WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. military contractors need at least three years to replenish stockpiles of three key weapons systems used heavily in the Iran war, according to an analysis released Wednesday, adding to concerns that American forces would have limited firepower in any future conflict with China.

The weapons systems are Tomahawk cruise missiles, which are used to strike targets deep inside enemy territory, and Patriot and THAAD interceptors that defend against incoming missiles and drones.

“The United States has enough munitions for any plausible scenario in the Iran war, but the depleted inventories have created a window of vulnerability for a potential Western Pacific conflict,” the Center for Strategic and International Studies said in its new report, provided to The Associated Press. “The time needed to rebuild those inventories has thus become a major concern.”

China has a stated goal of ensuring its military is capable of taking Taiwan by force if necessary by 2027, which experts see as more aspirational than a hard deadline. But Chinese President Xi Jinping warned this month that if Washington mishandles its relations with the self-governing island, the U.S. and China could end up clashing or even in open conflict.

Trump administration is boosting funding, but production takes time

The analysis by the Washington think tank factors in the Republican Trump administration’s historic $1.5 trillion defense budget proposal for 2027, which significantly accelerates spending on high-end munitions that began under the Democratic Biden administration. While there’s bipartisan agreement in Congress to boost inventories, “the problem today isn’t money; it’s time,” the report said.

“It takes time to expand production capacity and to build these complex systems,” the report said, adding that the window of vulnerability will last “for several years until inventories return to their previous levels and another several years before they get to the levels that war planners desire.”

Although munitions inventories are classified, CSIS said sufficient public information exists in Pentagon budget materials to estimate production timelines.

President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have insisted the U.S. is capable of fighting any war. They have pushed defense contractors to speed up munitions production, with Hegseth telling lawmakers last month that military spending under Trump will help manufacturers double or even triple their capacities.

During Trump’s Cabinet meeting Wednesday, Hegseth lauded the president’s efforts to expand the nation’s defense manufacturing sector, with private contractors investing in new plants and production lines “so that we’re getting weapons faster than ever.”

Concerns about diminished stockpiles were a theme at recent congressional hearings. For Democrats, the munitions supply is a damning metric against the Iran war, which Trump launched without lawmakers’ approval. Some Republicans argue that the problem stems from the U.S. sending Patriot missile defense systems to Ukraine after Russia invaded in 2022, although several American allies use those systems.

The roots of the predicament can be traced to the end of the Cold War, said Mark Cancian, a retired Marine colonel and senior adviser at CSIS who co-authored the study with research associate Chris H. Park.

After the fall of the Soviet Union in late 1991, the U.S. assumed future wars would be short and regional with little need for large numbers of such high-end weapons, Cancian said in an interview. The Pentagon ordered relatively low numbers, assuming the military would not need many of them. Military contractors responded in kind, relying on a relatively small manufacturing footprint to build them.

Russia’s war with Ukraine showed that wars could be protracted and require deep inventories of advanced weapons, Cancian said. At the same time, U.S. military strategists were war-gaming possible conflicts in the western Pacific.

“The thinking started to change, but it just takes time to build inventories,” Cancian said, adding that part of the challenge is bringing up to speed a complicated web of supply chains and subcontractors that produce very novel components.

President Joe Biden’s administration should get some credit for starting conversations with the defense industry, putting money into the industrial base and ramping up production, said Cancian, who oversaw acquisitions of military hardware at the Office of Management and Budget under Presidents George W. Bush, a Republican, and Barack Obama, a Democrat.

“A lot of people in the Trump administration are inclined to say that everything was terrible until they arrived, and that’s not true,” Cancian said. “Now, it is true that the Trump administration really increased funding.”

How long it will take to rebuild key stockpiles

The U.S. fired 1,000-plus Tomahawk missiles at Iran, and it could take until late 2030 to fully replenish the prewar inventory, CSIS estimates show.

Fewer than 200 Tomahawks are made a year because of small orders in the past, the report says. However, manufacturer Raytheon has a goal of ramping up capacity to more than 1,000 per year.

RTX, Raytheon’s parent company, declined to comment on the CSIS findings because it had not yet seen the report. But RTX pointed to investments of several billion dollars to boost production, including expanding facilities in Alabama and Arizona.

