What happened
Labour is promising a sweeping package of measures to help communities reclaim declining town centres. Under a new “Pride in Place” programme, residents will be able to block the spread of betting and vape shops, take over disused pubs and libraries, and repurpose boarded-up buildings through community right-to-buy schemes. A multi-billion-pound fund will be shared across up to 340 towns to support local projects, with extra money for initiatives backed by grassroots groups.

Who said what
Communities Secretary Steve Reed said the plan would fuel “patriotic renewal” and counter “Reform’s toxic division”. He warned that Nigel Farage’s party was exploiting high street decline, adding: “You can’t claim to love Britain and then talk it down. Real patriots build their communities up.” The comments “illustrate Labour’s concern over the rise of Reform UK, which has been ahead of the party in the polls for months”, said Daniel Martin in The Telegraph. The move “also forms part of Starmer’s own fightback against his internal and external critics”, said Kiran Stacey in The Guardian.

What next?
Ministers say the programme will help towns launch cooperative businesses and breathe life into local economies.

What happened
Doctors have managed to treat Huntington’s disease for the first time, with a gene therapy slowing the disease by 75% in sufferers. The genetic disease has no cure or currently approved treatments, but the company uniQure developed and tested a new drug, known as AMT-130, which is delivered by brain surgery.

Who said what
Experts from University College London said the finding could “change everything” for patients with the condition, which relentlessly kills brain cells and resembles a combination of dementia, Parkinson’s and motor neurone disease.

Treatment is “likely to be very expensive”, said the BBC, but represents “real hope” for those suffering from “a disease that hits people in their prime and devastates families”.

What next?
If further data shows more success for the drug it will then go on to the medical regulators, who will decide if it is safe and effective. After that the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence will determine if it provides good value for money depending on effectiveness and cost.

While air travel remains the safest mode of transportation by a significant margin, there might be something happening on planes that could cause you a literal headache. Toxic fumes from jet airliners can sometimes leak into the cabin and cause significant health problems for passengers, according to a new investigation from The Wall Street Journal. The fumes have reportedly been found in the cabin of almost every modern model of plane and there are indications that both the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and jet manufacturers have long known about the problem.

There have been thousands of “fume events reported to the US Federal Aviation Administration since 2010, in which toxic fumes from a jet’s engines leak unfiltered into the cockpit or cabin”, said the Journal’s investigation. This is due to a design element on planes called “bleed air”. While half of the oxygen on planes is recirculated into the cabin through filters, the other half is “pulled from outside via the aircraft’s engines”, which can bring unwanted oil fumes into the cabin if the seals keeping the oil out fail. These fumes “have led to emergency landings, sickened passengers and affected pilots’ vision and reaction times mid-flight”, added the Journal.

The FAA maintains that fumes rarely leak into plane cabins. In “rare instances, mechanical issues such as failures of an engine oil seal or recirculation fan bearings can cause fumes to enter the cabin”, the agency told CBS News in a statement. Flight manufacturers and airlines have provided similar remarks. Airbus’s aircraft are “designed and manufactured according to all relevant and applicable airworthiness requirements”, a company spokesperson told People.