Live, rolling coverage of business, economics and financial markets as FTSE 100 gains on hopes of US-China trade thaw; Shell profits drop 28% to $5.5bn
At one minute past midnight on Friday, eastern time, a US tariff exemption that has fuelled the rise of companies such as Shein and Temu, and stocked the wardrobes of millions of Americans with cheap fast fashion and other household goods, closed.
As part of Donald Trump’s flurry of tariffs on China, the US is closing a loophole that allowed low-value goods to be shipped into the US without paying any import fee.
I’m not sure what will happen with the tariffs … It’s very difficult to predict beyond June.
Classification from Germany’s domestic intelligence agency lowers threshold for monitoring of group
The press release on the domestic intelligence agency’s finding explains that “the finding is based on an extremely careful expert review spanning a period of approximately three years,” with detailed analysis of “numerous statements and positions” from high-level AfD officials.
It said that the party’s “ethnic-based” policy “devalues entire population groups in Germany and violates their human dignity,” as it called out “numerous anti-xenophobic, anti-minority, anti-Islamic and anti-Muslim statements continually made by leading party officials.”
It’s Friday morning, so time for 10 Premier League things to jabber about this weekend. Are you off to a game this weekend? Tell us more about your expectations, plans and rail replacement buses.
Arne Slot has admitted he will rotate his squad a little for Liverpool’s four remaining league games now the Premier League trophy is safely in the bag “We are going to these four games trying to win them all and that’s what every player who wears the Liverpool shirt should aim for. My lineups will be different – we’re not going to change everyone but there will be a certain rotation in the upcoming games. I think some of the players deserved to play earlier in the season but they are good enough to play for this club. Earlier in the season I mainly chose the same people but this is a moment to see where others are but definitely also becauase they deserved to play this season.”
The coach has gone from the football field to the gossip pages with his May to December relationship. It’s an extraordinary turnaround in his career
Football has never known a control freak like Bill Belichick, the Nixonian figure who ran the New England Patriots as if their facility was a CIA black site. But four months into Belichick’s new coaching tenure, at the University of North Carolina, there is a stunning lack of clarity about who’s actually in charge.
Belichick was not the obvious choice to revitalize the Tar Heels. Not only does he lack any college coaching experience, he is dour, cold and gruff – traits you imagine might turn off a high school prospect who could choose to play for Deion Sanders, Lane Kiffin or another charismatic sideline general instead. Belichick is also 73 and deeply set in his ways, part of the reason why the Patriots fired him in 2023 after 24 years of service. No other NFL team has hired him since: the Atlanta Falcons considered Belichick for their head coaching vacancy in 2024, but wound up passing after Patriots owner Bob Kraft reportedly warned his Falcons counterpart, Arthur Blank, “not to trust Bill”. (The Patriots deny the allegation.)
Sotheby’s sale of Piprahwa gems, excavated after burial with Buddha’s remains, denounced as perpetuating colonial violence
Buddhist academics and monastic leaders have condemned an auction of ancient Indian gem relics which they said were widely considered to be imbued with the presence of the Buddha.
The auction of the Piprahwa gems will take place in Hong Kong next week. Sotheby’s listing describes them as being “of unparalleled religious, archaeological and historical importance” and many Buddhists considered them to be corporeal remains, which had been desecrated by a British colonial landowner.
Their tech may have been primitive, but for 80s schoolchildren of a certain kind they had a glamour to equal any modern iPhone
Over the last couple of weeks I have been tidying our attic, and while the general aim has been to prevent its contents from collapsing through the ceiling, I have a side-mission. My most valued possession when I was twelve was a Casio GD-8 Car Race watch – a digital timepiece that included a built-in racing game on its tiny monochrome LCD display. Two big buttons on the front let you steer left and right to avoid incoming vehicles and your aim was to stay alive as long as possible. I lost count of the number of times it was confiscated by teachers at my school. I used to lend it to the hardest boys in the year, thereby guaranteeing me protection against bullies. As a socially inept nerd, this was invaluable to my survival. I’m pretty sure I still have the watch somewhere, and my determination to find it has been augmented by a recent discovery: these things are valuable now.