For in-demand air defense systems, replacing as many as 290 THAAD, or Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, interceptors that shot down incoming Iranian drones and missiles could take until the end of 2029, CSIS estimates. Replenishing more than 1,000 Patriot interceptors should wrap up in mid-2029.

Lockheed Martin is significantly boosting production of rounds for both systems, while deliveries of THAADs “were apparently re-sequenced to prioritize U.S. needs over those of allies and partners,” CSIS noted.

“Patriot deliveries pose a dilemma for the United States because of the need to replenish its own inventories, help Ukraine defend against Russian missile attacks, and meet the needs of 17 other countries that use the interceptor,” the report said.

Lockheed Martin said in a statement that it’s investing $9 billion through 2030 and “is already delivering tangible results to meet heightened munitions demand, including a new facility in Alabama announced last week along with more than 20 others across the United States.”

In the meantime, CSIS said a potential conflict with China is “not all bleak,” with the U.S. military recently displaying its capabilities against Iran, Venezuela and the Houthi rebels in Yemen.

“China is deeply aware that it has no recent combat experience and that it performed poorly in its last war — against Vietnam in 1979,” the report said. “That difference in experience may preserve deterrence until munitions inventories are restored.”

Kenneth Iwamasa was jailed in LA following the role he played in Perry’s death at age 54 on October 28, 2023.

Matthew Perry’s live-in personal assistant, who had a central role in the Friends star’s descent into ketamine addiction and injected him with the fatal dose of the drug, was sentenced to three years and five months in prison.

Judge Sherilyn Peace Garnett handed down the sentence to 60-year-old Kenneth Iwamasa in federal court in Los Angeles. He was also sentenced to two years of probation and a 10,000 dollar fine (£7,446).

It was the fifth and final sentencing in the two-and-a-half-year investigation and prosecution that followed Perry’s death at age 54 on October 28 2023.

Before handing down the sentence, Judge Garnett said “You were privy to his struggle with addiction. Your conduct was reckless, not just on the day of his death but in the days leading up to his death.”

The sentence was exactly what prosecutors had sought, though Ms Garnett disagreed on some of the details.

She found that Iwamasa did not abuse a position of trust, which could’ve brought more prison time, and said “there is no hard evidence that you acted with malicious intent, though some would disagree”.

Advertisement

Iwamasa was at Perry’s side through the final days of his life, acting as the actor’s enabler, drug messenger and de facto doctor.

He was the last person to see Perry alive and he was the one who found him dead in his hot tub.

He was the first person to reach a deal with prosecutors, pleading guilty in August of 2024 to one count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine resulting in death, and became their most important witness.

Iwamasa’s lawyer, Alan Eisner, argued for a six-month prison term with six months of home confinement, emphasising Iwamasa was always acting at the direction of a boss with much more power than he had.

“His loyalty to Mr Perry was paramount,” Mr Eisner told the judge. “He worshipped Mr Perry, he looked up to Mr Perry. All he did was please and accommodate Mr Perry.”

When Mr Eisner said Iwamasa was unable to act differently than he did, the judge cut him off and said: “Unwilling. Not unable. He could have said no.”

Perry’s family members, some of whom may speak in court, made it clear in letters to the judge that there is no one they blame for his death more than Iwamasa — a long time friend they thought would help the actor maintain sobriety but instead indulged the worst impulses of a lifelong addict.

Perry’s mother, Suzanne Morrison, wrote: “Mathew trusted Kenny. We trusted Kenny. Kenny’s most important job — by far — was to be my son’s companion and guardian in his fight against addiction.

“We trusted a man without a conscience, and my son paid the price.”

Perry had hired Iwamasa in 2022 and was paying him 150,000 dollars (£110,000) a year to live at his Los Angeles home and act as his assistant.

The actor had been taking the surgical anaesthetic ketamine legally for depression, an increasingly common off-label use, but he wanted more than his doctor would give him.

According to Iwamasa’s plea agreement, he bought off-the-books ketamine from another doctor, Salvador Plasencia, who taught him how to inject it.

Plasencia was sentenced to two and a half years in prison in July.

