Ten Things You Need to Know Today: Monday 30 Apr 2018

Amber Rudd has stepped down as Home Secretary, admitting she
should have known about deportation targets. Rudd denied such
targets existed but leaked emails seemed to show otherwise.
Accepting her resignation, Theresa May accused Rudd of
“inadvertently misleading” the home affairs select committee on the
issue.

Some parts of the UK could get one month’s rainfall in one day
today, the Met Office says, with “unseasonably cold” weather,
particularly in the south and east of England. The Environment
Agency has issued a total of 31 flood alerts across England.
Southern, Thameslink and Gatwick Express railways are all warning
of delays.

The shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, says Labour would cap
fees on overdrafts if it were elected. The party says it wants to
end the “national scandal” of poor families getting deeper into
debt – and claims its policy would save 2.7 million people who are
stuck with permanent overdrafts the equivalent of £86 every
year.

The Guardian reports that Network Rail has undertaken a
“secretive” policy of cutting down millions of mature and smaller
trees across the UK, in a bid to stop the nuisance of leaves on the
line. The train network operator admits the trees it is felling are
healthy but says its new “vegetation management” policy will end
delays.

A tree planted on the White House lawn by French President
Emmanuel Macron and US leader Donald Trump last week has since
disappeared from view. The oak tree was a gift to Trump from Macron
and came from a first world war battlefield where American
servicemen died. No official explanation of its absence has been
given.

The EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, begins a
two-day visit to Ireland today, after warning that the UK
government has contradicted itself when laying out its policy on a
post-Brexit border between Northern Ireland and the republic. DUP
leader Arlene Foster warned that Barnier “doesn’t understand” the
unionist stance.

The BBC says street parties and other community events will be
allowed to screen the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle
live without a TV license. A premises usually has to have a TV
license to hold such an event but there will be a special waiver
for the royal wedding, which takes place in Windsor on 19 May this
year.

The oldest known spider has died at the age of 43, after being
stung by a wasp. Identified by Australian scientists as Number 16,
the female trapdoor spider was significantly older than the
previous record holder, a 28-year-old tarantula found in Mexico.
Number 16 was said to have lived a quiet and sedentary life in her
burrow.

More than 500 students and teachers were evacuated from a
university in Melbourne, Australia, last week because of a strong
smell of “gas” which turned out to be a rotting durian fruit. The
tropical fruit, known for its pungent smell even when not rotten,
was in a cupboard in the RMIT library – but the smell was carried
by air conditioning.

A third of all early deaths could be prevented by a vegetarian
diet, according to a new scientific study.

The researchers at Harvard say their new findings indicate that
people are vastly underestimating the benefits of a plant-based
diet