Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news

The presence of US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick at today’s talks in London is seen as directly related to China’s export ban on rare earth minerals and permanent magnets, critical in aerospace, military and semi-conductor companies worldwide, my colleague Lisa O’Carroll reports.

After the call between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping last week, their first since Trump’s inauguration in January, the US said Xi had agreed to resume shipments of rare earths to the US, breaking the logjam needed for talks to resume.

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© Photograph: AP

© Photograph: AP

The FBI is searching for a suspect accused of assaulting a federal officer and damaging government property during the anti-ICE demonstrations in Los Angeles.

Police fire rubber bullets and teargas while protesters block a major freeway and set self-driving cars on fire

• Full report: Teargas and flash-bangs used on LA protesters as opposition to Trump intensifies

Around 300 Guard troops have been deployed to LA so far.

President Donald Trump earlier said he would deploy 2,000 California National Guard troops to Los Angeles to respond to immigration protests, despite the objections of California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

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© Photograph: David Ryder/Reuters

© Photograph: David Ryder/Reuters

Dua Lipa and her younger sister, Rina Lipa, are five years apart.

Israeli forces early Monday detained the "Freedom Flotilla" aid boat bound for Gaza while carrying Greta Thunberg and other activists.

Aston Villa and Manchester United must shift surplus players while Sunderland and Leeds seek extra squad depth

Recruitment was cast as the main reason for the club’s disappointment last season. Mikel Merino playing as an auxiliary centre-forward after Kai Havertz had broken down made that apparent. This will be a summer with a marked difference with Andrea Berta ready to go as the club’s new sporting director. Berta spent 12 years at Atlético Madrid, supplying the players and foundation behind Diego Simeone’s dynasty. Arsenal seek to avoid friction between Arteta dictating as he did previously and Berta wielding the same kind of power that was so effective in Madrid. Benjamin Sesko of RB Leipzig is heavily linked to the striking vacancy with Sporting’s Viktor Gyökeres seen as too costly. Martin Zubimendi is expected to reunite with Merino in Arsenal’s midfield, though Real Madrid may yet turn the midfielder’s head. Kepa Arrizabalaga will come in as a back-up goalkeeper within a squad well set for success but missing the final pieces. John Brewin

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© Composite: Guardian Picture Desk

© Composite: Guardian Picture Desk

Suspension comes as 13m students take four-day gaokao tests for limited spots at country’s universities

Big Chinese tech companies appear to have turned off some AI functions to prevent cheating during the country’s highly competitive university entrance exams.

More than 13.3 million students are sitting the four-day gaokao exams, which began on Saturday and determine if and where students can secure a limited place at university.

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© Photograph: Xinhua/Shutterstock

© Photograph: Xinhua/Shutterstock

Organisation’s former president has no regrets over what was lowest grossing film in US history when released a decade ago

There are movies that bomb at the box office. And then there is the Fifa biopic United Passions, starring Tim Roth, Sam Neill and Gérard Depardieu, which was hit with the cinematic equivalent of a thermonuclear strike when it opened in the US 10 years ago this week.

You might remember the fallout; the fact it took only $918 (£678) in its opening weekend, making it the lowest grossing film in US history at the time, and the stories detailing how two people bought tickets to see it in Philadelphia, and only one in Phoenix, before it was pulled by distributors.

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© Photograph: Cinematic/Alamy

© Photograph: Cinematic/Alamy

It was after the substitution of the former Liverpool captain that Thomas Tuchel’s side slipped in to individualism

The tendency is always to gloom. How could it not be? Nobody could have sat through England’s 1-0 win over Andorra on Saturday and not felt a profound sense of frustration. Six million years of human evolution has culminated in this? When the England manager shrugs and says he can’t blame the fans for booing, you know it was bad.

Thomas Tuchel was a short-term appointment. He’s not in the post for pathways or development or creating a culture. He’s here to win the World Cup next summer. In the boozy, drowsy somnolence of the RCDE Stadium, that felt a preposterous ambition. Look at England’s rivals.

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© Photograph: Urbanandsport/NurPhoto/Shutterstock

© Photograph: Urbanandsport/NurPhoto/Shutterstock

Feeling energised after a cold dip may just be your body’s shock response –and increased immune cell activity doesn’t always mean fewer infections

‘It’s a long-held belief that taking to the waters is good for your health,” says Mike Tipton, a professor of human and applied physiology at the University of Portsmouth. From Roman frigidariums to Thomas Jefferson’s foot baths, cold immersion has long been seen as curative. But does modern science support the idea that it boosts immunity?