Iwamasa also began buying ketamine from Perry’s acquaintance Erik Fleming, who was getting it from a street dealer.

Fleming was sentenced to two years in prison two weeks ago.

The dealer, Jasveen Sangha, dubbed “The Ketamine Queen”, was sentenced to 15 years on April 8.

In the final days of Perry’s life, Iwamasa was injecting him six to eight times per day.

On October 23 2023, he gave the 54-year-old actor a large dose and left to run errands. He returned to find Perry dead in the hot tub.

The LA county medical examiner found that ketamine was the primary cause of death and drowning was a secondary cause.

At first, Iwamasa lied to police, omitting ketamine from the list of medications Perry was using and saying nothing about his injections, but when investigators served a search warrant in January of 2024, he began coming clean.

Perry became one of the biggest stars of his generation along with Courteney Cox, Jennifer Aniston, Matt LeBlanc, David Schwimmer and Lisa Kudrow on Friends, NBC’s megahit sitcom that ran from 1994 to 2004.

Get more Daily Record exclusives by signing up for free to Google’s preferred sources. Click HERE

A federal judge on Wednesday allowed a teenager accused of sexually assaulting and killing his 18-year-old stepsister aboard a Carnival Cruise ship to remain free for now while arguments continue in a Miami court hearing.

Timothy Hudson, 16, was initially charged as a juvenile, and U.S. Magistrate Judge Edwin Torres previously ruled he could stay with an uncle under electronic monitoring. However, prosecutors later sought his detention after the case was moved to adult court.

Federal prosecutions involving minors are uncommon, but the case falls under federal jurisdiction because the alleged killing took place in international waters, outside any individual state’s authority.

Wednesday’s hearing ended without a final ruling, with the judge saying he wanted to consult the U.S. Marshals Service about the possibility of holding Hudson in central Florida, closer to his family, instead of South Florida, where the trial is set to take place.

It’s unknown when Torres will announce his decision. In the meantime, Hudson walked out of the courthouse after the hearing, rather than being immediately taken into custody.

Hudson has pleaded not guilty to charges of first-degree murder and aggravated sexual abuse. His federal public defenders have declined to comment on the charges.

Hudson’s stepsister, Anna Kepner, had been traveling on the Carnival Horizon ship in November with her family, including Hudson. Before the ship was scheduled to return to Florida, her body was found concealed under a bed in a room she was sharing with Hudson and another teen, a criminal complaint said.

The cause of Kepner’s Nov. 6 death was determined to be mechanical asphyxia, which is when an object or physical force stops someone from breathing.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Alejandra Lopez argued Wednesday that the crimes Hudson is accused of are so serious that the court shouldn’t risk another violent attack. An autopsy determined that Kepner had been pinned down and forcibly raped, the prosecutors said. She also noted that it likely took 3-5 minutes for Hudson to strangle Kepner until she was dead.

“I believe there is clear and convincing evidence that this defendant is a danger to the community,” Lopez said.

The prosecutor also argued that Hudson was a much greater flight risk because he now faces a possible life sentence if convicted of the adult charges. As a juvenile, he would have been released at age 21, regardless of what counts he was found delinquent on.

Evan Kuhl, with the Federal Public Defender’s office, told the judge that Hudson has abided by the conditions of his release for months without issue.

The judge acknowledged that an adult facing these charges would almost certainly be detained until trial, but he still needed to consider the reality of Hudson’s age, despite the adult charges. While the judge said he agreed with the defense that Hudson was a low flight risk, he still hadn’t decided whether the teen posed a threat to the community if certain pre-trial restrictions remained in place.

Kepner’s father, Christopher Kepner, previously released a statement, saying the family was placing “trust in the justice system to pursue the truth with care and integrity.”

“The situation is deeply painful and complex for the entire family,” Kepner said.

Anna Kepner was a high school cheerleader at Temple Christian School in Titusville, Florida, about 40 miles (65 kilometers) east of Orlando. At her memorial service in November, family members encouraged people to wear bright colors instead of the traditional black “in honor of Anna’s bright and beautiful soul.”

John McGinn has been painted doing his iconic goggle celebration on the side of a house in Clydebank.

A stunning mural celebrating Scotland hero John McGinn has appeared in his hometown ahead of the World Cup.

