At the world’s largest wholesale market, vendors have reduced their exposure to the US but fear the repercussions of a global economic shock

If you have ever bought a Christmas decoration, a button, an electric shaver or any other cheap manufactured product, there is a good chance it came from Yiwu, a city in east China’s Zhejiang province that is home to the world’s largest wholesale market.

Covering more than 4m square metres, tens of thousands of suppliers have booths in Yiwu International Trade City. As the US and China exchange increasingly hysterical rhetoric and threaten ever-higher tariffs, it is vendors at places like Yiwu who are at the frontline of the new trade war.

Surangel Whipps Jr says he would be ‘deeply disappointed’ if attempt were abandoned under Coalition

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The president of Palau has strongly backed an Australian bid to host a UN climate conference on behalf of the Pacific, arguing that it would boost regional solidarity and clean energy investment and he would be “deeply disappointed” if the attempt were abandoned under the Coalition.

Speaking in Sydney, Surangel Whipps Jr stressed he did not want to offer a view on the Australian election but said leaders should heed the results of a Lowy Institute survey that suggested 70% of the population supported Labor’s proposal for the country hosting the Cop31 climate summit late next year.

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Tests ahead of Sunday’s race revealed E coli levels three times above the threshold for poor bathing water

Water quality along the stretch of the River Thames which will host the iconic Oxford v Cambridge Boat Race has been classified as poor by clean water campaigners, as a result of E coli from sewage pollution.

Testing carried out along the four-mile route, which the university rowing teams will tackle on Sunday, has revealed E coli levels which are three times above the threshold for poor bathing water status.

• Midfielder’s two free-kicks fires 3-0 first-leg win
• ‘I don’t know if it will ever sink in,’ says Rice

Declan Rice could barely contain his delight after two stunning free‑kicks from the England midfielder gave Arsenal a famous victory against Real Madrid that leaves Mikel Arteta’s side within touching distance of reaching the Champions League semi-finals for the first time since 2009.

Mikel Merino ensured Arsenal will head to the Spanish capital for the second leg next Wednesday with a commanding 3-0 advantage over the champions after a whirlwind second half.

A swift loss of £4tn from global stock markets has led some to liken Trump’s trade war to 1929 Wall Street crash

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Donald Trump’s escalating trade war has plunged global financial markets into the steepest rout since the spread of the Covid pandemic five years ago.

Drawing parallels with the 1929 Wall Street crash and the ensuing 1930s Great Depression, the US president’s “liberation day” tariff plan has led to warnings of a global recession from leading economists.

Order restores journalists access to White House spaces while the news agency’s lawsuit moves forward

A US judge on Tuesday ordered the White House to restore full access to the Associated Press to presidential events, after the news agency was punished for its decision to continue to refer to the Gulf of Mexico in its coverage.

The order from the US district judge Trevor McFadden, an appointee of Donald Trump, requires the White House to allow the AP’s journalists to access the Oval Office, Air Force One and events held at the White House.

Outcry as CNN reports president to stop funds for program that would have created jobs in Middletown, Ohio

Despite promises to bolster the US manufacturing industry, the Trump administration is reportedly planning to cut a key program that invests in some of the biggest manufacturing industries in the US, including in JD Vance’s home town of Middletown, Ohio.

Donald Trump is looking to slash a $500m grant from the Biden administration that was slated for Cleveland-Cliffs, a steel manufacturing giant in America’s rust belt, according to reporting from CNN. The grant was intended to help the company upgrade its ageing blast furnaces, so they would be powered by hydrogen, natural gas and electricity instead of coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel.

• 51-year-old among dozens killed in tragedy
• Pitcher won World Series with Cardinals in 2011

Former Major League Baseball pitcher Octavio Dotel was among the dozens killed when the roof of a nightclub in the Dominican Republic collapsed during the early hours of Tuesday morning.

At least 58 people died and 160 were injured at the nightclub in Santo Domingo where a crowd that included athletes and politicians were attending a merengue concert.

Declan Rice’s set-piece brilliance dominated this stunning victory but Saka also shone on a momentous night

David Raya Two early saves to deny Mbappé settled his nerves and was a spectator for most of the second half. 7/10

Who knew that Declan Rice would be able to bend a free-kick like Beckham? In the first leg of a Champions League quarter-final. And not just once, either. On a red-letter occasion for Arsenal, probably the finest since the Emirates Stadium opened in 2006, their key midfielder brought the house down; Real Madrid to their knees, as well.

It is never wise to write off the Champions League holders, the 15‑time winners – the club that have the patent on astonishing comebacks. Surely not this time.

