlfriend’s home, despite her having a restraining order against him. Curtis Saunderson, 44, was handed a restraining order in December 2025, banning him from contacting his ex-girlfriend and visiting her home in Peterborough until May 2027.

However, between April 21 and May 19 of this year, Saunderson breached his order by making multiple attempts to contact her by phone and turned up at her house on different occasions.

During one of these visits, Saunderson was caught on a video doorbell using a concrete tile to break the victim’s front windows. Cambridgeshire Police arrested him on May 20 and charged him with criminal damage and five counts of harassment.

Saunderson, of no fixed address, was jailed for 56 weeks and ordered to pay £250 in compensation after admitting the offences at Cambridge Magistrates’ Court on Friday (May 22). This included the activation of a six-week suspended sentence he received for theft offences in April.

Detective Sergeant Louis Scott said: “Saunderson’s relentless attempts to contact the victim showed his disregard for the previous court orders. I would like to thank the victim for her ongoing cooperation and bravery for reporting this harassment.”

(Left to right) Bereaved parents Liam Walsh, Lorin LaFave, Mariano Janin, Ellen Roome, Lisa Kenevan, Ruth Moss, and Stuart Stephens speak to the media in Downing Street, central London, following their meeting with Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer (Stefan Rousseau/PA)

PA Wire

In 1959, a young doctor named David Sackett stumbled on a clinical trial that would change his life – and most of ours. The study showed that conventional wisdom on bed rest in medicine was wrong. And it helped lead Sackett and others to develop evidence-based medicine, in which doctors today make decisions based on rigorous scientific research.

It was a necessary corrective. The history of medicine is littered with practices once assumed to work but which were later shown by research to be useless or harmful – as I discovered in the five years it took me to research my book, Beyond Belief: How Evidence Shows What Really Works.

Sackett was a precocious young doctor in his final year of medical school at Cook County Hospital in Chicago, when he noticed something odd. Most medical advice was based on received wisdom or the opinion of the most senior doctor in the room (an approach now called eminence-based medicine). This was unsatisfying to Sackett, who realised he lacked the information to determine which treatments worked best for his patients.

Then, one day, a teenager set Sackett on a new path. The adolescent had an enlarged liver as a result of infectious hepatitis, which Sackett later ascribed to hepatitis A. Back then, everyone thought that a patient with hepatitis must be kept resting in bed until the liver returned to normal. It was conventional wisdom, and no one really questioned why.

But Sackett’s patient did question why. He felt energetic after a few days, and he demanded to get up. Soon, a battle was raging between an increasingly sulky adolescent and a stubborn doctor who predicted permanent liver damage if the young man dared to get out of bed.

Seeking more information, Sackett went to the library and started scouring medical journals. Here, he found the remarkable bed rest trial. It had been published in 1955 by Thomas Chalmers, a doctor and pioneer in clinical trials.

In the early 1950s, during the
Korean war, Chalmers was based at a US army hospital in Kyoto, Japan. The US military used Japan as a base for treating soldiers evacuated from the front, and the hospital was dealing with a big outbreak of infectious hepatitis among its patients.

Strictly enforced bed rest meant that soldiers were in hospital for about two months, creating a drain on the army. So Chalmers decided to test whether resting this long was necessary using a randomised controlled trial – an unusual experiment at the time.

Chalmers identified men with similar hepatitis symptoms and then randomly assigned them to one of two groups. In one group, men were kept to strict bed rest – so strict, in fact, that they were allowed only one trip to the latrine each day and a once-weekly shower. Men in the other group were prescribed “ad lib rest”, which meant that they could do largely what they wanted as long as their boisterousness didn’t break the ward rules.

The results of this trial showed that the men recovered just as quickly when they were active as when they were confined to bed. Chalmers recommended that hepatitis patients should be allowed to get up earlier – presumably a relief for hundreds of restless soldiers. In 1955, Chalmers also wrote up his findings in one of the most detailed clinical trial reports ever published, at 73 pages long.

As Sackett read this epic paper in the Chicago library, he immediately saw that conventional wisdom on hepatitis treatment was wrong. He convinced his supervisors to let the bedbound teenager get up – and sure enough, the patient recovered just fine. But the incident left a bigger mark on Sackett. It showed him that other standard practices in medicine could be wrong too, and that randomised trials had the power to show which ones had a beneficial effect.

In the short term, this meant that Sackett became a self-professed troublemaker. Now, when senior doctors told him to treat patients because of conventional wisdom, he challenged what they said. He became notorious for interrupting senior doctors whenever they were pontificating about what to do.

But the aftershocks were greater than this. A few years later, Sackett joined the newly established medical school at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada. Here, he and his colleagues started teaching student doctors to solve problems using evidence from research – such as randomised trials – rather than just doing what eminent physicians said.

This approach eventually became known as evidence-based medicine, a term first published in the medical literature in 1991.

Within a decade, the principles had been integrated into medical teaching all over the world. By 2014, evidence-based medicine had been called one of modern medicine’s greatest intellectual achievements – ranked alongside sanitation, antibiotics and vaccines.

A lesson we keep forgetting

Today, it seems obvious that doctors should base their decisions on rigorous scientific evidence. It is remarkable – and not widely known outside academia – that evidence-based medicine is such a recent phenomenon, which is one reason I wanted to write my book. By helping spark this change, the bed rest trial has indirectly benefited everyone who has received modern medical treatment.