Casio started making digital watches in the mid-1970s, using technology it had developed in the calculator market to compete on price, but as the decade drew to a close, the market became saturated and the company started to explore new ways to entice buyers. Speaking to Polygon in 2015, Yuichi Masuda, senior executive managing officer and Casio board member, explained, “Casio went back to its original thinking when it first entered the watch market; that is, ‘a watch is not a mere tool to tell the time.’ We started talking about a multifunction [approach], time display plus other things, such as telephone number memory and music alarms.”
As Ryan Garcia, Devin Haney and Teófimo López prepare to fight in Times Square, the Matchroom boss discusses power, pressure and the man (mostly) behind the curtain
As workers tighten bolts on a steel ring platform beneath the glare of LED billboards in Times Square on a sun-splashed Thursday afternoon, Eddie Hearn is still wrapping his head around the reality of what he’s helped build.
“It actually is going to happen,” he says, sounding slightly astonished. “Up until about two weeks ago, I thought: this isn’t happening. And now we’re 24 hours away.”
(Edition) Ideas of migration and self-discovery inspire the latest album from Hong and her imaginative band, entwined with harmonies and delicate effects
Drummer/composer Sun-Mi Hong didn’t get to where she is now without a struggle for independence. She was born in Incheon, South Korea, to a conservative family and earmarked for a teacher’s life, but her teenage dream was to become a drummer. At 19, as the only woman in a not-overly respectful percussion class, she got wind of the Amsterdam Conservatorium’s jazz course, moved to Europe and met her band of skilful soulmates. Her evolving music leans towards a European chamber-jazzy sound with occasional American hints of Wayne Shorter, Paul Motian, or Ambrose Akinmusire. The Dutch jazz scene has feted her: the latest of its accolades, the Paul Acket award for an “extraordinary contribution to jazz”, will be presented to Hong at the big-time North Sea jazz festival this July.
This album continues her series inspired by ideas of migration and self-discovery. The band’s signature sound of closely entwining brass and woodwind harmonies open the two-part title track: tenor saxophonist Nicolò Ricci and Scottish trumpeter Alistair Payne are improvisers of elegant shape and balance, and delicate thematic tone-painters, too. Quiet abstraction unveils the second section, before canny slow-burn pianist Chaerin Im’s piano ostinato and Hong’s surging percussion ignite a crescendo: Hong often favours free-swinging Elvin Jones-like grooves in which the core of the beat roams all over the kit. Soft horn sighs, cymbal flickers, and Italian bassist Alessandro Fongaro’s fast flutters colour the plaintive Escapism, Toddler’s Eye is a springy folk-dance and the suite A Never-Wilting Petal confirms this imaginative band’s talents for balancing storytelling with on-the-fly musical adventures.
Goods worth less than $800 will be subject to 120% levy meaning prices on Chinese exports will probably increase
At one minute past midnight on Friday, eastern time, a US tariff exemption that has fuelled the rise of companies such as Shein and Temu, and stocked the wardrobes of millions of Americans with cheap fast fashion and other household goods, closed. As part of Donald Trump’s flurry of tariffs on China, the US is closing a loophole that allowed low-value goods to be shipped into the US without paying any import fees. The “de minimis” loophole, known by the Latin phrase for “of little importance”, was “a big scam going on against our country”, the US president said on Wednesday. “We put an end to it.”
US intelligence agency videos target lowly officials who are trapped working for a wealthy corrupt elite and whose fate is ‘precarious’
The CIA is on a recruitment drive for foreign spies. In their sights are Chinese officials and workers, who the US intelligence agency hopes to turn against Beijing via some newly released glossy videos.