Bayern Munich’s sentimental journey is at risk of grinding to a halt. The prospect of a home final will disappear if they do not win at San Siro next week and there may be no fairytale goodbye for one of their legends.

Thomas Müller is an all-Bavarian icon and, sniffing space in the manner that has defined his career, appeared to have salvaged at least a draw soon after arriving from the bench. The script seemed clear enough from there: three days after the announcement that a 25-year marriage is almost over, Muller would bring Bayern closer to a blissful reunion with the trophy they cherish most.

England’s puzzling form continued with a defeat in Belgium but Sarina Wiegman insisted she is unconcerned and believes the result will help her side in the long run.

From 3-0 down, the Lionesses attempted a stunning comeback, helped by a world-class debut goal from the striker Michelle Agyemang, but it was too little too late. Having seemed to be back to their entertaining best when emphatically beating Belgium on home soil on Friday, an injury-hit England side produced a wholly contrasting first‑half display in Leuven and could have no complaints about the scoreline.

Your wrongful detention is testament to the fact that you have struck a nerve. They are trying to silence you, but they will fail

• ‘We will persist’: Mahmoud Khalil’s wife says pro-Palestinian voices won’t be silenced

Exactly a month ago, you were taken from me. This is the longest we have been apart since we got married. I miss you more and more every day and as the days draw us closer to the arrival of our child, I am haunted by the uncertainty that looms over me – the possibility that you might not be there for this monumental moment. Every kick, every cramp, every small flutter I feel inside me serves as an inescapable reminder of the family we’ve dreamed of building together. Yet, I am left to navigate this profound journey alone, while you endure the cruel and unjust confines of a detention center.

I could not be more proud of you, Mahmoud. You embody everything I ever hoped for in a partner and the father of my children. What more could I ask for as a role model for our children than a man who, with unwavering conviction, stands up for the liberation of his people, fully cognizant of the consequences of speaking truth to power? Your courage is boundless, and now more than ever, I am in awe of your strength and determination. Your voice, your belief in justice, and your refusal to be silenced are the very qualities that make you the man I love and admire.

Beijing vows to ‘fight to the end’ as president claims ‘many’ countries are seeking a deal with US

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Donald Trump is poised to unleash his trade war with the world on Wednesday, pressing ahead with a slew of tariffs on the US’s largest trading partners despite fears of widespread economic damage and calls to reconsider.

The US president claimed “many” countries were seeking a deal with Washington, as his administration prepared to impose steep tariffs on goods from dozens of markets from Wednesday.

Aston Villa loanee faces unusual but not unprecedented challenge in the Champions League quarter-final first leg

Presumably some time between making another play for Marco Asensio and the Paris Saint-Germain forward pitching up on loan in February, Unai Emery, or at least Aston Villa’s administrative staff, sifted through the small print of Uefa’s regulations in case this very scenario presented itself. Less than three months after replacing Kvara Kvaratskhelia at Parc des Princes in a Ligue 1 draw against Reims, Asensio faces the unusual but not unprecedented challenge of trying to knock his parent club out of the Champions League, the competition PSG crave so badly.

Villa were on the other end of this peculiarity in October, though the stakes were nowhere near as high. When Bologna came to Birmingham, they arrived with a Villa player in their ranks. With Villa leading 2-0, coasting towards a victory that maintained their 100% start to the league phase, Samuel Iling-Junior entered late on to gentle applause from all sides. It was the 21-year-old’s first appearance at Villa Park – albeit for the visitors – and it could prove his last given Iling-Junior, who signed from Juventus last summer as part of the package that saw Douglas Luiz depart, joined Middlesbrough on loan in February.

Probationary employees laid off in Trump administration’s purge lose reinstatement in 7-2 ruling over legal standing

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The US supreme court has handed Donald Trump a reprieve from a judge’s ruling that his administration must rehire 16,000 probationary workers fired in its purge of the federal bureaucracy.

A day after ruling in the White House’s favor to allow the continued deportation of alleged Venezuelan gang members, the court gave the White House a less clear-cut victory in halting the order by a California court that dismissed workers from six government agencies must be rehired.

Nicholas Roske, of Simi Valley, California, faces up to life in prison over incident in Maryland in June 2022

A California man pleaded guilty on Tuesday to trying to kill Brett Kavanaugh at the US supreme court justice’s home in a suburb of Washington DC nearly three years ago.

Nicholas Roske was arrested near Kavanaugh’s home in Chevy Chase, Maryland, in June 2022. Roske was armed with a gun and a knife, was carrying zip ties and was dressed in black when he arrived in the neighborhood by taxi just after 1am, authorities said.