Of course, evidence-based medicine is imperfect and rightly continues to evolve. Evidence is often complex, flawed and contradictory, and new studies can come along that overturn existing ideas. But it can help people do more of what works and less of what doesn’t. It’s a hard-earned lesson we shouldn’t forget.

This article features references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and may contain links to bookshop.org. If you click on one of the links and go on to buy something, The Conversation UK may earn a commission.

Donald Trump has been discharged from Walter Reed Military Medical Center after a routine presidential health check

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Donald Trump has left his biannual check-up declaring it went “perfectly”, thanking medical staff for their care.

On Truth Social, the US President posted: “Just finished my 6 month physical at Walter Reed Military Medical Center. Everything checked out PERFECTLY. Thank you to the great Doctors and Staff! Heading back to the White House. President DJT”.

This marked the fourth occasion Trump has publicly revealed details of a medical examination since beginning his second term in office. The divisive American leader, who turns 80 next month, attended Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Tuesday (May 26).

The White House has reportedly maintained it was standard “preventive healthcare” as scrutiny over his wellbeing has grown.

“The visit will include the president’s routine annual dental and medical assessments as part of his regular preventive healthcare,” the White House confirmed on May 11.

This follows Trump’s consistent dismissal of worries regarding his age and fitness, referencing past test outcomes that he described as “perfect”, reports the Daily Star.

According to Forbes, Trump recently informed reporters: “I feel the same as I did 50 years ago. It’s crazy. I know many people that all they do is watch their weight… and then they kick the bucket. And here we are, I feel great.”

Earlier this month, he also stated in the Oval Office: “My health is perfect.”

In January, Trump told The Wall Street Journal: “I will know when I am ‘slowing up,’ but it’s not now!”

The appointment marked his third scheduled trip to Walter Reed in roughly 13 months and his fourth publicly revealed medical assessment since re-entering the White House. The White House physician, Dr Sean Barbabella, has stated Trump is in “excellent health” and “fully fit” to serve.

Following an examination in October 2025, Dr Barbabella also purportedly said that the president demonstrated “strong cardiovascular, pulmonary, neurological, and physical performance”. Trump has additionally maintained he “aced” cognitive tests during his assessments, frequently drawing comparisons with Joe Biden.

In July 2025, the White House confirmed Trump had been diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency, a widespread condition associated with blood pooling and swelling in the legs. Photographers have likewise repeatedly documented noticeable bruising on his hands, which Dr Barbabella has put down to regular handshaking coupled with a daily 325mg aspirin dose taken for cardiac prevention.

Critics have similarly highlighted occasions where Trump seemed to doze off or “rest his eyes” during official engagements. Concerns have broadened to include mental sharpness.

Earlier this month, a group of 30 psychiatrists and doctors signed a statement in the British Medical Journal describing Trump as “mentally unfit”, citing alleged “deterioration in cognitive functioning” and “impaired judgment”. Despite this, a 2025 memo claimed Trump’s “cardiac age” was 65, some 14 years younger than his actual age at the time, while reports have indicated he has shed around 20lbs (9kg) since 2020 — something his team has attributed to an “active lifestyle”.

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In a holdall was £580 worth of cigarettes and vapes along with cash and coins totalling just over £60

A West Belfast man caught red-handed breaking into a convenience store was today jailed for nine months.

Judge Mark Reel told Conor Martin Gallagher that he will spend a further nine months on supervised licence on his release from custody.

The 38-year-old, formerly of Cherry Park in Dunmurry, had previously pleaded guilty to a single charge of burglary of a non-dwelling with intent to steal.

Belfast Crown Court heard police received a report of a break-in at Jack’s Convenience Store at Broom Park in Dunmurry at around 1.30am on Monday, June 9, 2025.

The report said a man was seen scaling the wall of the shop and climbing on to the roof. Prosecution barrister Gareth Purvis said police attended the scene and noticed the shop’s silent alarm had been activated.

He said a hole had been made in the roof after a number tiles had been removed, thrown to the ground and smashed. He was arrested for the offence of burglary and later told police in an unsolicited comment: ‘I did it. You caught me bang to rights

Mr Purvis said: “Shortly afterwards a male was observed exiting through the hole in the roof carrying a black and pink holdall. He attempted to evade arrest by jumping on to the roof of another building. After a short stand-off, he surrendered.

“He was noted to be wearing black trousers, a white hoodie, a black body warmer and a single glove.”

In the holdall was £580 worth of cigarettes and vapes along with cash and coins totalling just over £60. The court heard it cost the shopkeeper £150 to replace the drawer on the till.

Asked by Judge Reel how much damage was caused during the break-in, Mr Purvis said he didn’t have an exact figure but it was “significant”, the place was in “disarray”, the main roof required re-plastering and the electrics on the shutters had been destroyed.

It was the second time in the space of two months that the shop had been targeted for burglary, the court was told.

During police interviews, Gallagher said he didn’t want legal representation and made full admissions to the burglary.

The court heard Gallagher has 34 convictions on his criminal record, including three for burglary. He is currently serving a sentence in Magilligan Prison for a previous burglary offence.

Judge Reel said: “For the defendant, this may have looked like a simple offence of modest enough value, but his actions caused great difficulty and expense for the victim.

“He clearly thought nothing of those whose livelihoods and businesses he was damaging. And this is the reason why significant custodial sentences are appropriate for this offence.”

Imposing an 18-month determinate custodial sentence, the judge told Gallagher: “Your offending is so serious that neither a fine nor a community sentence could be justified and only immediate custody is appropriate.”

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