The two videos touch on probable anxieties among some inside the Communist party machine – getting stuck in a lowly job assisting an increasingly wealthy corrupt official, or becoming victim to the endless purges that have targeted millions of party members at all levels since Xi Jinping came to power.
A professor’s quest to make sense of her eco-anxiety takes her from her ancestral village in China to Cop 26 and beyond
Eco-anxiety is not an official medical diagnosis, but everyone knows what it means. The American Psychological Association defines it as “the chronic fear of environmental cataclysm that comes from observing the seemingly irrevocable impact of climate change and the associated concern for one’s future and that of next generations”. Fear of the future, an ache for the past, the present awash with disquiet: into this turmoil Alice Mah’s new book appears like a little red boat, keeping hope afloat against all odds.
Mah is a professor of urban and environmental studies at the University of Glasgow as well as an activist passionately concerned with pollution, ecological breakdown and climate justice. Her previous books, Petrochemical Planet and Plastic Unlimited, catalogued the catastrophic impacts of the petrochemical industry on the natural and human world. In Red Pockets, the trauma is personal.
Charities say the judgment creates ‘a legal framework that simply cannot uphold the dignity’ of trans people
Fourteen national LGBTQ+ charities have written to Keir Starmer seeking an urgent meeting to discuss what they describe as “a genuine crisis for the rights, dignity and inclusion of trans people in the UK” after the supreme court’s ruling on biological sex.
The UK supreme court ruled last month that the terms “woman” and “sex” in the Equality Act 2010 referred only to “a biological woman” and to “biological sex”, with subsequent advice from the equality watchdog amounting to a blanket ban on trans people using toilets and other services of the gender they identify as.
From a hidden gem in Nice to a rustic revelation in Beaujolais and a bargain bistro in Brittany
Far away from the tourist traps of the old town, tiny seafood restaurant Coquillages Bouchet on Rue Rusca is a relative newcomer in Nice. Tucked away on a sidestreet near the port, the menu is short and the atmosphere relaxed. The young owners, Nicolas and Hugo, are best friends and their passion for fresh seafood, especially sea urchins and oysters, simply radiates. If you’re after fancy, go to one of the exclusive beach clubs dotted along the coastline. If you want fresh, vibrant and delicious platters of seafood served with charm and glasses of ice-cold white wine, come here. Melanie Clarkson
Justice department calls on court to hold judge’s order against ending temporary protected status for 300,000
The Trump administration asked the US supreme court on Thursday to intervene and assist in its attempt to strip temporary protected status (TPS) from more than 300,000 Venezuelan migrants in the US, a move that would clear the way for their deportation.
The justice department asked the supreme court justices to put on hold a federal judge’s order from March that halted the decision of the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, to terminate the temporary legal status that previously was granted to some Venezuelans.
We want to hear about the big moves you made following a romantic split - for the better or for the worse
Have you made a drastic decision following break up? Did you move countries or have a massive career change because a relationship ended? Or did heartbreak lead you to undergo a body transformation or maybe even getting a tattoo ... that you now regret?
We want to hear about the big moves you made following a romantic split - for the better or for the worse.
Manufacturer Incat built Hull 096 to run between Buenos Aires and Uruguay, dubbing it the ‘most complex’ project it has ever undertaken
An Australian boatbuilder has launched what it describes as the world’s largest battery-power ship, describing it as a “a giant leap forward in sustainable shipping” and the “most important” project it has ever done.
Incat, a manufacturer based in Tasmania, constructed the ship – called Hull 096 – after being contracted by the South American ferry operator Buquebus to build a vessel to run between the Argentinian capital, Buenos Aires, and Uruguay.
A ‘wetter farming’ project explores rehydrating peatland to help grow crops in boggier conditions while cutting CO2 emissions
“I really don’t like the word ‘paludiculture’ – most people have no idea what it means,” Sarah Johnson says. “I prefer the term ‘wetter farming’.”