The eye-catching painting, perched on a house close to where he grew up in Clydebank, captures McGinn performing his iconic goggle celebration. The former St Mirren and Hibernian star previously revealed he first pulled out the famous gesture for his nephew, Jack, who wears goggles while playing football because of his poor eyesight.

Alongside McGinn, the striking artwork proudly displays his Scotland squad number – seven – and the words: “Made in Clydebank. From Girders”, a cheeky nod to Irn-Bru’s legendary mid-80s slogan. The Record understands the mural is part of an upcoming campaign for the beloved soft drink.

The Aston Villa captain was born and raised in Clydebank to his parents Stephen and Mary, where he attended St Columba’s High School and St Peter the Apostle High School. His brothers, Stephen and Paul, also play professional football while his grandfather, Jack McGinn, was once Celtic’s chairman and Scottish Football Association president.

John McGinn is no stranger to seeing himself splashed across a wall, with theWitton Arms pub beside Villa Park in Birmingham also boasting a mural of him doing his trademark celebration. A chant adored by the Tartan Army sits alongside it, declaring: “We’ve got McGinn…Super John McGinn”.

Other Scotland heroes have also recently seen murals spring up in tribute to their incredible achievements. Captain Andy Robertson paid a visit to his own mural last week on Tancred Road, just a short stroll from Anfield.

Painted by MurWalls, it features a powerful portrait of Robertson touching the Liver bird on his chest alongside the message ‘Born in Glasgow, made in Liverpool’. References to the nine trophies he has lifted as a Red are also included, as well as the chant supporters have serenaded him with over the years.

That comes after Scott McTominay’s World Cup-sending overhead kick against Denmark was immortalised in a mural just a stone’s throw from Hampden Park. Alex Coyle, known online as Alko, described the painstaking process of recreating Scott McTominay’s sensational overhead kick, which fired Scotland to the World Cup for the first time in 28 years.

He teamed up with two England-based street artists, Dan Gudgeon and Harvey Whetton, after being commissioned by hand-painted advertising company Global Street Art. The trio spent four gruelling days bringing the massive mural to life on a wall at the end of a tenement block on Somerville Drive in February.

Alex said he was thrilled to be involved. He previously said: “I was pretty happy, because originally [Global Street Art] had just said they had a job for me in Glasgow. And then they sent a depiction of the actual design, and I thought ‘that’s definitely going to be a big deal’.”

The artists began by covering the entire wall in black paint, followed by a layer of Scotland blue. Alex admitted this was the most laborious part of the job.

He continued: “Sometimes you get a bit bored using the roller on the pebble-dash wall. We painted the whole thing black and then the whole thing blue. That’s what takes the biggest amount of time. It’s manually taxing and always a bit boring.”

Once the background was complete, the team moved on to the detailed work using spray paint, taking turns across different levels of scaffolding.

“Our team leader Dan directed us, but we all have pretty similar skills, so we just took turns with whatever needed doing and what parts we fancied doing,” Alex said.

The unpredictable Glasgow weather added a further challenge. He added: “It was quite cold, but on the Wednesday, it was pretty windy.

“I was trying to hold onto the reference image but it was blowing about quite a lot when I was at the top of the scaffolding. But that’s better than if it was raining.”

Get more Daily Record exclusives by signing up for free to Google’s preferred sources. Click HERE

WASHINGTON (AP) — Shrey Parikh finished third in the 2024 Scripps National Spelling Bee before making a stunning exit from his school bee last year. Now in his final year before he ages out of the competition, he’s fully committed.

The 14-year-old from Rancho Cucamonga, California, works with three coaches. He pays for word lists and study guides. He tries to learn every Greek and Latin root, every language pattern, every spelling bee-worthy word he can find. And he competes throughout the year in online bees that pit him against the country’s other top spellers.

Shrey’s approach has proven effective for spellers seeking to hold the trophy, and on Wednesday he became one of nine spellers who got through the semifinals and will compete in the finals Thursday night.

But at least one other finalist has gone old-school, shunning outside help and using the dictionary as his guide.

Their opposing strategies have revived a long-running if good-natured debate in spelling circles: Which is more important, mastery of languages or rote memorization?