• Argentinian provokes French club on arrival in Paris
• Emery praises ‘mature’ goalkeeper before quarter-final

Unai Emery insisted Emiliano Martínez will handle the heat in Aston Villa’s Champions League quarter-final at the Parc des Princes, after the Argentina goalkeeper riled Paris Saint-Germain by wearing a cap showing off his World Cup triumph over France and appearing to feature a rooster, a national symbol.

Martínez, who trained with the Argentina flag dyed into his hair, was the pantomime villain when his penalty shootout save and mind games helped his country to victory in in 2022. Martínez was heavily jeered and booked twice in Lille in a memorable Europa Conference League victory 12 months ago, his first game in France since those Qatar antics. The Villa manager said Martínez, whom he first worked with at Arsenal, has matured and learnt to control his emotions.

Exclusive: Noor Abdalla attacks Columbia officials alongside Trump administration in letter to husband

• Read Noor Abdalla’s letter to Mahmoud Khalil here

In a letter marking one month since his detention by immigration authorities, Noor Abdalla vowed to continue to fight for the release of her husband, Mahmoud Khalil, and for the right to speak up on behalf of Palestinian rights.

“We will not be silenced,” she said. “We will persist, with even greater resolve, and we will pass that strength on to our children and our children’s children – until Palestine is free.”

• Team say decision ‘not taken lightly’
• Malone was on run of eight straight winning seasons

Michael Malone, who coached the Denver Nuggets to the NBA title in 2023 and has led the team to eight consecutive winning seasons, was fired on Tuesday in a stunning move that comes with less than a week in the regular season.

Also out is general manager Calvin Booth, whose contract will not be renewed. The Nuggets said Malone’s long-time assistant coach, David Adelman, will take charge for the rest of the season. ESPN reported on Tuesday that there had been tension between Malone and Booth over the direction of the team as the Nuggets integrated younger players and let veterans of the title run leave.

Exclusive: Algorithms allegedly being used to study data of thousands of people, in project critics say is ‘chilling and dystopian’

The UK government is developing a “murder prediction” programme which it hopes can use personal data of those known to the authorities to identify the people most likely to become killers.

Researchers are alleged to be using algorithms to analyse the information of thousands of people, including victims of crime, as they try to identify those at greatest risk of committing serious violent offences.

Musk’s unsuccessful attempts may be sign of growing rift between US president and tech billionaire

Elon Musk made personal, repeated attempts to try to get Donald Trump to back off from the wave of global tariffs that have created turmoil in international markets, it was reported on Tuesday.

Musk’s failure to get Trump to listen, however, is evidence to some observers of a growing rift between the US president and the world’s richest person, who has been leading the White House’s efforts to curb federal spending as head of the unofficial department of government efficiency (Doge).

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2 mins: England keep the ball well for a couple of minutes, but then a pass down the left flank towards Grace Clinton is slightly overhit and a defender intercepts.

1 min: Peeeeeep! England get the game started!

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3 mins: Dier’s weak headed clearance sees Inter pick it up again, Martinez getting on the ball before Augusto looks to play in Thuram down the left. Jonas Urbig is off his line quickly to claim it.

2 mins: Inter with more possession in these opening moments, and that will continue after Goretzka concedes a foul.

President speaks in White House framed by coal miners

The European Union still wants to avoid a trade war with the United States despite Donald Trump’s administration’s rejection of the “zero for zero” offer on all industrial goods put forward by Brussels, an EU spokesperson told reporters on Tuesday.

White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said on Monday that the European Union needed to lower its non-tariff barriers, including those created by value-added taxes and food safety regulations, if it wanted to reach a deal.

• Minute-by-minute updates from the 8pm BST kick-off
• Bayern Munich v Inter – live with Niall McVeigh

It’s been a season of incessant frustration for Arsenal. Yet it could end with them winning the European Cup for the first time. Right now, in this exhilarating, occasionally bowel-loosening window just before kick-off, anything is possible. And nights like this don’t come along very often: it’s only Arsenal’s second Champions League quarter-final in the last 15 years.

This is great fun: Sean Ingle’s minute-by-minute report of Arsenal’s win in the Bernabeu 19 years ago.

47 min - GOAL! Real Madrid 0 - 1 Arsenal Brilliant from Thierry Henry! Absolutely brilliant! From just over the half-way line he turns past Ronaldo and ghosts past three Real defenders before coolly sliding it into the far corner from 15 yards. Superb.

Georgia is still recovering from the impact six months on and the famed Masters course will look different as a result

Hurricane Helene made landfall in the early hours of Friday 27 September, in Big Bend, Florida. Meteorologists at the National Hurricane Center had been watching it building for a week, as it moved away from Nicaragua, up past Grand Cayman, Cancún, and Cuba, and the governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp, had declared a state of emergency on the Tuesday afternoon.

