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 DonaldTrump and XiJinping 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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.’”
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.
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) conductedraids 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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.”
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.
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.
With number of young girls sharing videos rising, study says following instructions can irritate skin and lead to allergies
Skincare regimes demonstrated by young influencers on TikTok offer little to no benefit, researchers have found, adding that on the contrary they raise the risk of skin irritations and lifelong allergies in children.
The team behind the study say there has been a rise in young girls sharing videos of complex skincare routines with moisturisers, toners, acne treatments and anti-ageing products.
Cases filed by two Guantánamo Bay prisoners allege MI5 and MI6 were complicit in their mistreatment
The UK government’s decades-long efforts to keep details of its intelligence agencies’ involvement in the CIA’s notorious post-9/11 torture programme hidden will face an “unprecedented” challenge this week as two cases are brought before a secretive court.
The cases, filed by two prisoners held at the US military prison at Guantánamo Bay, will be heard across a rare four-day trial at the investigatory powers tribunal (IPT), which has been investigating claims the UK’s intelligence agencies were complicit in their mistreatment.
Eisenhüttenstadt, once a socialist vision but now at risk of becoming a ghost town, seeks to ditch its far-right image
If you’re considering moving to a German ex-communist model city that is trying to lure new residents with a range of perks, including free accommodation and rounds of drinks with locals, take it from Tom Hanks: Eisenhüttenstadt has many charms.
While filming outside Berlin in 2011, the Hollywood actor and history buff took a mini field trip 60 miles east to what he called Iron Hut City and was instantly smitten. “An amazing architectural place,” he said, pronouncing it “fascinating”. He returned sprinkling stardust again three years later, even acquiring a vintage Trabant car he shipped back to Los Angeles. “People still live there – it’s actually a gorgeous place,” Hanks said.
Amid geopolitical storms and the rise of populism, the ‘Nordic-Baltic eight’ is gaining clout as a bulwark of western resolve
With Europe’s political kaleidoscope spinning wildlyin the populist winds, a group of northern countries is gaining weight as a geopolitical anchor. Known as the Nordic-Baltic eight (NB8 in diplomatic jargon), it brings together small northern European states that, individually, might have little clout in international security and politics. But since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, they have wielded growing influence as a pressure group for western resolve, offering an attractive blend of democratic security, defence integration and societal resilience.
Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway and Sweden established their regional cooperation format in 1992, after the end of the cold war, with regular meetings of prime ministers, parliamentary speakers, foreign and defence ministers and senior government officials. It began as a forum for wealthy, stable Nordic countries to rebuild bridges with Baltic neighbours with whom they had traded and exchanged for centuries but who had been trapped behind the iron curtain under Soviet rule since the second world war.
Paul Taylor is a senior visiting fellow at the European Policy Centre
Bruno Pereira has been considered one of the great Indigenous protectors of his generation. And this has made him an enemy of a man called Amarildo da Costa de Oliveira, also known as Pelado. The Guardian’s Latin America correspondent Tom Phillips reports on the story of these two men – Bruno and Pelado – and what happened when their paths collide
Warning – this episode has descriptions of violence and some swearing.
He was Oscar-nominated for his unforgettable work alongside Jack Nicholson, in one of the greatest films of all time. It was the start of his career as the ultimate character actor. He discusses David Lynch, Ian McKellen and the joy of playing a murderous doll
Brad Dourif knew it was time to retire from acting when he stopped feeling … well, anything about the parts he was being offered. “I got to a place where if somebody offered me something, all I felt was an empty: oh.” It had started in 2013, after a production of Tennessee Williams’s The Two-Character Play. That had been an extraordinary experience, with his co-star Amanda Plummer “by far the best actor I’ve ever worked with”, but left him wondering if there was anything he still wanted to do professionally. Acting no longer got him excited; it just left him tired. “It became clear to me after a while that I just really didn’t want to work any more.”
