The Guardian

Rio Tinto said in December it may cease operations at the Tomago aluminium smelter at the end of its current electricity supply contract Anthony Albanese and the New South Wales premier, Chris Minns, are preparing to mount a major bailout of Australia’s largest aluminium smelter, in a deal worth as much as $2.5bn. Resources giant Rio Tinto said in December it was contemplating ceasing operations …

Democratic socialist is frontrunner in four-way race to face Republican Tom Tiffany in test of anti-establishment mood Wisconsin voters will decide on Tuesday whether to nominate a democratic socialist for the state’s highest office in the latest test of an anti-establishment wave among Democratic primary voters. Francesca Hong , a democratic socialist state lawmaker, emerged as the frontrunner i…

Verdant thinktank says cost could top £25bn a year by 2030 and calls for maximum temperature for working and urban redesign to cool down cities Repeated debilitating heatwaves this summer are likely to have cost the UK economy more than £4bn in lost economic output by the end of July, new analysis shows. Green thinktank Verdant had suggested June’s unseasonally hot weather had an economic cost of…

Exclusive: Horace Mason, 74, who has lived in Sweden for 25 years, faces being deported after court ruling A 74-year-old British man who has been living in Sweden for 25 years who needs round-the-clock care for dementia has been given 10 days to leave the country after he lost a post-Brexit migration court case. The deportation order comes after a Swedish court ruling in July that the government’…

First responders, residents and environmental groups say military dropping flares to destroy forests and crops Firefighters and residents of south Lebanon have accused the Israeli military of lighting wildfires in the region, as forested areas burned down in blazes sparked by Israeli bombing. Environmental groups said the fires in recent weeks were part of a longstanding Israeli practice of targe…

Organoids and tissues grown from human cells promise more accurate results, with £20m Cambridge project to create standardised models Miniature human organs and other tissues are to be grown from NHS patients’ cells in a drive to improve medicine testing and reduce the number of animals used in drug development. Scientists will use the clumps of tissue to learn how diseases vary between patients,…

State’s Democratic lieutenant governor bests Angie Craig in another election contest pitting a progressive against a moderate Peggy Flanagan, Minnesota’s lieutenant governor, won the Democratic primary for US Senate in the state, in another election contest that pitted a progressive against a moderate, this time with immigration issues at the center. The US Senate race in Minnesota, in which Flan…

The Comac C919 will fly from Beijing to Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia, although experts say it could take generations for it to challenge the west’s dominance of the industry China hopes to break into the world of commercial aviation with the first international flight of a Chinese-made passenger jet scheduled for Wednesday. The Comac C919 will take off from Beijing capital international airport at 3pm…

Al-Ahmed, who maintains his innocence, was accused of putting his father in a headlock in March Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates Get our breaking news email , free app or daily news podcast The man who disarmed one of the gunmen allegedly responsible for the Bondi beach terror attack has had an assault case against him tossed out. Ahmed al-Ahmed, 44, had been accused of putt…

Nearly 500 personnel battle Timber fire in Los Padres national forest as blaze grows to 3,000 acres Evacuations have been ordered for areas along California’s famous Big Sur coast as a wildfire burns in the nearby steep, rugged mountains. The Timber fire in Monterey county started on Sunday and grew to nearly 3,000 acres by Tuesday evening, according to Cal Fire, the state’s fire agency. Nearly 5…

Prime minister Anutin Charnvirakul calls for tighter gun controls and ‘decisive penalties’ after nine dead in school shooting Thailand has suspended firearms licences after last week’s deadly school shooting , as the bodies of the teenage attacker and the grandparents he killed were cremated. The prime minister, Anutin Charnvirakul, said he had ordered the interior ministry and police to stop iss…

Officers – correctly – may not have fully unzipped the bag containing the lifelike doll to avoid destroying evidence, one expert says Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates Get our breaking news email , free app or daily news podcast Revelations that a “body” found inside a suitcase was actually a sex doll may have been embarrassing for police, but experts say officers followed th…

The prime minister tells the Guardian that last year’s diplomatic rift with ally New Zealand could be on voters’ minds as they head to the polls As voters in the Cook Islands prepare to head to the polls in a high-stakes general election, they will have much to reflect on. Over recent years, politics in this small island nation has been defined by fierce debates about deep-sea mining , diplomatic…

New research sheds light on the genetic basis of the venomous insect’s ‘weird mating behaviour’ Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates Get our breaking news email , free app or daily news podcast If you think you’ve had a bad one-night stand, spare a thought for the male redback spider, whose sole reproductive partner eats him after sex. Male redbacks appear to invite this canniba…

Journalists and others were allowed to fly on presidential jet despite security threat while Trump was spirited away Sign up for the Breaking News US newsletter email Democrats called on Tuesday for a congressional briefing over a stunning charade in which Donald Trump was secretly spirited to different plane than the one the public and press believed he was travelling on, an episode first report…