“The current forecast for Hurricane Helene suggests this storm will impact every part of our state,” Kemp said, but in Augusta, over in the east of the state, people felt safe, they had not had a hurricane here in almost 100 years, and this one was forecast to pass it by.

Prosecutors say Ryan Routh made ‘reconnaissance’ trips before alleged incident in West Palm Beach in September

A man charged with attempting to assassinate Donald Trump on a Florida golf course last summer tried to buy a rocket launcher as well as an anti-aircraft missile from a person he thought was a Ukrainian arms dealer, court papers filed on Monday assert.

The documents add substantial additional details to the justice department’s case against Ryan Routh, 59, who allegedly made several “reconnaissance” trips to West Palm Beach from his North Carolina home ahead of the alleged assassination attempt on 15 September last year.

• Australian powerbrokers ready to take 33% stake
• London club also favoured to play in a 10-team format

Any potential deal for the NRL to take control of Super League depends on the continued presence of French clubs in the British game. Australian powerbrokers are likely to abandon plans to buy a stake if Catalans Dragons and Toulouse are ejected by clubs leading a review into the sport in the UK.

There is an increasingly hostile power struggle developing in British rugby league after a number of clubs – spearheaded by Leigh Leopards and Batley Bulldogs – successfully removed Simon Johnson as the Rugby Football League chair and installed as his replacement the governing body’s former chief executive Nigel Wood.

As their experimental structures made out of cactus plaster, tree resin and chopped straw appear in the real world, eco research studio Material Cultures explains why nature has all the best building materials

“It’s like nose-to-tail eating, but for trees,” says Paloma Gormley, co-founder of the ecological design studio Material Cultures. “Industrial timber production is so wasteful. We should be making the most of every element of the tree, from its bark to the natural glue-like lignins and rosins – it all has value.”

The organisation’s philosophy is currently on display at London’s V&A in a show called Material Cultures: Woodland Goods. A hairy brown wall hangs in the museum’s furniture gallery, alongside some unusual plywood stools whose seats have been exchanged for slabs of compressed bark. Nearby are sheet materials made from pine needles and sap, papery silver birch bark encrusted with dried moss, and other experiments with things gathered from the forest. It’s quite a contrast to the polished furniture on display in the museum’s permanent collection, as if there’d been a rustic takeover by a crafty team of beavers and squirrels.

Gormley, who is the daughter of sculptor Antony, founded Material Cultures with Summer Islam and George Massoud in 2019. While most architects are used to selecting proprietary products from catalogues, often without knowing much about their origin or impact – pairing aluminium composite cladding panels with petrochemical insulation systems – this trio prefer to go back to the land and harvest their materials from the natural environment.

US president had trailed ‘direct talks’ and said Iran would be in ‘great danger’ if they failed

• US politics live – latest updates

Iran, wrongfooted by Donald Trump’s revelation that “direct talks” between the US and Iran on its nuclear programme are set to start in Oman on Saturday, insisted the talks would actually be in an indirect format, but added that the intentions of the negotiators were more important than the format.

Trump on Monday threw Tehran off guard by revealing the plan for the weekend talks and saying that if the talks failed Iran would be in “great danger”. There has been an unprecedented US military buildup across the Middle East in recent weeks, and Trump’s decision to make the talks public looks designed to press Iran to negotiate with urgency.

Video game adaptation broke records over the weekend as reports pour in about chaotic screenings and TikTok trends

Minecraft has jumped from game consoles to movie screens, and theaters across the country are shaking with perhaps the most vocal fan participation this side of an Avengers finale. As the film broke box office records, reports (and phone-shot videos) have been pouring in across the internet of the game-based fantasy-comedy inciting near-riots of applause, cheersand popcorn-chucking as the youthful target audience expresses their gratitude for references to the source material’s characters, memes and attendant lore – particularly the Chicken Jockey, a visual reference to a relatively rare but well-known phenomenon within the game. If you don’t know any more than this, there’s no real need to investigate further; the answer doesn’t matter. Even for someone actively watching A Minecraft Movie, it has absolutely no bearing on the actual story or characters at hand.

The reactions have become a TikTok trend unto themselves, with viewers making sure to record the screen in readiness for the audience bedlam that ensues (curiously, it happens when Jack Black says “Chicken Jockey”, not when the character actually first appears). Essentially, the kids are watching themselves watch the movie, not unlike how they might watch a stream of someone else playing the game and screaming along in real time. Some adults are amused by the chaos; others have attempted to decode how much of it is genuine enthusiasm and how much is half-ironic insta-nostalgia (yes, Minecraft has been around long enough to inspire nostalgia). Still others have simply panicked and called the cops; as seen in the video that helped establish the trend, officers apparently escorted the rowdiest kids out of one showing.