The answer: it’s complicated. While cold water immersion does activate the body, that’s not the same as strengthening the immune system. “When you immerse yourself in cold water, your body undergoes the cold shock response,” says Tipton. “You get rapid breathing, a spike in heart rate and a surge of stress hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol.” This may explain why people feel more alert or energised after a cold dip. But does it mean you’re less likely to get sick?

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© Illustration: Edith Pritchett/The Guardian

© Illustration: Edith Pritchett/The Guardian

Dear Abby advises a man on family tensions after his wife's passing.

LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell said the protests have "overwhelmed" cops.

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander dominates with 34 points as the Thunder defeated the Pacers, 123-107, in Game 2 of the NBA Finals, getting help off the bench from Alex Caruso and Aaron Wiggins.

Happy birthday to us

Forgive me the indulgence of celebrating ten years of this column. Toot toot!

I began posting biweekly brainteasers at the end of May 2015, originally addressing you folk as “guzzlers” – Guardian puzzlers. The cringy coinage didn’t stick, but the column did, and here we are a decade and 260 columns later.

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© Photograph: Knut Hebstreit/Alamy

© Photograph: Knut Hebstreit/Alamy

Mark Read will step down from UK group after market capitalisation halved during his seven-year tenure

Today, the Guardian, in collaboration with the University of Cambridge, launches Secure Messaging, a world-first from a media organisation

Today, the Guardian launches a unique new tool for protecting journalistic sources. Secure Messaging is an important new technological innovation that will make it easier for people to share confidential information with us.

Blowing the whistle on wrongdoing has always taken bravery. As threats to journalists around the world increase, so does the need to protect confidential sources. One of the most dramatic global shifts against whistleblower safety comes as part of the Trump administration’s continued assault on the free press.

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© Photograph: The Guardian/GNM

© Photograph: The Guardian/GNM

Frederick Ashton’s La Fille mal gardée to be performed for first time, replacing classics by Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky after fundraising in London

One of the “most English of ballets” will be performed for the first time at the National Opera of Ukraine in Kyiv after a boycott of the classic Russian repertoire, including Swan Lake and the Nutcracker.

Sir Frederick Ashton’s La Fille mal gardée, a celebrated romantic comedy, will be performed to a sell-out audience on Thursday after Ukraine turned away from the works of Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky and Prokofiev.

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© Photograph: Anastasia Vlasova/The Guardian

© Photograph: Anastasia Vlasova/The Guardian

The extraordinarily popular painter of kitsch American scenes struggled with addiction and depression, as this documentary with access to his previously unseen works shows

You won’t find the works of Thomas Kinkade lining the walls of the Museum of Modern Art, yet the painter, who died in 2012, is one of the best-selling artists in history and his paintings hang in tens of millions of American households. Kinkade’s typical subjects – rustic landscapes, sleepy cottages, quaint gazebos – bask in an idyllic calm, a luminous callback to a fabled simpler past. Turning to his unpublished archive, Miranda Yousef’s engrossing documentary portrait unveils the dark shadows that lurked within the self-titled “painter of light”.

Through interviews with family members, close collaborators and critics, as well as Kinkade’s own words, the film traces his meteoric success in the 1980s and 90s. Shunned by the art world, he marketed his works through home-shopping television channels and a network of franchise stores to a ravenous fanbase. The Kinkade name became a brand and his pictures were plastered on to collectible plates, cookie jars and mugs. At its peak, his empire generated more than $100m a year.

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© Photograph: Publicity image

© Photograph: Publicity image

An evocative deep dive into the environmental journalist and Brazilian Indigenous defender going missing in the Amazon. Plus, Richard Ayoade teams up with Warwick Davis, while Amber Rudd has some inside info to share …

This six-episode Guardian podcast opens with evocative descriptions of dense Amazonian jungle teeming with macaws, jaguars and howler monkeys. But the pastoral beauty soon gives way to fear, as we hear about the disappearance of environmental journalist Dom Phillips and Brazilian Indigenous defender Bruno Pereira in a tale that pits them against the forces that run one of the world’s biggest drug-smuggling routes. This gripping investigation tries to get to the bottom of what happened and, given that it’s hosted by Phillips’s friend, the Guardian’s Latin America correspondent Tom Phillips, does so in a movingly personal manner. Alexi Duggins
Episodes weekly, Widely available

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© Composite: The Guardian

© Composite: The Guardian

Gwen’s talent vastly outshone her brother’s – but both are treated with subtlety in this outstanding dual biography

A young woman sits reading, a pot of tea to hand, her blue dress almost the only colour in a still, sandy room. Gwen John’s painting The Convalescent shows a subdued yet happy moment, for this woman is free to think and feel. That, we see in Judith Mackrell’s outstanding double biography of Gwen and her brother, was her ideal for living: to be at liberty even if that meant existing in deepest solitude.