“At the end of finals, most of the words aren’t going to have a really clean-cut language pattern or rule that you can pull from. So I think memorization is really important,” said Sam Evans, who coached each of the past two champions. “Sometimes it gets a bad reputation, but you have to do it.”

Every word is in the dictionary, if you can find it

It’s all but impossible to reach the finals without knowing the components that make up words absorbed into English: roots and languages of origin. But some champions have stood out for their incredible recall, the ability to instantly visualize any word they’ve run across or even recite dictionary definitions verbatim: Nihar Janga in 2016, Zaila Avant-garde in 2021 and Bruhat Soma in 2024.

Sarv Dharavane might be the next of that group.

Sarv finished third in 2025 as a relative unknown in the spelling community. There’s a reason for that. The 12-year-old sixth-grader from Dunwoody, Georgia, has no coach. He doesn’t participate in online bees. And his only study guide is the source for every word in the competition: Merriam-Webster’s Unabridged dictionary.

“The book is my coach,” Sarv said.

Given his past success, he saw no reason to change it up. And he’s back in the finals.

“I didn’t really change anything because my strategy got me far last year, but I did more of what I did before,” Sarv said.

“I used to read the dictionary and set aside difficult words to study later,” he explained. “I did it a lot, so I got a lot of words and it was really easy just to go through them. I’ve always been able to remember pretty well, and I can read through long lists without getting tired, so this strategy works pretty well for me.”

Simple, right?

Many spellers think there’s a better way.

Master the roots, and you don’t need to memorize as much

Dev Shah, the 2023 champion, advocates an artistic approach to spelling — the one also championed by his coach, Scott Remer. Master roots, master language patterns, and learn how to spot the exceptions, and you can spell a word that you’ve never seen or don’t remember.

Shah accepted that he could never memorize the dictionary — “No one can,” he said — and he believed if he got a word he didn’t know, he could figure it out.

“The skill of guessing is everything,” he wrote in a Washington Post op-ed after his victory.

In an interview Wednesday, Shah said memorization was important, especially for quirky words with obscure origins. He said the best spellers, including Avant-garde, found a balance between memorization and mastery.

Having a conceptual understanding of how words are spelled can also help spellers perform under pressure when their memory fails them, said Shah, who admitted he finds it daunting to memorize a huge volume of words.

Former champion Sohum Sukhatankar, who coaches Shrey, said spellers need to fill their brains with the most useful information.

“When you’re at the highest level, you have to be prepared for hundreds of thousands of words,” he said. “You want to do as little memorization as possible to avoid the chance that you just forget it, so it’s all about efficiency.”

After a catastrophic school bee, one speller seeks every edge

Shrey knows he might have to guess when he’s at the microphone, but he wants to eliminate variables. That makes sense, given that a year ago, he wasn’t even the top speller at his school.

“I had a fever at my school bee last year, and I just blanked on the word ‘calipers’ … and I missed it,” he said. “I was really devastated.”

It took a few months before Shrey was motivated to start studying again. Once he did, he added Sukhatankar to his coaching team. He’s learned how to slow down when he’s at the microphone because of a bad experience in 2023, when he rushed through a word, didn’t enunciate it clearly and judges determined he got it wrong.

He’s also a believer in study guides. Shrey said an interactive, AI-assisted platform called Onyma that offers personalized learning and competition with other spellers — launched this month by Sukhatankar and Evans — has helped with his preparation.

He also uses SpellPundit, an online resource created by two former spellers and their parents that made a splash at the 2019 bee when the majority of that year’s eight co-champions used it. The company claims every champion since as a customer.

Shrey won the annual SpellPundit bee, the South Asian Spelling Bee and several other online bees, which he doesn’t necessarily see as an advantage.

“I feel like it (creates) more pressure to perform,” he said.

Evans believes spellers who want to win should use their study time efficiently, but there’s no barrier to learning every possible word.

“There’s a common joke among spellers that says everything’s in the dictionary, so it’s all ‘on-list,’” he said. “The dictionary is the most basic thing that spellers need to know.”

___

Ben Nuckols has covered the Scripps National Spelling Bee since 2012. Follow his work here.