Creator of hit series responds to rumors of drama with Cristóbal Tapia de Veer in fiery interview with Howard Stern

The third season of The White Lotus may be over, but the drama continues for the hit HBO show. In a new interview, creator Mike White hit back at composer Cristóbal Tapia de Veer, who told the New York Times last week that he is quitting the show.

De Veer, who composed the show’s score and viral title sequence stylized for each of the three seasons’ locations, told the Times that he would not return for the show’s fourth season following creative differences with White. “We already had our last fight for ever, I think,” he said of White. “He was just saying no to anything.”

After 15 Palestinian medics and civil defence workers were killed by Israeli forces late last month, Israel began a familiar pattern of denial

The Israel Defense Forces’ changing account of its killing of 15 Palestinian medics and civil defence workers is part of a long familiar pattern in high profile cases involving the killing of civilians.

Often, at first, the IDF denies involvement. Sometimes – in the context of Gaza – it suggests one of Hamas’s own rockets fell short, causing the casualties.

Drink removed from draft list after lobbying from whiskey-making Ireland and wine-producing Italy and France

• US politics live – latest updates

Amid the economic maelstrom of Donald Trump’s trade war, drink makers might take a small drop of comfort: the EU has dropped plans to hit American bourbon with retaliatory tariffs.

Bourbon and other US whiskeys have escaped EU countermeasures after heavy lobbying from the EU’s drinks-producing countries – such as whiskey-making Ireland and the wine behemoths Italy and France – who feared their alcohol industries would become casualties of a global trade war.

Wall Street rises after Treasury secretary says US can reach ‘some good deals’ with trading partners

• Business live – latest updates

Rachel Reeves stepped in to soothe stock market jitters on Tuesday amid signs that the punishing global sell-off triggered by US trade tariffs was starting to ease.

The chancellor told parliament she had spoken to Andrew Bailey, the governor of the Bank of England, who confirmed “markets are functioning effectively and that our banking system is resilient”.

Chinese foreign ministry calls comments by US vice-president ‘ignorant and disrespectful’

Beijing has hit back after the US vice-president, JD Vance, referred to “Chinese peasants” in an interview defending Donald Trump’s tariffs.

Speaking to Fox News last week, Vance asked: “What has the globalist economy gotten the United States of America? And the answer is, fundamentally, it’s based on two principles – incurring a huge amount of debt to buy things that other countries make for us.

Robert F Kennedy Jr and social media influencers are proponents of the ingredient – but is it worth the hype?

In March, the health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr claimed that beef tallow, an animal fat, is healthier than its plant-based alternative, seed oils. Kennedy said the US wants food companies to “switch traditional ingredients for beef tallow”. Some, like Steak ’n Shake and Sweetgreen, have already done so.

Beef tallow, also known as “beef drippings”, is made by removing, simmering, then cooling the fatty tissue that surrounds cows’ organs. American fast-food restaurants used it to deep fry foods like potatoes until the 1990s, when they switched to seed oils. Today, it can be found in soaps, candles and skin care.

Malek gives an eccentric performance as a nerdy agent who wants his superior Laurence Fishburne to retrain him as an assassin

Here is a moderate action spy thriller directed by James Hawes, who previously made the Nicholas Winton drama One Life. It is conceived in the robustly muscular style of Bourne and Mission: Impossible, and features Rami Malek as nerdy CIA intelligence analyst Charles Heller, whose wife is murdered by terrorists in London. Enraged at a lack of progress in the case and suspecting a cover-up, he blackmails his immediate superiors into training him to be an assassin (by threatening to reveal their black ops), so he can hunt his wife’s killers and whack them. His exasperated teacher is Colonel Henderson, played by Laurence Fishburne. It’s based on an 80s bestseller by Robert Littell, filmed once before with John Savage in the lead.

There’s a bit of entertainment value: a big scene at the swimming-pool-in-the-sky bridging two skyscrapers, which the film imagines to be in Madrid rather than its actual location in London, plus a wacky moment in which Charles has to get his smartphone out and watch a YouTube tutorial on how to pick a lock. But there is a fundamental problem concerning how ruthless Charles is supposed to be in killing his wife’s murderers in cold blood – which would compromise his relatable nice-guy status – and the final confrontation with the homicidal mastermind involves a very muddled exchange of views. Charles wishes to maintain his moral superiority, and his antagonist does not challenge him on the subject of the CIA’s own culpability over the years.