The quietness of a life spent largely alone in single rooms, reading, drawing, painting and occasionally having wild sex with the sculptor Rodin, is counterpointed in this epic narrative by the crowded, relentless, almost insanely overstimulated life of Augustus John. Lion of the arts in early 20th-century Britain, he was a bigamist, adulterer, father of so many children you lose track (so did he), and an utterly forgettable painter.

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© Photograph: incamerastock/Alamy

© Photograph: incamerastock/Alamy

As a lifelong singer and a teacher, Jean Walters was used to making a noise. At 67 she found a new way to do it

One sunny August evening, Jean Walters was sitting in her garden in Meltham, West Yorkshire, when the church bells began to ring. She sipped her glass of wine; the evening seemed idyllic. “A quintessential English country garden,” she thought, and posted on Facebook: “Bells ringing, how lovely!”

The next day when the plumber came to fix her toilet, more prosaically, he mentioned that he had seen her post, and being a bellringer himself, gave her the number of the local church’s tower captain. “He said, ‘Come along and try it.’ I did. I loved it. I said to my husband, ‘Did you hear that single bong? That was me.’”

Tell us: has your life taken a new direction after the age of 60?

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© Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian

© Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian

The Liaoning carrier, accompanied by two missile destroyers and a supply ship, entered Japan’s exclusive economic zone before exiting to conduct military drills

A Chinese aircraft carrier group has entered an area of Japan’s territorial waters for the first time, prompting concern in Tokyo over China’s expanding naval reach.

The Liaoning carrier, accompanied by two missile destroyers and a supply ship, entered Japan’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) on Saturday evening, Japan’s defence ministry said, before exiting to conduct military drills.

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© Photograph: China Stringer Network/Reuters

© Photograph: China Stringer Network/Reuters

Scott Pelley spoke out about President Trump's lawsuit against CBS and its parent company.

Key producer index falls at fastest pace in 2 years despite moves to boost demand

The national guard’s deployment in Los Angeles sets the US on a familiar authoritarian pathway. History shows the results

Now that Donald Trump’s tariffs have been halted, his big, beautiful bill has been stymied, and his multi-billionaire tech bro has turned on him, how does he demonstrate his power?

On Friday morning, federal agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the FBI, and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) conducted raids across Los Angeles – including at two Home Depots and a clothing wholesaler – in search of workers who they suspected of being undocumented immigrants.

Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com

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© Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

© Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Perfect for summer dining, these cooling bowlfuls will quench both appetite and thirst

When the thought of eating hot meals seems unbearable, chilled soups will help you beat the heat. Today’s ones are cooling, nourishing, hydrating and a little more fortifying than the usual chop-and-blitz raw soups such as gazpacho. As much as I love those, sometimes I want something I can get my teeth into; something with the satisfying chew of cold noodles, or a crunchy or herbaceous topping. These are perfect for dining al fresco, or to pour into jars and take along to a picnic.

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© Photograph: Louise Hagger/The Guardian. Food styling: Emily Kydd. Prop styling: Jennifer Kay. Food styling assistant: Eden Owen-Jones.

© Photograph: Louise Hagger/The Guardian. Food styling: Emily Kydd. Prop styling: Jennifer Kay. Food styling assistant: Eden Owen-Jones.

Vast areas of land are now dominated by one species – purple moor-grass – and good luck with seeing a bird or insect there. How do we revive these habitats?

Deserts are spreading across great tracts of Britain, yet few people seem to have noticed, and fewer still appear to care. It is one of those astonishing situations I keep encountering: in which vast, systemic problems – in this case, I believe, covering thousands of square kilometres – hide in plain sight.

I realise that many people, on reading that first sentence, will suspect I’ve finally flipped. Where, pray, are those rolling sand dunes or sere stony wastes? But there are many kinds of desert, and not all of them are dry. In fact, those spreading across Britain are clustered in the wettest places. Yet they harbour fewer species than some dry deserts do, and are just as hostile to humans. Another useful term is terrestrial dead zones.

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© Photograph: George Monbiot

© Photograph: George Monbiot

The NBA and ABC digitally inserted images of the Larry O’Brien Trophy onto the court during the broadcast of Game 2 of the NBA Finals.