The word might be baffling, but the concept is simple: paludiculture is the use of wet peatlands for agriculture, a practice that goes back centuries in the UK, including growing reeds for thatching roofs.
After Europe’s biggest blackout in over 20 years, experts warn that while such incidents are rare, no grid is infallible
Europe’s biggest blackout in over 20 years on the Iberian peninsula unleashed hours of chaos for people in Spain, Portugal and parts of France earlier this week. But in the aftermath it has raised a common question for governments across the continent: could the same happen here?
Europe’s political leaders and energy system operators have given assurances that such blackouts are extraordinarily rare, and that European power grids are some of the most stable in the world.
Joan Partridge, in Redditch, is collaborating with cosmetics firm after post showing her beauty routine went viral
At 103 years old, dispensing pearls of wisdom is second nature to Joan Partridge. But even she was surprised when a video of her applying rouge found an appreciative audience of almost 200,000 on TikTok.
“I do my makeup every day, every morning, I think it is your confidence,” said Partridge, who is the eldest resident at Millcroft care home in Redditch, Worcestershire. Since the video went viral, Partridge has caught the attention of a cosmetics company which is keen to collaborate with her.
From the turtle-nesting beaches of Italy to Greek island bird havens, across the Mediterranean campaigners are fighting to protect habitats from tourists seeking a picture-perfect holiday
In the summer months in Puglia, southern Italy, the battle for the beaches begins before dawn. Armed with tractors, beach owners flatten every imperfection from the sand, dragging it to sift out anything large enough to be considered waste. As the sun rises, tourists flood the coastline, often unaware of what lies hidden beneath their feet.
Two feet below the surface, delicate eggs laid by loggerhead sea turtles (Caretta caretta) are waiting to hatch. For the turtles, the beach is not a beauty spot but a habitat.
US foreign policy is turning it into a global pariah – yet Labour’s strike on the Houthis represents a new level of support
Paul Rogers is emeritus professor of peace studies at Bradford University
This week’s RAF attack on Houthi rebels in Yemen was the first to be approved by the Labour government. It joined a major US military operation that started in March and has involved 45 days of airstrikes. Operation Rough Rider is a demonstration by the Trump administration that it will prosecute a vigorous war that is more intense than under Joe Biden, and has, according to the US, already seen more than 1,000 targets hit.
The RAF operation reportedly targeted a plant manufacturing armed drones used in Houthi attacks on shipping transiting the Red Sea, and demonstrated that Keir Starmer has decided to be Donald Trump’s closest military ally.
Paul Rogers is emeritus professor of peace studies at Bradford University
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Erin Patterson was “extremely aggressive” during a financial dispute with her estranged husband about their children, a Victorian court has heard, as more message exchanges between the former couple were revealed.
Patterson, 50, faces three charges of murder and one charge of attempted murder relating to a beef wellington lunch she served at her house in Leongatha in South Gippsland in 2023.
If further confirmation was needed that the Peter Dutton-led Coalition would take Australia aggressively backwards on dealing with the climate crisis, his final election costings released on Thursday tell the story in black and white.
The Liberal and National parties plan to gut programs designed to cut emissions and help create green industries to give the country an industrial future as demand for fossil fuels falls. They also plan to ignore advice that Australian nature is in poor and deteriorating health and strip back already limited funding for environment programs.
Benjamin Netanyahu says strike intended to deter Syria’s new leadership from any hostile move against the Druze
Israel’s air force has launched airstrikes against unidentified targets near Syria’s presidential palace, in what Israeli officials said was a warning to the Syrian government after days of bloody clashes near Damascus between pro-government militia and fighters from the Druze minority sect.
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, and the defence minister, Israel Katz, said in a joint statement that the attack early on Friday, the second this week in Syria, was intended to deter the country’s new leadership from any hostile move against the Druze.