We speak over video call from his home in upstate New York, where he lives with Claudia, his girlfriend of 30-plus years, a poet and songwriter, and his tabby cats Honey Mustard and Snapdragon. Instead of working, he is building and decorating a swimming pool-sized enclosure for them, so that they can be outdoors safely at night. “You might call it a catio but we call it kitty city!” he says. “My friend who helped me build this thing gave it a once-over and he went: ‘Expensive cats!’” Dourif, 75, is enjoying retirement so much that it takes a nudge from his agent to pull him away from the fantasy novel he is immersed in to alert him to the fact that he is 20 minutes late for our call.
Afghanistan, Haiti and Iran included in full 12-country ban and citizens from seven other countries partially restricted
Donald Trump’s new ban on travel to the US by citizens of a dozen countries, mainly in Africa and the Middle East, went into effect at 12am ET on Monday, more than eight years after Trump’s first travel ban sparked chaos, confusion, and months of legal battles.
The new proclamation, which Trump signed last week, “fully” restricts the nationals of Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen from entering the US. The entry of nationals of Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela will be partially restricted.
The world’s oceans are in worse health than realised, scientists have said today, as they warn that a key measurement shows we are “running out of time” to protect marine ecosystems.
Ocean acidification, often called the “evil twin” of the climate crisis, is caused when carbon dioxide is rapidly absorbed by the ocean, where it reacts with water molecules leading to a fall in the pH level of the seawater. It damages coral reefs and other ocean habitats and, in extreme cases, can dissolve the shells of marine creatures.
Romantic robot musical Maybe Happy Ending has triumphed with six wins at this year’s Tony awards, with actors Cole Escola and Kara Young also making history in their respective categories.
Maybe Happy Ending was named best musical, with its star Darren Criss also taking home the award for leading actor in a musical. The first-time winner spoke about being proud to be part of a “notably diverse and exquisite” Broadway season, while Michael Arden, who won best direction of a musical for the show, said that “empathy is not a weakness but it is a gift and our shared responsibility” in a speech ending with him wishing everyone a happy Pride Month.
Poland and allied countries scrambled aircraft early on Monday to ensure the safety of Polish airspace after Russia launched airstrikes targeting western Ukraine near the Polish border, the operational command of the Polish armed forces said. “The steps taken are aimed at ensuring security in the regions bordering the areas at risk,” it said on X.
All of Ukraine was under air raid alerts in the early hours of Monday after the Ukrainian air force warned of Russian missile and drone attacks.
Russia launched an air attack on Kyiv, which Ukraine’s air defence units were trying to repel, the military administration of the Ukrainian capital said on the Telegram messaging app early on Monday.
Russia says its forces are advancing to the edge of the east-central Ukrainian region of Dnipropetrovsk for the first time in the three-year war, raising the prospect of a new front as the conflict escalates and peace talks stall. Russia is attacking the region after reaching the adjacent western frontier of Ukraine’s Donetsk region, according to Russia’s defence ministry. The pro-Ukrainian Deep State map showed forces very close to Dnipropetrovsk, which had a population of more than 3 million before the war, and advancing on the city of Kostyantynivka in Donetsk from several directions.
A Ukrainian military spokesperson, Dmytro Zaporozhets, said that Russian forces were trying to “build a bridgehead for an attack” on Kostyantynivka, an important logistical hub for the Ukrainian army.
Russian military units are also closing in on Sumy city, three years after Ukraine forced them out of the northern region. The troops appear to be within 18 miles (29km) of the city, which is 200 miles north-east of Kyiv.
Independent monitors confirmed Kremlin claims to have retaken the village of Loknia, which had been liberated along with the rest of the Sumy region during Ukraine’s 2022 spring counteroffensive.
Moscow and Kyiv are engaged in a public row over the return of the bodies of thousands of soldiers who have died in the war. Russia accused Ukraine of delaying the swap of prisoners of war and the return of the bodies of 12,000 dead soldiers. Ukraine denied those claims. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia had not sent the names of more than 1,000 captured soldiers to be released. “In typical fashion, the Russian side is once again trying to turn even these matters into a dirty political and information game. For our part, we are doing everything we can to keep the exchange track moving forward,” he said in a video statement.