A new management system could be installed in the car park

A Cambridgeshire car park could be upgraded to tackle parking “abuse”. ParkingEye has proposed to install a car park management system in the car park along St Mary’s Street and at the back of 28 High Street in Huntingdon.

This would involve installing an Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) camera and ANPR column. The parking company wants to install the management system to “reduce car park abuse and ensure spaces are available for genuine site users”.

The car park has 20 parking bays, including disabled spots. The applicant added: “The scheme has been located on an area of land that is already used for car parking and as such will not significantly impact upon visual or landscape receptors. The proposal will ensure that the existing car park is used more effectively and reduce the amount of abuse that currently occurs.”

If approved, the cameras will be installed on columns which will “monitor the entrance and exit points of the car park”. There will also be additional signage on new and existing poles detailing the terms and conditions of using the car park.

The applicant said there is currently no “sophisticated system” to manage the car park, which leaves it open to “misuse and can often mean that spaces are not available for people using the site”.

The development will have a minimal impact on the local landscape and character. Access to the car park will also remain the same.

ANPR cameras used high speed optical character recognition to instantly read vehicle registration plates. This is then cross referenced with real-time to track the vehicles movements.

Bolton Council has labelled the schemes as causing “high expected traffic disruption” after multi-way temporary traffic signals were installed at a number of busy junctions.

The first set of works started today (Tuesday, May 27) at the junction of Bury New Road and Castle Road, opposite the garage.

Multi-way traffic lights have been put in place from 8pm until 5am for utility asset works being carried out by Untitled Utilities.

The works are expected to continue until Thursday, May 29.

A second scheme also began today on Bury Road, outside number 428 and facing Crompton Way.

Multi-way signals have again been installed while new service connections are carried out.

These works are also scheduled to finish on May 29.

Roadworks (Image: NQ)

The combination of both projects starting on the same day is likely to worsen congestion across the area, particularly during peak travel times and evening journeys.

Drivers travelling between Bolton town centre, Halliwell and Tonge Moor could face significant delays as traffic is funnelled through temporary lights at multiple points.

Google Traffic Live shows Bury Road in red meaning heavy traffic (Image: Google Maps)

Motorists are also being warned that disruption is unlikely to ease any time soon.

Further multi-way traffic lights are due to be installed on Bury Road at the junction with Linthorpe Road over the weekend beginning Friday, May 30.

Those works are linked to utility repair and maintenance activity and are expected to create additional delays.

Google maps image (Image: Google Maps)

Residents are being advised to allow extra travel time, consider alternative routes where possible and expect slower-moving traffic across the Bury Road corridor for the remainder of the week and into the weekend.

There are millions of chemical tanks around the U.S., and experts say it is exceedingly rare for them to fail as long as they are properly maintained and inspected.

Yet this past week, there were two major hazardous chemical emergencies on the West Coast. A large tank containing a corrosive chemical at a Longview, Washington, paper mill ruptured on Tuesday, killing two and possibly nine others. And late last week about 50,000 people were evacuated in Southern California after a chemical tank overheated and threatened the area with a catastrophic explosion. Authorities mitigated that risk, and people have been able to return home.

The incidents have raised questions about who is responsible for regulating companies that handle dangerous materials. An Associated Press review has found that officials at the local, state and federal levels all play a part in keeping these facilities safe.

Here’s what to know:

Tanks typically have robust safety standards

Chemical engineering professor Stephen Kmiotek said almost every industry uses chemical tanks. They are common because most manufacturers will use chemicals at some point of their process.

Kmiotek said there might be millions of tanks across the country, but they are generally safe as long as companies are following the standards for how they are built, maintained and inspected. The Worcester Polytechnic Institute professor said the failure rate of chemical tanks is about 1 failure per 1 million tanks per year.

“There are a lot of measures in place to keep people safe,” said Kmiotek, who has tracked the Washington incident closely.

But it is important that companies keep up proper maintenance and inspections, particularly after the tanks get older. Inspections should be increased after a tank passes 10 years, he said. That is especially true for tanks that use highly caustic substances, like the white liquor in the Washington tank. Valves on the tank will need to be replaced more often.

Authorities in Washington said they don’t yet know how old the tank was or how recently valves had been replaced.

