Good afternoon. The Australian government faces having to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to the American oil and gas company Chevron to help it clean up oil wells on Barrow Island, in Western Australia, under a deal made in the 1980s.
The WA government also faces a hefty bill – estimated to be $129m – to help repair an offshore nature reserve where about 900 wells have been drilled over the past six decades.
Chevron says it has paid more than $1bn in royalties – about $3 a barrel – for oil and gas extracted from beneath the island, which is about 70km off the state’s north-west coast. Under state legislation written especially for the project, federal and state taxpayers will have to pay them back nearly half that amount to help cover remediation costs.
Top news
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AFP news agency calls on Israel to allow evacuation of its freelance contributors
In video
Behind closed doors at a New York City federal building, people are confined after being seized by officers on their way out of immigration court on the 12th floor. This rare look inside Donald Trump’s anti-immigration crackdown shows one of several rooms from which accounts have emerged of people being detained in unsuitable conditions with few basic provisions. Ice maintains the rooms are not used for detention. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has requested that the small Pacific nation of Palau accept asylum seekers currently residing in the US, amid a wider push from the US to deport migrants to countries they are not from.
What they said …
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“We’re not gelded, we’re not emasculated. We’re very much virile and out there” – Michael McCormack
The Nationals MP said he didn’t want to be a boring interview for the media – this was one way of going about it. McCormack was responding to Liberal MP Dan Tehan, who had earlier compared McCormack and Barnaby Joyce to “two steers in a paddock” after one former leader backed the other’s push to repeal net zero by 2050. The party’s current leader, David Littleproud, meanwhile, says he’s “relaxed” about whatever Joyce and McCormack are up to.
In numbers
Just days after the cancellation of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, Donald Trump has claimed that the future owner of the US TV network CBS will provide him with $20m worth of advertising and programming as part of his settlement with Paramount over a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris.
Before bed read
Is “office air” to blame for your limp workday hair and spotty, flaky skin? Air conditioning, heating and poor ventilation in the office can contribute to drier skin and greasier hair, Natasha May writes – but other factors such as the commute may play a part too.
Daily word game
Today’s starter word is: FIX. You have five goes to get the longest word including the starter word. Play Wordiply.
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