Thousands of Angelenos enraged by Donald Trump’s decision to commandeer their state national guard swamped the downtown streets on Sunday, bringing a major freeway to a standstill. But the national guard, hemmed in by the protesters and by dozens of Los Angeles police cruisers, played almost no role in any of it.
A vocal, boisterous but largely peaceful sea of protesters engulfed the north-eastern corner of downtown Los Angeles around city hall and the federal courthouse. They hurled insults at Trump and at the immigration enforcement teams who had conducted mass arrests of undocumented migrants in the area on Friday.
The Oklahoma City Thunder blew Game 1 of the NBA finals after holding a significant lead over the Indiana Pacers. In Game 2, they made sure there was no repeat, utterly dominating their opponents in a 123-107 victory that leveled the series at 1-1.
In Game 1, the Thunder had a 12-point lead at half-time and a 15-point lead in the fourth quarter before losing to the Pacers courtesy of a Tyrese Haliburton basket in the final second. On Sunday night, they took control of the game early on, but this time they didn’t let their advantage go.
Justice and courts reporter Nino Bucci talks through the trial that has gripped Australia – of the woman accused of murdering three of her relatives with poisoned mushrooms over a family meal
Last week, in a trial followed all over Australia and across the world, Erin Patterson took the stand. She is accused of three counts of murder, and one of attempted murder, allegedly by poisoning her relatives with deadly mushrooms inside four separate dishes of beef wellington.
As the Guardian Australia justice and courts reporter Nino Bucci explains, Patterson has always denied the charges. Though she admits the lunch she prepared in July 2023 killed her in-laws – as well as her estranged husband’s aunt – she maintains it was a tragic accident.
Freedom Flotilla Coalition says ship’s communications were jammed after Israeli defence minister threatened to ‘take all necessary measures’ to prevent the humanitarian ship from reaching Gaza
Critics see deployment of national guard as an authoritarian flex by a strongman who has relentlessly trampled norms
Donald Trump walked out to a thunderous standing ovation as Kid Rock’s “American Bad Ass” boomed from the sound system. He watched martial artists slug it out behind a chain-link fence. A female champion let the US president try on her gold belt. It was a night of machismo, spectacle and violence.
Shortly before he joined an Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) event in Newark, New Jersey, on Saturday night, Trump had signed an order deploying 2,000 national guard troops to Los Angeles, where protests sparked by sweeping immigration raids led to clashes between authorities and demonstrators.
Queensland captain expected to make way for Tom Dearden
Beau Fermor also dropped with Kurt Capewell to step in
Queensland’s Daly Cherry-Evans has become the first State of Origin captain dropped mid-series this century, as one of several huge Billy Slater selection calls. Slater will name a 20-man squad for Origin II on Monday morning, but Tom Dearden is expected to replace Cherry-Evans in the No 7 jersey in Perth next Wednesday.
Beau Fermor is the other player dropped after the Maroons’ series-opening 18-6 loss at Suncorp Stadium, with Kurt Capewell set to replace him. Kurt Mann is then expected to take Dearden’s spot on the Maroons’ bench, after acting as 18th man in game one.
Still gliding above the town of Wuppertal on an overhead track 125 years after it was built, the charming Schwebebahn has lost none of its magic
It’s easy to be seduced by the romance of train travel. Think of sleeper trains, boat trains, vintage steam railways, elegant dining cars. But it’s rare that an urban transport system can capture the imagination quite as much as the Wuppertal Schwebebahn in Germany caught mine, and that of anyone else who’s clapped eyes on the world’s oldest suspended railway.
In October it will be 125 years since Kaiser Wilhelm II took a test ride in the Schwebebahn, just a few months before the hanging railway officially opened for business in March 1901. It was an incredible feat of engineering then, and remains so today. Even with sleek modern carriages having long replaced the original ones, it looks like something imagined by Jules Verne, with carriages smoothly gliding under the overhead track. They have even preserved the first 1901 carriage, nicknamed Kaiserwagen, which can be hired for private occasions.
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