After the Bhopal, India, disaster at a pesticide plant in 1984 that killed at least 3,800 people, the chemical industry took a number of steps to improve safety, including making sure chemical tanks are built right and inspected, informing workers about the risks and analyzing what could go wrong if the tank fails and who is at risk.

State agencies are responsible for inspections

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was involved in the response to both situations, and the U.S. Chemical Safety Board said Wednesday it was opening an investigation into the Washington incident. It is an independent federal agency that investigates incidents that could cause “the catastrophic release of extremely hazardous substances.”

But it was state agencies in Washington and California that oversaw the safety at the two companies, along with local fire marshals and hazardous materials teams, said Marissa Baker, an associate professor in the University of Washington, Department of Environmental & Occupational Sciences. The California Division of Occupational Safety and Health and the Washington state Department of Labor and Industries would have been responsible for conducting inspections, she said.

In Washington state, where there are far more chemical sites than there are inspectors, the state labor agency generally opens investigations based on complaints or incidents, Baker said.

Baker noted that the Washington company, Nippon Dynawave, was the subject of two investigations by the state labor and industries agency, although the issues were not related to the current situation, and it had fires in recent years.

Federal agencies provide some oversight

Federal regulators require facilities that store or use hazardous chemicals to maintain a “safety data sheet” that details the hazards and offers guidance on the emergency response. Businesses must share that information with state, tribal and local officials. Under an EPA right-to-know rule, the companies must allow fire departments to conduct inspections upon request.

The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration has established protocols for industries that use or store highly dangerous chemicals, known as Process Safety Management standards. They involve inspections, training, special work permits, operating procedures and emergency planning and response.

While the GKN Aerospace plant in Garden Grove, California, would fall under this type of regulation due to the materials it used in its manufacturing process, it was not immediately clear whether the Longview paper mill had to follow the Process Safety Management protocols.

The public danger from some chemicals isn’t always clear

Stephen Lester, a public health expert and the former science director of the Center for Health, Environment & Justice, said he is concerned that there aren’t clear standards for exposure levels. One of the primary standards is for workplace exposure, and there isn’t a proven standard for how much of a chemical it is safe to be exposed to after a spill or explosion.

“Without these health-based guidelines, you’re ending up with some person making the judgment about what’s acceptable and what’s not,” said Lester, who has spent more than 40 years helping communities assess their health risks.

And the workplace standards are based on an average man, so they don’t account for children or the elderly or anyone with a compromised immune system.

“It’s a very tough situation. I don’t envy the scientists and the toxicologists in the position of advising the decision makers because that person’s going to have to make a judgment call in their best opinion based on what information he knows and he’s been able to research and generally accept it about the exposure to these chemicals,” Lester said.

Slack, the popular workplace instant message service, began experiencing “severe” lag on Wednesday afternoon, according to the company.

“The Slack Engineering team is currently investigating severe latency impacting all Slack services,” Slack wrote on its website just after 4 p.m. Pacific time. “We’ll provide an update as soon as we have more information to share and apologize for any inconvenience this is causing.”

A company dashboard showed problems impacting the service’s login, messaging, notification, search and API capabilities.

More than 3,000 problem reports about Slack had been logged by monitoring site Downdetector around the time of the announcement.

“We continue to investigate the issue, and are‌ implementing fixes to restore services,” the company wrote on its site later on Wednseday. “We’re starting to see some improvements from the fixes implemented so far. We’ll provide another update as soon as we have more information, and again we are sorry for the inconvenience this is causing.”

The Independent has contacted Slack for comment.

Online, Slack users traded notes about the impact of the issue.

“Slack is down, I guess it’s time to pack up for the day,” Kevin Bailey, founder of the healthcare start-up Understood Care, wrote on X.

”Slack is having an incident that’s not reflected in their status page,” AI strategist Patrick Kolencherry wrote on X prior to the announcement from the company.

This is a breaking news story and will be updated with new information.

She is up against southern noir crime fiction novelist SA Cosby, known as Shawn Andre Cosby, whose book King Of Ashes has been shortlisted for an unprecedented three Dagger awards, including Gold, the Short Story Dagger and the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger, which recognises the best thriller of the year.