The British-flagged yacht Madleen, operated by the pro-Palestinian Freedom Flotilla Coalition, was aiming to deliver a symbolic amount of aid to Gaza

• Activists accuse Israel of ‘forcibly intercepting’ ship – live

Israeli forces have taken command of a vessel that tried to challenge its naval blockade of the Gaza Strip, with the boat and its crew of 12 including activist Greta Thunberg now heading to a port in Israel, officials said on Sunday.

The British-flagged yacht Madleen, which is operated by the pro-Palestinian Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC), was aiming to deliver a symbolic amount of aid to Gaza later on Monday and raise international awareness of the humanitarian crisis there.

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© Photograph: X/Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC)

© Photograph: X/Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC)

There’s frustration among researchers that falling pH levels in seas around the globe are not being taken seriously enough, and that until the buildup of CO2 is addressed, the consequences for marine life will be devastating

Read more: ‘Ticking timebomb’: sea acidity has reached critical levels, threatening entire ecosystems – study

On a clear day at Plymouth marina you can see across the harbour out past Drake’s Island – named after the city’s most famous son, Francis Drake – to the Channel. It’s quite often possible to see an abundance of marine vessels, from navy ships and passenger ferries to small fishing boats and yachts. What you might not spot from this distance is a large yellow buoy bobbing up and down in the water about six miles off the coast.

This data buoy – L4 – is one of a number belonging to Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML), a research centre in Devon dedicated to marine science. On a pleasantly calm May morning, Prof James Fishwick, PML’s head of marine technology and autonomy, is on top of the buoy checking it for weather and other damage. “This particular buoy is one of the most sophisticated in the world,” he says as he climbs the ladder to the top. “It’s decked out with instruments and sensors able to measure everything from temperature, to salinity, dissolved oxygen, light and acidity levels.”

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© Photograph: Karen Robinson/The Guardian

© Photograph: Karen Robinson/The Guardian

As a musical about him opens at Liverpool’s Royal Court, Michael Cullen tells of hope, heart – and hitting rock bottom

When the lights went down on the final scene of Speedo Mick – the Musical, Michael Cullen had tears streaming down his face. He wasn’t the only one.

On the face of it, the show about his life, which opened at Liverpool’s Royal Court theatre this week and runs until July, is a knockabout romp about a local character known for raising money for charity by strutting his stuff in a pair of bright blue budgie-smugglers.

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© Photograph: Mark Waugh/The Guardian

© Photograph: Mark Waugh/The Guardian

World No 1’s spellbinding effort dismantled by Alcaraz in the fifth set to conjure theatre in Paris and a rivalry for the ages

By the end, it felt cruel to want more. Look at the state of these men: bedraggled and dishevelled, dragged into a place of wildness and madness, of mental atrophy and physical dismay. You, on the other hand, have spent the last five and a half hours sitting on your couch, eating snacks and gorging on the finest sporting theatre. You want this prolonged for your entertainment? You want more of this? And of course the only real answer is: yes. Yes, please.

Twilight zone at Roland Garros. Two sets each, six games each: the shadows ravenous, the noise bestial, every thrill laced with a kind of sickness. By the end, admiration began to meld with pity. Pity for their teams and families, trapped in the convulsions, feeling a spiralling hypertension with every passing moment. Pity for the tennis balls, being smacked and beaten mercilessly across the Paris night. Pity for the watching Andre Agassi, who you could swear had hair when this match started.

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© Photograph: Stéphanie Lecocq/Reuters

© Photograph: Stéphanie Lecocq/Reuters

To help Americans name their new reality, we wrote a phrase book of authoritarianism.

Broadway rewarded adventurous newcomers including Sarah Snook (“The Picture of Dorian Gray”), Nicole Scherzinger (“Sunset Boulevard”) and Cole Escola (“Oh, Mary!”).

© Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

Radio presenter was diagnosed with stage four cancer in 2020

© Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images

Russia ‘constantly spreading false information’ that they have entered Dnipropetrovsk, says Ukraine

© AP

The ICE operations in Los Angeles resulted in the arrests of 118 immigrants this week

© AFP via Getty Images

The agent of former NFL cornerback Adam “Pacman” Jones called into question the actions of Covington police.

Asian stock markets have advanced ahead of the second round of trade talks between Washington and Beijing, following a solid report on the U.S. job market

© Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved

Israel had vowed to prevent the vessel from reaching Gaza, saying its military would use “any means necessary” to stop it from breaching a naval blockade.

© Fabrizio Villa/Getty Images