One of the most photographed men in the world, he has gone from captain of the England football team to elder statesman. We look back at the red cards, redemption, scandals, fashion and family life
It’s swings and roundabouts being a titchy kid in football. David Beckham first played for Chingford-based youth team the Ridgeway Rovers, where he was coached by his dad, Ted. Back then, he didn’t make the England schoolboys squad because he wasn’t burly enough – his father subsequently employing the somewhat nauseating tactic of feeding his son Guinness with raw eggs to gain weight. On the other hand, it did mean he could be a match mascot at Manchester United, his dad’s passion, at the age of 11, because he was still so cute and shrimpy.
To mark his 100th day in office, Donald Trump sat down with the Time journalist Eric Cortellessa, who here speaks to Jonathan Freedland about what he learned from his hour-long interview with the US president
Archive: ABC News, BBC News, CBS News, CBC, Forbes Breaking News
Ibtisam Ghalia and her four children are just one of the families living on brink of starvation with no sign of an end to blockade
Every day, Ibtisam Ghalia and her four children count their remaining stocks of food. These are meagre: a kilo or so of beans, a bag of lentils, a little salt, some herbs, spices, and enough flour for half a dozen flatbreads cooked on a griddle over a fire of wood splinters, waste plastic and cardboard.
In the two months since Israel imposed a total blockade on Gaza, stopping food, medicine, fuel and anything else from entering the devastated territory, Ghalia’s “cupboard” has slowly diminished.
Mariama Timbo is a striking figure – and not because of her pink motorcycle. As the sole female biker in her province ferrying people and goods to town, she is now training a new generation of women to follow her lead
Words and photographs by Caitlin Kelly in Makeni, Sierra Leone
Streaming through the green fields of Sierra Leone’s Bombali district, Mariama Timbo sits tall on her pink motorbike. Women selling nuts on the side of the road wave as she glides by; policemen give an approving nod as she passes through checkpoints. “They don’t give me any trouble,” she says – a badge of honour in the rural district. Taking her time on the rocky roads, she brakes, slowly approaching the bumps.
Her careful driving is not the only thing that makes Timbo stand out. The 26-year-old is the sole female motorcyclist in the northern province ferrying people and goods to Makeni, one of Sierra Leone’s fastest growing cities.
Mariama Timbo outside eWomen, an NGO that helps women build businesses
It was torture. It took six people to carry me to an ambulance
In the spring of 1995 I was studying for my A-levels in Cambridge, along with my best friend, Kate. For her final art exam, Kate wanted to create a male torso in the style of a classical sculpture, which she would present along with her written assignment on the male nude. She asked if I’d be the model and I, of course, agreed – what teenager wouldn’t be flattered at the prospect of being immortalised as a Greek god?
We decided to make the cast in the garden of Kate’s family home. Wearing just my Y-fronts and a pair of Mickey Mouse socks borrowed from Kate’s dad, along with a layer of baby oil, I lay down as Kate finished mixing the fine casting plaster, which she then poured from my neck to my ankles.
The Black Panthers shook America awake before the party was eviscerated by the US government. Their children paid a steep price, but also emerged with unassailable pride and burning lessons for today
Heavy metal’s godfathers are preparing a star-studded farewell – but will Ozzy Osbourne, after ‘horrendous’ surgery, be well enough to perform? In their first interview for two decades, the original lineup talk about their hopes and fears for rock’s ultimate gig
On a video call from his home in Los Angeles, Ozzy Osbourne is struggling to recall the exact details of recent years, ones he calls “the worst of my life”. “How many surgeries have I had?” he wonders aloud. “I’ve got more fucking metal in me than a scrap merchants.”
The trouble began in earnest in early 2019, when he was midway through what his wife and manager Sharon had firmly told him was his farewell tour. For one thing, both of them had been working constantly since their teens; for another, Ozzy had been diagnosed with a form of Parkinson’s disease, after years of insisting an intermittent numbness in one of his legs was the result of a drinking binge (or rather its aftermath, during which he says he didn’t move for two days). The tour was going well, but then he caught pneumonia, twice. “And then I had an infection. I’m still on antibiotics to be honest with you, I had a thing put in the vein in my arm to feed in IV shots of them.” Six years later, “I’ve still got it on – it comes out this week, with a bit of luck. Antibiotics knock the hell out of you.”
The soft, undecided and swinging voters are at an all-time high in Australia, while support for the centre-left Labor and conservative-leaning Coalition is low
More than 18 million Australians will head to the polls this Saturday to choose between the incumbent centre-left Labor party and its conservative-leaning Liberal/National Coalition challenger.
But about one in three voters will brush off the major contenders – led by the current prime minister, Anthony Albanese, and the opposition leader, Peter Dutton – in favour of someone else altogether, in an election marked by a cost of living crisis and the spectre of Donald Trump.
Method of preserving 18th-century Austrian vicar has never been seen before, say researchers
The mystery of a mummy from an Austrian village has been solved, according to researchers who say it was embalmed in an unexpected way – via the rectum.
Intrigue had long swirled around the mummified body stored in the church crypt of St Thomas am Blasenstein. The remains were rumoured to be the naturally preserved corpse of an aristocratic vicar, Franz Xaver Sidler von Rosenegg, who died in 1746 at the aged of 37, gaining the mummy the moniker of the “air-dried chaplain”.
Knicks beat Pistons 116-113 in Game 6 to win series 4-2
Brunson finishes with 40 points including game-winner
Clippers hold off Nuggets 111-105 to force seventh game
Jalen Brunson made a tiebreaking three-pointer with 4.3 seconds left and finished with 40 points to lead the New York Knicks to a 116-113 win over the Detroit Pistons on Thursday night and into the second round of the NBA playoffs.
“He’s at his best when his best is needed and he’s done it all year,” Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said. “That’s what makes him special.”
Visitors strike late in Spurs’ 3-1 first-leg victory
‘We need to replicate what we did today’
Ange Postecoglou has insisted that Tottenham have the belief that they can overcome a tricky second leg in the Arctic Circle and reach the Europa League final despite conceding a late goal against Bodø/Glimt.
Ulrik Saltnes gave Kjetil Knutsen’s Norwegian champions hope of mounting a comeback next week after Spurs had raced into a 3-0 lead in the first leg thanks to goals from Brennan Johnson after just 38 seconds, James Maddison and a penalty from Dominic Solanke. Bodø have a formidable record at home, having won six of their seven matches in Europe so far including victories over Olympiakos and Lazio.
Ever hear about a fantastical yarn featuring Manchester United being down in 14th place in the Premier League yet somehow standing proud at 3-0 up a mere quarter-way through a major European semi-final, against a 10-man Athletic Bilbao who already appeared cooked?
Before kick-off here the answer would be no – of course. But, by half-time, Ruben Amorim’s men were flying, and if Noussair Mazraoui’s left-foot rocket had beaten Julen Agirrezabala, rather than ricocheted back off his crossbar, United’s lead would have been 4-0, and this tie clinically dead.
‘We are very unified. We want to be able to work with FIA’
Drivers unhappy after Verstappen punished for swearing
Lewis Hamilton has led a call demanding changes that would give Formula One drivers a formal place in discussions with the sport’s governing body, the FIA, and warned that they could act collectively to facilitate such a change, potentially acting as other sports have with a strong union representation.
Hamilton made the remarks after the president of the FIA, Mohammed Ben Sulayem, had intimated in a post on social media this week that he was considering adjusting the rules around the unpopular and controversial punishments for drivers for offences including political statements and swearing.
Hundreds of vehicles have been left with flat tyres after sharp metal debris spilled from a truck and spread across a 30km stretch of a busy motorway into Sydney.
Police were called to the southbound M1 between Wyong Road and Mount White on the Central Coast about 5.10am on Friday “due to a large amount of metal debris on the roadway”, New South Wales police said in a statement.
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